Hi I have just started playing with ROR and I think its very good. My only problem is that I am new to web development and know much abount html. I was wondering if there is any tool/plugin I could use to design rhtml pages. Regards Sandeep -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> I have just started playing with ROR and I think its very good. My > only > problem is that I am new to web development and know much abount > html. I > was wondering if there is any tool/plugin I could use to design rhtml > pages.I wouldn''t try to use a WYSIWYG editor, they just suck when outputting code. It may look good, but it''s bloated and none of them has been able to reliably produce CSS (layer) based designs. I had to tackle the same problem a year ago and this is the best way to go: ? Have a real designer design you a mockup of your site in Photoshop or have a look around at some sites and gain inspiration (don''t steal their css, just remember the good elements) from their work. I tend to make small selection screenshots with Snapz Pro (SnagIt if you''re a PC user) from the parts I like. That way, I''m not tempted to copy a complete site ? Pick up a few books on CSS design. I really really really liked CSS Mastery (http://www.cssmastery.com/) and The ZEN of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ ASIN/0321303474/203-5958976-9142326). CSS Zen Garden (http:// csszengarden.com/) will also be a good help. Also, there are some nice blogs out there that deal with CSS and design (http:// cssbeauty.com, ?) ? Practise, practise and more practise. The first time it will probably take you a few days to get a layout looking the way you want it (the culprit: Internet Exploder, it sucks when it comes to CSS). I believe most of the other mailing list members will agree with me CSS designs are best done by hand as they yield compact coding and offer more control over your design. Best regards Peter De Berdt
Sandeep, I have all of the Macromedia and Adobe tools at my disposal and have gone to creating the rhtml pages by hand. As RoR uses layouts and views (which go into the layouts) I find it easiest to code by hand. As Peter mentioned it is a good idea to look into using css. Even better, have a pro design the site so that you can essentially "wrap" your views into a shell (layout) for a consistent look and feel. Your learning as I did - the fun way. Good luck, Robert Dempsey -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> I have just started playing with ROR and I think its very > good. My only problem is that I am new to web development and > know much abount html. I was wondering if there is any > tool/plugin I could use to design rhtml pages.As others have mentioned, it''s probably not in your best interest, in the long-term, to use GUI-tools to design your pages. I would only add that in a pinch, Dreamweaver MX actually ships with some page design templates that could help you get started. Yes, these templates in DW use semantically-correct mark-up and CSS for presentation. And actually... for a WYSIWYG editor -- and not that I use this way -- but DW spits out some pretty clean mark-up. Macromedia actually hired Eric Meyer, web standards evangelist and CSS-guru, to help them clean-up the HTML code generation in DW back in 2003. Of course, whether this is all worth US$400, is up to the individual... :)
Sandeep Chandra wrote:> Hi > > I have just started playing with ROR and I think its very good. My only > problem is that I am new to web development and know much abount html. I > was wondering if there is any tool/plugin I could use to design rhtml > pages. > > Regards > > SandeepDreamweaver has been very good for working visually with other templating languages. I wonder if something is in the works for RHTML templates? It is true GUI designers (in general) do a poor job working with generating code, but IMO, Dreamweaver does a great job keeping templates lean. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>> I have just started playing with ROR and I think its very good. My >> only >> problem is that I am new to web development and know much abount >> html. I >> was wondering if there is any tool/plugin I could use to design rhtml >> pages. > > Dreamweaver has been very good for working visually with other > templating languages. I wonder if something is in the works for RHTML > templates? It is true GUI designers (in general) do a poor job > working > with generating code, but IMO, Dreamweaver does a great job keeping > templates lean.It''s been a long time since I last used DreamWeaver, so I''m wondering: does it generate css-based layouts that work on all major browsers (especially Internet Explorer 6) and aren''t bloated with needless css classes and/or ids? What I hated about all GUI web editors, is the fact that you generate an XHTML page with just content, logically structured and by the time they''re finished, your XHTML looks nowhere near what it was and you have a css file full of garbage classes. Best regards Peter De Berdt
Particularly because RoR is a Model-View-Controller framework and so much of its power is accessed through element IDs and classes in a page''s HTML, you''re probably not going to get very far or make much good use of Rails'' features without a decent understanding of HTML. The sorts of WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver that are suitable for templating and won''t mess with hand-edited code (a requirement for any kind of templating environment) are not for people who don''t know HTML. They can help a knowledgable person work faster and help a programmer who isn''t very good at design do somewhat better design, but they''ll actually make things much harder for someone who doesn''t understand the underlying HTML and CSS. I strongly recommend hand-coding your RHTML and CSS until you get the hang of things and understand the basic rules of markup and have a good grasp of the different uses of DIVs and SPANs and CLASSes and IDs and how to make use of them in styling a page with CSS and making Ajax calls from Rails. Worry first about making your program do what you want it to do. Worry about looks afterward, and learn the HTML and CSS you''ll need to achieve that as you go. This is not because I am some elitist or troll out to punish you, but because I think you''ll waste enormous amounts of time and end up with a much worse application if you start using something like Dreamweaver right away. In the hands of someone who knows what s/he is doing, Dreamweaver is a powerful tool that can generate good HTML and speed development of complex sites and templates. For someone who doesn''t understand what they''re trying to achieve underneath the WYSIWYG view, it''s worse than using nothing at all. And don''t even think about using some cheap, simple WYSIWYG HTML editor for web development that has substantial code running behind it. It''ll just screw everything up. That said, a Google search for Dreamweaver and RHTML turns up some results, including these basic directions for configuring Dreamweaver to edit RHTML files. If you want to launch it from inside RadRails (which is a terrific IDE, by the way, and *will* increase your productivity even now), that''s up to you. I suggest making it not the default behavior but rather something you launch from a context menu when you right-click on an RHTML file in your project''s file tree. http://codesnipers.com/?q=node/175 -sk Sandeep Chandra wrote:> Hi > > I have just started playing with ROR and I think its very good. My only > problem is that I am new to web development and know much abount html. I > was wondering if there is any tool/plugin I could use to design rhtml > pages. > > Regards > > Sandeep-- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.