I'm using visual studio 2005 and have been building asp.net applications. Mostly just departmental level apps for reporting and data maintenance. They work and they look ok but they don't look great. I don't have any other tools like Dreamweaver or Expression. Can anyone name any books or resources for making better looking web pages in Visual Studio.
Thanks,
Billy
Honestly, the IDE does a fairly good job at design work. We are transitioning our designers from Dreamweaver to Visual Studio 2008, and they definitely like the tools.
Don't take this the wrong way, but some people just can't make a page look good, no matter what tool it is. I am one of those people. I can code all day long, but if I need to put a page together, it is going to look like something right of of the 90's.
I'd recommend looking for some HTML templates, and adapting them to your product. There are open source templates out there, and ones that can be bought for relatively little money.
I always try to write the code myself rather than using design tools.
There is a lot that you can to do with CSS and HTML, and it's important to understand how those pieces fit together.
If your looking for some good examples of site design, I recommend checking out http://csszengarden.com
They have a lot of different designs that are all based off the same HTML file, so it gives you some great perspective into the possibilities of CSS.
My buddy Jacob Sanford has a book out you should look at:
Professional ASP.Net Design
First thing you need to do is learn CSS. You can't expect to style anything if you don't know the technology used to do it. I would start with the HTML-Dog tutorials, and go from there. More importantly is actually having a good sense of design, and that is much, much harder.
Design skills don't have anything to do with dreamweaver. To develop a good sense of design, you need to start getting introspective about the sites you visit. Think about why things look good or bad. Paired with your CSS knowledge, when you see something that looks cool, think about how you would implement it. If you dont know, the source code is right there so take some time to figure it out.
I have been doing this for about 5 years or so now, and I still suck at coming up with new designs. (although, I am better at it then when I started.) What I do when I start a site is rip off the basic design from somewhere else, and make it my own. For asp I use devexpress controls, which have alot of great looking themes, so usually I just end up extending the look and feel of the controls to the rest of the site.
Related
I would like to create a website (non commercial) for fun. After lot of thought, have decided to go ahead with Rails & Java (in the backend). The main challenge I am facing is with the UI - am not an expert - can work on Html/Css/Javascripts however it would take me much much longer and this is my bottleneck.
I am leaning towards Dreamweaver to build the UI. My question is - will using a tool like Dreamweaver really help me - an armature in UI to create a small web site or am I better off diving deep into CSS/JQuery-UI and then start coding...
In my opinion, drop dreamweaver. You should go look at Bootstrap. It's a very easy to use framework that will assist you in creating your own website from scratch. It's amazingly simple to use and has many jQuery plugins pre-packaged and ready to use.
I second Henry. But if you're new to frontend design; also something to note is the power of tools like chrome inspector to pick it all apart. It's a great way to quickly develop, but also by simply exploring, you'll find yourself learning it all very quickly.. But there's still a lot to learn.
Plus if you're looking into rails, dreamweaver just doesn't fit into the workflow. But then again, I can't imagine dreamweaver fitting into any workflow.
I am looking for a reporting and database contols solution. This post is not a rate the control but what has your experience been when using it.
I had a look at Telerik, DevExpress, Syncfusion and a few others. I have downloaded a copy of each and tested each for a week or so. However these arent cheap when I make the investment I would like to base it on othera experience as well as my own feel for the tools.
I had read all the post on SO and many other sites. Many outdated so wanted to know more recent experiences.
DevExpress looks great and seems to be what im lookig for however from what ive read their controls are coded and very differet ways. WPF is apparently very bad. I could be wrong though and please correct if i habe been misinformed.
Everyone seem to be happy with Telerik.
I will probably be customising later on so source is important. Winforms will be used. But would like to migrate to WPF and/or ASP.Net later. This is client requirements.
thanks in advance
You should list down your expectations from a third party suit.
Also its better to compare individual components rather than the whole suit.
I have lot of experience with devexpress#winforms, but the learning curve is quite steep.
I don't like the layout controls. Rest of the controls are pretty slick. Reports and Charts are good.
Support is also quite good.
I'm working with DevExpress scheduler for WinForms right now, and I can say only praises for this component suite. Everything is accessible easily, customizations are very easy; but to be honest I still haven't done any major customization, so it could be possible that 95% cases are easy, but that 5% is impossible (not sure, don't have that much experience with DevExpress). I would just say that they are much better than Infragistics WinForms suite.
Also reporting suite (XtraReports) is well known as a very good solution.
I am a CS grad student, and I am interested in spending some spare time in getting involved with development of Mozilla Firefox web browser . I would like to contribute to HTML renderer , JavaScript engine etc. But I don't have any solid experience in writing parsers or similar stuff, and I don't have any clue from where to start.
There are of course some links in https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Developer_Guide/ but since Firefox is already is very huge project, I don't know from where I should start learning.
So, my question is what core things I need to learn first to get started with Web browser Development and from where I can learn this (any links)? Do I have to revise how to write parsers/compilers? How do I learn to write HTML renderer/ JavaScript engine? Is it even possible considering they are already very huge projects? Sometime back, I downloaded source code of V8 JavaScript engine (http://code.google.com/p/v8/) but I couldn't understand much from it's source code as it was highly optimized code, and there were no much useful comments for beginner like me to understand what going on.
Update:
I am fairly comfortable working with C, C++, Java, PHP, C#, VB.Net, JavaScript and I am more interested in learning how web browser parses an web page, how it constructs and maintains the DOM, how CSS is applied, how HTML reflow engine works, how it interacts with JavaScript engine, how it interacts with web server, how the components are drawn on the screen etc.
Read the docs on getting started. Hang out on irc.mozilla.org in #developers and watch for interesting conversations. Introduce yourself in #introduction and ask questions. Go to http://bugzilla.mozilla.org and start searching for open bugs in components that sound interesting, then look for bugs that catch your fancy. Use tools like http://mxr.mozilla.org/ and http://dxr.mozilla.org to help you locate the relevant code, and ask questions in #developers. Learn, hack, repeat.
I wrote a post about my experiences getting involved over the past year, and it seems to reflect the path that a significant amount of Mozilla developers took.
You might want to review a list of known bugs and see if you're able to fix them. Other possible way to get a foot in the door is to get involved in quality assurance tasks, which would help you learn better internals of the application.
Bugs marked in Bugzilla with the [good first bug] whiteboard status are a good place to start. You can view the list here.
Find something you like and try to fix it! The developers on IRC (#developers in irc.mozilla.org) are usually happy to help when you get stuck.
If you are interested in parsing, learn finite state automata and formal gramars, it should be part of your CS curriculum at some point, like in a compilers class. For the javascript part, study about JIT compilers, specially on how a tracing JIT works. Follow Mozilla development blogs, here is a good starting article:
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/03/a-quick-note-on-javascript-engine-components/
Finally, but not least importantly, try to contact people already working there, and try to build a mentor-pupil relationship, they can assign you tasks and can help if you get stuck when working on the code. Going to opensource conferences is a great way to meet the people behind a project and get started contributing.
Mozilla Developer Guide
I have been developing websites for quite some time and I am not so good in designing websites? My Boss is refering me to take some lessons on it.
But I really want to stick to development rather than designing?
You don't need to be a designer. But I would highly recommend you understand the process and some of the techniques used. Having that knowledge will assist in both working with designers and providing better back ends.
I'd do the course, but make it clear to my boss that it's not what I want to do as a main job.
Answer yourself these questions:
What is your objective, the dream? developer or designer?
What are you best with?
Will I be able to justify with my design requirements?
It this common that a developer should be a designer too?
Will you be able to to concentrate on both, the ever changing trends and techs.
Having said that, I have seen such people having both skills but still they don't weigh equal in both parts.
Developer as well as designer:
Chris Coyier of css-tricks.com
Pekka
It depends on what you want to be in the future. Actually, designing and programming are two different skills. Obviously, for websites two things are both required. As a developer, if you have some basic knowledge about design, it would help you and also the designer to make the website much easier to maintain. But personally, I do not thinking you have to dive into design.
a good developer knows a lot about design, but dont have to be good at designing something.
i've seen to many developers building up a given design and making so much mistakes, because they don't see the little intricacies that are enormously important for a well designed website.
One particular design aspect I find many developers (good ones) are not necessarily extremely strong at is understanding of colors harmony. Even though it seems like easy thing to do, find the right combination of colors on a page, it is not always that easy. That course may be helpful in that regard.
I started of as a developer and then progressed into being a Developer/Designer.
You start to understand design aspects, UX aspects and the likes.
So i believe a good developer should also have a good understanding of design aspects as well
The bottom line is your boss thinks you'd benefit from a bit of immersion in design, and you probably will.
It doesn't sound like he wants you to become a designer, just get a feel for it. He's not asking for a career change.
There's always benefits in learning something new. And if your boss is backing you taking some time to do it got for it.
As a developer you should know something about usability and software ergonomics. You should know the basic structure of a website. And you should be able to implement a given design.
I think it is not the job of a developer to create a design.
Try to answer: "Why does your boss want you to improve skills in design? "
Your team is too expensive and boss is going to fire designer. He is wondering is it possible.
Your designer complains to boss that developers constantly ask him to refactor insignificant details interrupting from common tasks. So your boss wants to delegate small design decision to developers.
If it's so, I think nothing is a bad to improve design skills if your boss doesn't want you to convert to designer.
I also agree with all those people, who state: Developer and designer are two different roles.
Well, if developing is the field you are comfortable with, stick with it.
But learning is never bad. Try to gain knowledge first, after taking the classes, you can answer this question yourself
Wow, I'm actually in the exact opposite of your situation. I'm a designer just crossing the line of web development. But in my case, it was my own decision and it wasn't imposed by anyone.
It's always a plus if you have web development skills on top of design skills. I guess it holds true if you're a web developer and have design skills as well.
It never hurts to learn the basic, like others have mentioned, but keep in mind to stick on what you're good at and master it. Its better to be a master of something rather than being a jack of all trades. With so much competition out there, you really have to excel at your craft.
Learn both, but master one, I'd say. I personally see myself as a developer foremost, but I do know a thing or two about design - and, more specifically, implementing it (think CSS and the like).
However, I gratuitously admit that I am not good at making a design that looks good. A functional one, maybe, but not good. You could say something like that to your boss - that yes, you are capable of learning to design, however that you will never be as good as a real designer. Likewise, a designer learning to program will never be as good as a dedicated developer.
What real-world projects would you suggest looking through the sources?
As I'm learning Java Swing, mucommander seems to be a decent example. The code is excessively commented though.
EDIT: No shameless plugs plz :).
I learned a lot from looking at the source code to GoGrinder. It's well thought out, uses MVC correctly, and the comments are helpful (and no, I didn't write it). It's also a fun program to use if you want to learn how to play Go.
For Gui design, Patterns and general good advice I highly reccomend Jeremey Miller's series of articles on building a better CAB. For C#, but equally applicable to Java. Also using
the MVC style which Stackoverflow follows, and Apple uses for Interface Builder.
Build your own CAB
Jeremy's articles/ideas are followed in his own project, which you can download and inspect at http://storyteller.tigris.org/
Take a look at the Windows version of truecrypt. It is one of the best organized open source projects I've ever seen. You can almost tell how the whole thing works just from the directory and file layout.
What I've done to learn some new technologies over the years is to look to open source projects that both match the criteria you're looking for and also interest you.
I'm not a Swing guy, but I'd suggest finding a project that uses Java Swing, does not appear too complicated, and then start digging through the source. The nice thing is you can then see the app before you start poking through it, and then you can see what happens as you change stuff.
The idea behind picking something that interests you is that it will keep you engaged. I am intrigued by content management systems, so I might download a CMS that I can then see how stuff works, and I'm engaged because the problem domain of the project fits in with an interest.
I've done this once or twice when I had to get up to speed on C# and I think it works will. YMMV....
Some of the most well thought out source code ( c++ ) I have seen in an open source project is the Ogre3D graphics engine, I've learned a lot about OOA&D just by looking at the structure and reading the comments. It is also well maintained and the community is very active.. http://ogre3d.org