Graphical Web Design

what's avaliable? whats the best to use?

[thehittmann]

I'm interested in converting my rather plain website into a Graphical site. I've seen some sites that have been made with Photoshop7 and I have liked what can be done with that program. What else is ther to offer that can do this sort of thing?

[caine]

Photoshop, yes though not familiar with it.

From the Macromedia school

Flash, Fireworks with Dreamweaver, Director, Freehand, etc.

Been using freehand for paper publications, nearly as powerful as Quark (also an alternative).

Then there is the Microsoft suite of programs.

personally i would pick one, and see what seems the friendliest, and once you find its limitations or its plus and minuses, you'll know exactly what you want and why!

[balinor]

Doesn't have to be done with software, it can be done by 'hand' as well with CSS or *gasp* tables. I have used both Fireworks and Photoshop for the task as well, and I found that each had their quirks (and each produced different code). Try them both out and see what works better for you. Best of luck!

Regards,
Padraic

[robert adams]

You don't create a website with Photshop, it is a graphics program to create graphics to put on a website.
If you would be a little more specific we could help you out better.

luck,
'robert

[thehittmann]

creating paths, logos, web buttons, side menu bar that exactly fits to the header.
so that everything is totally graphical and then use #maps
for navigation. The only part that would not be graphical would be whatever text is linked to from the index which would be opened in an iframe.

[europeforvisitors]

so that everything is totally graphical and then use #maps for navigation.

Will this site be visited only by people with high-speed Internet connections? If not, you might want to give some thought to page weight and what your goals are. (If you're hoping to make a profit from your site, or if you want to reach a large audience, you'll need to think about the consequences of writing off low-bandwidth users.)

[robert adams]

so that everything is totally graphical and then use #maps
for navigation. The only part that would not be graphical would be whatever

That is what I thought you were talking about. That is probably the worst way to create a webpage. One big image will take forever to load, won't be visible to the search engines and serves no real purpose. Why not create a regular web page with text and graphics that are small and fast to load and that the search engines can find.

robert

[thehittmann]

I already have one, and it does great in SERPS, all pages listed.

it wont be one big image it would be smaller images in tables that all link together to make the bigger image. I have a 56k connection and have had no problem viewing such sites.

i'll sticky you an example of what im interested in doing

[divaone]

you can create an entire webpage in PhotoImpact. it's user-friendly, only a moderate learning curve and even comes with ready-made templates. if you only care for parts, it has a button designer, does rollovers (and several other scripts), image mapper, and you can even FTP directly from the program. the webpage you create in PI can contain as few or many images AND as much text as you like. there are many other goodies but i tend to stick with hand-coding inside HTML-Kit

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