Newb, needs advice about landing page

Question

Hey guys, I am very new to Dreamweaver. I was asked by my
boss to create a landing page. She asked me because I am the
graphic designer for all print material. She is well aware (as am
I...lol) I am no web developer....But I would LOVE to learn and I
have plenty of time to figure it out.
only requirements are: Dimensions are 950px by 475px. must
use divs, and be centered. I don't need to do anything fancy script
wise, basically this is a welcome page with a summary and 2 links
and whatever aesthetic design i come up with.....(in short, it kind
of looks like a postcard) I am familiar with CSS & html coding,
but I'd say as far as layout structure and professional web
standards, I'm a complete novice.
I will be creating the layout in photoshop.
Would you recommend that I slice up the photoshop image? and
play with the CSS that photoshop generates?
Or would you recommend that I FIRST set up the "container"
div and the rest of the layout in Dreamweaver, then slice photoshop
and place each image individually..
Again, I am very new to web stuff....But I would love to
learn the web standards, best practices, what structure is best to
use, etc...
Any advice would be greatly appreciate...thanks a lot, Take
care...

Answer 1

> just out of curiousity, why never use the code that
Photoshop
> generates?
Because Photoshop (and any other graphics app that writes
HTML) are *TOO
GOOD* at what you have asked them to do, and that is to
create HTML to
exactly produce the graphic layout you have designed. To do
this they have
to drastically merge and split cells, filling the table with
col- and
rowspans, and producting a completely inflexible and
monolithic structure
that breaks apart as soon as the shape of the contents
changes (for example,
when I change the browser's text size display). Crash/bang.
Furthermore,
the resulting mess is simply impossible to troubleshoot.
Now - for HTML emails, you will usually need to use tables
for your layout
since email clients cannot be relied on to properly display
more
contemporary layout methods. But for web pages, you'd want to
move beyond
this very poor layout structure created by the graphics apps.
> people love that PS generates code for them
Only those who don't understand could go in this category.
That markup is
good for prototyping, but lousy for production. But look at
the web - 80%
of what you see there is prototype-level stuff.
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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"kdubbie" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
> Hey thanks a lot, Murry for the feedback and I
appreciate it.
>
> and LOL...don't ask me where my boss came up with these
dimensions, for
> some
> reason she wants it to look as much like a post card as
possible....and I
> definately understand your point that designing for
print and web are 2
> COMPLETELY different animals....in which I conveyed to
her....Right now I
> create HTML emails, which is how I have learned
CSS...but understand that
> standards for email are VERY restricted compared to web.
>
> And you are correct to, I meant CSS layout vs tables.
Just what she asked
> for
> is all...
>
> And thank you very much, that's what I was looking
for......I should
> create
> the layout in Dreamweaver first....then slice up what I
created in PS
> (images
> only) and then bring them into dreamweaver?
>
> just out of curiousity, why never use the code that
Photoshop
> generates?...I've seen a couple of tutorials and read a
few forums where
> people
> love that PS generates code for them....(and sorry, not
questioning
> you.....but
> just looking for as much info as possible)
>
> Thank you very much....
>