I'm using visual studio 2005 and have been building asp.net applications. Mostly just departmental level apps for reporting and data maintenance. They work and they look ok but they don't look great. I don't have any other tools like Dreamweaver or Expression. Can anyone name any books or resources for making better looking web pages in Visual Studio.
Thanks,
Billy
I always try to write the code myself rather than using design tools.
There is a lot that you can to do with CSS and HTML, and it's important to understand how those pieces fit together.
If your looking for some good examples of site design, I recommend checking out http://csszengarden.com
They have a lot of different designs that are all based off the same HTML file, so it gives you some great perspective into the possibilities of CSS.
Honestly, the IDE does a fairly good job at design work. We are transitioning our designers from Dreamweaver to Visual Studio 2008, and they definitely like the tools.
Don't take this the wrong way, but some people just can't make a page look good, no matter what tool it is. I am one of those people. I can code all day long, but if I need to put a page together, it is going to look like something right of of the 90's.
I'd recommend looking for some HTML templates, and adapting them to your product. There are open source templates out there, and ones that can be bought for relatively little money.
First thing you need to do is learn CSS. You can't expect to style anything if you don't know the technology used to do it. I would start with the HTML-Dog tutorials, and go from there. More importantly is actually having a good sense of design, and that is much, much harder.
Design skills don't have anything to do with dreamweaver. To develop a good sense of design, you need to start getting introspective about the sites you visit. Think about why things look good or bad. Paired with your CSS knowledge, when you see something that looks cool, think about how you would implement it. If you dont know, the source code is right there so take some time to figure it out.
I have been doing this for about 5 years or so now, and I still suck at coming up with new designs. (although, I am better at it then when I started.) What I do when I start a site is rip off the basic design from somewhere else, and make it my own. For asp I use devexpress controls, which have alot of great looking themes, so usually I just end up extending the look and feel of the controls to the rest of the site.