SiteGrinder

SiteGrinder is a commercial plug-in made by Media Lab Inc. for Adobe Photoshop that allows users who are skilled at Adobe Photoshop to create multi-page websites without knowledge of the underlying web technologies such as HTML, CSS, javascript, and Document Object Models.

SiteGrinder uses an algorithm that employs artificial intelligence techniques to determine what image files, html files, and css files to create to represent a site based on a design in Photoshop. This algorithm works in conjunction with special words, referred to as "Hints", that are added by the user to layer names in Photoshop. These hints tell SiteGrinder about specific functionality of layers, layer groups, and layer comps. Hints are plain English words like "button", "thumbnail", and "form".

SiteGrinder is available for Mac OS X and Windows operating systems.

Features

tandards Compliance

All HTML and CSS produced by SiteGrinder is XHTML 1.1 compliant. SiteGrinder does allow users to add arbitrary text and code to pages that will be created, and it does not enforce XHTML 1.1 compliance for such text.

=Web

SiteGrinder automatically converts image and shape layers to web graphics and positions them perfectly on the resulting web pages. As it builds, SiteGrinder eliminates intra and inter-page redundant graphics and merges layers when possible to minimize download size.

tyled Photoshop Text becomes Styled Web Text

SiteGrinder converts Photoshop Type layers directly into styled CSS text on web pages. Photoshop character and paragraph styles are preserved including character and paragraph settings. Text can optionally scroll and have multiple hyperlinked words and phrases.

Buttons with Rollovers and Popups

Text, Image, and Hybrid buttons can have rollovers, and popups by just adding the hints "button", "rollover", and "popup" to the end of layer names or layer group names.

Rapid Image Portfolios/Galleries

SiteGrinder has a large number of features aimed at creating web image galleries. These include automatic thumbnail and thumbnail navigation generation, automatic sequential navigation button programming, support for custom layouts for different image aspect ratios, thorough support for metadata inclusion on pages, and creation of multiple galleries from a single design.

Multi-Level Menus Without Programming

SiteGrinder can create menus and submenus from text layers, graphical layers, or a combination of both. The "-menu" hint, added to a 5 line type layer for example, creates a five item text menu.

Multi-page Creation

SiteGrinder generates mulltiple pages in a single pass. Buttons automatically link to pages whose names they share. Page content is determined using Photoshop's layer comps feature.

Email Forms and Generic Forms

SiteGrinder 2 Pro employs a straightforward way to define multiple form elements in a single Photoshop type layer. PHP and CGI email forms are supported, as well as generic forms.

Background Colors & Tiles

SiteGrinder 2 supports custom background colors for different areas of your pages. SiteGrinder 2 Pro adds a variety of background image tile features, including vertical and/or horizontal repeating tiles and "fixed" background images that remain in place as content scrolls on top.

Flash slideshows Generation

SiteGrinder 2 Pro can create animated Flash slideshows from folders of jpeg images. Choose different transition styles, durations, and even assign hyperlinks for each slide.

Inclusion of External Media

SiteGrinder 2 Pro supports the inclusion of multimedia content on pages through the use of placeholder layers indicated position and size. Flash, Animated GIF, Quicktime & Windows video, and MP3 music are among the supported media types. Users can also link to media from remote locations over the internet.

Resize Resistance

SiteGrinder 2 Pro can create page areas which adjust vertically on the fly if the browser changes font sizes or if content is edited after SiteGrinder builds the pages. "Footer" elements positioned below these areas will move up or down as needed to accommodate the new size.

upport for PHP, In-Line or External HTML

SiteGrinder is designed to hide the complexity of HTML and other web infrastructure, but for maximum adaptability SiteGrinder 2 Pro does allow advanced users to add arbitrary code to their pages wherever they like. SiteGrinder 2 Pro can also intelligently import folders of HTML files when it builds to create a huge number of pages from a single page design.

SiteGrinder also supports various server side markup, such as HTML Object, PHP, and Apache SSI, for importing HTML at page load time. This allows sitewide content like navigation menus to be kept in a single file. An edit to this file will therefore alter every page that imports this file at page-load time.

Basic vs. Pro

SiteGrinder 2 comes in two flavors, Basic and Pro.

Features unique to the Pro version include:Multimedia import, forms, galleries, Flash slideshows, tiles, and external HTML import are all features requiring a Pro license.

Version History

SiteGrinder is, in a number of ways, a sequel to PhotoWebber and PhotoWebber 2 application software also from Media Lab.

SiteGrinder 1.0 was released in January 2005SiteGrinder 2.0 Basic & Pro was released in May 2006

External links

* [http://www.medialab.com Media Lab]
* [http://www.medialab.com/sitegrinder SiteGrinder Official Page]
* [http://www.medialab.com/forums SiteGrinder Discussion Forum]

References