letting out steam: web design

[benplaut]

first of all, i am not a web designer. i am good enough at graphic design, and absolutely love working with vector graphics (i used the CorelDRAW! suite for both, which i adore), but i am not a web designer.

my dad, assuming that since i run linux i must be an expert of everything do with computer (i'm flattered...), set me up to do a website for the husband of a colleuge of his. the business is for his welding business, that also happens to sell Hawaiiana and some Hawaii based art.

there's a reason i'm not a web designer, i simply don't understand how the page works. yes, of course i could take a course on HTML, and learn everything there is to know about web design. it woldn't really help. i need something more along the lines of a graphic design program, for HTML. In graphic design, box 1 could really care less about box 2 being at the wrong coordinates in relation to the sqaure root of Pi... etc. In web design, you have frames, layers, tables, and g-d knows what else trying to coopirate and get everything to work together. this ends up with messiness unmatched by anything else. Frames overlapping, text running from one box to another, you name it. it's happened.

what i need is a program like a graphic design program that can save in some web-friendly format. i've tried dreamweaver, frontpage, and Nvu... none of them work how i want

my dad says that i can make somewhere around $300 for this site, but the truth is, i make about $40 an hour cleaning up spyware. i've spent well over 15 hours trying in vain to get this thing to work (and i'm nowhere near don't)

please, some knight in shining armour come and find me a program for my needs! :)

"you've done so much already, why stop! there's alot of money you can make"

- My Dad

:roll:

i don't care if it costs, as long as it is either native, or WINE'able...

[m0biu5]

If you are a good graphic artist and you can have a good sense of color and style, I suggest you use a CMS and modify a theme to your needs. There are plenty out there, and you can edit the stylesheets and images of the theme of your choice - wala! I used to code in Notepad back when I used Windows, and I've tried Nvu for Linux and its "okay" I guess... but seriously, check out content management systems. :)

[Kvark]

I don't know any better program then dreamweaver for this in general but...

Photoshop/Image Ready is excellent for the image part. You can make a complete image based menu with all the underlaying html, and javascript (for the buttons changing appearance when you move the mouse over them and click them). When you are done in Photoshop/Image Ready then you got a html file that doesn't need anymore work at all to serve as the menu frame.

Personally I'd perfer to make the images one by one with the Gimp and pussle the menu together by writing code. But guess thats not acceptable for you.

...yeah, I know that it's not linux, and that this particular program is too expensive for people who want to keep it legal, just saying it's the best tool for making good looking website menues without writing a single line of code.

[benplaut]

Photoshop/Image Ready is excellent for the image part. You can make a complete image based menu with all the underlaying html, and javascript (for the buttons changing appearance when you move the mouse over them and click them). When you are done in Photoshop/Image Ready then you got a html file that doesn't need anymore work at all to serve as the menu frame.

that's a good idea... i'll see if Corel has similar functionality,,,


i can't really use a CMS (i did use one on my personal site until my host shut down) because it's a pay-for site that someone is paying me to make. it really doesn't have enough content to do justice to a CMS...


i'm WINE'ing Fireworks MX at the moment, see how i like that...

still hoping :)

[maruchan]

Ben, why not just find some templates you like and start from those? CMSes are a good idea, but you might go batty trying to figure out how they're supposed to work if you have no experience with PHP or CSS.

If you invest a little time learning to use CSS and XHTML, you will be able to put basic layouts down quickly and build from there. I wouldn't recommend any particular software for this, because most anything will work.

[benplaut]

^^OK, scammer

goodbye.

you obviously have no interest in Ubuntu GNU/Linux, so you are in the wrong forum. i suggest you try your own personal forum on your own personal computer, on your own personal webserver. Better yet, just don't go to the trouble, and don't let anyone know about it!

Goodbye, and have a nice day! :-|


<<edit>>

k, they got it

[WildTangent]

^^OK, scammer

goodbye.

you obviously have no interest in Ubuntu GNU/Linux, so you are in the wrong forum. i suggest you try your own personal forum on your own personal computer, on your own personal webserver. Better yet, just don't go to the trouble, and don't let anyone know about it!

Goodbye, and have a nice day! :-|


<<edit>>

k, they got it
did i miss something? so far, the best program ive used is Dreamweaver. it has 3 different viewing modes, one is the code, one is the design, and the other is both (shows half a window of code, half a window of design :P) and i find it very easy to use. i suppose thats because i was in a web design class that taught me how to use it, but im sure you can find guides with google :P

-Wild

[benplaut]

did i miss something? so far, the best program ive used is Dreamweaver. it has 3 different viewing modes, one is the code, one is the design, and the other is both (shows half a window of code, half a window of design :P) and i find it very easy to use. i suppose thats because i was in a web design class that taught me how to use it, but im sure you can find guides with google :P

-Wild

i have problems with frames...

i am working on the photoshop suggestion- that's more what i like :)


what you missed is some scammer who is trying to convince you to send him $5 to each of his 5 paypal accounts, and continue until you somehow receive money by spamming the links to every forum on the globe...

he got in ten posts of it before they stopped him :roll:

[WildTangent]

i see. as for web design, i hate frames too, but there are ways to make them work the way you want. but i still hate frames. instead i use tables. tables are awesome. this is my personal site for my other hobby: http://longlivemarneus.serveftp.net/llmminis all done in dreamweaver, using tables. another feature of dreamweaver that i love (but i dont use anymore, because i work directly on my own server, rather than upload to my ISPs server) is that it has a feature that will automatically FTP your modifyed files to your server when you save.

-Wild

[poofyhairguy]

i have problems with frames...


Shudder. The easiest way is to:

Use dreamweaver after buying templates for it.

[Kvark]

Yeah, frames can be a problem, so can tables. and a lot of other things in HTML. The main problem is that it defines data and layout in the same code.

Hopefully things will get less messy when XML and XSL becomes more widespread.

[WirelessMike]

I agree with Maruchan. I've made some sites using css and xhtml (transitional) that were relatively easy to design in a simple editor (I use Bluefish and Screem on Ubuntu and Aranae and Notetab on Windows), though Nvu or Mozilla Composer do make things even easier for the visual designer.

The hard part is content. If you have that, and some good original graphics, a simple css template can provide a professional looking site in minutes. I recommend this site (http://glish.com/css/) for reference.

I've no experience with PHP, so I can't speak to how easy that may or may not be, but css is a quick study, especially for anyone familiar with simple html (such as <img src="http://blahblahblah.jpg"/>, etc.).

However, I agree with most here that Macromedia Dreamweaver probably offers the best "wizard" style editor, though the code from a wizard will never be as clean as strict xhtml.

Good luck-- Lotsa opportunities in site creation. Typically, the only reason experienced creators aren't swamped is that people, as you said, tend to hit up the first geek they know for a site and offer them money. The typical geek is more inclined to go for the money and learn as they earn rather than defer to a professional-- Me, included.

[americanLoki]

I have to throw my hat into the Dreamweaver crowd here. In fact besides my games it's the only reason I still have a Windows partition on my machine.

The other thing I can recommend is at least learning basic HTML. Even though Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG editor it sometimes has it's own mind about how code should be constructed and it's always better to know at least the framework beind what you're doing. I recommend this site (http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/) if you're willing to learn. This is how I orginally got started, it's a good "trial by fire" way to learn. The site will take you step by step and then ask you to apply what you learned at the end of each chapter.

Just my 2 cents though.

[BinaryDigit]

I have to throw my hat into the Dreamweaver crowd here. In fact besides my games it's the only reason I still have a Windows partition on my machine.

The other thing I can recommend is at least learning basic HTML. Even though Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG editor it sometimes has it's own mind about how code should be constructed and it's always better to know at least the framework beind what you're doing. I recommend this site (http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/) if you're willing to learn. This is how I orginally got started, it's a good "trial by fire" way to learn. The site will take you step by step and then ask you to apply what you learned at the end of each chapter.

Just my 2 cents though.
Use HTML-Kit, it's an EXCELLENT and free program that can help you with web design (this is for Windows only I believe however)! and it's not just for HTML, you can edit CSS, PHP whatever you like. Look at the details here:
http://www.chami.com/html-kit/

[egon spengler]

i see. as for web design, i hate frames too, but there are ways to make them work the way you want. but i still hate frames. instead i use tables. tables are awesome. this is my personal site for my other hobby: http://longlivemarneus.serveftp.net/llmminis all done in dreamweaver, using tables.

Generally tables are increasingly seen as a poor design chocie in web design. You might want to look into css (htmldog is a good place to start). That site could quite easily be replicated in css which is generally lighter (so yousave bandwidth costs) and easier to maintain.

I second the vote for html-kit. Supposedly it can run on linux but i have never tried. It's basicall a text editor though so if you really not looking to learn too much dreamweaver would stll be best bet cos you dont need to understand the code with that. (though of course knowing code will be a big help)