Dreamweaver, VS and designers (oh, my!)
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I have 20 years of abuse at the hands of Microsoft, so when I need to sling code, that's what I reach for. Whether it's better or worse than anything else out there isn't as important as the fact that it's the environment I'm most productive in. It's at this point that I'd like to draw the distinction between programmers and web designers. A programmer is a geek who can write serious code and do, well, you know, all that programming stuff. A designer is an artist (who usually owns a Mac) capable of creating cool looking stuff on any type of canvas. The computer, specifically a web browser, is merely the canvas upon which they create their art. It is certainly possible for someone to be both, though typically they're one or the other at heart. I am a programmer. Any designer who has looked at my company site will quickly confirm this. My web sites typically use a table based layout. I use css, but only as a form of code reuse. In short, though I am a creative creature at heart, my current visual skills suck. And I've decided to do something about it. I'm just not sure what. In the course of upgrading the recording studio for video, I've also acquired Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, and several other fluffy bunny apps from Adobe. While Dreamweaver isn't my particular religion, I thought perhaps I could use their css oriented designer to help me move towards a more artistic approach to web design, help me learn css design in a more visual / intuitive manner, and then use that in my VS 2008 based sites (I ain't giving up my C# / .NET / Sql Server coding horsepower). Not surprisingly, they don't seem to play particularly nice together, even though DW shows a lot of apparent .NET support. I've never used the VS designer much. Partly because I come from the old school and am accustomed to coding by hand in a high powered editor, and having my code formatted so that it's readable after the fact. And partly because the VS designer (especially once you get master pages into the mix) has always seemed a bit clumsy and buggy. That said, I wonder if I'm just not giving it a fair chance. Is it possible that the designer / css functionality in VS is comparable to that in DW if one gets used to it? I suppose there's a question in here somewhere, for those of you who are both serious coders and serious artists. I'm unwilling to give up .NET for programming tasks, but I'd sure like a css / visual approach to design that would play nice with the C# back end. What would you fluffy bunny geeks recommend for
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I have 20 years of abuse at the hands of Microsoft, so when I need to sling code, that's what I reach for. Whether it's better or worse than anything else out there isn't as important as the fact that it's the environment I'm most productive in. It's at this point that I'd like to draw the distinction between programmers and web designers. A programmer is a geek who can write serious code and do, well, you know, all that programming stuff. A designer is an artist (who usually owns a Mac) capable of creating cool looking stuff on any type of canvas. The computer, specifically a web browser, is merely the canvas upon which they create their art. It is certainly possible for someone to be both, though typically they're one or the other at heart. I am a programmer. Any designer who has looked at my company site will quickly confirm this. My web sites typically use a table based layout. I use css, but only as a form of code reuse. In short, though I am a creative creature at heart, my current visual skills suck. And I've decided to do something about it. I'm just not sure what. In the course of upgrading the recording studio for video, I've also acquired Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, and several other fluffy bunny apps from Adobe. While Dreamweaver isn't my particular religion, I thought perhaps I could use their css oriented designer to help me move towards a more artistic approach to web design, help me learn css design in a more visual / intuitive manner, and then use that in my VS 2008 based sites (I ain't giving up my C# / .NET / Sql Server coding horsepower). Not surprisingly, they don't seem to play particularly nice together, even though DW shows a lot of apparent .NET support. I've never used the VS designer much. Partly because I come from the old school and am accustomed to coding by hand in a high powered editor, and having my code formatted so that it's readable after the fact. And partly because the VS designer (especially once you get master pages into the mix) has always seemed a bit clumsy and buggy. That said, I wonder if I'm just not giving it a fair chance. Is it possible that the designer / css functionality in VS is comparable to that in DW if one gets used to it? I suppose there's a question in here somewhere, for those of you who are both serious coders and serious artists. I'm unwilling to give up .NET for programming tasks, but I'd sure like a css / visual approach to design that would play nice with the C# back end. What would you fluffy bunny geeks recommend for
I'm writing a book on this subject now, titled "Social Media for Engineers and Scientists[^]." Many left-brained professionals like programmers and engineers believe they are bad designers and/or not creative. I thought the same thing, but what I've learned is that it is entirely possible to learn how to be a MUCH better designer. There are rules, tips, and tricks that they don't teach you in your computer science or engineering school. You can start by checking out a presentation I created on Slideshare (Creating Great Content[^]) that introduces some basics. If you're interested you can contact me directly and I can suggest some books and resources to get you from novice designer to apprentice artist.
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I have 20 years of abuse at the hands of Microsoft, so when I need to sling code, that's what I reach for. Whether it's better or worse than anything else out there isn't as important as the fact that it's the environment I'm most productive in. It's at this point that I'd like to draw the distinction between programmers and web designers. A programmer is a geek who can write serious code and do, well, you know, all that programming stuff. A designer is an artist (who usually owns a Mac) capable of creating cool looking stuff on any type of canvas. The computer, specifically a web browser, is merely the canvas upon which they create their art. It is certainly possible for someone to be both, though typically they're one or the other at heart. I am a programmer. Any designer who has looked at my company site will quickly confirm this. My web sites typically use a table based layout. I use css, but only as a form of code reuse. In short, though I am a creative creature at heart, my current visual skills suck. And I've decided to do something about it. I'm just not sure what. In the course of upgrading the recording studio for video, I've also acquired Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, and several other fluffy bunny apps from Adobe. While Dreamweaver isn't my particular religion, I thought perhaps I could use their css oriented designer to help me move towards a more artistic approach to web design, help me learn css design in a more visual / intuitive manner, and then use that in my VS 2008 based sites (I ain't giving up my C# / .NET / Sql Server coding horsepower). Not surprisingly, they don't seem to play particularly nice together, even though DW shows a lot of apparent .NET support. I've never used the VS designer much. Partly because I come from the old school and am accustomed to coding by hand in a high powered editor, and having my code formatted so that it's readable after the fact. And partly because the VS designer (especially once you get master pages into the mix) has always seemed a bit clumsy and buggy. That said, I wonder if I'm just not giving it a fair chance. Is it possible that the designer / css functionality in VS is comparable to that in DW if one gets used to it? I suppose there's a question in here somewhere, for those of you who are both serious coders and serious artists. I'm unwilling to give up .NET for programming tasks, but I'd sure like a css / visual approach to design that would play nice with the C# back end. What would you fluffy bunny geeks recommend for
I just installed Microsoft Expression Studio 3 for my designer. He uses Illustrator for all the design work we do here and, much to his surprise, a site he recently designed in Illustrator imported without a flaw into Expression Studio today. He's going to play with it and see how it goes. Fingers crossed it works well and I can hook up my Developer Express controls once the design is done. Cheers, Drew.
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I have 20 years of abuse at the hands of Microsoft, so when I need to sling code, that's what I reach for. Whether it's better or worse than anything else out there isn't as important as the fact that it's the environment I'm most productive in. It's at this point that I'd like to draw the distinction between programmers and web designers. A programmer is a geek who can write serious code and do, well, you know, all that programming stuff. A designer is an artist (who usually owns a Mac) capable of creating cool looking stuff on any type of canvas. The computer, specifically a web browser, is merely the canvas upon which they create their art. It is certainly possible for someone to be both, though typically they're one or the other at heart. I am a programmer. Any designer who has looked at my company site will quickly confirm this. My web sites typically use a table based layout. I use css, but only as a form of code reuse. In short, though I am a creative creature at heart, my current visual skills suck. And I've decided to do something about it. I'm just not sure what. In the course of upgrading the recording studio for video, I've also acquired Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, and several other fluffy bunny apps from Adobe. While Dreamweaver isn't my particular religion, I thought perhaps I could use their css oriented designer to help me move towards a more artistic approach to web design, help me learn css design in a more visual / intuitive manner, and then use that in my VS 2008 based sites (I ain't giving up my C# / .NET / Sql Server coding horsepower). Not surprisingly, they don't seem to play particularly nice together, even though DW shows a lot of apparent .NET support. I've never used the VS designer much. Partly because I come from the old school and am accustomed to coding by hand in a high powered editor, and having my code formatted so that it's readable after the fact. And partly because the VS designer (especially once you get master pages into the mix) has always seemed a bit clumsy and buggy. That said, I wonder if I'm just not giving it a fair chance. Is it possible that the designer / css functionality in VS is comparable to that in DW if one gets used to it? I suppose there's a question in here somewhere, for those of you who are both serious coders and serious artists. I'm unwilling to give up .NET for programming tasks, but I'd sure like a css / visual approach to design that would play nice with the C# back end. What would you fluffy bunny geeks recommend for
I've used Dreamweaver to assist friends in webdesign classes and I must admit to being impressed. Yes, it relies heavily on Flash (if you let it), but it produces solid code without requiring the user to be an expert programmer. This should make it attractive to artistic types who really want to focus on presentation without being forced to deal with tedious details. I know it's nice to build perfectly optimized, neatly formatted code, but it's not really necessary or desirable when the objective is to produce a nice looking site in a cost-effective manner. I've used FrontPage, Visual Web Developer, Expressions... whatever Microsoft has offered since there were more than 7 of us on the Internet, and none of them worked as well for just producing a site that looks good and functions as it should. It pains me to say that, and I still detest Adobe, but this is one product they got right. It's not meant for programmers, and shouldn't be judged by programmers' standards. It's a design and layout tool without peer in the Microsoft pantheon, and should be weighed on its own merits, fluffy bunnies notwithstanding. I'd encourage you to explore it more fully, Christopher, and report back to us your findings... ;P
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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I've used Dreamweaver to assist friends in webdesign classes and I must admit to being impressed. Yes, it relies heavily on Flash (if you let it), but it produces solid code without requiring the user to be an expert programmer. This should make it attractive to artistic types who really want to focus on presentation without being forced to deal with tedious details. I know it's nice to build perfectly optimized, neatly formatted code, but it's not really necessary or desirable when the objective is to produce a nice looking site in a cost-effective manner. I've used FrontPage, Visual Web Developer, Expressions... whatever Microsoft has offered since there were more than 7 of us on the Internet, and none of them worked as well for just producing a site that looks good and functions as it should. It pains me to say that, and I still detest Adobe, but this is one product they got right. It's not meant for programmers, and shouldn't be judged by programmers' standards. It's a design and layout tool without peer in the Microsoft pantheon, and should be weighed on its own merits, fluffy bunnies notwithstanding. I'd encourage you to explore it more fully, Christopher, and report back to us your findings... ;P
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
It's a design and layout tool without peer in the Microsoft pantheon, and should be weighed on its own merits, fluffy bunnies notwithstanding.
Well, we all know my phobia of bunnies... Actually, this is my immpression of it as well. And there's nothing wrong with Flash either beyond the (rather major) factor that it requires a plugin to work. And that's really much of what I'm searching for. I'd like a tool that makes it easy to design sites, I just don't want to give up the back end power. I know I can accomplish that by learning the Adobe Way, using javascript, or other such technologies, but I'm hoping for a path that gives me the ease of site design offered by DW but still allows me to leverage my experience with MS technologies. Does such a thing even exist? Is it simply hidden from my eyes? Perhaps I've just offended the Bunny Gods (fluffy or otherwise). :)
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
I'm writing a book on this subject now, titled "Social Media for Engineers and Scientists[^]." Many left-brained professionals like programmers and engineers believe they are bad designers and/or not creative. I thought the same thing, but what I've learned is that it is entirely possible to learn how to be a MUCH better designer. There are rules, tips, and tricks that they don't teach you in your computer science or engineering school. You can start by checking out a presentation I created on Slideshare (Creating Great Content[^]) that introduces some basics. If you're interested you can contact me directly and I can suggest some books and resources to get you from novice designer to apprentice artist.
I'll check out your site and takse you up on the offer, thanks!
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
I just installed Microsoft Expression Studio 3 for my designer. He uses Illustrator for all the design work we do here and, much to his surprise, a site he recently designed in Illustrator imported without a flaw into Expression Studio today. He's going to play with it and see how it goes. Fingers crossed it works well and I can hook up my Developer Express controls once the design is done. Cheers, Drew.
I played with Expression 1.0 and it wasn't really ready for prime time. Perhaps I should give it another look.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services