Dan McCullum DesignDan McCullum Design

Journey into Reading/Thoughts on Coding

Thursday, March 13, 2008

A while back I posted about how I was ditching Dreamweaver and doing future web design by hand coding. Well, I just passed the first real test.

Version one of Journey Into Reading (http://journeyintoreading.org) was actually my second web design job, and although I was relatively happy with the design, when it came time to add some major content to the site a week or two ago, it became clear that a visual refresh would be worthwhile.

So, after a few hours designing the layout, coming up with the styling, and structuring the site (and probably quite a bit more time spent on getting the page to work correctly in Internet Explorer) I ended up with the current design.

So, now that I've done a "real" site entirely by hand (cross-browser and cross-platform this time, unlike the coda test sites I did earlier which I didn't bother spending the time necessary to make IE-compatible), how do I feel about the switch to hand-coding?

Well, it's not a whole lot slower or faster, and it does give a feeling of confidence that your code is going to be valid and streamlined. However, there are a few things that still bug me (though some of these things may be resolved by simply learning how to use CSS a bit more effectively).

Lack of Link Management
This is probably the single most annoying thing about hand-coding. In Dreamweaver, it is very, very easy to change the location/name of files and have Dreamweaver automatically update site-wide links to that file. Coda (and every other coding program that I have found) does not have this feature, making structural changes and such a pain.

Lack of Library items/Templates
The lack of Dreamweaver-like templating is also an issue that bugs me. Adding a page to the main navigation bar, or changing the order of a sidebar link list is no longer a simple matter of editing a special template file and then updating all the pages using it.

However, I recently found an article that talks about getting similar functionality by using php includes.

Despite these issues, I'll be sticking with hand-coding for the foreseeable future, and will probably find ways to adapt to these problems.

Until next time... Au Revoir

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One small step for man...

Saturday, February 09, 2008

One giant leap for web design.

Well, I've done it. I've really done it. I have switched over to hand coding my websites. I plan to hand code all my future design jobs.

Why?
Dreamweaver on Mac is still very slow, even though it is now Intel-compatible. It also lacks a native interface, which is somewhat detrimental. I decided to go cold-turkey and create a tiny little test site (http://dmdzine.net/codatest) entirely with Panic's Coda, one of the nicest pieces of software I have found yet. While it is still missing a few key features (automatic link management and templates/library items), I am willing to put up with that because of the nice interface and quick workflow. I may end up using CSSEdit (which I got in the MacHeist bundle) for my stylesheets, but overall I really like Coda.

The switch from visual to code has not been as difficult as I imagined so far, though only time and a large multi-tiered website will tell.

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