by David Peters

Creating a web site to match a visual design created in a tool like Photoshop is not an easy task. Photoshop was created to give total freedom to the artist. The web, on the other hand, is designed with many confusing technologies and standards that place other concerns ahead of maintaining visual design integrity.

Understandably many users who are good at Photoshop but don’t want to spend months or years learning the gory details of the internet such as XHTML, CSS, javascript, etc. have been intimidated by this situation.

SiteGrinder 2 successfully turns Adobe Photoshop into an easy-to-use and powerful website design and production tool. While SiteGrinder is not aimed solely at the web neophyte, a SiteGrinder-equipped designer with no previous web experience can use only their Photoshop skills to go from concept to deployment of a professional, standards-compliant site in mere hours with no slicing or programming.

SiteGrinder can create graphics, text, and interactivity by using modern web standard technologies. It also takes into account many requirements like cross-platform browser compatibility, all without the user being aware of the background programming needed.

You know Photoshop, SiteGrinder knows CSS, HTML, and web image formats. It is simply a matter of you telling SiteGrinder about special layers, like buttons, by adding “hints” to the layer names.

To the right you can see how the words “button”, “rollover”, and “popup” are the only things required to create interactivity. Once you’ve added a few hints you can open SiteGrinder and build your page with one mouse-click.

This unique program works the way you do, actually turning the design of web pages into a more creatively satisfying activity. You can easily enable your web site’s functionality as you design it and quickly testing it out live in a web browser whenever you feel like it.

Such a flexible workflow even allows you to make major design changes, like selecting a new background color, at the very last minute without headaches! SiteGrinder

You may be curious about how SiteGrinder can create many web pages from a single Photoshop document. The answer is simple! Photoshop includes a little-used but incredibly powerful tool called the “layer comps palette”. This palette enables you to save and name particular document states, including the position and visibility of every layer.

You simply need to make your Photoshop document look the way a page on your site should and then make a layer comp. You then set up the next page and repeat. SiteGrinder will use these comps to decide what to include on the web pages it creates. Even more amazing: if your layer comp names match your button names SiteGrinder will link them automatically. You don’t even have to give the URLs!

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