Software Review – Adobe Photoshop Plug-in SiteGrinder 2 Pro From MediaLab

One of the inherent problems with website design is that it usually takes two types of people to create an effective site. First you have the designer who puts together all of the images, text layout, and the buttons etc. This makes for a pleasing site to visit. Then you have the programmer who takes all of those items and puts the code around them to make the pages change when the buttons are clicked and does all of those programming things to make the site come to life.

This is all fine and good for large shops that can afford to hire multiple people to accomplish these goals. But there are a lot of groups, companies, and single entities that still have problems with getting projects off the ground. First you have the designer who can put together a layout in Photoshop, but has little to no coding experience. Then there is the web designer who is good with coding, but has limited Photoshop experience; certainly not enough to do all the slicing and dicing to create a layout with any cohesiveness.

This is where SiteGrinder 2 Pro comes in. SiteGrinder 2 Pro is an automation plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that allows users with some Photoshop skills to create multiple page websites without knowledge to the underlying web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Yet it is fully CSS Capable, Flash Compatible and it only takes basic Photoshop skills. Sure the more capable you are in Photoshop, the more stunning the results can be, but the basic skills needed can be fairly easily learned.

One of the fundamental Photoshop techniques needed is the use of Layer Comps. Layer Comps were first introduced in Photoshop CS and they let you save your current view of layer visibility and editing states as a snapshot. You can have as many as you like, the layer comp never trashes your layers, and it is saved with your file.

The workflow for SiteGrinder 2 Pro is design your page/page elements in Photoshop with each one having its own layer. Then you activate SiteGrinder from the Automations menu. Check for errors, click its build button, then test the page using it's publish function. From here you can refine or upload to the live site. Now granted this is the simplistic workflow, but it highlights the basics even for more complex multi-page sites as well.

Now how does SiteGrinder 2 Pro work? Well each one of those layers that you create needs be assigned a name with what is called a "hint." A hint is really a directive that tells SiteGrinder what to do with that element. For example if you make a rectangle and put the word "Page 2" on it, you can name the layer "Page 2-button," SiteGrinder will create a button out of it. There are a whole host of hints that can be used to create text, buttons, rollovers, popup's, links, and other things to enhance your page and site.

Article Author: T. Michael Testi

T. Michael Testi is software developer, a writer, and a photographer. He also blogs at PhotographyTodayNet and at All This and Everything Else.

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