Photoshop or Tables??

Hey Folks

I am just wondering which is best - using photoshop to make a base design, and then add hotspots or using dreamweaver to make a tabular design which fits to every page and can be edited easily?

 

I use both depending on design

 

I use hotspots. Just seems to work better than the tables and loads more smoothly.

 

Design and tables should NEVER go together. If you want a good design, use divs and CSS. Tables are meant for TABULAR data, not design. Do a lookup online for tables and design, there are a lot of negative things said about it and it's bad webmaster practice in my opinion.

 

photoshop all the way

 

no way man...divs and css are the way to go. Even though you can build some pretty nice looking graphics with Photoslop, it plugs in a ton of "Extras" such as blank images, extra javascript code and increased page size with the extra graphics.

Just my opinion.

 

CSS here too.
First I make a concept of the whole thing in photoshop and/or illustrator and make sure the important layout images are finished. After that I write the xhtml and then the CSS. When that's done I do some additional photoshop works for additional graphical stuff or streamlining images. When everything is finished I do the javascript if it's needed.

 

I wouldn't suggest the use of photoshop to create your page layouts. Tabular structures really have no place in the layout of web pages either. There are a few instances that I will use a table, but rarely ever for layout. Even without talking semantics, tables just aren't as 'nice' to work with.

That being said; neither Photoshop or Dreamweaver do a good job at laying out tables. You don't need any javascript or onmous* events for image rollovers if you're using css, and the way they structre the page is semantically disasterous.

I know the question was 'which one', but I think the answer is really 'neither'. I'd be happy to give you a quick lesson on css layouts if you'de like over im sometime. just give me a pm.

 

I just can't seem to grasp css, I guess it's something I should be looking at to make changing the look of a whole site that much easier, so does anyone know of a good tutorial for css they can point me to?
I still use Frontpage express (the free version which used to be bundled with ie), and notepad for editing websites, but there has to be a better way.
As for Photoshop, I watched an introductory video for using it on some templates I purchased, and decided with all those sliced images it would be a bit large in file size for my liking. Dreamweaver I just can't afford period

 

http://veerle.duoh.com/comments.php?id=208_0_2_10_C

It's said that this is one of the best tutorials around, maybe you could have a look

 

I agree with Greg-J -- with CSS the question of image/hotspots and tables for layout is irrelevant. CSS are so much easier to work with once you learn the basics. I suggest you take a CSS and reverse engineer it so you can see how it is done. If you have a good understanding of HTML then it will take you a weekend to introduce yourself to the concepts. Another great site for more information is http://www.w3schools.com

 

I use dreamweaver to cut the image up and export the basic html then I cut it up again and use CSS to put the site together..


Best of both works... Makes things 10x quicker, especially if you can write CSS off the top of your head and not use the dreamweaver tools. Dreamweaver is good for visualizing the site while you are making it but I would sugget you never EVER use its built in CSS, PHP etc tools.

CSS all the way though...

 

Invest in any Eric Meyer css book

 

I build the graphics in PS, then slice it up and code in (x)html and CSS.

 

Yup, photoshop for design work. I hand code the html and css in dreamweaver. Tables are for tabular data.

 

Thanks for the link, I will look into it and see what I can learn.

 

in my best experiance, which is atleast a few hundred sites.. i use photoshop to build the layout/mouseovers then depending on the layout and its needed, and the clients needs, i either use photoshop to output tables, or css (theres a option). then i open up said files and rewrite them. but i find that lettign photoshop cut the initial image and output it into html or css is about the most time saving, and hte cleanest way to handle it.

 

in my best experiance, which is at least a few hundred sites..
Do the design work in your favorite graphics package (mine is photoshop)
Hand code template pages, use a template system to manage your site.

 

stuw you a smarty guy? or do you use a differnt or homecooked method?

 

I've used several template systems including smarty, in house developed and homegrown.

At the moment I'm coming down in favour of smarty, and I'm slowly moving a lot of my homegrown template sites to smarty.

The main reason for moving to smarty is part of my exit strategy. I think my sites will be more saleable in the future if they are using a well documented system