Need advice

[qmr]

ok Ross you twisted my arm.

The piece of string (tied to my finger) is to remind me about the complex sequence of events required to construct a Golden Section diagram which when installed on your canvas gives the composition a distinct fra-angelico-look (without the angel) (or the virgin) (or anything else for that matter.. in fact the canvas is blank except for a few parallel lines but you get the picture)

Unfortunately I lost the string off my finger as I had my finger in a book ..(html) ..(forms) and the string fell off..

Alright.. this is a tall story. The string is used because the Fra didnt have a slide rule, and to do the job properly you have to create exact bisecting arcs in the centre of precisely delineated lines.

However, a curious thing about artists (apart from the fact ones I know all drive cheap cars) is that the Golden Section is hard-wired into our consciousness; ie: standing on one leg, shutting one eye and squinting out the other at a distance from the canvas and subject, then rushing up to the canvas and marking the relative position of the elements with a bit of charcoal while the point on the canvas is still perfectly fixed (blinking is fatal) achieves the same end.

But for social acceptance, a piece of string is definitely the way to go..

(how did i get onto this?)

(getback to work!!)

Q.

[qmr]

yes, I use Dreamweaver too, and like Bill I am an artist who transferred my work to the computer then the web.. buying xarax is definitely your smartest move to date.

Learning 'basic' html will be the next smart move, because even though dreamweaver lets you work in a pretty reliable wysiwyg environment, it does mess up font tags and other irritations if you're not careful ..knowing how to read html helps a lot, as you can do quick edits 'live' in notepad etc.

I started my sites in Hotdog, hand coded and now I work mostly in dreamwweaver which is a superb editor and very easy to use. HTML is easy to learn after the first two days, it's so logical.. and as an artist you can think of it as a computer language for arranging your composition. Personally I remember html easier than the Golden Section.. <font size="1">(and you dont even have to find a piece of string either)</font>

I recommend you learn about html, especially tables, because as a designer/artist youre going to want to translate the designs on your xara window into a pretty good approximation onscreen. And preparing the whole screen layout as a window in xara is a good way of working, you then separate a duplicate screen of the elements so you can select and export the separated elements to gif or jpegs, and recreate the text areas as text in coloured (if necessary) tables.

You definitely do not put your design layout as a couple of big images onto the web page; you break it up into specific graphics and table cell background colours where you can get away with it, all arranged in tables, text arranged in table cells too. Dont save text as graphic images either, as font tags give you heaps of control for size. But if you do have a choice font you want to use for a short piece etc, export it as a gif from xara.

Break bigger graphics into smaller pieces, bits with soft gradient bits as jpegs, and bits with mostly flat colour areas as gifs etc. Xara makes this so easy, and animations too. Then assemble them all into tables that a user with a 640x480 screen can view without sideways scrolling, or if your design deserves the extra room, an 800x600 size. You'll soon pick up the way to make tables resize with different viewers screens.

Decent websites require design skills and html knowledge, regardless of software. If you dont learn basic html you'll never build decent looking websites. Sounds like crap I know, but I truly believe it now.

Q.

http://www.Qdesign.co.nz