Adobe Programs

I was fortunate enough to get the adobe creative suite 3 web premium. Now in my class all we really did was keep the schools site updated using dreamweaver. Now that i have all the programs there is so much capability. I designed some web pages using photoshop. But i dont know what programs i should use? Like take fireworks for instance, it appears look a lot like photoshop im sure its a lot different but what is it used for? And what about illustrator, what is that used for? I know flash is used for more animation and such and thats not exactly what im going for right now. In my brief web design experiences i have found that i prefer using photoshop over dreamweaver. It just makes more sense for me to draw what is in my mind rather than messing with the code. I know this is a lot to answer but any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Well ... first things first ... you SHOULD NOT be using a graphics program to create your site.

Having said that, you can use it as you would normally use pen & paper but that's as far as it goes.


A site should be hand-coded ... using DW if you want but stick to code view. Don't let the machine code your site.

You use PS to help you visualize an end product ... that's all.

Hope that helped a bit.

Oh and differences between FW and PS ... not many.

Illustrator however ... more for vector stuff like logos.

Why should you not use ps to design a web page?

You can design a complete mockup of your site in PS. No problem there at all.
When it comes time to want to place the design into an html editor or DW, you will need to manually slice up all the bits and pieces. Slice up the buttons, slice up the header, slice up any side pieces or doo dads.
Save each one individually and then by handcoding, place each one of these elements in the proper div.

Some people have used PS to design a sight and then slice it up and export it using the PS feature which will give you a very bloated code that is not up to today's web standards.

So design away... just remember to insert the pieces into the html by hand or by css.

Hope that helps

Now, of course if you need to learn HTML and/or CSS before you can move from PS to hand coding, check the stickies on this site and also check out http://www.w3.org

Thanks a bunch. I forgot to mention that i have been slicing my images in ps. hahaha sorry. I do know basic to intermeidate html i took classes on that. but as far as css go i become very lost. thanks for the link.