Design Tools Used to Create Your Web Site

To quickly build your custom, hand-coded web site we use the best tools.

Visitors to our office who see us work are always impressed by our set-up, work techniques and speed. Part of that is what we know and part is the tools we use.

Give us a call and we can put our experience to use on your next project. Contact us by calling at (805) 409-4300 or video conference via our AIM account:

Or continue below to take a virtual visit of our office and read more about the tools we use to create your site. You will find out more about us than you may need to know but in determining who will handle your Internet needs it is these little things that can make a difference.

State-of-the-art equipment

Dual-screen Power Mac

Though it's not "he who ends with the most pixels wins," studies have shown more pixels equals faster work. Click image for a larger view.

Lots of screen real-estate and a fast computer are what we use to get your job done fast. Nobody does dual-screens better than Apple's Macintosh. Add their elegant and stable operating system and it defines state-of-the-art. A 20-inch wide-screen LCD display with a PC standard 17-inch LCD display gives us a large enough desktop to have multiple windows and views open at the same time.

The computer is kept in a separate room so the office is quiet: we can hear ourselves think. Nightly clones of our entire system and weekly back-ups keep files safe and eliminate the possibility of down-time... or lost image and HTML originals.

Other equipment we use regularly include a USB-2 Canon scanner, 3-button wireless mouse (so we can mouse with either hand and avoid RSI), and a great boom mic for making crystal clear training videos.

Though we use a Macintosh for our work our end results are compatible with your Windows PC. Everything we do is cross-platform: even the CD we burn of your finished site. We can take your Microsoft Word documents and other PC files to create your web site.

Testing network

We test every design on the latest Windows PC while we are working. Our second screen is a PC standard LCD display and we control our networked PC using MS Remote Desktop Connection. The PC running Internet Explorer appears in a window on our Mac and we drag it over to the PC screen. Some Mac-using designers use Virtual PC to have a PC for testing. But VPC is not fast enough to catch onUnload code errors and the colors are not quite right. Our way is better... and uses much less of our Mac's CPU and memory (none.) The end result is a faster and better job. How to set up RDC video. (25 MB)

Dreamweaver

Close-up of workspace

Click image for a larger view or click here for a view of the second screen.

We have been using Dreamweaver for many years and it is by far the best software for creating web sites and web applications; if you use it right. To us "right" means having dual screens so you can see the WYSIWYG and code view at the same time; Relevant CSS and Assets windows open all the time; use of Library items where appropriate... and a whole lot more. With this you get the precision and cleanliness of hand coding with the speed of drop-and-drag.

Dreamweaver is for web designers who liked the option of hand coding, while having a visual representation of their work. It is a great aid in writing clean, standards-based code quickly. Using Dreamweaver Library items and CSS tools allows us to maintain, expand or update your site easily and at a very reasonable cost. And Dreamweaver's integration with Fireworks and Flash allow us to manage your image content.

Fireworks / Flash

Fireworks is the companion program to Dreamweaver that is used for web image editing and optimization. Fireworks opens native Photoshop images. Thought it doesn't have all the print-based features of Photoshop, its web optimization and editing process is better. Originals are saved in the open-standard PNG format as originals and optimized for the web as gifs or jpegs.

You've all seen Flash-based advertisements on the web. Though we can do A LOT with JavaScipt/CSS based animation or animated gifs, Flash allows us to place a even more action on your site.

Other software

We also use various programs to make faster and better use of our time. (Actually, it's your time when we are working on your site)

Microsoft Office gives us compatibility with everyone else in the universe. Spam Stopper helps us place email address on sites so spammers can't get a hold of them so easily. Style Master 3.5 is a stand-alone CSS editor that has a few features DW's built-in CSS editor doesn't. One of the features saves us (you) hours each time we use it! Link Checker X also saves a lot of time by automatically checking all external links on your site. OsXigen is an FTP client we use occasionally. iChat AV for instant messages and video conferences.

Snapz Pro X allows us to make screen-shot training videos for you or your staff or product demos for your site and Final Cut Express or QuickTime Pro is used for editing them (which one we use depends on how much editing is needed). Audacity allows us to clean up or re-record audio files for the training videos.