Skip to main content

The bitter divorce of PSD and HTML

    Today's article is an interesting post that I read. The original post in Portuguese and authored by Fabricio Teixeira can be found at arquiteturadeinformacao (Now don't ask me pronounce this =)).


    Some are calling it the death of PSD but I prefer calling it a "divorce". PSD and HTML are both healthy and living strong, just that they do not live together anymore. "PSD to HTML", which for years was the most accurate and sometimes the only right path to web design process, seems like has its days counted.

    Firstly you draw a page in Photoshop; impeccable layout, representing exactly how the web pages would appear when opened in a browser. After a sign-off on this picture (PSD) from the client the front end developer transforms these pictures into HTML, CSS and Javascript. The assets are cut, one by one, exported from the PSD and integrated into the HTML. Plugins and new tools are created in the process and some companies even charge upto $100 to do this process for you.

    As articulated by Nick Pettit on the treehouse Blog, PSD to HTML is a process that makes perfect sense at first glance. It can be a difficult process to start working on the development of a web page without knowing exactly how the designers hope to get the final result. Experience in PSD first and then create a final product seems to be a very reasonable process.

    It turns out that the scenario has changed considerably in recent years. The direction in which the web design is heading brings some aspects that make this process of PSD to HTML to start getting outdated. Among the major changes are:

Design in CSS

    After CSS3, many of the visual effects that were earlier achieved only with the tools of Photoshop (shadow, rounded corners and gradients among many others) started becoming available by mere use of CSS code. Previously, if a box had rounded corners, then the developer had to export the edges as images and make them fit to the pixel. Most modern browsers now support the CSS to implement this. Rare are the scenarios where we still have to support the troublesome Internet Explorer.

Responsive Design

    If you are a front end web developer, you are pretty much aware of the challenges involved in designing websites that run on all resolutions available in the market - especially after the rise of smart phones, tablets, phablets and the chaos by the lack of standardization of the screen sizes by the manufacturers of these devices. The Responsive Design comes as a very effective solution to these problems. Now back to the example of rounded corners. It is almost impossible to make these fit perfectly on all resolutions available in the market and it deceives those who think that its ok to support the 3 or 4 most common breakpoints and chuck the rest.



Flat Design

    With the trend of flat design setting in, interfaces without much shadow, bevel, emboss and all that jazz allow more and more sites to be designed using CSS alone using images for photos and specific backgrounds only. This has resulted into greatly reduced use of Photoshop visual effects.

Market Maturity

    Over the years, the web design industry has matured significantly. Designers and developers have begun to learn what works well and avoid what does not. In most companies, designers are expected to have an accurate knowledge of what is achievable with the currently available technologies. No crazy solution is proposed which hasn't been tried and tested earlier.

Does that mean Photoshop is dead?

    No. Definitely not. Photoshop is still very important in web design. However, it is now more of a sketchbook than an actual step in the process of web development. Designers test solutions in Photoshop to determine the harmony of the page and display the visual identity for customers and other stakeholders. The layout also serves as a discussion tool for everyone to come a consensus on the look that the product should have.

Designing in the browser

    Brad Frost is one of the programmers who has captured this shift in thinking. According to him, the best way to design a website in a browser is to get the developer to code on the same day the designer starts thinking on the branding. Below is a interview in which he tells a bit about the process that he usually applies in the projects he participates in.


    This is how the sketch board looks now a days for the developers while the designers create the branding for the customer.


    This is how a once popular and sometimes the only method to generate good functioning web pages is slowly and steadily making way for a more developer oriented web development with little to no dependency on Photoshop assets and layouts.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your comments here...

Recommended for You

Playing with the markers and info window bubbles...

    In the last few posts, we have seen some marker examples and some information window examples. Now, lets do something interesting combining these two things. Just writing that "This is an info window" in the information bubble is not very interesting! And I know this...Have gone through the same phase!     So, today we will do something interesting! We will display the latitude- longitude co-ordinates of the point that the user clicks on the map! Doing this is not at all complex! Copy paste the following code and you will see for yourself a map coming to life!     The output of the above code looks as seen in the result section above! If you have any queries regarding the above code please comment on the blog post or feel free to contact me at my mail ID .
3 comments
Read more

Map Loading...

    The blank web page seems so boring and dull when the map is still loading. You will come across such a situation quite often where you will be having a slow internet connection! We cannot do anything about the slow internet connection, but we can surely avoid the dull blank web-page by using a simple trick. We can place a "loading" image at the center of the web page so that the page doesn't look blank! An image like this:             The following code will show you how this can be done and here it is!     As you all can see the code is very very simple and the output will look as seen in the results section above. The image below shows the loading stage of the map.       Do let me know what you think about the examples shared here! Do leave your comments here! Till the next example, happy mapping!
4 comments
Read more

Ground Truth - How Google Builds Maps

    Todays's article is cross posted from The Atlantic 's Tech section. The article was posted by Alexis Madrigal who is a senior editor at The Atlantic , where he oversees the Technology channel. So, thanks to The Atlantic and Alexis Madrigal, we will have an exclusive look inside Ground Truth , the secretive program to build the world's best accurate maps.     Behind every Google Map, there is a much more complex map that's the key to your queries but hidden from your view. The deep map contains the logic of places: their no-left-turns and freeway on-ramps, speed limits and traffic conditions. This is the data that you're drawing from when you ask Google to navigate you from point A to point B -- and last week, Google showed me the internal map and demonstrated how it was built. It's the first time the company has let anyone watch how the project it calls GT, or "Ground Truth," actually works.     Google opened up at a key moment in its evo
6 comments
Read more

Panoramio Layer...

    Let's start with the obvious question first...What is Panoramio? Panoramio is a geolocation-oriented photo sharing website. Panoramio website was officially launched on October 3, 2005 by Joaquín Cuenca Abela and Eduardo Manchón Aguilar, two Spanish entrepreneurs and was acquired by Google in July 2007.     Accepted photos uploaded to the site can be accessed as a layer in Google Maps, with new photos being added at the end of every month. The site's goal is to allow Google Maps and Google Earth users to learn more about a given area by viewing the photos that other users have taken at that place. The website is available in several languages and can be viewed here .     You may add photos from Panoramio as a layer to your maps using the PanoramioLayer object. The PanoramioLayer renders a layer of geotagged photo icons from Panoramio on the map as a series of large and small photo icons. Let us now have a look at the following code to understand the concept in more det
2 comments
Read more