Web designers need a real web design application

Jul262010
tools

You’d think that web designers would have a dedicated toolkit that is specifically designed to help them do their work, but this is actually not the case.  As web design has grown as a profession, designers and front end developers have had to make do with a set of applications intended for print media and photo manipulation and bend them to our rather specific needs. 

When you think about how much revenue a big company like Adobe pulls in from web designers, its really surprising that we only have one tool dedicated to web work, Dreamweaver. Unfortunately its a bloated developers gadget box that has no real value when it comes to actually designing a website as opposed to just coding one.

Jason Santa Maria has just written a very interesting article about this subject, systematically going through the approaches to the creative process that are currently available:

The web and its related disciplines have grown organically. I think it’s safe to say the web is not the domain of just the geeks anymore—we all live here. And those of us who work here should have sophisticated, native tools to do our jobs.

Read his full article here.

Posted on July 26 2010. You Should Follow me on Twitter.

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  • http://tylerherman.com Tyler Herman

    As long as Photoshop is a must have for all designer I don’t think Adobe will bother to make anything useful for web designers. They got us buying a whole suite for 1 program (well Illustrator and InDesign too but the rest is garbage). Fireworks could be the program but Adobe isn’t going to bother putting the time in if they get the sale regardless.

    Dreamweaver has too much of a stigma of being for amateurs to ever be picked up again by serious web designers.

  • http://www.pointydesign.com James

    All true words. However I think Photoshop is losing ground to designers who work in the browser. Its a very attractive idea to move as much of the workflow out of Photoshop and into code, because you repeat yourself much less. At this point I tend to work on really general look and feel in Ps and then do as much as I can after that in markup.

  • Harley

    I disagree completely.

    I hate dreamweaver. So I moved to Coda. Don’t like coda? go to Espresso. Can’t afford a mac? get textmate.

    Can’t afford Photoshop? download it. Get PixelMate? there’s a plethora of web design applications for you to use, and WDEs are on the rise- and have been around since 2006. You are referring to WDEs right?

    I mean with FTP, in-built File browser, Syntax highlighting for over 30 languages, WYSIWYG CSS Editor, Debugging, terminal, DOM inspector, JS console… I’m more than set to do my entire process right out of Coda- Except the Designing part. Photoshop is an independant Application for a reason though- Personally I think mixing image editing programs and coding programs is au faux.

    We do have them… why aren’t you embracing them?

  • http://bitfoundry.ca James Beardmore

    You’re missing my point and accidentally making it for me here.

    I totally understand what you’re saying, but I’m talking about *design* tools not development ones. There are tons of great development tools out there just as you have mentioned, but there is nothing that is made for specifically designing the visual layout of websites. We have to make do with Photoshop and it’s other Adobe buddies which are simply not designed for designing websites, they are a pain in the ass. These are tools geared to print design and photo editing, web designers are forced to shoehorn them into laying out websites, repeating ourselves when we want to add another link that is the same shade of red, etc.

    I DEFINITELY don’t support mixing design and code in an application. What I do mean is that we need a good web *design* application would allow us to design the visual aspects of sites from a web perspective, like using global settings that mimic css for layout and styling. This way the understanding and workflow between designers and devs is smoother.

  • http://www.callycreates.blogspot.com/ Cally

    No idea if it will be too basic for some but I’ll be interested to see how Adobe Muse performs since it’s hyped as being a visual web design tool which, in theory, would make things possible for those of us who love design but get visual brain freeze looking at code.

  • admin

    The problem with Adobe Muse, like any development tool Adobe creates, is that it outputs absolutely horrendous code. Yes, if you want to make a website yourself, it will technically get the job done, but it will put so many useless tags in your code you won’t be able to find your way around it.

    And of course, working with a tool that does things badly is a real roadblock for learning how to do it right.

  • http://bitfoundry.ca James Beardmore

    The problem with Adobe Muse, like any development tool Adobe creates, is that it outputs absolutely horrendous code. Yes, if you want to make a website yourself, it will technically get the job done, but it will put so many useless tags in your code you won’t be able to find your way around it.

    And of course, working with a tool that does things badly is a real roadblock for learning how to do it right.

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