Hi All,

 

Just started my 30 day trial of Adobe Creative Cloud and it's the first time I've actually noticed the Grid template that Dreamweaver has, usually I'd just start with a blank HTML and start from there. But this new Fluid Grid layout looks interesting, and definitely looks like it could save some time beings as you have the ability to preview and set-up your website for a desktop, tablet and mobile based resolution.

 

But what are your opinions on this, is this something you'd start to use or are there some problems that come with this type of set up.

 

Thanks.

It's still Dreamweaver, so I personally wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

 

For people who don't use Dreamweaver, you have the ability to preview your website at any resolution by clicking the corner of the browser window and resizing it

It's still Dreamweaver, so I personally wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

 

For people who don't use Dreamweaver, you have the ability to preview your website at any resolution by clicking the corner of the browser window and resizing it

 

Fair enough,

 

However the Fluid Grid layout doesn't just show you how the site would look at a different screen resolution, from what I can gather a CSS stylesheet is created and it contains three different sections which apply to the three different resolutions. And when you start designing your site the CSS contains percentages and essentially aids you by resizing what ever content you add across the different resolutions. Of course slight altering needs to be done depending on the complexity, like I seen a tutorial of someone who flicked to the smart phone resolution and chose to hide a sidebar div as it wouldn't be beneficial on a smart phone. But that's probably the bare bones of it, I wanted to know if people have designed a website using a fluid grid and then compare it to how they would usually design the site.

 

Thanks for your input =]

If you do a Google search for "responsive grid" you'll see lots and lots of frameworks, examples and guides. For the past few years there has been a lot of focus on responsive web design - making one site look beautiful on an array of different screens - and grids have been a popular solution. I guess it's good that Dreamweaver has made this practice easier for its users now!

If you do a Google search for "responsive grid" you'll see lots and lots of frameworks, examples and guides. For the past few years there has been a lot of focus on responsive web design - making one site look beautiful on an array of different screens - and grids have been a popular solution. I guess it's good that Dreamweaver has made this practice easier for its users now!

 

I agree that it is good how Adobe is putting it out there, I mean up until now I never really noticed they existed. And it does seem as though it saves a lot of effort beings as the CSS sorts out the position and it also contains files to make sure it's very cross compatible. But I'm definitely going to look into the responsive side of things, I've just used a 960 grid template with 12 columns in Photoshop and already I've hidden the grid away as I feel confined lol.

Personally, I don't see the point of using Adobe products to create any website. I would use Gimp and Sublime text 2 - exactly what I'm using now! then just use the browser to preview .

 

Photoshop gives you messed up code if you slice your design up and adobe, only ever used it in school and never liked it aha.

Premade responsive grids are all well and good but a) only when they suit the content, and using them off the bat you'll never learn how to create a fully custom grid yourself.

Premade responsive grids are all well and good but a) only when they suit the content, and using them off the bat you'll never learn how to create a fully custom grid yourself.

 

Would you say for inexperienced grid users that this is a good way to get started? and I still haven't looked too much into this grid set-up, right now to me it just seems to confine what I want to do, well make the design more static I should say.

I'm a grid whore through and through (print background) and I swear by them. I've dabbled with sites without a grid and they work fine but my preference is always a grid. I agree with BlueDreamer about using a premade grid, though I have benefited from them in the past as they've helped me develop my own.

 

In fear of sounding like a broken record, of all the frameworks, Foundation was my favourite. The grid worked great. However, I'm partial to semantic markup and I just found that I was creating too much code - almost another case of divitus again. Then again, perhaps it's the way I worked. I haven't used the latest premade grids as I built my own.

 

A few tips based on my experience, so not necessarily a path you may want to follow, but I used semantic.gs for a while. That helped me gain a few pointers in developing a semantic grid without any grid1, col1 nonsense. After a while I got complacent and built a grid using the Bourbon library. Very excellent indeed but there were a few gaps in my knowledge. I'm about 80-90% through a new grid that I intend to use for my projects which should fast track development.

 

I hasten to add however, that even though I use a custom grid, the grid itself will differ according to content. I've built sites with 6 columns, 10 columns and 12 with my recent grids. 12 works well to the power of 3 and all but I'm quite fond of 6 as I likes typography based sites I does, me. Have a look at semantic.gs or even Bourbon.io. You won't learn overnight, though Sass isn't that hard to comprehend, but it would be worthy of your time if you're interested in grids.

 

The 960 grid was pretty solid, but you have to take into account multiple devices from mobile to HDTV. Build with content in mind and set your breakpoints according to the content as well - not devices.

 

Have a think about some of the above points or file them in the bin. They're just my thoughts so you needn't take them as set in stone. Good luck

Use Dreamweaver and Photoshop but do the coding from scratch... There are plenty of tuts to learn responsive coding from scratch.