designing a web site

[kapuanu]

I'm just getting started building websites. I read that a webpage can be built in Photoshop. Is it easier to do it this way, and can I export the finished page to dreamweaver mx?

[essence]

I find it is much easier to first design the page in Photoshop then Export to DW. However, you must first slice up your image into more managle parts, then put it in your webpage.

Hope this helps!

-essence

[toicontien]

Photoshop and Dreamweaver are tools to help you build web sites. They won't build the site for you. WYSIWYG HTML editors can produce sloppy HTML if you aren't carefull (especially photoshop). Bottom line: learn HTML and CSS.

http://www.w3schools.com/ - Both HTML and Cascading Style Sheets

http://www.alistapart.com/ - Advanced CSS and HTML

:cringe: Don't use Photoshop to design web pages. Pages become too laden with graphics and can take a long time to load on dial-up connections. And yes, about half of the people out there still have dial-up. Image-based sites usually don't have as much regular text as normal web sites, which means that search engines don't have as much to read when they index a site.

When learning HTML, learn the basic text-formatting tags (except for the <font> tag, leave that dinosaur alone). Then learn table-based layouts (I know, I know, use CSS, blah blah blah. I'll get to that in a minute). Table-based layouts are easy to grasp when you are first starting out. Once you know HTML and are comfortable using tables, get into CSS.

Using Cascading Style Sheets, you can throw out the <FONT> tag for good. You can also throw out tables. The thread at this forum below has more info on table vs CSS layouts:

http://forums.webdeveloper.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10167&highlight=table

Basically you have a lot of learning to do. No biggy. Just get versed in the web standards (http://www.w3.org/). Get versed in how browsers react to the different standards. A list of common browsers is below:

Internet Explorer: 4.0, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 for the PC; 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 for the Mac (both OS 8/9 and X).

This site claims to allow you to install multiple versions of IE on one computer - all running on one install of Windows: http://www.insert-title.com/web_design/?page=articles/dev/multi_IE

Netscape: 4.0 - 4.8, 6.0 - 7.2 on both PC and Mac. http://www.netscape.com/

Mozilla: 1.0 - 1.5 (PC and Mac, only OS X after 1.2.1) http://www.mozilla.org/

Firebird: .7 http://www.mozilla.org/

Safari - Mac OS X http://www.apple.com/

Opera: 5.0, 6.0, 7.0 - 7.2 (PC and Mac, but only up to 6.0 on Mac). http://www.opera.com/

And one more thing. Stick around here. There are lots of people going through the same things you are right now, people who have been through it all, and those who could learn by what you post :)

[essence]

I agree fully with you toicontien, however I wasnt suggesting the whole page just graphics, I usually design my template in PS then go to different phases, you have him a lot of good information but some of that may not make to much sense to him.

[toicontien]

This thread could also be helpfull:
http://forums.webdeveloper.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22200

[kapuanu]

It seems that I do have a lot to learn. Since Im familiar with photoshop, its good to know that i could do some of the work of putting some of the design together before coding the entire page.... Thanks for all of your help.