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Web Design Software
Good afternoon everyone.
We have recently updated our website and are very happy with it’s content. I have designed and produced the site from scratch and so far it’s served us very well.
We’ve decided that we’d like to get some new software as the package we currently use is now limiting us. The main thing we’d like to do is have a more up-to-date looking gallery. We’ve got loads of images that you can click on, but when you do you just get a larger version of the picture in a new screen and that’s it.
I’ve been on some websites where when you click on the image the background turns grey and the image is displayed in it’s own box in front of the existing page ……. kinda like this ……….
Does anyone know of any good packages out at the moment, and one where we can create a gallery with the effect of the attached.
Many thanks.
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10 Replies
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🙂 I might not get shot down in flames for this post – lets see 🙂
The effect you show is called lightbox or sometimes shadowbox or a similar name and is a javascript driven event which uses a html tag to dynamically change the source to provide a clickable link on an <a> tag and thus show the grayed out screen and image.
The grayed out screen and window is known as a modal window and sits on top of the rest of the page effectively hiding any clicks whilst in that mode.
Although there a million clones here’s the guy that is best known for it:
http://www.lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2/
You will probably find that you will need to add this to your page yourself – a bit tricky if you have a dynamic editor in place via a cms, however if you have built the site yourself then adding this should be an issue, its a couple of lines in the <head> area and then adding a rel=foo tag to your image links.
In terms of software – if you can afford it go for Dreamweaver as it produces clean code, it has a myriad of extensions (like modules) available which allow you to do any number of things.
There are an number of cheaper editors around and some are better than others, I would avoid FrontPage if you can as the code it produces is not so hot and you’ll spend ages later on deciphering it.http://www.adobe.com (Dreamweaver)
http://www.coffeecup.com (Coffee Cup HTML Editor)If you are brave you could go for what the pro’s use and get a text editor like Zend Studio – but only if you want to spend your time looking at scripts really, for normal web design and management I suggest that you stay with a GUI Editor like Dreamweaver.
I hope this helps and if you need any more advice – hopefully I may be able to help.
Owen
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I’d recommend Dreamweaver too. Not one to use though if you are a beginner with web sites, although you seem to be fairly up to speed.
Also, if looking for album stuff a good add on is JAlbum which is free to download from the net and there are loads of different skins to use. Very easy to integrate to a web site, but you would need a separate gallery page.
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We use a utility called quick.cms, its completely free to download and you basically upload it to your server. The content management system is really easy to use, you can either edit the text with a wysiwyg editor (bit like word) or edit the html code itself.
It also has that cool picture fade thing built in as standard, once a pic is open you can click next/back to go through the various pictures on that page.
I did the latest "version" of our website using this and am very happy with the results so far, has lots of prompts for search engine optimisation too.
Worth a look anyway, http://www.opensolution.org, they also do a shopping cart version too which is also free.
Oh and you can either download various templates off the net or edit the css page to create your own unique look.
Andy
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Try http://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com it comes with various slidshows and galleries and you can get loads of free extensions which add more features (even though it has loads already) It is a html generator rather than an editor so you can design as you like, preview and then generate the code either direct to site or to local drive for uploading via normal ftp. Probably won’t appeal to Dreamweaver users or coders but for those on a budget with no web experience this is ideal and the support forums are fantastic. I knocked up a couple of basic sites for customers very quickly and you can view them on http://www.drivingdynamicsuk.com or http://www.dsikitchens.co.uk.
The code generated will validate if possible.
Alan D -
Thank you everyone, i’ll have a look into all the ideas and see what I come up with.
We’ve just bought another web name too so that’s another site to build. 😀
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Also if you want to offer ecommerce check out cubecart v.3
Completely free (basic install) all you need is a suitable hosting package, nothing major just supporting php and mysql. One and Ones basic business package does this for £8 a month so its not mega bucks hosting.
You can then by custom mods to add to the program, google search Estelle’s mod store for examples, these aren’t necessity but there are some cool ones like customer image upload!
We used it on ours, http://www.pettags.co.uk Not trying to sell anybody anything but it gives you a feel of what it can do. and are currently doing one for our signage side.
Andy
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Oh the joy of free web sites and web software – great until you want to actually do something constructive in the code – and then need a professional to sort it out…
Gosh – doesn’t that sound like the sign industry…..
Oo
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I use Coffee cup software.
Free updates for life is a cool attraction.
Easy to use too.
Everything from shopping carts to juke boxes….
worth a look.
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I use WordPress blogging software with all my websites now
Search Engine Friendly
User Friendly Interface
Clean easy to understand code
Used as a Content Managment System for easy updating
Hundreds of plugins available
Hundreds of free themes and plenty of better premium ones for small prices, and they’re not difficult to edit yourself either
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I use Dreamweaver and Notepad 🙂
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