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Designers - How Do You Start Developing a Site?

almost 9 years ago from Sean Geraghty, Design @ Nested.com

  • Marc EdwardsMarc Edwards, almost 9 years ago (edited almost 9 years ago )

    I always like to know what is needed before touching any code.

    That means I’ll rough out ideas on paper, in Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop first. I realise those approaches aren’t always popular with responsive web design, but I think static tools have a lot of value, especially early on in the process.

    For websites, I’ll typically only work out components in Illustrator/Photoshop (header, footer etc), and jump into HTML/CSS pretty early.

    I do use SASS (SCSS). I don’t use any frameworks or grid systems any more (percents and box-sizing: border-box make life pretty easy).

    I’ve been using CodeKit to remove white space and compile SASS to CSS. https://incident57.com/codekit/

    I currently use Hammer for static site compiling, and to convert Markdown to HTML (handy if you have tons of text pages, articles or help docs). http://hammerformac.com

    And, I’m using Coda for pretty much all the editing and FTP. http://panic.com/coda/

    All three of those tools have different ways to preview your pages in realtime, but I usually use Coda for that task.

    It’s another Mac app (I think everything I’ve listed is Mac only), but Espresso is also worth checking out. http://macrabbit.com/espresso/

    8 points
    • Nick Wittwer, almost 9 years ago

      +1 for Espresso and CodeKit. The workflow is so fluid when they're used in tandem.

      2 points
    • James Young, almost 9 years ago

      I tried Hammer and it was mildly useful but as soon as I had to pass a project (unexpectedly) across to another agency the client bought in to do other bits on, it became a bit of a nightmare as they were Windows devs so Hammer became a bit of a burden as they couldn't compile the files or work in the same way and the project that was neat and tidy fell apart a bit.

      Something to consider as not everyone is on a mac.

      1 point
    • Updula LeeUpdula Lee, almost 9 years ago

      OH DEAR GOD!, YOU DON'T USE SUBLIME TEXT! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO YOURSELF?

      2 points
      • Tyler Fowler, almost 9 years ago

        My votes up for Atom in this case, never could get into Sublime.

        Also I use Brackets for certain things, it's slightly more project oriented structure can be better for certain things. Unfortunately I place way too much value on good syntax highlighting and the CoffeeScript highlighting in Brackets is.. how do you say.. garbage?

        0 points