On Tue, Feb 08, 2000 at 12:01:04PM -0600, Jim Sanford wrote:
I personally just write the raw dtml/html code in the Zope management interface, but that is me (I have a knack for languages, spoken and computer, - had military training in 2 (Vietnamese and Russian) and have picked up a bagful of computer languages over the years. HTML, JavaScript, Zope(DTML) and Python being the latest)
I have tried using a GUI to design a page and then convert it to DTML manually, but I have found that most GUIs produce really "fat" code and don't like it.
Seconded. I remember an instance where I created a rather large table (200 rows) with Frontpage. The HTML file was > 100k. I looked at the file in a text editor, and it using a whole lot of extraneous <FONT> tags, etc. I just cleaned up a page written with Netscape Composer. Ugh! That code was nasty! Quite honestly, my artist friend and I (I'm nowhere close to a graphics designer; I'm just the "code monkey") start out with a list of sections to the web site and then try and make a mockup HTML page. We browse around other web sites and discuss the pros/cons of different things, then we update/refresh on a copy of Zope that runs on my computer until we get it right. After that, we outline the content that will be in each section and start doing them. I normally write some ZClass Products as needed beforehand but then we jump right into a RAD design cycle. Every section goes through several revisions until we are both satisfied. I write raw DTML into Zope, but then again, HTML makes sense to me :-) Disclaimer: I've only developed one site with Zope so far; Its a church youth group site. A near-final copy is at http://secure.lunaweb.net:8100 if you'd like to see the result of my "strategy". I'd be interested in what other people have to say about their development cycle. -- Stephen Pitts smpitts@midsouth.rr.com