Here is my video that I have been working on for class. It is a kinetic type video which is a video using only type, or only basic graphics as long as the type is the main focus.
I used a NOFX song called Murder the Government. You should buy some of their CDs. They are awesome. If you don’t know who they are, get yourself out from underneath that rock you have been under and listen to some of their music.
What is so great about Photoshop? Yes, it’s photo editing software, hence Photoshop, and it is the best out there, but why do so many design websites with it? It’s not made for web design in the first place. I can see if you are comfortable with it, but I slice up websites for a living and I can’t stand going through layers upon layers of “Layer 1, Layer 2, …” and it makes me go crazy. Not only that, I have to find that magic layer in the 50 others to extract your logo or side bar or whatever. I slice and dice and create my entire website in Adobe Illustrator.
Why you ask? It’s very simple really. Adobe Illustrator has layers also, but many don’t use them and when they do use them, they use them sparingly. I do edit the photos in Photoshop, but then bring them over into AI. I have a huge canvas this way and I can move and cut things up on multiple layers without having to merge or flatten. It saves me time… a lot of time actually.
Plus how many photos do you really use on a website? Most of the stuff that you make will end up being converted to code or a simple shape such as a square, rounded corner, etc. In the last 5 websites I have sliced there were a grand total of 7 photos that were used in the actual design of the site. There were portfolio sections, but in the design you would leave this blank or have in sample.
Please use Illustrator or something to design your website if it’s going to get sliced because it will save everyone more time. Many people who slice probably wouldn’t like an AI file since they are not used to it, but after they use it, it will grow on them!
Next is the actual slicing part. Most people send the comps off after this, but if you design and slice what do you use? I would never, ever, ever use the slicing option that Photoshop has. I guess it’s not bad, but you aren’t going to get the results you want and you wont understand the code as well and then they decide they want something different, you are screwed. Just take some time and learn basic XHTML and CSS. After that I use TextMate by Macromates. It’s a very minimal, lightweight, IDE. Supports tons of languages and even Ruby on Rails. It’s €39, which equals about $56.9088. By the way, I am talking about Mac OS X software here. Sorry Windows people…
Lastly, you will need a way to upload files to a web server. To do this you will need an FTP. I have two great options here. If you can get a student discount get Fetch because it’s free and one of the best out there. If you don’t mind coffing up some money or you do not get a educational or charitable discount I would just get Transmit from Panic. It has more features than Fetch and I personally like it better. Once again, sorry Windows users, Mac only stuff.
I do want to warn you about one piece of software that actually gets banned in some work places such as mine. Dreamweaver by Adobe (Just recently released by them, but has had 8 previous versions from Macromedia which has been bought out by Adobe.) Dreamweaver hogs a shit load of RAM and not for a very good reason. It is just packed full of extra features that try to make it easier, but it really is just easier to learn how to program it since XHTML and CSS is very basic than have to learn how to navigate through menu after menu to add one thing. You will have to learn what everything means anyways to be able to use the menus. If you want a fully featured IDE that has a built in FTP and has all the features of Dreamweaver then get Panic’s Coda. It’s $80, but much less than Dreamweaver’s $400 price.
So this is what I end up with and everything I use to make websites (with the exception of the occasional Flash video.)
• Design and slicing = Adobe Illustrator
• Coding = TextMate
• FTP = Fetch/Transmit
• Optional (takes place of both TextMate and a FTP) = Coda
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Everywhere you go on the internet these days there are Adobe/Macromedia Flash files everywhere. Ads are almost always flash and somtimes entire sites are Flash, but why? What do you get out of having a Flash based website?
http://www.kinodesign.com for example has a website that is entirely Flash based. Why? I don’t see the plus here. They don’t use any fancy Flash tricks. You can do this all with javascript and even easier, CSS. The top navigation could be done with simple CSS image hovers and the navigation and the portfolio could all be done with CSS. JQuery could do the orange to white effect that happens when you click on portfolio or when things fade in or out.
Yes, if you don’t know coding such as (X)HTML, CSS, or Javascript/JQuery this would take longer then throwing this all together in a Flash file and uploading, but think of all the benefits.
Those are just some of the benefits. With a little extra time you can get everything you wanted in a Flash site in a XHTML and CSS based website. The only time I can see using a Flash file is like the use on YouTube where they use it for their videos. If you notice everything on their site is XHTML and CSS though. Everything, but the videos.
This is why I don’t use Flash ever on any of my sites. It’s useless to a portfolio site or any other site for that matter. Just don’t use it. Learn a small amount of CSS and then a little HTML and your site will be 10x faster and more professional.