Adobe Workflow examples??

[Guest wannaberacer]

I am not a total newbie when it comes to creating web sites, I have a good amount of coding experience and understand allot of the basics. I am currently in the New Media program at the Academy of Art university (sf), right now we are creating prototype web sites in illustrator and using acrobat to link separate pages. I'm wondering if this a is a typical way to go about things in web design.

 

I'm not new to illustrator or photoshop, but i recently acquired the master suite and I don't really know how everything fits into the big picture. from begining to end what kind of a workflow does the typical professional have with the products offered by adobe?

 

from what I know now, it seams that it goes something like this: images, logos and basic design in Illustrator and Photoshop --> layout, prototypes, slicing and optimizing in Fireworks --> css, html , compatibility and final authoring in Dreamweaver.

 

and I assume any php or heavy coding would be done in Net-beans or something similar.

 

does this sound right?

 

what would a professional adobe using web design guru do?

 

where do you start? where do you finish?

 

thanks for any info guys.

[falkencreative]

from what I know now, it seems that it goes something like this: images, logos and basic design in Illustrator and Photoshop --> layout, prototypes, slicing and optimizing in Fireworks --> css, html , compatibility and final authoring in Dreamweaver.

 

Sounds like you have it basically right -- just depends on personal preference on what programs you use. I don't think there is a "right" way -- it basically comes down to what works best for you.

 

My personal preferences:

-- I stay away from using Illustrator for mockups -- I've found it difficult to get the pixel-precision you can get with Photoshop. The web is raster (pixel) based, so using a vector tool like Illustrator may not be the best choice. Using Photoshop or Fireworks makes a lot more sense.

-- I haven't done much with Fireworks, so I primarily use Photoshop for all design/slicing as necessary/optimizing

-- My coding is done in Coda (http://www.panic.com/coda/) rather than Dreamweaver. Basically, the only time I open Dreamweaver is if I have to do table-heavy code or need to create image maps. Most of my coding is front-end HTML/CSS/Javascript or the occasional bit of PHP, and Coda works fine for that. I probably would use Eclipse if I needed to do a lot of PHP coding.

 

Where do you start? Probably the logo, if that is necessary, since that tends to help set the "feel" you want the design to have. Unless I'm coding a web app, I would start with the design next, make sure that is approved, and then move to coding. Saves a lot of time recoding if the design changes multiple times. With a web app, where functionality is more important, I would build out a basic framework of code first, settle on a couple features, and then come back to the design step when I have something functional.