There won’t be a new layout this month. There are some reasons for it. Firstly, I have no idea what to feature. Also, it’s Lunar New Year so I’m rather busy with eating those new year goodies. Lastly, I really like the current layout.
I don’t force ideas to come out of my head. Every time I tried to do that, things don’t work well. I do have a rather interesting way of generating ideas for my layout.
I do not plan my layout then start looking for the image. It happens the other way round. Often, I find myself browsing through galleries and galleries until I find a picture that I really like. I tend to look for images that I can fit in my side bar.
With the image, I start to imagine how a layout will look like on my bed. The bed is an excellent spot to think in my opinion. Just don’t fall asleep on course. After much planning of layout in my brains, I’ll attempt to construct the layout with Photoshop.
I always start with erasing the background, you can try using the Background Eraser for it. But for inexperience users, just stick with the Eraser, it gives you more control. Frankly, I sucked at using the Background Eraser.
Usually, the images I obtained from galleries are of good quality already, so I don’t usually do sharpening and stuff. But if you were to face with that kind of trouble, er.. just pick another picture okay?
The key thing about making a layout is how to slice your images so that you can make it into a HTML document. That can be rather difficult for starters, all I can say is that practice makes perfect [almost perfect, no one is perfect]. You’ll soon figure slicing images does require some brains, don’t slice images without planning the tables before hand.
I recommend everyone to use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, it’s a must nowadays, it speeds things up so much. Please don’t listen to those ignorant old fashion fools who preach to you that the real way of coding HTML is by typing in a notepad. That fellow needs to be awaken. WYSIWYG editors likeDreamweaver and FrontPageallows users to code HTML too. Oh, and don’t listen to those people who slam either Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Truth is, those people only used either one of the products more than the other, it’s not a fair comparison. Dreamweaver MX 2004 [released in 2003 actually] andFrontPage 2003 (as part of Office family) is available in the market.
I’m happy to help people with Photoshop. I used to code with Dreamweaver, but I’m using FrontPage right now. I can only help withFrontPage, my Dreamweavercan’t launch. I do a bit of Flash too, but I think I’m in the below-intermediate level, only ask me if you’re a beginner.
Lastly, some of these programs aren’t easy to start with, especially Flash which looks totally revolting to start with. FrontPage 2003 has theOffice 2003 interface so it may be easier to use than Dreamweaver MX 2004. As for Photoshop, well.. there’s a reason why it’s my favorite program you know.
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