what's your poison?

[kanezfan]

I once learned how to use frontpage pretty well, but decided it was pretty basic, so i picked up dreamweaver, went through the tutorials and did ok, but I still find it pretty frustrating at times. I mean I have these ideas for designs in my head, but I can never get them out on the screen. they always come out looking all jacked up, tables look out of position, the text doesn't flow correctly, it's not the right font, etc.... I think i could really get into this, but I feel like i'm missing one little tiny critical piece of the puzzle here. how do you guys create these great looking sites?

[Marco]

I usually create a mockup in Photoshop. If that comes out right then I make web graphics out of it and start working on the HTML. Which, I may add, I code by hand rather than mess around with a WYSIWYG program. That offers you quite a bit more control over the code ;)

[kanezfan]

does photoshop export the stuff you create as html then? and is that kit?

[Marco]

Well it actually can do that, but I prefer to do it myself. ;)

And yes, that is KITT. :)

[synicide]

I hand code in DWMX2004, if you can believe that. :p

[kanezfan]

ok, can you guys give me some pointers? take me through the process. cause I usually start straight in to dreamweaver, making tables, then adding in images. I'm pretty good with fireworks, should I "draw" out my design in that first?

[Marco]

Well that's what works for me. Create an empty 1024x768 image, then create a mockup design on top of that. I guess it's worth a shot :)

[Noiz Pollution]

I come up with something I like in PS first, then cut it up and code the HTML by hand. To be honest I don't think I could be bothered with a WYSIWYG editor after hand coding for so long.

[kanezfan]

I'm going to try that with fireworks later then. I did do that once, but i ran into trouble. I made these boxes to hold content right, but then I got stuck because i couldn't figure out how to get data in them, like they were images. i know i'm not making sense....

[Noiz Pollution]

Be sure to have in mind which parts of the image are actually going to just be table cells with a image or colour for their backgrounds

[Chris Gwynne]

Notepad.