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PSD to HTML is not dead

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Re: PSD to HTML is not dead

#41

Post by dntrkv »

tomkin wrote: post #27

This is a high-brow flame war. The last post bothered me, and this one bothers me all the same. Let's cut the shit for a minute and examine the lay of the land. "PSD to HTML is dead" panders well to developers. But it doesn't make it true. Let's dig a little deeper into why a developer may want to believe that the incredible toolset contained within Photoshop is completely useless and unnecessary: The inability to us…

This is exactly what I have been wondering. Do people still use the old slicing method for their PSD documents? Whenever I code from a PSD design, it is used strictly as a reference. I attempt to reproduce it using all CSS, and then for the parts that I cannot reproduce in CSS, I will extract the images from the PSD usually by just copying the layer to a new document and saving it as a PNG. But having these PSDs is very important for me during the design process, during the coding process, and having them around to compare after you are done.

It's very easy to go off track and start designing on the fly if you don't have a solid, agreed upon, reference.

Re: PSD to HTML is not dead

#42

Post by super-serial »

MichaelTieso wrote: post #26

A designer I work with hands me AI files that I'm then meant to convert to a WordPress theme. She knows near zero about coding. It's a nightmare and I'm constantly in battle of functionality and her wanting things pixel perfect. The worst is that she hands over the designs to the clients who do not understand that it will not be pixel perfect and many things will change.

Tell her to think of the robots. There are more robots that browse the web than humans, and her static design makes them angry. You are currently giving allegiance to robots over humans because the robots are estimated to become sentient in 2030.

Hopefully this will confuse her enough to stop asking for pixel perfect html/css.

Re: PSD to HTML is not dead

#43

Post by scarecrowbob »

MichaelTieso wrote: post #26

A designer I work with hands me AI files that I'm then meant to convert to a WordPress theme. She knows near zero about coding. It's a nightmare and I'm constantly in battle of functionality and her wanting things pixel perfect. The worst is that she hands over the designs to the clients who do not understand that it will not be pixel perfect and many things will change.

Hey, that's 90% of my business. At least it is an Ai file and you can pull SVGs out of it if that's your thing. You're right that it's no fun.

At some point, I decided that I'm okay with that battle (there's a lack folks who have both the skills and the masochistic willingness to do it, and I charge a relative lot for the service).

That said, I've been finding that a) designers who still really care about "pixel perfectness across devices" but don't know how to code usually aren't all that great (so I see fewer of them as move to better projects) and b) the ones that are really good also have an understanding about how the finished product should feel and will change across devices/screens sizes/etc (and what kinds of crap I might need to add because they have missed or omitted some functionality.

I've found it really helpful that the poorer designers can't think about the edge cases (or even to send a post archive or 404 page, in the case of WP sites), so I end up just doing whatever, and then iterating based on my own preferences... if they really don't like it, it's not my fault, they just send a design.

It's still all a pain in the ass, but at least I work remotely, for a few hours, and get paid okay... I just have to be okay with folks telling me to fix the "horrible looking mistakes" I did intentionally but which don't match their (non-obvious, often poorly thought-out) aesthetic bends.

Re: PSD to HTML is not dead

#45

Post by scarecrowbob »

pjmlp wrote: post #22

What about those IT departments that do Powerpoint to HTML? :)

LOL, but I'm working on a web application whose only graphical reference is PPT... and I've done it before. Bizarre, but I suppose it's better than having a scan of a sketch on a napkin from a bar.

Re: PSD to HTML is not dead

#46

Post by rfnslyr »

aridiculous wrote: post #38
tomkin wrote: post #27

This is a high-brow flame war. The last post bothered me, and this one bothers me all the same. Let's cut the shit for a minute and examine the lay of the land. "PSD to HTML is dead" panders well to developers. But it doesn't make it true. Let's dig a little deeper into why a developer may want to believe that the incredible toolset contained within Photoshop is completely useless and unnecessary: The inability to us…

tl;dr Use Sketch if you're on a Mac I agree with most of your points except this: >>Moving divs around, adjusting CSS or erasing pencil off a piece of paper is never going to be as efficient as clicking on a layer and moving, resizing it, etc. As a visual designer and front-end developer (that knows Photoshop very well), code is actually far more efficient for modern UI's. It's much better organized than the PS layer…

I LOVE Sketch. It's so good. What's lacking are proper video tutorials for complex things and different subjects. I'd love to see an hour long video of someone vectoring something or designing a mobile app from start to finish.

Started using Sketch a few weeks back, never went back to Photoshop.

When I design, I usually just have livereload running with my website on my right monitor and code in my left. Ctrl+S = refreshes the site = very easy to develop with just html/css.

Re: PSD to HTML is not dead

#47

Post by pjmlp »

lubosk wrote: post #30
pjmlp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always fun to discuss with customers that expect pixel perfect designs, to the point that they actually measure them it all browsers specified on the contract. Thankfully, I am not the one usually sitting in those meetings.

But what pixel perfect means in fact? That it looks as it was supposed to. If I'm a designer and design something which looks perfect, do I want a coder to alter this perfect look to something ugly? Ideally pixel perfect is replaced with "looks perfect" and designer works closely with coder to achieve perfect look on various devices and resolutions. But I don't think coder should make assumptions how the coded design…

Well, on those meetings means that someone on the customer side had the wonderfull job of using an on screen pixel ruler and counted the exact number of pixels.

Pixel count not the same as on the PSD image, across all targeted browsers? No money, even if it is only 1 pixel.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I do know a few of such cases.

Re: PSD to HTML is not dead

#48

Post by stephenr »

johnx123-up wrote: post #36
shortformblog wrote: post #11

Says the company whose entire business model is built around PSD to HTML conversion. Sometimes one works better than the other for a project's specific needs. And vice versa. What we are needing to get past is pixel-perfect design, however.

Not sure if it is dead or alive. But, the business is extremely challenging with players like cssilize. they charge peanuts with pms and automated quality checks.

Pay peanuts you get monkeys.

They charge $19 PER PAGE just to have "permission" to remove their name. That should be all the proof you need of their business model.

If you need more though, the "$39 a page" actually ends up being $254 a page, if you want..

* responsive.. * tested/compatible with Chrome, Safari or Opera... * accessible * commented css * commented markup * using a css grid framework * html5 * microformats * speed optimisation * sprites * a favicon * PERMISSION TO REMOVE THEIR NAME FROM THE PAGE

This is why people think "PSD to HTML" services are a thing of the past - operators who are stuck in the past and think using modern standards is a reason to charge 2x or 3x the stated price. Seriously look at their pricing page - they add the per-page price again just to use HTML5 instead of XHTML Transitional, and again to use a CSS grid framework.

Re: PSD to HTML is not dead

#49

Post by krrishd »

Personally, I feel like the author is trying to suggest that something like Photoshop is an easier way to build a UI due to the somewhat drag-and-drop nature as well as the instant ability to view the result. Right now, I think both of these are trumped by modern tools: CSS's exactness and variety of properties now allow for more precise design decisions in terms of layout and structure, and its actually faster to develop in the browser iteratively using the DevTools, being able to see the final product.

Re: PSD to HTML is not dead

#50

Post by krrishd »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #31
gedrap wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, frameworks such as Bootstrap would fit your definition of WYSIWYG pretty well.

What I'm thinking of would be a visual editor that works with things like bootstrap.

http://divshot.com is a good tool, and it integrates with its own hosting platform as well at http://divshot.io
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