On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 12:36 PM, Ken Kixmoeller f/h <[email protected]> wrote: > > I teach DreamWeaver, and technical people commonly struggle with it > because they always want to dig into the code directly. >
This is the challenge for many web sites I work with: you want designers to design the _appearance_ of the site, but a web developer to write the _code_ to generate that appearance. It's a difficult teaching point to get the owners to understand that they are not paying to having it done twice. Ideally, your web site is being generated by an application (or hand-coded) to produce clean tight code with no unnecessary tags, which degrades gracefully (if not pixel-for-pixel exact matching) for browsers of lesser capabilities (smaller screens, Javascript disabled, poor CSS support, etc.), supports the standards, and renders well in all current, past and future browsers. A good designer has the "vision thing" and can describe the overall appearance of a web site and paint a picture. If they're exceptionally good, they can take this painting they've created and generate some good CSS or HTML snippets. The web developer then takes these pieces and weaves it into a whole, perhaps bringing in some outside widgets (Google Maps, Twitter feeds, jQuery widgets). As for tools, the designer can use Dreamweaver or Adobe or even MS Paint (I had a client do that!). For the web developer, a good programming editor (UltraEdit, SciTE, gVim) makes a big difference. I've done in with the VFP editor. You could even use Notepad, though NotePad++ is a huge step up. For smaller sites, using a mini-CMS like Joomla or Drupal and a good template can get you good code and the ability to add in some dynamic content. For larger or more complex sites, hiring a team to help you determine (and, if necessary, build) the right thing is the answer. In no case do I think a product like Dreamweaver or FrontPage should be generating production web sites. JOMO, -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
