Is a complex of sites a misuse of XD?
I fear being a fool rushing in where techies wear galoshes. I plan to use WD for a family of five travel guides. I expect to have to use about 18 live WD files to maintain about 50 scattered pages, and be outputting about 100 pages from 3 database-page-generating systems. These systems would combine components making up a base XWD htm page that uses absolute links to reference a single central graphics folder.
My base architecture is at www.nycgetaways.com/redesign.
Is this absolutely a bad idea? My reasons are to give designers greater freedom to frolic, and to use XWD's superb drop shadow capability. My page menu will be in a tab panel to the left. Links there bring up alternate content in the panel to the right. That content I plan to style using a central style sheet, dropping it styled into a placeholder. Very cumbersome, but I expect Xara to extend WD's capability to make all this easier with time.
Words of caution will be heeded.
Re: Is a complex of sites a misuse of XD?
Well, you'll have to play a lot with placeholders.
Remember: if you have a dynamic content that can become longer than a placeholder is, use scrolling.
As far as I know, WD or XXP4 were never used in this kind of project. If you decide to build it, and succeed, your experience may be very valuable for the WD community. :)
If you'll need any assistance, I'll be glad to help you.
Re: Is a complex of sites a misuse of XD?
The main problem would be, that Xara Web Designers exported HTML is not usable for pages with dynamic lengths. For example if you don't know how much hotels a search will get, websites generated with Xara Web Designer will not be able to adjust their page sizes (in this case the length of your page) to your flexible needs. It's a well known drawback of the used absolute position approach.
If you don't need such flexible layouts, then Xara Web Designer will be worth a try.
Remi
Re: Is a complex of sites a misuse of XD?
I had a nightmare last night about designing my sites in WD. Then on visiting this board I see I must have sleepwalked and written a post to this board.
Thank heavens it was only a bad dream. Sorry to have bothered you.
Re: Is a complex of sites a misuse of XD?
Two words: scroll bar.
Two more: thank you. :)
Re: Is a complex of sites a misuse of XD?
John, I would appreciate help.
I realize that I can combine WD with Dreamweaver (I actually use Namo Web Editor) if in my web editor, for less-designed pages, I can propagate my background tile from the center of the window as XWD does instead of from the left edge. I tried patching code together from XWD's default page and roe.js but cannot figure it out. Can you help me with a body-code/javascript combination that will accomplish that (propagating the background tile from the center)?
Then it would be possible to use XWD for primary high-traffic pages where the most design freedom is needed and a format achieving the same architecture-look in a web editor for the remaining pages where that is more appropriate.
If we could start like this, I can imagine the use of WD spreading over our sites as designers demand the freedom it gives.
Re: Is a complex of sites a misuse of XD?
Hi,
I may be putting my "foot in my mouth" again, but why break the habit.
I am currently trying to design a website to be used as a base for a 'Forum". I posted a link in the "post your site" thread for an idea of what I have done.
As was mentioned WD is not 'advanced" enough to handle the back end scripts for dynamic sites. (correct me if I am wrong).
My project now is to 'slice' what i have designed intoo sliced objects..and possibly have the forum adminstrater use the slices within his coding.
Jim
Re: Is a complex of sites a misuse of XD?
I also use Namo and am looking at ways of combining the strengths of both applications.
Re: Is a complex of sites a misuse of XD?
John, I have discovered the style background-position: center