Solving the ASP.NET Designer / Developer dilemma
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Sorry to post this in the lounge, but this is where all the smart people/people with plenty of experience hang out...so it makes the most sense to me to post this here. In my 3 years or so of creating ASP.NET web apps with various employers, I have yet to see a good solution that allows development by both designers as well as developers. Designers don't really like Visual Studio ( and I understand why ). They don't want to learn asp.net controls, etc, they just want to design. On the other hand, developers like ASP.NET and Visual Studio because it allows us to focus on coding the business logic and data acess faster than ever. Can any of you provide a somewhat detail explanation of your designer/developer set-up? do you use a combination of VS and Expression Web? What about Visual Web Developer? Do both designer and developer us VS? do you use Source Safe? There has to be a good solution that makes both professions happy - but it's definately elusive.
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
In the worst situation, the designer only knows PhotoShop, and sells the customer on something that should only appear in print (not to mention any sites on a particular Web site known by a four letter acronym). In the better situation, the designer gives me the pretty pictures, and a working HTML page. There are enough graphical HTML tools out there that they should be able to craft at least that much. It's also enough that it makes the migration to ASP.NET (or PHP, or ...) much easier. Usually it's a case of, "replace that region with a DataList", "this much is the master page", etc. I don't really think it is necessary for the designer to know a particular server-side technology, but should know enough HTML/JS/CSS that they can build an example of what they want in something close to the final format. As far as workflow, invariably the first section is always the same, and always involves email. Numerous iterations of the PhotoShop run around until there is a 'final' product. I don't know of too many designers who would use version control, but it would definitely help if you could train them. Once that's in place (and safely stowed in Subversion), comes the migration to HTML/CSS and then to ASP.NET.
-------------- TTFN - Kent
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Sorry to post this in the lounge, but this is where all the smart people/people with plenty of experience hang out...so it makes the most sense to me to post this here. In my 3 years or so of creating ASP.NET web apps with various employers, I have yet to see a good solution that allows development by both designers as well as developers. Designers don't really like Visual Studio ( and I understand why ). They don't want to learn asp.net controls, etc, they just want to design. On the other hand, developers like ASP.NET and Visual Studio because it allows us to focus on coding the business logic and data acess faster than ever. Can any of you provide a somewhat detail explanation of your designer/developer set-up? do you use a combination of VS and Expression Web? What about Visual Web Developer? Do both designer and developer us VS? do you use Source Safe? There has to be a good solution that makes both professions happy - but it's definately elusive.
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
Check out WPF. It'll blow your mind, and this issue is essentially made moot.
------------ Cheers, Patrick
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Sorry to post this in the lounge, but this is where all the smart people/people with plenty of experience hang out...so it makes the most sense to me to post this here. In my 3 years or so of creating ASP.NET web apps with various employers, I have yet to see a good solution that allows development by both designers as well as developers. Designers don't really like Visual Studio ( and I understand why ). They don't want to learn asp.net controls, etc, they just want to design. On the other hand, developers like ASP.NET and Visual Studio because it allows us to focus on coding the business logic and data acess faster than ever. Can any of you provide a somewhat detail explanation of your designer/developer set-up? do you use a combination of VS and Expression Web? What about Visual Web Developer? Do both designer and developer us VS? do you use Source Safe? There has to be a good solution that makes both professions happy - but it's definately elusive.
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
Nothing like a white board!
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I don't care what tools you want to use to do the site, but it's all done in ASP.Net, so if you can't live in that environment, then you don't work here. Pretty simple.
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles.Jasmine2501 wrote:
I don't care what tools you want to use to do the site, but it's all done in ASP.Net
wow thats the spirit,btw do you work for ms or something hee...
_________________________ "When the superior man refrains from acting, his force is felt for a thousand li." Sun Tzu
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Sorry to post this in the lounge, but this is where all the smart people/people with plenty of experience hang out...so it makes the most sense to me to post this here. In my 3 years or so of creating ASP.NET web apps with various employers, I have yet to see a good solution that allows development by both designers as well as developers. Designers don't really like Visual Studio ( and I understand why ). They don't want to learn asp.net controls, etc, they just want to design. On the other hand, developers like ASP.NET and Visual Studio because it allows us to focus on coding the business logic and data acess faster than ever. Can any of you provide a somewhat detail explanation of your designer/developer set-up? do you use a combination of VS and Expression Web? What about Visual Web Developer? Do both designer and developer us VS? do you use Source Safe? There has to be a good solution that makes both professions happy - but it's definately elusive.
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
Ideally you have three layers here. You have your designer who works in Photoshop. You then have your web-developer who is proficient in CSS and HTML (and JavaScript if needed.) Then you have your back-end guy who exposes the right hooks for the web-developer to get data from. The web-developer should be happy with Visual Studio. Though I find, being a web-developer myself, that a good text editor is better. What you don't want is a designer creating your markup when they are no good at it. Using Dreamweaver or exporting slices from Fireworks is not the way to create your markup and CSS. Just like the back-end guy wouldn't use auto-generated code. If your designer is not comfortable in a text editor then they shouldn't be producing production markup. You need to find a markup guy, someone who really understands the whole HTML + CSS + JavaScript story. And don't let your back-end guy produce markup if he isn't comfortable with it either. Just because someone can code a multi-million user system in C++ doesn't mean they can do HTML and CSS. It isn't simple no matter how much you laugh at it. Also part of the problem is the HTML that ASP.NET can output. It is very, very easy to let ASP.NET do its thing and output markup that makes what Word produces look good. It is important to get your ASP.NET controls outputting clean, valid and well structured HTML. Then you need to start using IDs and Class attributes properly. ASP.NET can produce good HTML but you have to wrestle it into that position at first. I do understand your situation though and think it has a lot to do with HTML and CSS emerging from a bad rap. People didn't pay attention to it and now find a lack of skills and understanding. Thankfully there are more and more visually proficient guys who know HTML and CSS. And back-end guys are coming around to the fact that markup is as important as their own code.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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Sorry to post this in the lounge, but this is where all the smart people/people with plenty of experience hang out...so it makes the most sense to me to post this here. In my 3 years or so of creating ASP.NET web apps with various employers, I have yet to see a good solution that allows development by both designers as well as developers. Designers don't really like Visual Studio ( and I understand why ). They don't want to learn asp.net controls, etc, they just want to design. On the other hand, developers like ASP.NET and Visual Studio because it allows us to focus on coding the business logic and data acess faster than ever. Can any of you provide a somewhat detail explanation of your designer/developer set-up? do you use a combination of VS and Expression Web? What about Visual Web Developer? Do both designer and developer us VS? do you use Source Safe? There has to be a good solution that makes both professions happy - but it's definately elusive.
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
Microsoft has seen the light and created Expression web for just this purpose! Expression web was expressly designed to create web pages for the designer. It has all the tools needed to create great web pages and copy that info out to xml or aspx and import it into VS with no problems. The designer does not need to know ASP and the developer does not need to make things look pretty, just get it to work. (Of course, the developer is most likely to MESS it up - something about "I can make it better!") PEACE AT LAST!!! :cool: :rose:
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Ideally you have three layers here. You have your designer who works in Photoshop. You then have your web-developer who is proficient in CSS and HTML (and JavaScript if needed.) Then you have your back-end guy who exposes the right hooks for the web-developer to get data from. The web-developer should be happy with Visual Studio. Though I find, being a web-developer myself, that a good text editor is better. What you don't want is a designer creating your markup when they are no good at it. Using Dreamweaver or exporting slices from Fireworks is not the way to create your markup and CSS. Just like the back-end guy wouldn't use auto-generated code. If your designer is not comfortable in a text editor then they shouldn't be producing production markup. You need to find a markup guy, someone who really understands the whole HTML + CSS + JavaScript story. And don't let your back-end guy produce markup if he isn't comfortable with it either. Just because someone can code a multi-million user system in C++ doesn't mean they can do HTML and CSS. It isn't simple no matter how much you laugh at it. Also part of the problem is the HTML that ASP.NET can output. It is very, very easy to let ASP.NET do its thing and output markup that makes what Word produces look good. It is important to get your ASP.NET controls outputting clean, valid and well structured HTML. Then you need to start using IDs and Class attributes properly. ASP.NET can produce good HTML but you have to wrestle it into that position at first. I do understand your situation though and think it has a lot to do with HTML and CSS emerging from a bad rap. People didn't pay attention to it and now find a lack of skills and understanding. Thankfully there are more and more visually proficient guys who know HTML and CSS. And back-end guys are coming around to the fact that markup is as important as their own code.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
Paul Watson wrote:
And don't let your back-end guy produce markup if he isn't comfortable with it either. Just because someone can code a multi-million user system in C++ doesn't mean they can do HTML and CSS. It isn't simple no matter how much you laugh at it.
So true! WELL SAID or TYPED or whatever.... :doh: I hate the individuals who just assume if you can code in something really well, you can work wonders in other languages/markup also. Especially when the markup/language they want is something you can stand! Ether way you have my 5.:-D
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Check out WPF. It'll blow your mind, and this issue is essentially made moot.
------------ Cheers, Patrick
Indeed we are doing some WPF stuff, but not me, not yet anyway. :( It is indeed some totally kick butt technology. For those who haven't yet snuck a peek, search for the keyword "xbap" . :rolleyes:
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
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Microsoft has seen the light and created Expression web for just this purpose! Expression web was expressly designed to create web pages for the designer. It has all the tools needed to create great web pages and copy that info out to xml or aspx and import it into VS with no problems. The designer does not need to know ASP and the developer does not need to make things look pretty, just get it to work. (Of course, the developer is most likely to MESS it up - something about "I can make it better!") PEACE AT LAST!!! :cool: :rose:
Is the Expression tool that creates the markup WYSIWYG?
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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Microsoft has seen the light and created Expression web for just this purpose! Expression web was expressly designed to create web pages for the designer. It has all the tools needed to create great web pages and copy that info out to xml or aspx and import it into VS with no problems. The designer does not need to know ASP and the developer does not need to make things look pretty, just get it to work. (Of course, the developer is most likely to MESS it up - something about "I can make it better!") PEACE AT LAST!!! :cool: :rose:
This helps. We are looking at Expression Web now as a tool, but maybe we are doing it backwards. Basically, I just finished writing an ASP.NET web app. In the app I use a Wizard control. The designer runs the app on the dev box, and does a 'view source' in the browser and goes 'hey, this is all table based, there's not much I can do with CSS with this thing.' The thing is, for me, it just looks like a Wizard control. I see no table tags anyway. ASP.NET just renders it in the browser as a table. Now I know there styles can be applies to various portions of the Wizard control, but this means, bascially that the designer will have to learn at least a portion of how this control works. No? I've pushed for an up front design, then to code once the design is worked out, but, I've only been here a month. Is that how you use Expression? Iterate through designs, then send it off to code once approved?
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
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Is the Expression tool that creates the markup WYSIWYG?
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/virtuallabs/aa740378.aspx[^] Tools like this will help take some of the sting out of web dev, but the problem is still with the HTML/CSS/Images pardigm. There is a growing gap between the client and server sides of software development. Just take a look at the progression of the client side technology. We basically use the same stuff we did 10 - 15 years ago HTML/CSS/Images. Now compare that to the server side technologies. CGI, ASAPI, ASP, ASP.NET 1.1, ASP.NET 2.0. You can see the same thing in the other platforms, Java, ColdFusion, PHP. On the MS platform, what's one of the best tools to come along in the last few years? ASP AJAX (Atlas)? That is basically a server-side tool to help manage the decrepit client-side markup. In fact, MS gave us an intermediate scripting language for when we need to wander over to the client-side.
Troy T.
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Ideally you have three layers here. You have your designer who works in Photoshop. You then have your web-developer who is proficient in CSS and HTML (and JavaScript if needed.) Then you have your back-end guy who exposes the right hooks for the web-developer to get data from. The web-developer should be happy with Visual Studio. Though I find, being a web-developer myself, that a good text editor is better. What you don't want is a designer creating your markup when they are no good at it. Using Dreamweaver or exporting slices from Fireworks is not the way to create your markup and CSS. Just like the back-end guy wouldn't use auto-generated code. If your designer is not comfortable in a text editor then they shouldn't be producing production markup. You need to find a markup guy, someone who really understands the whole HTML + CSS + JavaScript story. And don't let your back-end guy produce markup if he isn't comfortable with it either. Just because someone can code a multi-million user system in C++ doesn't mean they can do HTML and CSS. It isn't simple no matter how much you laugh at it. Also part of the problem is the HTML that ASP.NET can output. It is very, very easy to let ASP.NET do its thing and output markup that makes what Word produces look good. It is important to get your ASP.NET controls outputting clean, valid and well structured HTML. Then you need to start using IDs and Class attributes properly. ASP.NET can produce good HTML but you have to wrestle it into that position at first. I do understand your situation though and think it has a lot to do with HTML and CSS emerging from a bad rap. People didn't pay attention to it and now find a lack of skills and understanding. Thankfully there are more and more visually proficient guys who know HTML and CSS. And back-end guys are coming around to the fact that markup is as important as their own code.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
I've found that the CSS Control Adapters do a decent job of cleaning up some of that ASP .NET HTML. http://www.asp.net/cssadapters/
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I've found that the CSS Control Adapters do a decent job of cleaning up some of that ASP .NET HTML. http://www.asp.net/cssadapters/
They help and ASP.NET can be wrestled into submission but it isn't as good as it should be. It still tries to ouput some pretty darn strange IDs and custom attributes. You wouldn't let odd stuff into your C# so you shouldn't let odd stuff into your HTML and CSS.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/virtuallabs/aa740378.aspx[^] Tools like this will help take some of the sting out of web dev, but the problem is still with the HTML/CSS/Images pardigm. There is a growing gap between the client and server sides of software development. Just take a look at the progression of the client side technology. We basically use the same stuff we did 10 - 15 years ago HTML/CSS/Images. Now compare that to the server side technologies. CGI, ASAPI, ASP, ASP.NET 1.1, ASP.NET 2.0. You can see the same thing in the other platforms, Java, ColdFusion, PHP. On the MS platform, what's one of the best tools to come along in the last few years? ASP AJAX (Atlas)? That is basically a server-side tool to help manage the decrepit client-side markup. In fact, MS gave us an intermediate scripting language for when we need to wander over to the client-side.
Troy T.
troy.tuttle wrote:
On the MS platform, what's one of the best tools to come along in the last few years? ASP AJAX (Atlas)?
I'd disagree, Atlas is OK but hardly the way forward. Too bloated, too constricted by the way ASP.NET works.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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This helps. We are looking at Expression Web now as a tool, but maybe we are doing it backwards. Basically, I just finished writing an ASP.NET web app. In the app I use a Wizard control. The designer runs the app on the dev box, and does a 'view source' in the browser and goes 'hey, this is all table based, there's not much I can do with CSS with this thing.' The thing is, for me, it just looks like a Wizard control. I see no table tags anyway. ASP.NET just renders it in the browser as a table. Now I know there styles can be applies to various portions of the Wizard control, but this means, bascially that the designer will have to learn at least a portion of how this control works. No? I've pushed for an up front design, then to code once the design is worked out, but, I've only been here a month. Is that how you use Expression? Iterate through designs, then send it off to code once approved?
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
On the Expression Web front I'll say it is a really good HTML and CSS text editor. The WYSIWYG bit though is still awful. No tool has come close to a production strength WYSIWYG editor. I don't do ASP.NET anymore though so can't really comment on how it handles ASP.NET tags. I do think that in your situation your markup guy is going to have to come to grips with ASP.NET tags. He'll have to know how to use repeaters to control what is outputted. When I used to do ASP.NET I used the "low-level" tags a lot to wrap up my own HTML. I didn't use the high-level controls that tried to output all the HTML for you. Ideally your markup guy will know how to create ASP.NET controls so he can drop them in and output the markup he wants.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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troy.tuttle wrote:
On the MS platform, what's one of the best tools to come along in the last few years? ASP AJAX (Atlas)?
I'd disagree, Atlas is OK but hardly the way forward. Too bloated, too constricted by the way ASP.NET works.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
The point is, if the client-side platform had any "real" capability, there wouldn't be a need for Atlas. It's 2007, not 1997.
Troy T.
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Sorry to post this in the lounge, but this is where all the smart people/people with plenty of experience hang out...so it makes the most sense to me to post this here. In my 3 years or so of creating ASP.NET web apps with various employers, I have yet to see a good solution that allows development by both designers as well as developers. Designers don't really like Visual Studio ( and I understand why ). They don't want to learn asp.net controls, etc, they just want to design. On the other hand, developers like ASP.NET and Visual Studio because it allows us to focus on coding the business logic and data acess faster than ever. Can any of you provide a somewhat detail explanation of your designer/developer set-up? do you use a combination of VS and Expression Web? What about Visual Web Developer? Do both designer and developer us VS? do you use Source Safe? There has to be a good solution that makes both professions happy - but it's definately elusive.
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
As a long time senior IT professional, I have never seen a complete decoupling of the two areas on the web; interface and the middle-tier. Lots of companies liketo tout their products but all incorporate some exceptions to standards in their tools making complete decoupling impossible. As it regards ASP.NET, the best way to allow greater decoupling is to simply use standard HTML by incorporating Microsoft's "Generic HTML Controls" which allow for server-side accessing like their server-controls. However, HTML standards are applied. Any such tools such as "Front Page" or "Expression Web" will always find a way to delegitimize complete decoupling. The fact of the matter is that complete decoupling in real world situations is more a myth of marketing than a reality...
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
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Microsoft has seen the light and created Expression web for just this purpose! Expression web was expressly designed to create web pages for the designer. It has all the tools needed to create great web pages and copy that info out to xml or aspx and import it into VS with no problems. The designer does not need to know ASP and the developer does not need to make things look pretty, just get it to work. (Of course, the developer is most likely to MESS it up - something about "I can make it better!") PEACE AT LAST!!! :cool: :rose:
I do all the asp.net coding for my company. I try to involve my co-worker as much as possible by letting her do some of the design (color schemes, layout, etc) but she can't code at all. I'm attending an MS function in early june and they're handing out free copies of expression web. I had never heard of it until recently but your post has helped shed some light on what it may be good for. Perhaps I can continue to use VS for the code and my co-worker can use EW for design? That would be good! Is expression web the new name for front page?
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I do all the asp.net coding for my company. I try to involve my co-worker as much as possible by letting her do some of the design (color schemes, layout, etc) but she can't code at all. I'm attending an MS function in early june and they're handing out free copies of expression web. I had never heard of it until recently but your post has helped shed some light on what it may be good for. Perhaps I can continue to use VS for the code and my co-worker can use EW for design? That would be good! Is expression web the new name for front page?
Front Page has offically gone away with Office 2007. Is was too inflexible. EW is not really a replacement (At least thats what Microsoft advertises), but is to be a stand alone product. As far as I know, EW would be an excellent product for your use - you can have her update your asp pages via project files thru email or she can edit your client side web site directly on your intranet web server and then publish from there when complete. EW can't affect server controls except for placement, looks, colors, etc... Functionallity of the asp page is still in VS and EW only affects what the client sees. :)
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Front Page has offically gone away with Office 2007. Is was too inflexible. EW is not really a replacement (At least thats what Microsoft advertises), but is to be a stand alone product. As far as I know, EW would be an excellent product for your use - you can have her update your asp pages via project files thru email or she can edit your client side web site directly on your intranet web server and then publish from there when complete. EW can't affect server controls except for placement, looks, colors, etc... Functionallity of the asp page is still in VS and EW only affects what the client sees. :)
I may be talking out of turn here, but if EW is going to edit the look of the page and be able to change, place, delete and create ASP controls on the form, then it will have to also have some (possibly limited) control of the code page, because that is where the defines are for ASP.Net to use them. Or will VS.Net insert them on its own? I'll have to look at EW myself to see how it works. Also it occurs to me that some sort of allowance for coding choice will have to be indicated for that to work as well. Wow now I've confused myself..