Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Creating a web site - The Guide

By David Peters

It is no easy task to actually build a working site that matches a visual design created in a tool like Photoshop. Photoshop is designed to give total freedom to the artist. The web, on the other hand, is built on top of many confusing technologies and standards that place other concerns ahead of preserving visual design integrity.

The programming languages that are necessary to create visually pleasing web sites such as XHTML, CSS, javascript, etc., can take months or even years to learn. Understandably this situation has intimidated many users who are good at Photoshop but don't want to spend months or years learning the gory details of the internet.

An easy to use program has been created to work alongside Photoshop. SiteGrinder 2 successfully turns Adobe Photoshop into a powerful website design and production tool. To be sure, SiteGrinder is not aimed solely at the web beginner, a SiteGrinder-equipped designer with no prior web design experience can use only their Photoshop skills to go from initial concept to a full deployment of a professional, standards-compliant site in a few hours.

Behind the scenes SiteGrinder creates graphics, text, and interactivity using the latest in web standard technologies and also takes into account more of the technological requirements such as cross-platform browser compatibility.

You are comfortable with Photoshop and SiteGrinder knows CSS, HTML, and web image formats. You create special layers, such as buttons, by adding "hints" to the layer names.

To the right you can see how the words "button", "rollover", and "popup" are the only things required to create interactivity. Once you've added a few hints you can open SiteGrinder and build your page with one mouse-click.

This unique program works the way you do, actually turning the design of web pages into a more creatively satisfying activity. You can easily enable your web site's functionality as you design it and quickly testing it out live in a web browser whenever you feel like it.

Such a flexible workflow even allows you to make major design changes, like selecting a new background color, at the very last minute without headaches! SiteGrinder

You may be wondering how SiteGrinder can create many web pages from a single Photoshop document. The answer is simple really, Photoshop has a little-known but amazing tool called the "layer comps palette". This palette enables you to save and name a variety of document states, including the position and visibility of every layer.

You simply need to make the document look the way you want a a page on your site to look and then make a layer comp. You then set up the next page and repeat. SiteGrinder uses these comps to decide what to include on the web pages it produces. Even better: if your layer comp names match your button names then SiteGrinder will automatically link them. You don't even have to provide links!

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