Hello, all.

Originally, (3 years ago?) I used an older version of VSD to throw up a web site and then opened the site with an older version of HTML Editor to tweak the header section for page titles and some SEO (as much as I knew at the time). I bought a template off the net and using these excellent products, my site was up immediately.

Until I put the new one up, you can check it out at www.desalvolaw.com

I read a book on SEO (search engine optimization) and got info from other sources which convinced me that I need to redesign my web sites with more content to get better organic results, which means a site redesign.

I planned on doing things the same way--VSD for basic layout, then once I got a basic page with my .gif gfx in place, on to HTML Editor to customize each page.

VSD was a little clunky but as I worked with it, I began to remember how to do stuff and it is pretty easy to use. There are down sides, like VSD automatically changing my header file every time I use it to open a page. But I got my basic layout down and even used GIMP to design some gif 3d buttons and stuff, which was kind of fun.

You can see what I have so far at www.desalvolaw.com/newtest

The problem has been using HTML editor. First, it takes forever--like 2-3 minutes or something--for the program to stop hourglassing my system before it is ready to use. Second, it seems to see my .gif files differently than VSD--you cannot click on some of the .gif's in HTML which are easily clickable and modifiable in VSD. HTML has crashed on me a couple of times. When I begin to define a .gif as a link, the choose file option will freeze the system for 15 or 20 seconds. It feels very unstable, clunky and slow. Has anyone else noticed this? And is CC addressing any of this with a patch? 2005 was more responsive than this.

BTW, I have an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ with 2 GB ram, plenty of hd space, and the system is virus free and protected by Zone Alarm Internet Security. Other programs, including hardware intensive video games, run like butter on this machine, and I do not experience these kinds of slowdowns as I do with HTML Editor.

Second problem--HTML Editor does not seem to want me to place text on top of my .gif layout elements--which is a problem. In VSD it seems to be no problem.

I think I may have to go to VSD to do the entire site at this point, since CC has done such a nice job integrating the other products into it. I do not like the limitations of not being able to switch to code, the header info limitations, and the Page One, Page Two paradigm/limitations. However, I guess I can get the website put together and at the very end, open every page with a text editor and customize the header info.

Which leads me to the third problem with using VSD and HTML Editors together. Every time you open your VSD created site, VSD decides to replace all your header info with its own. Which is a pain in the behind when you just opened a mess o pages with an HTML Editor to customize your header info for SEO. This alone makes me wonder how I am going to regularly update content on my site without having to spend an hour re-saving all my header information over and over because VSD thinks it knows better than me about what my header info should be.

Is there a way to turn this feature of VSD off?

Problem #4--VSD and HTML see a yellow box on my page as yellow. All browsers render it as purple. Bizarre. Any ideas?

Has anyone else had any of these problems or experiences, and if so, how did you work around it?

Thanks

Scott

Scott, you never did state which version of the editor you are using.

I am using the absolute latest non-beta releases of both VSD and the editor as of May, 2008.

Scott DeSalvo

Hi atlascot,
being a user myself of VSD and html Editor , I've learned you can't mix the 2 together, VSD will not recognize any changes you have made to the html file ,if you make the changes before uploading it will change it for sure. If you'd like the header to adhere to VSD then I would suggest just using the html tool in VSD and copy/paste to all your pages, could even go as far as a CSS or PHP include.Sorry to say it's one or the other, but I hear the good people at Coffeecup are working on such a solution of sorts.
I'm running XP SP2 I.E.7 3gig ram and html 08 does the same for me, so for now I switched back to 07. hope I explained this ok. lol