Newish web designer needs a lot of advice.

[Yamaha_R1]

NEWISH WEB Designer. With some questions please!

1. I design all my pages by hand. I copy CSS and whatnot I need. For really complicated tables, I generate them in word. What is the best web software for making web pages? Word WAY OVERCOMPLICATES everything, using VML for pictures regardless, and span functions EVERYWHERE. I hated adobe. Most web programs can't perfectly align images, pixes, colors and lines.

With other website software, if I tweak something by hand, and switch back, the editor gets all messed up. I need to be able to edit by hand, and with program.

2. When I design pages for other people, they always want to be able to update content. Whats the best way to design a page, where the front page content is EASILY editable by the owner? Without horribly long scripts that I have to make?

3. What web software does style sheets?

4. If I have a menu on a web page that repeats on every page, is SHTML the best way to encorporate it in each one? Or PHP? How do they do that easily? Is there web software that does SHTML? Like Blizzards website and my web site do?

5. One site uses frames. One site, the menu repeats on every page. The other site I did uses SHTML to encorporate the menu. Best way?

6. I wrote a giant CGI database script for the fighters page, to put up about 20 people and there records. Is there software / scripts that ALREADY do customizable database and display formatting?

My works.

<SNIP>

Thanks much
-Dan

[edited by: trillianjedi at 8:54 am (utc) on Jan. 15, 2005]
[edit reason] Please see TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[valder]

1. Personally I recommend that you don't depend on WYSIWYG editors that make the code for you, but rather create the code yourself. Are you sure you need "really complicated tables"? Tables for layout are on their way out, especially complex tables. I would perhaps use non-complex tables to define the outer layout, and then use CSS for anything else.

My favourite editor is Kate, but since you're obviously in windows-world, I can't recommend any. You should find one that highlights syntax in different colors so it's easy to read your code and spot syntax errors etc.

2. Separating content from structure is important. It makes your own and your clients lives easier.
Perhaps you should look into some CMS?

If you're using PHP, it's simple to place content in separate files and include them wherever needed.

3. Any text-editor :)

4. Definitely PHP, just include('file.php');
Or perhaps better, add this to your .htaccess or server configuration file;
php_value auto_prepend_file "/www/htdocs/header.inc"
php_value auto_append_file "/www/htdocs/footer.inc"

5. It's certainly not frames; I don't think frames should be used at all.
>> One site, the menu repeats on every page.
-What do you mean? That the menu loads on every page request? -That's what life without frames is like, get used to it :)

6. Not sure what you mean. Do you mean like phpMyAdmin [phpmyadmin.net]?

-Eivind

[rocknbil]

1. I prefer Macromedia (previously Allere) HomeSite, especially for a hand-coder. It has so many quick key, tag completion, and search features it's as fast as any wysiwyg editor. It has an internal valdator that allows you to set the level of validation (for example, validate for HTML 3.0 or 4.0/transitional.) You can even create custom menus for your development environment. It also supports validation in most languages. Awesome editor.

For those of you that like wysiwyg, HomeSite has a Dreamweaver integration tool.

2. The only way around this is very simple pages with clearly delineated text areas, and even then they can mess it up. :-D there are content management systems out there, but most of them are of course script-based in one way or another.

3. Homesite comes with Bradbury TopStyle Lite, that does the style sheet portion of development.

4. SHTML includes are one way. If the menu is Javascript-based (bad idea) just including the file by <script-language="Javascript" src="menu.js"> will work.

Actually this in combination with #2 indicates a dynamic solution is better all-around. You develop a perl or php interface that outputs the pages. You use ONE (a single file) template that outputs the customer content and repeatable menu from that single template file.

5. Out with the frames if possible, IMO, develop all or most of your pages in the same familiar formatting.

6. Yeah lots out there. Problem I've found with canned scripts is when I try to apply them to specific tasks, they almost fit. But not quite.