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Web Design Tools
Web design tools range from simple utilities to complex and robust software packages. Your choice of tools may be based upon personal preference, the scope of the project, or the tools purchased by your employer. This lesson provides an overview of some of the most common web design tools.BEST PRINTER FOREVER AND SAVE YOUR
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Starting up
You will work with several files from the web03lessons folder in this lesson. Make sure you have loaded the weblessons folder onto your hard-drive from www.digitalclassroombooks.com/webdesign. See “Loading lesson files” in the Starting Up section of this book.
This lesson provides a general overview of web design tools and also includes step-by-step exercises. The web editors used in this lesson are available as fully functional trial versions at no cost. If you haven’t decided which tools to use, you’ll want to download and install the software tools used in this lesson. You’ll need a text editor, such as TextWrangler (Mac) available at www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler or Visual Web Developer Express available at www.microsoft.com/express/Web. You’ll also need a program with a visual design surface such as Dreamweaver, available at www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=dreamweaver, or Expression Web available at www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it. Web editors versus WYSIWYG tools
HTML and CSS use text as their foundation. Because of this, even the most simple text editor, such as TextEdit on the Mac or Notepad on the PC, is capable of creating web pages. These basic text editing tools, however, lack features that help with web design and development such as checking code syntax, organizing your site folders, and uploading files to web servers. In addition to text editors, there are also fully featured web editors and design tools, such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Expression Web. These are WYSIWYG tools (“What You See Is What You Get”) that provide a visual layout environment, code editing, along with website management tools. Robust text editors and coding tools that handle web markup and programming languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP provide another set of tools for creating websites. In this overview you’ll look at the advantages and disadvantages of each category of web design tools.
Plain text editors
Plain text editors such as Notepad and Text Edit are included with the Mac OS or Windows operating systems, so you likely already have one installed on your computer. While they are widely available and free, they are not optimized for web design. Working with plain text editors requires excellent knowledge of the language you are coding, because they provide no guidance when writing code. The basic text editors also lack functionality for previewing your pages in a web browser, or the ability to check pages for correct syntax or broken links.
These default text editors for the Mac OS and Windows can be used if you have no other choice, but it is unlikely you will want to use them as your primary web design tool.
Text editors for web design
There are several text editors with more advanced capabilities. These type of editors provide several benefits that make it easier to work with code. We’ll look at some of the benefits here.
Code coloring
Whether you are writing a new HTML or CSS page from scratch or opening a preexisting page, code coloring visually separates your HTML and CSS syntax from the content on your page. Tags that include attributes and values are assigned different colors. This code coloring makes it easier for you to locate specific code, and it can help you spot and correct errors. Forgetting to add a closing bracket or a quotation mark, for example, causes content to be colored differently than if tags were applied correctly. After you become accustomed to using colored syntax, you can use the colors to quickly spot errors in HTML. Most modern text editors also allow you to customize the color of your syntax.
Line numbers, invisible characters, and other visual aids
Most text editors provide line numbers in documents opened for editing. Line numbers help you orient yourself within your code and also help when collaborating with other designers or developers. These tools also make it easier to see invisible characters such as line breaks or carriage returns.
Code completion
Most text editors can automate a number of certain tedious tasks, such as typing brackets or common tags. Although the methods and shortcuts for each program are diff erent, most full-featured text editors have this capability. Some text editors automatically trigger code completion as you begin to type, while others require you to trigger the code completion and choose the code from a list of options. Code completion is useful, as it removes some of the burden of having to remember every detail of the syntax you are using, whether HTML, CSS, or another language.
Automation features
Most text editors have some capability for automating repetitive tasks. Whether they are called macros, snippets, clips, or by some other name. These automation tools give you the ability to add reusable pieces of code to your pages and can save you a great deal of time.
Finding and replacing code
Most text editors used for coding also have robust tools for searching and replacing code. Although this can be helpful on a single page, it is indispensable on larger projects where you need to make changes on a large number of pages across a site.
Much more!
Advanced text editors are designed to scale, and accommodate advanced users. Developers and programmers who regularly code in more sophisticated languages such as PHP (originally an acronym for ‘Personal Home Page’), ASP (Active Server Pages), and Ruby on Rails (a framework for web applications) often use the advanced features of text editors to help them build their sites. In many ways, the line between text editors and WYSIWYG editors is beginning to blur. Some text editors have built-in functionality that allows you to build local site folders that keep track of site elements such as hyperlinks between documents, and media such as images and videos. They may also have an internal page preview feature or some form of FTP client that allows users to publish their pages to the web.
WYSIWYG editors
The concept behind WYSIWYG web editors is that you create web pages in design view and the program writes the HTML and CSS code behind-the-scenes. These tools claim to provide a visual way to create web pages without needing to understand HTML or CSS code. To effectively use any web design tool, you still need an understanding of HTML and CSS, and these design tools all include methods for working with code. Editing code is often required when using WYSIWYG editors, despite their visual layout capabilities and marketing claims. If you are just starting out as a web designer, it’s useful to know that many web professionals perceive WYSIWYG tools as inappropriate for professional use. While this sentiment is not universal, there is a large population of web designers and developers that dislike all WYSIWYG editors because they do not always produce the best code for a situation. WYSIWYG applications generally cost more than text editors, and the time required to learn many WYSIWYG applications can be as much as learning HTML and CSS code. Despite the higher cost and time to learn, the use of WYSIWYG editors is widespread. Additionally, they can speed your design work with some projects. Most popular WYSIWYG editors also include features to help you code your pages when entering code. These include capabilities similar to text editors, such as code completion, code coloring, and automation. Two of the most popular WYSIWYG editors are Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Expression Web. Both applications have similar capabilities. Dreamweaver is available on both the Mac OS and Windows platforms while Expression Web is only available for Windows computers. Expression Web is available at no cost if you are a student, see the note about the Microsoft Dream spark program, and has a suggested retail price of $150 for business users. Adobe Dreamweaver is $150 if you are a student, and $300 if you are a business user. You can obtain fully functioning trial versions of these products to evaluate them for your own use at www.microsoft.com/expression or www.adobe.com/dreamweaver.
Design and layout tools
Both Dreamweaver and Expression Web use icon-based menus and panels to format text, insert images, and add media such as video files, Flash movies, or Silverlight objects. Adding elements such as hyperlinks, tables, div tags, and form elements involves dragging them onto a page.
Site management and file transfer protocol
Both Expression Web and Dreamweaver include site management tools, including file transfer protocol (FTP) capabilities so you can upload files to a web server from your local machine. They also support reusable objects, such as page templates and library items, and can check links to make sure they go to valid pages or objects. The site management tools are helpful, as they make certain that links that are created while working on your computer function correctly when the site is moved to a web server.
Coding environment and text editor \
Both Dreamweaver and Expression Web off er a code-only view of web pages which can be used for modifying HTML or CSS code, or a design view to work on pages visually, or a split view that displays the code and the visual layout at the same time. Both programs support popular coding and scripting languages, such as JavaScript, and several server-side languages, including ColdFusion, PHP, and ASP. Specialized menus and code panels help you build pages and applications in the language of your choice. Expression Web offers particular strong capabilities for designers working on sites that use Microsoft’s ASP scripting language.
Templates and reusable elements
Dreamweaver and Expression Web both provide templates which are essentially parent master pages that link to any number of child pages. A master page controls the structure and appearance of multiple attached pages, so any change made to a master page is automatically applied to the child pages. This provides a consistent appearance across websites and ensures that site changes are applied quickly and globally across a site. Templates also allow you to make certain sections of a web page non-editable so that other users don’t manipulate certain content or design elements. For example, the content of a News page could be designated as being fully editable, but the navigation bar could be marked as being off -limits.
Defining sites in Dreamweaver or Expression
Web Both applications use site folder definitions for the local and remote storage locations where a website resides. Once you define a site folder, the program keeps track of the files being used. When you add, remove, rename, or reorganize your asset files, both Dreamweaver and Expression Web update any related hyperlinks.The files on your local drive can also be synchronized with the files on your remote web server using integrated FTP capabilities. In the following two exercises, you will walk through the initial steps of creating a new site in Dreamweaver and Expression Web. These exercises are designed to get you up-and running in either (or both) of these popular web design applications. If you will only be working in a text editor, you can skip to the “Using design tools in the browser” exercise, or if you already plan to use only one visual editor or the other, you need to only complete the section relating to that WYSIWYG editor.
Hi. I’m Designer of Blog Magic. I’m CEO/Founder of ThemeXpose. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.
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