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Designing A Webpage

slayer202

slayer202

Lifer
I plan on designing a webpage in photoshop, but not sure on how to go about sizing it. I plan on having a banner on top, and I think 2 columns of frames/menus, 1 on each side.

Problem is I dont know how wide to make it all. do most people still run 800 x 600? yuck...it would be so tiny on my comp. 1024 768? sorry, im kind of a beginner at this stuff.
 
i still design my site for 800x600. according to the browser stats that my site collects, about 40% of the traffic is from browsers at that resolution.
 
Photoshop is not a web-design tool. Photoshop is a tool for making graphics. The majority of a webpage is not graphics. Look at this forum for example, why the heck would someone use photoshop to design it?

If you think a rectangular graphic (of any size), even with a stretchable text area, is going to look good and be useable, you're living in 1996.

So, design for whatever size you like, because as long as you stick to the "photoshop is a web development tool" mindset, your page is going to suck regardless.

BTW, most people use 1024x768 or 1280x1024 now.
 
Originally posted by: notfred
Photoshop is not a web-design tool. Photoshop is a tool for making graphics. The majority of a webpage is not graphics. Look at this forum for example, why the heck would someone use photoshop to design it?

If you think a rectangular graphic (of any size), even with a stretchable text area, is going to look good and be useable, you're living in 1996.

So, design for whatever size you like, because as long as you stick to the "photoshop is a web development tool" mindset, your page is going to suck regardless.

BTW, most people use 1024x768 or 1280x1024 now.
Click to expand...

the site needs to be designed...this is a forum if you didnt know. how do you suggest making the site? handwritting the code in notepad and having no graphics?

how do you expect me to make the site?
 
Personally, I draw layouts on paper until I get something pretty close to what I want, then I think about the best way to implement each part of that design as a webpage. Some of it is going to be graphical, but most of it isn't. A single 800x600 or 1024x768 image s definitely *NOT* the best way to implement a webpage.

If you want to do your mockups in Photoshop, fine (it's a lot slower than doing it on paper). If you actually want to use a photoshop mockup as a completed site, it will suck.
 
well like i said, i am pretty new at this. i dont know php, xml, css, and that stuff. basically i can somewhat throw a page together in PS and throw that into dreamweaver.

the site is going to be basketball related, so I dont plan on having it graphics heavy, nor blog like. no fruity colors and 8 million small content boxes.

not sure what you would reccommend
 
Well, if you don't know web technologies like CSS and HTML, then you're not going to be able to make a very good page. So, if you don't want to learn them, do whatever you want.

Saying "I want to make a webpage but I don't know CSS, PHP, HTML, etc" is a lot like saying "I want to biulds a computer but I don't know what a hard drive, or a CPU, or a Video card is"

You either have to learn what those things are, or you're going to end up doing a crappy job.
 
Other than banners or somethin I doubt you need to use PS to design your page. I used PS to design a page awhile ago, splicing up an image and filling in wut i needed. But ya i agree with notfred, HTML/CSS would be good to learn and it's pretty easy. Unless your gonna be keeping track of like massive stats, i doubt you'll need php/mysql or anything like that. Check out www.w3schools.com for some help.
 
Originally posted by: notfred
Well, if you don't know web technologies like CSS and HTML, then you're not going to be able to make a very good page. So, if you don't want to learn them, do whatever you want.

Saying "I want to make a webpage but I don't know CSS, PHP, HTML, etc" is a lot like saying "I want to biulds a computer but I don't know what a hard drive, or a CPU, or a Video card is"

You either have to learn what those things are, or you're going to end up doing a crappy job.
Click to expand...

dreamweaver and various sites on the web can help me with html, but the other stuff i have never used. and i never said i am not willing to learn or use them, i just said i dont know them.

since i dont know the languages, i dont know the benefits and things possible with them that might make things easier for myself.

and like i said, its a basketball site, so it doesnt need to be anything fancy. the home page where ill have updates and news or w/e, along with a few seperate pages. I'm not gonna have tons and tons of stuff along with archives and god knows what else. some stuff I would plan on having, if it helps, would be polls and maybe live scores of games. Not totally sure yet. thanks for the help guys, i do appreciate it
 
The two most important things to learn, if you don't know them, are HTML and CSS. You can make a perfectly good site with just those two, and they're both pretty easy to learn. And like neegotiator said, w3schools had good tutorials.

Polls and live game scores will require you to learn some more advanced stuff.
 
i know its a very broad and general question, but what will css help me do easier than or that html can not do?

the site as planned is going to be very simple. a clean and simple layout with some graphics on top, and frames on each side of the page. content in the middle. frames on the outside staying the same on each page most likely. the main page will be updated, and i planned just to use dreamweaver for this to add however many entries i want on the page, and when i get past that, start deleting off the bottom. I'm pretty sure this is not the best way to do this, and there probably an easier way to update/archive my "posts" but I would survive without that. other pages will have various different topics, but just basic layout, with content in the middle again.

sorry for the noobness 😱
 
i know thats not a very straight forward question, but can anyone help me out a bit? i guess ill work on throwing together a bit of a layout to help show you guys what i mean
 
Originally posted by: slayer202
i know its a very broad and general question, but what will css help me do easier than or that html can not do?
Click to expand...

linky

All CSS for layout, images, and design. If you are using the better browser, install the web developer toolbar and dissable CSS on those pages.

Every page at csszengarden uses the exact same html, the css is what changes the look, layout, etc..

CSS and XHTML will help you design standards complient web sites that work in 99% of browsers no matter what resolution they are running.

Web designers shouldn't be designing around resolution anymore, they should be designing around usability and compatability. You can do all that and still get the site look and results you want.
 
hmm interesting. thanks. If I photoshop the design how I want it, can I then do whatever I need to do with css / xhtml / whatever, or should I know what needs to be done before I design?
 
Photoshop would give you 100% images, then you'd have to re-code to remove the extra ones. I suggest a pure CSS/HTML layout the ones posted. Another example is the one in my sig.
 
I've been making little web pages for a couple years now and have used Dreamweaver
very little. I prefer using Notepad for everything. I started learning CSS for the layout
of the page and I will tell you it makes everything so much easier. You'll be happy you
learned it. The link the others have posted for W3 schools is excellent too. I've picked
up a lot there. Good luck with your site.
 
1024x768 seems to be the trend now. But centering your site makes it easily viewable in multple resolutions without as much scrolling from side to side.
 
I am a designer and I prefer to layout a homepage in photoshop... as well as a template for other pages to follow. I found that laying out everything in organized photoshop layers is a very easy way to build web pages... with CSS and HTML. All you do is slice up the images you need... and work with dreamweaver on the actual techical format.

I highly recommend using photoshop for doing this... I design in 800x600 but use CSS to create a nice linear background that is indefinite, so the website can stretch to give the illusion that it is a bigger page. I found this is the best way to design for now.

Peace.
 
Photoshop is a great way to sketch your layouts. Once you figure out how you want it to look, use the rulers to figure out the positioning you will use in CSS, and chop up any images you may need. Voila.
 
http://www.chemicalbreakdown.net/

something like that isn't what i want. its a little too simple, i dont like how plain it is with just plain text all over. I'm not really sure what I want to do, but I think im gonna lay everything out in photoshop and post it, and ill ask you guys for reccomendations of what I can do with it. Thanks
 
ok i threw together a VERY VERY ROUGHHHH outline of what I kinda wanna do. please no flaming, it is pretty damn noob.

http://www.reggin.net/usa/test.jpg

its just to give you guys kind of an idea of what i wanna do. the top bannerish part needs a lot of work. the pictures obviously weren't cropped very well, but ideas are appreciated. and nothing is really how i want it to look, thats just the setup i want, so ignore the gross fonts and sloppy job
 
CSS based layout is great about making boxes and putting them wherever you want. That's essentially all your layout is.You've got a box at the top with some images in it, then three boxes underneath that, one with links in it, one with another box that is a main content area, and one with banner ads.

I'm really not sure what your question is, but that wouldn't be a difficult layout to do with CSS.

Personally, I think it's ugly and I don't know how many people are going to want to read a "Dirty Morrison" website, but that's irrelevant. 😉
 
What I want to know is how you can afford Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver but you have no experience whatsoever with design. 😛

You do have to start somewhere, but you should learn HTML first, and then maybe CSS. You can still get away with designing a really basic page in HTML, though CSS isn't that much more difficult to learn. I started designing websites when I was around 12 years old, learned a good amount of html, then gave it up when I was 14 or so. I got back into it recently and I picked up CSS in only a few days, use examples to help you learn. It really does make the process a whole lot easier. 🙂
 
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