Re: [opensuse] feature rich website design software for Linux?

Matt T. wrote:
Agreed.

And in my humble experience, working in the XHTML and CSS code directly using
powerful tools such as KDEWEBDEV (which contains the famous Quanta+) enables
you not only to make better websites but also to make them faster. And speed
is needed to minimize the costs and to survive!

If I design a website, I do not play with the mouse and push some graphical
impressions around. first I try to "see" with my inner eye the website - look
and content and structure - which is perfect (imho) for the customer. Based
on my knowledge about his business, his customers, his cultural and social
environment, his corporate identity (if he has any).

Then, when I know what I want - and not before - I take
Quanta+ (kdewebdev) and code the HTML and CSS quickly. If the site needs more
(PHP) programming than a simple contact form I use a framework such as
cakephp (see http://cakephp.org).

(I sat next to an Apple guru using Golive for some month, I have seen the
difference in results, in both time needed and look of the sites, and last
but not least maintainability of the resulting code:) While my dreamweaver or
golive friends are still pushing around their mouse trying to understand why
there is a gap here and there or why the site looks different in MSIE than in
Firefox, I can present my customers their site, and usually it is accepted as
it is.

So my recommendation for her is to get a good book about XHTML and CSS. may be
even the "Dummy Guide CSS Web Design", but there are numerous others, and get
a tool like KDEWEBDEV / Quanta+, which gives you all support you need to
point and click the HTML elements to the page. I can assure you that her
sites will not only be more close to what she imagined (if she has the
creativity to imagine a design, and does not depend on playing with pixels
until it looks more or less OK), but most of all she will be so much faster,
which is key to economical survival as a small web design shop.

Just my 2 cents ...
Matt


Ops, that's a different approach, e.g. trying to use GIMP/Inkscape for
discussion with customer and finalize the website with KDEWEBDEV / Quanta+

I still can remember IBM Homepage Builder did a smart but usual way to
make sure the website look the same for most browsers. It allows a
special mode (my preferred mode several years ago) that websites is
created using blocks, each block is an absolutely positioned <div>. Drag
and drop, align and distribute them as you do in OpenOffice Draw. It
ensure compatibility because it can form some kind of simple website
with only
<div id="xxx" style="position: absolute; top: 87px; left: 57px;">..</div>

The good thing is: it operates like OpenOffice Draw, or Inkscape, but it
results a website. The bad thing is, the website have fixed positioned
everything, width and heigh was also fixed, and text size is not easy to
adjust. Some customer seems to be fine with all these problems.

Anyway, as there are no direct replacement for Macromedia Dreamweaver or
GoLive, I think I have to try to help set up a workflow a bit
differently, a.k.a. use GIMP/Inkscape for prototyping and low-level
development environment for site creation. I know what you mean by
having a website understood before done, many customers are like what
you described, but there are more customers (especially in my country)
care about the look of the website and completely ignore the content. In
my experience if you make a website with look in mind but not the
content, the site would be difficult to maintain later, and even
difficult to maintain the same look later. But, but, but, some customers
happily pay to have a beautiful website with only a few pages and is
satisfied to not to update it for 3 years, never considering what he did
all that for. Maybe this is more like that in my country, but it's not
so easy to ignore these customers. By the way she just finished an
O'Reilly book about (X)HTML/CSS and I'd like to say she got it pretty well!

Let's see. I first prepare to use GIMP/Inkscape for prototyping for a
customer or two before I try introduce this to her. For me if I wish I
can also get in touch some customer with simple web design tasks.

Best regards

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Huateng Tower, Unit 1788
Jia 302 3rd area of Jinsong, Chao Yang

Tel: +86 (10) 8773 0650 ext 603
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http://www.realss.com

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