Funny how life goes around in circles
As an illustrator and print graphic designer (from a time when there was no ‘web’ version of the profession), my first interest in creating web pages arose when I realized I could slice up a page-sized Photoshop image and carefully place all the slices into the cells of a table.
Alas, with dial-up internet hovering around the slow to incredibly slow mark, such pages were a novelty only, and had no place in the real internet world.
So I spent ten years learning HTML and CSS, and was soon creating fast loading – but graphically anaemic – sites at 640×480 or 800×600 resolutions, forever following the adage that the entire front page, graphics and all, should never exceed 32kb.
But now, with the spread of speedy broadband connections and screens larger than the door on a toaster oven, I see the ‘sliced-up-Photoshop page’ format returning. Not only that, but with a proliferation of ‘PSD to HTML’ services around to take the load off code-wary designers, there’s no longer a need to learn any code whatsoever.
Or is there…?
I liken creating a graphically rich web page in Photoshop and using an online service (or a plugin like SiteGrinder) to convert it to XHTML/CSS, to buying a modern car with the engine bay encased in resin. It’s all very well if everything performs perfectly, and you never have to ‘pop the hood’.
But what if changes have to be made? Or something falls apart?
Have you seen the code for some of these ‘SiteGrinder’ pages? 200 Div Tags with descriptive names like ‘12’ and ‘44’!
I guess it comes down to this; there are quick web page solutions, and there are those with longevity and adjustment. In a way it reminds me of modern computer peripherals. Several years ago I had a colour laser printer. It cost the earth, but whenever it broke down it was fixed. More recently I bought a much cheaper colour laser which had pretty much the same output quality. But when it decided to make a whirr/click/click noise and refused to print on one side of the paper, I was told it’d be cheaper to buy a new printer.
That, I believe, is the issue with cut-and-paste websites. If you have to make a whole bunch of changes, rather than wading through all the CSS and images and div tags, just do it over again.