I layed out a website using VSD and "Published" it. Then I took a look at the HTML code that it generated.

The CoffeeCup software catalog lists Visual Site Designer as a tool for creating "Professional websites". You truely can easily produce a professonal looking website, but if you peek under the covers, you have to wonder, what is professional about HTML/CSS code that uses bitmaps for backgrounds (and not even as a CSS background-image, either but as an <img>!) And, what is professional about a website that uses absolute positioned blocks to hold everything in place (no liquid layouts possible with this tool!)?

In fact, there is no way to use a bitmap to add a tiled background to a div block. You can do this with the page background, but with one limitation, it will tile both horizontally AND vertically. In CSS you can constrain the tiling to either the 'x' direction or the 'y' direction. There is no such feature in VSD!

You can't even create a CSS border! If you want to add a border, you have to create two overlapping shapes (that become two bandwidth gobbling bitmaps [and what's odd, is, one of the bitmaps is a merging of the two, so the second bitmap isn't even needed!]!)

And the bitmaps are JPEG, not GIF or 8-bit PNG!!! JPEG, adds compression artifacts to the image where ever there are sharp color transitions (such as a border), so it's no longer crisp and clean, but looks kinda blurred and muddy--none of which would be true if CSS:background-color/border were used (i.e. doing it the professional way)! And, creating a border this way, is a bit tedious. Much easier (and this software is suppose to be making things easier to do, right?) to click a checkbox and edit some controls -- you know, to tell the software to make a border for you (I mean, isn't that the point of "Visual Design" software?)

So, about all this tool is good for (at least in the context of "professional") is testing layouts and creating prototypes to show to customers before coding the truely professional version.

Pre, if you don't like the way VSD works, then don't use it! No one is forcing you to use that program, and if you're already handy at coding and know what "professional" coding looks like and how it works, then why in the world would you need to use VSD at all? VSD is truly a main setup for those that don't have any experience with working with website coding at all and want the ease of drag and drop. That's pretty much the gist of it and although there are some coders that do use it, most either move on to HTML and CSS coding or they work with coding within the VSD environment.

Plain and simple, if it's not what you need, don't use it.

The term professional in the English dictionary refers only to being paid to do a job of work, and has no bearing on the standard of workmanship, nor how it was achieved.

The oldest profession is of course prostitution

I do not do , can not , nor want to do code, but i am delighted to say, i have now been paid for writing 2 websites.

Am i a professional, in the true meaning of the word YES, so i gues i am a professional W Y S I W Y G'er not a website developer but a paid amateur.

I think CC are referring to a professional looking website for self web design, not implying that professionals should use it and i think especially Scott would agree, i could never professionally design using code

I would add to that, I sell software and gain from adds on my site. Most viewers just look at the display not what's underneath. Programs like VSD have to take that approach. Everything is Absolute Positioning.

I cannot imagine a Webmaster tragic seeing a site looking at the source and going to discuss the faults with their neighbour. A thing is what it is and does what it does. I like the ease of creating a visually pleasing site and just recently have been transferring some pages to the editor to add a flavour of CMS I developed. I can code in html, not as fast as some but in my opinion and this is mine only. Why would I if I can put a site together that does the job in fraction of the time of coding it raw.

I have followed your posts and I detect that you have an alternate agenda and if as I suspect that it is just to discredit VSD then I suggest you find another way as I for one am not interested.

If you wish to see change then post some requests for improvements in the appropriate thread

I think you are true to your signature

The old professional looking website rant. It's all a bunch of lingo that goes no where. Your basing your opinion on web standards which are changing constantly. If your end users like the way your site looks and Google is indexing and rating your site for the content you desire then all is good. New standards are set by somebody deviating from the current ones. If we all stuck to standards the internet would be a pretty dull place. I bet if you spent as much time working on your sites as you did complaining about VSD your site would be number 1. I would step up to the HTML editor to get what you need. We'll be waiting here for your complaints on that to.

VSD is just a tool – it's what you do with it that counts.

There are many "professional" sites on the web that are pretty dismal. Awkwardly designed, poor color choices, not user-friendly... but they're hand-coded and meet current validation standards.
You can also find sites that function very well but won't validate due to social plug-ins, maps and other outside scripts but their code is quite "professional".

I'm currently working on a site to replace a "professionally" created site. It was made in Dreamweaver by a full-time web designer so it must be better than VSD Tables nested within tables nested within tables...... What an unusable mess.

Find the tools that work best for you and learn to use them well

Exactly

What if you think it does something that it really doesn't do (like produce a site that will play well on all platforms [which is what I interpret "allows you to create professional websites" to mean].



So, are you defending the notion that dismal design intersects with "professional"? That, it's OK for VSD to produce code that is substandard?

Oh NO not again, another 4 product 4 category 4 pages (or maybe 5) another 4,000 hours at $10 an hour

But, do they know to look on various operating systems? They see what they developed on their own computer, but I'll wager that most of the VSD audience doesn't know to test on different platforms and to design for multiple resolutions and aspect ratios. Part of VSDs hand holding should be to give them these insights, otherwise they are left with a false sense of "complete".

In other words, is VSD really WYSIWYG, if it isn't across all platforms? What the typical VSD customer sees, is not necessarily what they will be getting on other clients.



So, are you saying that it's OK for VSDs output to be substandard"?