[thelist] what do you use to create code from layout?

H. G. Quinn hgquinn at attglobal.net
Sun Apr 1 20:43:55 CDT 2001


Though neither is completely clean or completely smooth, using Dreamweaver and
Homesite (which is distributed with it) together has proven to be, for me, the
most effective toolset for creating code for a layout (and, since Macromedia
and Allaire merged recently, maybe one day there'll be a single tool that will
do everything we want).

Personally, I've found that I can create clean pages pretty fast if I start the
page in Homesite to set up titles and meta tags, then jump over to DW to create
tables and place images and rollovers, and key in my copy, then move back to
Homesite to clean up the code, create stylesheets and test/tweak the code and
styles for multi-browser compatibility.  While DW is great for many things, it
is, unfortunately, very persistant in wanting to assign fixed TD widths and
heights, once a table has been built; and not only is it persistant, but often
the values really don't fit the cells' contents...so once I get back into
Homesite (after placing all my images/rollovers in their respective cells), I
remove or correct the TD width/height values, and _do not_ return to DW for
that page unless I'm completely breaking down and rebuilding a complex table,
and not always even then.  Overall, I spend 95% of the time it takes to build a
page in Homesite, but for setting up images in tables and doing simple
rollovers, DW is easier; it's also easier to key in copy into DW because you
see the content contextually; so I use DW for those tasks, and Homesite for
everything else.

(One thing I hate about DW is: once you begin to place images in a table, the
columns to the left or right of the images being placed collapse down to the
point where their cells are virtually unselectable.  My workaround is to always
start my tables out with borders and cellspacing of 20 pixels, which allows
images and rollovers to be popped into cells with relative ease.  I then take
the border/cellspacing values back down to 0 pixels once the table is
completely filled.)

Anything out there that's really easy builds poor code.  Anything that allows
good code to be built needs a bit of work and thought.  So far, anyway.  So you
have to give something up to build good pages.  You make your choice: ease and
poor code, or a bit of work and good code.  I mean, FW and Imageready will both
build HTML, but it takes hours to clean it up.  Whereas you can build and tweak
to completion a complex page and its stylesheet in under 2 hours, and the page
will be clean and not break under multiple browsers.

ted serbinski wrote:

> question everyone.
>
> simply when you design a site and layout in your favorite graphics program
> (say fireworks or photoshop) ... what tools do you use to transform this
> layout into code that you can fix and than tweak?
>
> i thought dreamweaver might be a useful tool, but after trying it, it seems
> it is not as useful as originally thought.
>
> thanks
>
> -ted

Cheers,
--
Heather Quinn
hgquinn at attglobal.net
http://pws.prserv.net/windyhill
http://www.windyhilldesign.com






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