I am going to design a site using asp.net, and after watching a tutorial to get a feel for what is will entail, it came to a point where the video just said "drop your css files into the project", so is there a common applications(s) for designing the actual css?
Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Expression.
First, learn to use a css compiler, it makes life much easier and you can write css much more intuitively in my opinion
http://compass-style.org/
Second, write css (or SASS/LESS) by hand. Designers have come a long way since the early Dreamweaver days, but in my experience, you will spend just as much time, if not more, tracking down the autogenerated stuff that doesn't work, than if you just wrote it from scratch and test with Chrome (or your other favorite in-browser CSS debugger).
They could of been referring to a theme in asp.net. Creating a theme in the App_Themes folder. (ASP.Net folder when you go to the add new items)This allows you to make pathing allot simpler. You can then put your skins, images(in a image folder) along with all of your style sheets. You then can set all your pages to use that theme in a web.config file. If you use the root web.config file then it will do it for your whole site. You would link it in the <pages styleSheetTheme="MyTheme"> You also will not have to have a lot of links in your head tags because all stylesheets in the theme will be inherited.(This is the drag and drop, Drag the .css file and drop it in your theme then all pages using that theme inherit the css.) Later on you can even change your themes dynamically.
Hope this helps do what you what you where looking for if not good knowledge on how ASP.net sites work from what i have learned. I am just learning myself.
You don't need an application to write css for you. Just get yourself a book on css or read some online tutorials to get you started.
Then create one and code it yourself. That way you are in complete control of what is happening. It doesn't mean you won't spend some time tracking down strange behaviour but that is all part of the learning curve.
Related
i have made a webpage and now it is "feature-complete".
As a next step i want to put some style to it.
The project is based on the Play framework and i choose SCSS as my CSS alternative (with an SBT plugin to convert SCSS -> CSS).
Every time i change some CSS i have to reload the page in the browser, which takes a while, see if i like it and keep or revert. Then start over.
This workflow does not seem right to me. How do you style a webpage built with Play (specifically: i use Play templates, so i cannot just copy every piece of HTML into a CSS editor and style everything from there)?
The best way that i found is to change the CSS directly in Chrome, remember the changes and apply them to the source file later on.
Is there a more "automatic" way of doing things? Any nice editors or browser plugins that change the source file directly? What am i missing?
What are other people, using Play framework (or other templating systems) doing?
Thank you!
Maybe you can download an extension that automatically refresh's your page every ... seconds. On this way you only have to "Alt-tab" between your code and your page.
BTW: I couldn't comment this, I need 50 reputation. Otherwise I wouldn't have commented it because this isn't really an answer but this is just my advice.
I am a newbie in Web designing. I learnt about templates that are available online that people can purchase and change the content according to their requirements.
One thing puzzled me. Why do people purchase themes when they can copy the code using VIEW SOURCE option. I have tried searching the answer but google has failed me.
Also, If I am not using Wordpress, can still I use Wordpress themes for my website.
Thanks!!
Because, while often technologically possible, that's still copyright infringement.
Because WordPress themes usually are more than just their raw HTML/CSS/JS. The PHP logic is frequently pretty complex and important.
1.) Copying source code is stealing. If you're copying the html/css, you'll probably copy the images, too. Definitely could be legal issues in that.
2.) If you decide to try and steal it anyways, you'll notice in a lot of cases they've used Iframes or JavaScript to pull the code in from elsewhere, where you do not have access to it.
3.) Copying CSS and HTML wouldn't do much for a Wordpress site. You wont' be able to copy any of the server-side stuff.
4.) You can't really use the theme because a Wordpress theme comes with functions and much more. You could use the CSS with a lot of hacking.
We can only copy the Html form either full encoding of the sites ie, ref style sheet.
According to the law, copy web design structure, encoding is a crime and Definitely could be legal issues in that.
If you are a newbie in web designing, I suggest you some of the top web designing blog that you should follow.
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/web-design-tips
https://blog.techreshape.com/5-web-design-tips-for-a-better-website-user-experience/
I have lots of fantastic PSD, CSS and HTML design resources from places like CodeCanyon, CoDrops, multiple designer bundles, etc. I'd like to incorporate some of them into a WordPress site, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to do it and I've looked everywhere I can think of, from CSS-Tricks.com and the Codex to For-Dummies books :)
I'm familiar with HTML, basic CSS and WordPress, but I'm (obviously) not a designer. I do know how to call an external stylesheet using #import or within tags, but how do I pull in the rest of the files?
For instance, I have an item called CSS3Accordion and it contains several index.html files as well as folders containing css, images and javascript. How should I reference them in my theme and where should I put them?
I'm assuming this is a very elementary question (so much so that these awesome design resources don't typically come with a how-to file), so in advance, let me say I sincerely appreciate any help I might get.
Applying a WP template to a WP site and coding one are two very different things. Those resources you are using, are they WP themes? If so, you should be able to install them quite easily using the control panel. If not, it's a completely new horizon. Templates don't function like "normal" html + css, they need much more things (specially, they need to be read by WP and its modules, widgets, etcetera).
I would suggest you start by downloading and installing themes (plenty of tutorials around), and then modifying some of those themes. They usually come with a custom css sheet to add/change styles (use firebug to find them, use !important to overwrite).
I hope this answers your question. If it's only a matter of loading new css, you can still add all of it to the custom sheet. There are also a lot of free plugins (like the accordion) that you can install in WP. Good luck!
I would recommend starting with a basic wordPress theme and incorporate your ideas as you go with some trial and error. WordPress themes are actually pretty straight forward once you spend some time dissecting a basic one. Most of the time I start with a complete design in Photoshop and use that image as a background to layout the sliced graphics over with CSS.
You can place your files anywhere you want, but I normally put them inside the themes folder and reference them with relative file paths, remember though to take the path into account when linking to the files.
I'd also suggest setting up a locally hosted WordPress install to play around with using something like WAMP, MAMP or LAMP. That way you have instant review without having to expose it to the public or uploading files every time you make a change.
Here are a couple of good starting template themes to explore with.
http://digwp.com/2010/02/blank-wordpress-theme/
http://code.google.com/p/wordpress-naked/
Regards and good luck.
what is the difference in performance between css templates and dreamweaver templates , or are they the same. Need to know which one gets indexed quicker by google.
I want to move my website to one the best templates for quick uploads and ftp linkups with linkmanagement tools
please advise
thanks
This is why I despise Dreamweaver and the alike...
Dreamweaver creates websites, which consist of HTML and CSS code, and maybe some JavaScript.
HTML: the "glue". It's the structure which browsers read.
CSS: the "perty stuff". It's what browsers read to determine how to make your page look (colors, layout, etc.).
Since Dreamweaver makes websites, a Dreamweaver template also helps Dreamweaver to make websites, which implies that it follows the above structure.
Templates just style your site and might provide some basic functionality, so they have nothing to do with uploads. Some might be bloated and cause slow loading times, but that's dependent upon the template.
In the end, Dreamweaver Template is more or less CSS + HTML.
A DW template file helps to isolate parts of your HTML code on a page/page basis. Editable content and "locked" content together (in hopes of making development quicker). If you like DW, and have a template you like - 0use it. But don't expect that to be your silver bullet.
There's no advantage to either template where search engines are concerned (good/bad content withstanding).
Content...(pertinent content) is what Google is after. Having a 1M file of valid content will beat a 200k file of sparse/bait-n-switch content every time (well, it's supposed to, right?).
The answer you are looking for: Every Dreamweaver template is a CSS+HTML template. So it depends on the CSS template you are using. For the most part Dreamweaver is pretty bad about writing optimal CSS and it also uses inline styles which is bad for performance.
The real answer: It is obvious you are a beginner and don't know how silly your question is, it is not even one question, and is open ended and has no answer. There is no such thing as a CSS template, CSS by itself is not enough to create a template and this is just a marketing word to use to sell templates to people looking for such a thing as a better alternative to HTML templates, and etc, there is CSS for a certain type of template or certain Document Object Model, so if that is your definition of a CSS template than every Dreamweaver Template is a CSS template, as Dreamweaver itself is not a web technology or language. Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG/IDE that helps you to write CSS (and other code) without knowledge of CSS, or in my case I use it because I love the pink/purple syntax highlighting it has for CSS in code view.
*Need to know which one gets indexed quicker by google - FTP Upload - linkmanagement *
This has nothing to do with your question, you can create a website in notepad that gets better SEO results. You are mixing all these different concepts together, SEO, CSS, HTML Templates, google indexing,templates, quick uploads, ftp linkups, linkmanagement tools, these are all different concepts and each require years of experience for you to achieve this. At the end of the day what I am trying to tell you is, building a website as you describe is not a few clicks to create a template with dreamweaver. You first need to learn enough to be able to ask the right questions. And then you will be able to create such a website, not the best and ultimate "templates for quick uploads and ftp linkups with linkmanagement tools" but something that works, even though I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to build.
I Think you should look into a CMS like WordPress and get a nice looking wordpress template for your site and eventually become more familiar with these concepts. WordPress has a really good SEO/(google indexing as you say) that it even gets better results than expensive websites built by professionals. This is definitely what you want! trust me!
http://wordpress.org/
I'm terribly new to web development. I'm trying to make a pretty simple site with a friend. My friend has taken the time to design the layout for our site, and we have things looking how we want in a static HTML page.
What I'd like to do now is move over to a Content Management System like Drupal but keep the same design that we have all ready laid out.
Since I'm completely new to this field, I'm looking for some best-practices advice as to how to make this leap.
It's apparent to me that I could probably edit some existing Drupal Theme to make it give me the layout that I want, but is that the path I should go down?
Thanks!
Update: Also, is it more than just replacing my style.css with their style.css?
Update 2: The end goal is for people to be able to log in and create news entries, very similar to a blog that will then appear on the front page. There will be other items on the left- and right- but they don't need to be directly accessed by anyone, really. They'll stay pretty static.
The Zen theme is sort of a meta-theme that's designed to be fully standards compliant and make pretty much every aspect of theming readily customizable, with lots of informative commenting. It's the best place to start if you want to develop your own theme. Even if you find a theme that looks a lot like the one you want to create, it's probably still better to start with zen because it's extremely well laid out and instructive. That being said, I've never built a theme from scratch, but it sure looks like a lot of work.
Update
In general the best approach will likely end up being to use your designer's HTML and CSS as a reference, and to edit the Zen-based templates and CSS files to recreate that appearance. It's a bit magical.
You will end up breaking the styles used in your designer's layout into chunks that are part of various template files. The mostly-static stuff on the side columns will become what Drupal calls "blocks"; you'll likely use the top part of the page to refine the HTML for the header section of the main page template; and you'll use the central part to add any necessary tags to the content section of the main page template.
I tend to make liberal use of the Firebug extension for Firefox, or the developer tools built into Chrome. These tools let you quickly locate a given CSS element that you want to change, and edit it to see how the change will look. At first though it's probably better to just read through the whole CSS file to get a feel for how it works. Again, Zen's CSS is very easy to digest.
Pour your heart and soul into the Drupal Theming Guide for the next few days. Theming, like most things, is best done if followed by a gratuitous amount of time in the documentation.
Start with either Zen or Framework themes. They provide good starting points for working with the CSS to adapt to your design.
This helps too:
http://drupal.org/theme-guide
Whatever you do, don't take Garland theme as how a good drupal theme is done. I went down that path when I first started Drupal...