ASP.NET - collaboration between designer and developer

Question

Our organization has dedicated designers who design the page and cut it up in Dreamweaver. That's worked well in the past with ASP and PHP sites. Now we're trying to make it work with .NET, but are struggling because of the structure of a project in ASP.NET. How does everybody collaborate with developers? The specific points I am looking for are:

-Transferring Dreamweaver content to Visual Studio -Changing HTML inputs to server controls -Giving designer access to finished Visual Studio product so they can tweak layout

Thanks!

Answer 1

The key to the solution of all your problems in this matter is quite simple, and yet so hard to fulfill: it's usually called semantic markup. If you can make sure that the designers to start with make their html semantic, and that the .Net programmers keep rendering the same markup but with their server controls where needed, the tweaking won't be a problem - the markup is the same.

So what is semantic html, then? you may ask. Well, it's not always as simple as one would like it to be. A good start is to make every page pass XHTML validation.

Answer 2

In my experience, designer-created HTML almost always needs to be at least refactored, if not rewritten. So, open a browser with the original HTML on the left, and try to match it as closely as possible in VS on the right screen.

Giving designers access to ASP markup is not a good idea, imho. Too much can go wrong if you only understand half of the tags you are manipulating.

Answer 3

Obviously, there will be a slight learning curve for your designers. But with that said, I have worked quite often with designers (none of whom used Dreamweaver, btw, so that may be part of the problem) on asp.net sites. Usually, they will create the HTML exactly how they want it on the server like a static HTML page, then I will go in and replace form fields manually with asp.net controls.

On an aside, I have found that I have the best chance of matching the design using controls that spit out the least HTML, such as Repeaters instead of DataGrids.

Once the site is up on the server and programmed, they can go back in an tweak things if need be.

Also, just like we have to adapt to them a bit (making our server controls spit out html how they like it) they also have to adapt to us a bit and not rely as heavily on id attributes in their stylesheets as some items id attributes will be controlled by hte .net runtime since they are controls.

MOre often than not, a designer new to asp.net will feel very threatened by this new way of doing things, specially with user controls instad of include files, but its really not that different than classic asp/php development is.

Answer 4

How about using one of Microsoft Expressions line of products? I've heard they are to .NET what dreamweaver is to PHP/ASP.