MAJOR update to the boards

See, I belive that it is impossible to make a good efficient web page with a WYSIWYG editor. Software is stupid, hence the code that pops out is always bloated and inefficient.

Table based code is certainly bloated. The majority of the code spat out contains no actaul content. It also results in a hodege podge of content and presentation. The whole point of HTML markup is that it should specify WHAT you are displaying, not how it should be dissplayed. This symanitc approach is the future, not the dissaster that was HTML4.0.

Take some time and look at what DreamWeaver spits out, it is rediculously poor code. Then try to integrate that code into some form of dynamic portal. It will break your heart. Then look at the source of a proper XHTML page. It is simple, neat, understandable and symanticly meaningfull. If the web is to develop any further (the whole web2.0 thing) then designers will haev to move towards symantic markup and separation of presentation from content because if your content and your presentation are completely intertwined then you cannot do anything else with the content because it is not extractable from the mess that is your code. Tables have a use in this new world, they are for representing tabular data, that's what the table tag means symantically!

No matter what way you look at it, table based layouts are history, the past, dead. Separation of style and content via XHTML and CSS is the future. What CSS Zen garden shows is that leaving tables behind does not have to result in ugly web pages and that you can make graphically and stylistically beautify and usable web pages with XHTML + CSS. Web design can NOT be separated from the code that underlies the page. A good web designer has to understand his medium, and that means that a good web designer must be intimately familiar with the languages that browsers speak, i.e. HTML, XHTML, CSS, Java Script & the DOM. No software can substitute for that understanding. The only use a WYSIWYG editor has in truely proffessional web design is to produce mockups to give to web programmers to generate efficient code from and lets face it, you may as well use PhotoShop for that!

Bart I would like to learn how to implement Mambo/Joomla CMS systems.
Is there any course/seminar in Ireland that you could point me to?
Thanks

I disagree strongly with this point of view. Web design is rapidly becoming more software based, not less. Like it or not Dreamweaver is the industry standard- every large web design company uses it. They use it because it has a number of clear benefits. It takes less time to produce pages, it is easier to create layouts that work, it allows teams to collaborate. Not every site requires highly dynamic pages- many are simple brochures that do not justify complex designs. Sure, the code may be bloated- but the overheads associated with bloated code (a few kilobytes) is a small price to pay.

As long as the page works in the major browsers you will find that nobody really cares how pretty the code is. Dreamweaver is on the verge of being a good CSS WYSIWYG editor. Perhaps more importantly Dreamweaver allows people to create the design they had envisaged easily.

This is important. Although the technology has changed the principles of good design have not. Dreamweaver is still the best compromise between design and web technology.

CSS templates are restrictive by comparison.

Bart I would like to learn how to implement Mambo/Joomla CMS systems.
Is there any course/seminar in Ireland that you could point me to?
Thanks

Sorry but my experience generally is that you learn these various CMS systems by getting your hands dirty, reading the online docs and posting your problems etc on the boards run by who ever makes the CMS you are experimenting with.

There are so many CMS systems and so few people actaully using any one such system in a small country like Ireland that it is generally not financially viable to do seminars/courses here.

Generally a good CMS system will have tutorials etc on their web page and that's where you have to start.

Best of luck with it!

Bart.

I disagree strongly with this point of view. Web design is rapidly becoming more software based, not less. Like it or not Dreamweaver is the industry standard- every large web design company uses it. They use it because it has a number of clear benefits. It takes less time to produce pages, it is easier to create layouts that work, it allows teams to collaborate. Not every site requires highly dynamic pages- many are simple brochures that do not justify complex designs. Sure, the code may be bloated- but the overheads associated with bloated code (a few kilobytes) is a small price to pay.

As long as the page works in the major browsers you will find that nobody really cares how pretty the code is. Dreamweaver is on the verge of being a good CSS WYSIWYG editor. Perhaps more importantly Dreamweaver allows people to create the design they had envisaged easily.

This is important. Although the technology has changed the principles of good design have not. Dreamweaver is still the best compromise between design and web technology.

CSS templates are restrictive by comparison.

Things look very different from where I'm standing.

Also, unless there are HUGE leaps forward in artificial inteligence programs like Dream Weaver will always produce bloated code. The future does not lie in "web brochure" like pages which really is the only thing you can use DreamWeaver for, it lies with content delivery systems where the core is the content and that content can then be delivered in many different ways. Dream Weaver has no part to play in that kind of system. However proper symantic markup has a HUGE part to play in that future.

Bart.

I've recently been looking at dreamweaver, in particular how I can make dynamically generated content work in it. And I'd have to agree with Bart, it's just not up to it. The best you can do is to take a snapshot of the page that was designed and hack the generated code into it. This is totally unsuited to something like this website where almost oll the front page content including naviagtion is generated.

Dreamweavers only use is to make small static webapges. It's use of technology seems stuck somewhere around 1999.

A good tool, well the only one I've used since it was recommended to me, for designing with CSS is style master www.westciv.com/style_master/ . The tutorial alone is well worth reading www.westciv.com/style_master/hands_on_tu...01.introduction.html

The comments that CSS cant generate nice pages are just wrong, Zen Garden shows that (so do most websites). If there are issues with a specific site, then its the designers fault. Using tables to seriously design a page layout is just silly nowadays for sites like this.

"Web design is rapidly becoming more software based, not less". Thats true, design the style sheets correctly and generate the content. Using dreamweaver doesnt scale in this.