New designer... :)

[MagruB]

Heya everyone.
Thought I'd introduce myself. I work in Derby and have been asked to re-design the company's website. I have been a graphic design artist for 3 years previously so am thinking of setting up the design in Photoshop, slicing it in Imageready and transferring it to dreamweaver for finishing. I'd say i'm confident using photoshop and, a little less so, Imageready but am a relative newcomer to Dreamweaver. I was hoping some of you could post some good do's and don'ts when importing and add the text in dreamweaver... and anything i may have missed that is necessary to do in Imageready
I'll post a mock up of the site as i've got at the moment as soon as i can

Thanks everyone. I look forward to chatting to you all in the future on this forum
Chris

[DanielOliver]

I dont think there are really many dos or donts to be honest just make sure your images have been SEO'd and the page isn't to slow to load. There is no right or wrong way with dreamweaver as there is only really one way in which you can add text. Just keep it simple.

The main do's and don'ts will be within photoshop when you are actually working on the design. Adding the text (providing you have a script to work from) is the easy part. Inless you don't have a script. If you don't it can be the hardest part :-D

[[Li] Brad]

You probably know already but:

- Use a sans-serif font in your site (Verdana, Tahoma)
- Dreamweaver can sometimes mess up your code, (especially when nesting tables and moving etc) when you use the design view. Make sure you check that your code is optimized and the way you want it

Good luck with your site,
[Li] Brad

[mafunk]

Why not build in fireworks and slice in Dreamweaver? The two work together very well - it's a piece of cake to do once you've gone over the tutorial at macromedia.

Don't forget to use stylesheets - much more professional than hard coding fonts and all that.

[MagruB]

Thanks guys, i'll look into Fireworks, if only to further my horizons. I'll see how it goes. And thanks for reminding me about stylesheets Had almost forgotten.

Laters all. I'm working on the intranet site first, so i'll try to post something when i've got a layout etc concrete.

Thanks
Chris

[Karen Harwood]

I'd stick with Photoshop, much more professional. I started running into too many problems with Fireworks. I still use it once in awhile for creating rollovers and dropdown menus.

If you have money to spend on software may I recommend Topstyle Pro for creating, editing and managing css. It intergrates very well with Dreamweaver too. You can download a free trail at www.bradsoft.com

[Web Designz]

I think Fireworks is alot easier and is more user-friendly than Photoshop. But of course, that is just my personal opinion.

[Karen Harwood]

True, Photoshop is more difficult to use. I guess I just learned how to use Photoshop first and sometimes it can be frustrating to break old habits when learning to use a different program.

I did spend allot of time learning Fireworks, Photoshop won the battle for me. What ever works best for you, is what you should probably be using. But if your looking to get hired, Photoshop has much better market penetration than Fireworks. Most of my clients prefer that I use Photoshop.