PSD to HTML walk-throughs are fantastic, but being able to see how it’s skinned and made to work on a CMS – WordPress – is invaluable to any self-taught web designer. And that’s what I love about this article – it is easy to follow and the author, Chris Spooner, takes the reader all the way through web publishing from start to finish. This technique of his made me realize just how much of an artist web designers are. They create a webpage look that includes color, design, pictures, font, shapes, etc., and then they make it come to life so that it’s usable and accurate. Web publishing is about both art and computer science and that’s what makes it so challenging yet interesting and complex – because you’re using both sides of your brain heavily.
The visuals in this article really helped me and I found them useful and even necessary. It’s important to be able to see how each move or series of moves affects the look of your page. I know that when I’m coding a site, I’m constantly refreshing my Firefox page to make sure that the changes I make are correct. In addition to the pictures, I think this article did a great job of using simple language and understandable concepts. Nothing too challenging was presented and that made it easy to follow along and have some idea of what Chris was writing about – even though I’m just a beginner.
I particularly enjoyed how he showed each step starting with the design process in PSD form. For me, it’s always harder to take a flat image I’ve designed and have it translate into an actual webpage. I think it was smart that Chris took notice of this issue some people have and he successfully addressed it in a way that many can understand (judging by the comments following his article). His subheads really help with organization as well and make his essay easy to go back to and figure out a specific problem.