Re: [SMARTY] Dreamweaver Users - How do you manage sites?

Gary Smith wrote:
> Hmmm...
> 
> I was hoping I could come up with a configuration that would allow my
> designers to work with the templates in dreamweaver but it looks like there
> are too many obstacles (paths, file types and names, nested templates) that
> would make it too hard (ftp, previewing, etc.) for them to use. I've
> downloaded all the extensions I could find for Smarty and Dreamweaver but it
> looks like there is no way to get a good development environment configured
> to allow this. Too bad, Dreamweaver and Smarty seemed like the perfect
> solution for me. I was hoping that this would be a common setup for
> smarty-dreamweaver users. Anybody else have this setup?
> 
> Thanks,
> Gary
> 
yep, we use smarty-dreamweaver combination and smarty files are outside 
of docroot.
About the obstacles:
There is not any real obstacles, designers tend to complain if they are 
smarty unexpirienced.

We have organized our work in folloing manner:
1. Designer creates psd or png layout.
1.1. Layout is shown to the client and changed until acceptance.
2. Designer/slicer slices layout to jpg/gifs and creates html files for 
index.html and  internal_page.html (for example). At that point you have 
  html files visualy identical to psd/png layout (sample static 
text/data is used where dynamicly generated content will be placed). 
Those files are temporary and used for convenience (can do preview in 
DW, etc.). Optionaly, you can show html (previewed in browser, of 
course) to the client to verify that some fluffy things as rollover 
images, animated gifs (!), js/dhtml menus, etc. are acceptable.
3. Designer/slicer/programmer creates index.tpl, header.tpl, footer.tpl, 
index_content.tpl, etc. and puts in appropriate parts of index.html html 
code.
4. Programmer creates index.php that uses index.tpl.
5. From that point on, desiner uses preview ONLY in real browser.
6. Programmer adds functionality to index.php (loading from db, etc).
7. Designer/programmer modifies *.tpl files and places smarty tags
8. Page is previewed
9. Corrections are made (if needed)
10. Iterating 7-10 until done...

Of course in the reality thing tend to get much more complicated, 
especially with large sites.

Key point are:
- designers must feel confortable with smarty. That is achieved by training
- programmers have to be cooperative and responsive to "stupid" 
questions from designers about smarty
- you have to have some kind of "visual freeze". Without it the project 
may cycle endlessly between 1-10, causing tension between designers, 
programmers, managers, clients...


--
Ognyan Bankov
metatotem.com

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