What is web design?

Confused with what adobe product to use for web design and web graphics.. can you help?

• I've tried to avoid asking this question as it may create more confusion but I'll never know until I ask. Anyway I've been reading articles, debates and forum discussions over the last few days trying to decide what software I should use for web design. I purchased adobe cs5 master collection a while ago so have access to software such as illustrator, fireworks and photoshop. I'd really like to pick one and put time into learning it but with all the articles I've been reading I don't know what to go with. I wish I wasn't such a picky guy but in these types of situations I always behave this way. I have several ideas for how I want the website I'm designing to look but would like a software which gives me the ability to play around freely and bring my ideas to life, leaving me with something I can refer to as a guide when it's time to actually start coding the design. It would be nice to be able to preview the website at the actual size/resolution it'll be and be able to add placeholders and possibly images I may use in the final design. I was on the lynda website today looking at the tutorials they offer many tutorials for adobe products so I know I'll be off to a good start. I'm originally a java/ruby programmer but know html and css. Previously I would hire a web designer but I've always wanted to learn because the creative mind is there but the knowledge of design software isn't. I always seem to have a full sketch of how I'd like a website i've just developed to look then end up hiring someone to design it. I realise with some time set aside and dedication towards learning how to use some of this software, I could certainly do the job myself. Anyway I'd really appreciate your opinions on: 1) Your preferred adobe cs5 product to use for creating realistic mock ups for websites? 2) Your preferred adobe cs5 product to use for creating web graphics such as buttons, icons, logos etc. Kind regards

• Answer:

  I *don't* use photoshop in early design. For mockups, I use a HB pencil and A3 graph paper. These tools are indispensable in web design, as they work collaboratively and people don't have to wait for you to make a mockup when you can get the idea of it very quickly. I usually skip on from story boarding and basic screen design on paper into a prototype. Prototyping a web site is something I either do in html with a bunch of templates (since then when I have to build I have my framework already layed out), or if it's a collaborative effort then I use a few different online tools. Protoshare (http://www.protoshare.com/) is particularly neat since I can lay out the site using wireframes, but then hit a button and *try* the site. Can't do that in photoshop. Photoshop and Illustrator are great for designers I guess. These are usually the guys and gals that sit behind their macs and dream up designs but then hand these onto people like me who have to deal with browsers and css and all that stuff making their dreams into something tangible. To me, designing in photoshop is just an unrequired step in the process. Good for photo editing, trying out ideas, but not for web design. Buttons, shadows, gradients, hover effects, etc - I do these in CSS: That's what it's for. I use polyfills to backport modern functions to legacy browsers and platforms. But I design for the future. Photoshop, drawing buttons, designing hoverstates and offset background shims seems like designing for the past to me. My ideal photoshop? Photoshop 6. It has layers, the basic manipulations like hue and brightness, the basic effects like gaussian blur for your shadows - which is pixel based but also gets around those times when you need to shim-over a shadow with a dummy layer because you want certain edges and not others... It's blazingly fast on a new machine - compared with CS5 it's wonderful on a my pithy dual core centrino laptop when I'm out with clients. CS5 is all things to all industries so it's bloatware - PS6 was good for phototographers and basic multimedia designers, so it was streamlined.