Rekabentuk Web / Web Designer Tips: Tools

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Tuesday, March 3, 2009

8 tips Webmasters Development Tools

Webmasters Development Tools, - What tools do you use and why?

As a web Designer / Designer my toolset is XTReME but this is due to the various forms of development we as a business are contracted to do. For example, I use Adobe Photoshop CS quite a bit for Design / Development Web Portal. Without going into a dissertation I am going to let you know the "base tools" we use and why. Some may surprise you, maybe not.

1. Microsoft Office

We use MS Office ALOT. Within we develop out business proposals to clients. We do nothing "fixed price" as every client is different. We communicate with them, gauge their needs as they relay them, gauge their skill set and we meet at a later date with our ideas, their ideas and a proposal. We used Word to make outlines of all the ideas and concepts, we use Excel to build out the "site options" aka: Basic site, Advanced Site, The Works... We present three options to all clients.

2. MindMap Pro

This (and other idea gathering and organizing) software is just AWESOME for development be it applications or web development. It allows you to create various forms of charts that are valuable during the development cycle but ALSO impress the crap out of your clients. You can start with things such as simple charts showing them various web abilities, for example, Amazon affiliate abilities step by step.

PRESENTATION COUNTS... EVERYTHING is judged by people be that websites or how you wish to attract customers to your development business. PRESENTATION IS EVERYTHING.

3. PaintShop Pro - Adobe Photoshop CS

Two fine image editors. We use Adobe Photoshop much more than PaintShop Pro for graphics, logo creation etc. We tend use Adobe Photoshop for "slicing" things up or specialization of images. We have found that Photoshop's complexity is usually of web design. In fact often its best to not get all creative and seek and slice out graphics where needed from google searches etc.

As far as image creation goes... I suck duck. However, my other half is AWESOME at it.

If you do not have a person who "Has the eye" for art and imaging you need find someone. I am fortunate, my lady is awesome at it. But... Believe it or not you can try and find high schoolers for example in art classes that are VERY good at digital art and they are MORE than happy to make some side dough at VERY reasonable rates!

4. Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web, PSPad

Dreamweaver is an AWESOME web editor, with the myriads of plugin's and consistent user interface it is WONDERFUL for building static sites and sites that have some dyanmic content. Expression Web is my editor of choice for ASP.NET based work. PSPad is just a fantastic all around "editor" and fills in all the gaps nicely.

5. Flash, Swish & Namo Web Editor

This is obvious... FLASH stuff. Generally speaking we only use flash to "accent" web sites. In time as Microsoft Silverlight, Flash and platforms such as Visual Studio and Flex Builder advance these more interactive environments will actually become the standards for web sites. Namo we use to "Rip Flash"... Its good for that. If you want a Flash item and want modify it Namo does a decent job of reverse engineering things.

6. Drupal CMS, Joomla CMS, SubDreamer

While I have not expored every "CMS" on the planet as there are many and more coming all the time these are what we have used. Our selection of which to use really depends on our client and our clients needs. When they need a dynamic site, frequent updates etc. whether they manage it or whether we maintain it all need be relayed to the client.

Joomla is nice, easy, effective though at times requires tweaking PHP code and obviously dealing with lots of formatting crap since nothing is standardized for the most part. Joomla has HORRIBLE workflow when considering a client maintaining their own site. Drupal is more ghastly from the developer point of view (though getting better) but does allow for the developer to set up good permissions (not excellent) and workflow for the client. For "EASY" sake, SubDreamer... Anyone can learn to use this and its a damned fine CMS.

7. Portals

I've done some sites with Drupal (PHP based portal) and its pretty decent. Example ( Bridging Digital Divide) I've yet to find a ASP.NET Portal worth a crap. For the past few months I've also been playing with a WONDERFUL portal application called Liferay, it is Java based... its efficient, AWESOME in capability, TRASHES any CMS noted above (except for the fact "Addons" are limited) and its DAMNED fast. It is a "WORLD CLASS" Enterprise level application... period. It will run rings around any of the above CMS's with its hands tied behind its back.

8. eCommerce

LOTS of these applications out there and many are really good, many suck, many are someplace inbetween. eCommerce is popular among those wanting websites. Ive played a bit with the rather new Open Source "Magento" and I just cant say who the target client is for Magento. Clearly it appears pointed at the business that wants a powerhouse eCommerce solution. Unfortunately most people wanting to engage in eCommerce are not power house salesman.

SunShop... If you've not tried it, pretty cool little shop program. Its quite easy to design for in templates, it has many really nice plugin's including absolutely painless integration with everything from PayPal to every merchant account type/provider on the planet. Wish lists, featured items, discounts tickets, gift certificates, reviews and more. Its EXTREMELY simple to administrate which is VERY nice when it comes to clients. So, power, performance and easy to setup, easy for your client to use. It lacks some things, video for example would be nice. But for your average small business its really quite good. In fact.... I am considering coding up a bridge for it so it can be seamlessly used with Joomla CMS. SubShop also has static page generation ability built in, very nice for Search Engine ranking.

While we are on that subject... Joomla, Drupal, CMS developers.... REALIZE that your iFRAME ability in these applications are VERY under utilized in sites. While for example you might be itching to have a DECENT mass mailer application that works nice with your CMS based site(s) or eCommerce package or Amazon Affiliate Store etc... You can use iFrame's to bring EXCEPTIONAL scripts seamlessly integrating to your CMS based webs!

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Please post what tools you use and WHY...

Until Next Time!
Read more... 3 comments 11:24 PM Posted by Admin
Labels: Tips, Tools

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Color Tools For Web Designers

A reference worth bookmarking for designers. Most of them you have probably seen and used, but still a handy reference. Color is an important factor in web design. Here is a list of resources on how to choose color schemes when designing web sites:

Web 2.0 Color Palette