1. Advertising
    y u no do it?

    Advertising (learn more)

    Advertise virtually anything here, with CPM banner ads, CPM email ads and CPC contextual links. You can target relevant areas of the site and show ads based on geographical location of the user if you wish.

    Starts at just $1 per CPM or $0.10 per CPC.

Easy-to-use design tool

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by JoshJD, Apr 24, 2014.

  1. #1
    Hey guys,

    I need to spec a web design but don't how to use the Adobe suite.
    Is there a simple web design application that will allow me to quickly & easily experiment with shapes, colours, gradients, text & images to put a simple idea together to hand over to a proper designer to implement?

    many thanks,
     
    JoshJD, Apr 24, 2014 IP
  2. YJunK

    YJunK Active Member

    Messages:
    344
    Likes Received:
    38
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    #2
    I use Gimp for when I need to quickly do something that I don't want to spend time figuring out in Adobe software. That should do the trick for you. :)
     
    YJunK, Apr 24, 2014 IP
  3. carlo75

    carlo75 Active Member

    Messages:
    129
    Likes Received:
    14
    Best Answers:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    80
    #3
    Sure Gimp can suits your needs, and is also freeware with a rapid learning curve ;-)
     
    carlo75, Apr 24, 2014 IP
  4. JoshJD

    JoshJD Greenhorn

    Messages:
    26
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    11
    #4
    thanks guys!
     
    JoshJD, Apr 24, 2014 IP
  5. meetdilip

    meetdilip Active Member

    Messages:
    196
    Likes Received:
    1
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    #5
    Agree with all above. GIMP is best alternative for Photoshop and the good thing is you can save images as .psd as well. Also IIRC we can open .psd files as well. It is available in both Windows and Linux. You will find a lot of tutorials on net on GIMP. Make sure you download GIMP 2.8.10 .
     
    meetdilip, Apr 24, 2014 IP
  6. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

    Messages:
    9,732
    Likes Received:
    1,998
    Best Answers:
    253
    Trophy Points:
    515
    #6
    Now, you might not want to hear this, and warning, I'm a bit brutally frank...

    But dicking around drawing goofy pictures is NOT web design... no matter how many PSD jockeys tell you otherwise. Starting out drawing pictures of 'what you want' is a completely back-assward approach to web design, and usually results in bloated, slow loading inaccessible laundry lists of "how not to build a website"

    The proper procedure for building a site if you actually care about people using it (aka 'accessibility') is to start out with your content (or a reasonable facsimile) in a flat text editor, putting it into a logical order. You then add semantic HTML tags to it so you have your baseline (which is what screen readers, braille readers and search engines can see) -- then you build the layout in CSS adding any semantically neutral containers (DIV and SPAN) as needed. Then and only then does one apply effects (borders, colors, shadows, background-images) and any scripted enhancements.

    Playing around in a paint program? Other than presentational background images late in the process they have no business even being in there.

    Anything an 'easy' tool (wysiwyg designers, preview panes, paint programs like photoshop or GIMP) does is garbage so far as designing a site -- and you're shooting your horse in the foot before the gate even opens by even trying to use them.
     
    deathshadow, Apr 24, 2014 IP