I do web development professionally. I can give you the lay of the land. The pros use Adobe's Creative Suite, which is comprised of multiple programs. Version CS4 is their latest and greatest (as of Oct 2008). Its big, complicated and expensive, but its power is unrivaled. The Master Suite (with all programs) is about $2500 (or $500 for students). Honestly, its not something that you can learn casually on your own. To go beyond scratching the surface really takes professional training unless you are incredibly clever, insightful, patient enough to read-read-read, and have the tenacity of a pit-bull. Yes, CS4 is *that* broad and deep and versatile.
Typically, designers use Illustrator and Photoshop to do graphics and photo work (respectively), then Photoshop or Fireworks to "assemble and slice-up" a site into its graphical and picture elements. Some use Fireworks to prototype --to make the menu buttons work, or at least look like they do. Most take their design into Dreamweaver to develope code (the XHTML and CSS and maybe even some Javascript). Some designers take the short-cut of using code generated by Dreamweaver, but the best websites are coded by hand. It behooves any designer/developer to know the eXtensible Hyper-Text Markup Language (XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) natively. Most websites these days also have a slideshow or animation or even video/audio, which is all done in Flash. Similar to Dreamweaveer, Flash can generate a lot of the code it needs (In ActionScript 3.0, specifically), but also like DW, the pros write their own and are MUCH better off for it, because (1) you can do a whole lot more with your animations using code, and (2) its a full-blown language capable of doing networking on the backend, among many other things. Its truly amazing what can be done in Flash (if you're curious to see a master in action, visit http://mudbubble.com ). Java is another language like Flash, but different. It tends to be used more in Academia and large enterprises, as its a very-strictly typed language (and kinda painful to use as a result, in my experience). There is another side to website development too, literally. What most know (and most web designers deal with) is the "client-side" in the browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera, the major ones). But the "server-side" is where you get web-pages from, and most websites these days generate the XHTML dynamically as they integrate "fresh" data and other assorted "dynamic content." There are a number of languages that do "server-side scripting" (e.g., PHP, ASP, JSP, Python, Ruby, Ruby On Rails). Most of these server-side sites also use databases that are written using and then accessed by some variant of Structured Query Language (like, MySQL, PostGre, MS-SQL or Oracle). Good database design is an art, though no end-users have any way to appreciate it by anything other than good response time from their websites and flexible reporting capabilities. Many websites use a client-side "framework" called a Content Management Systems (CMS) or a "portal." The great advantage to these is that the databases are all already made, as are lots of "modules" likle Calendars, Address books, blogs, chat, you name it. These make it much easier to get a large site with rich functionality going relatively quickly and make maintenance and content updating a whole lot easier too. The price you pay for the convenience, similar to the genetrated code, is that there are some things you can't do (or can't do the way you want to) In other words, developers almost always bump into (or up against) the limitations in any framework they choose (and there are a whole slew of them out there, though Joomla is the only one I can think of off-hand). Ok, that's about all I can think of about the (serious) web dev world of today. Its probably TMI (too much information), and its not really quad-related, but anyway... Hope that helps, bob quinn ________________________________ From: "gah17...@aol.com" <gah17...@aol.com> To: quad-list@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 6:47:43 PM Subject: [QUAD-L] web site design Hi all, I wonder if anyone on the list designs web sites for a living? I have designed and a few but am looking to broaden my knowledge on different programs. I presently use FrontPage 2003. Thanks, Glenn Henry ________________________________ Feeling the pinch at the grocery store? Make dinner for $10 or less.
