Let's talk about web design for a minute.
In the print world, if you know how to use InDesign or Quark you essentially know how to create any document or page (with a couple caveats based on background knowledge like: placed images need the proper resolution, no accidental spot or RGB colors, etc). What you see is what you get.
Web design is different in that just knowing the Dreamweaver program does not allow you to make proper web pages. Or maybe a better way to put it is that there is much more required background knowledge before you will be able to build a professional, useful, successful web page. With that knowledge, Dreamweaver is a great tool for building websites but that background knowledge needs to come first.
What do you need to know before Dreamweaver is useful?
1 - You need to learn the rules for saving images for the web. Easy.
2 - HTML is how you get "stuff" on the page. You need to learn HTML and semantic markup (a fancy way of saying "tag things by their meaning, not their look"). It sounds like programming but it's really not, it's typing. You have to learn about 10 basic tags for HTML and then you're up and running. You can get a working knowledge of HTML in a couple hours. Fairly easy to learn.
3 - You need to learn CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This is, admittedly, the difficult part of web design. Everything you think of as "Design" is CSS on the web - from font control to page layout. CSS has to be created by hand by typing text to create a set of rules - you can't use a tool like the frame tool InDesign to draw a box. This isn't as difficult as it may sound - you only use about 20 CSS properties on a regular basis so that's another 20 words to understand. But yes, CSS takes a while to learn because it's really more about judgement and problem solving than learning some "code words". And that's why when people ask me "Why isn't there a program where I put stuff where I want it then makes a web page for me?" I have to tell them there isn't a program like that because the act of laying out a web page involves creativity, judgement and problem solving and no program can do that for us (yet).
Acceptance that web design is not done the same way as print design is the first step.
We have 3 web related classes:
In our Standards-Based Web Design class we use Dreamweaver as we learn the 3 topics above and we create websites at the highest level of professionalism - what's known as "Standards Based web design" - This class has my strongest recommendation.
We do have a Dreamweaver specific class that teaches all the "parts" of Dreamweaver but it is for people who are part of a team that already uses Dreamweaver and that person is not responsible for creating pages but maybe updating them or doing a couple specific things using Dreamweaver. Recommended only for special cases.
We also have a class dedicated to Creating HTML Email - even though they may look the same, the rules are completely different for web pages and email HTML pages. This class uses a very specific subset of Dreamweaver's tools along with Photoshop.
Showing posts with label conway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conway. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Flash CS4 Tips and Tricks
Remember the new tweens live on the object, NOT the timeline, so select the object first then move the red playback head to the new frame and make your changes. The changes are "property changes" not "keyframes".
You want an object to finish its tween then stay in that state for an extended time? Shift-drag the last frame to the right (if you just drag, you extend the animation).
Be very careful with the scroll wheel on your mouse when you are over an editable field in the property or motion inspectors - most of the fields are active the moment your cursor is over them and scrolling the wheel changes values (handy if you're aware it's happening, annoying when you're trying to navigate).
BONUS TIP: If you are using the scroll wheel to change values, adding the SHIFT key changes the values by 10, COMMAND-Mac/Control-windows changes values by .1
You want an object to finish its tween then stay in that state for an extended time? Shift-drag the last frame to the right (if you just drag, you extend the animation).
Be very careful with the scroll wheel on your mouse when you are over an editable field in the property or motion inspectors - most of the fields are active the moment your cursor is over them and scrolling the wheel changes values (handy if you're aware it's happening, annoying when you're trying to navigate).
BONUS TIP: If you are using the scroll wheel to change values, adding the SHIFT key changes the values by 10, COMMAND-Mac/Control-windows changes values by .1
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
What Inspires Us?
Last night, C2 participated in the AMA/Ad2 Agency Crawl in the Third Ward. As part of our presentation, we showcased some websites that inspired our instructors. Here is a listing of sites mentioned in the presentation:
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