What do you use for...

[Neishai]

... web design/coding?

... web hosting?

... art? (programs/media)

... your screen resolution?

... other stuff I haven't thought about?

While I'm gathering my wits and files about me (and reorganizing my site in general), it occurs to me that everyone's got their own favorite programs and settings. Some of these questions are me getting a feel for how people build their sites and what their favorite programs are. Yes I am looking for some tips; I don't want to do more work than necessary. The screen resolution is for QA purposes. I would like my sites (and eventually more art) catered to everyone that's going to view them. So for that matter, what image sizes do you prefer? Compact ones, or sprawling dragony goodness?

As for me, my web host that I settled for is Zymic. It is free and allows FTP access, so it makes backing up my files (big issue for me before with GeoCities!) easy. There's also no advertisements. I'm not exactly sure how they pay their bills.

My screen resolution is 1600 x 900, which makes my favored tiny font unreadable without frames. This is on my laptop, which I use almost constantly; my desktop probably has a similar resolution but it has a nice matte HD display (as opposed to the laptop's gloss). When I art on it, the colors are subtle and vibrant; on my laptop the colors look washed-out and dull. Definitely need to recalibrate.

On the subject of art, I use Adobe CS5 (it's new for me but I love all the new features). It was a requirement in my Animation program, haha. So was Maya, 3D art program (I was tempted to ask if anyone would be interested in 3D dragons, but the hours involved in that make me laugh, not that I wouldn't want to do that, just not possible at this point -I don't want to be a mole again!). Nowadays I like to sketch in pencil then either ink by hand and clean up the lines in PS, or just ink entirely in PS. It's a mood thing, really! I prefer no shading templates, favoring a more organic and painted look. I hope to get out of my coding hell soon and show you guys some dragons in that style. :)

Let's see... oh the real reason why I started this thread...! Program used for coding! I am a real oldschool Notepad user. It makes updates exceedingly time-consuming and tedious. I had considered playing with DreamWeaver, or maybe a free coding program like Notepad++ or Aptana (I know Omniwite uses that sometimes). So really I would like to see if you guys code by hand (and with what program) or if you use free templates (like on Webs or something).

Maybe this will become an interesting discussion, who knows. :)


(Also Mods, if you think this should be in Debate and Discuss, do you think it can be moved? I figured since it relates to Nexus sites in general it would be fine here.)

[Starburst]

Design and coding: Adobe Dreamweaver, because it's what my dad was able to get me for free since he was an Adobe developer waaaaay back when. XP

Web hosting: again thanks dad for hosting a webserver out of our basement.

Art: pencil/paper, crappy little scanner and then Photoshop Elements... 7 I think?

And 1440 x 900 resolution.

[delyar]

Web Design/Coding: Textpad. It's like Notepad but it colour codes things based on whether brackets/quotations are open, which is absurdly handy for remembering to close things. It also doesn't randomly mess up my code with word wrap. (I code entirely by hand.)

Web Hosting: I am with justhost right now, which is paid.

Art: I'm working on this. My new scanner isn't cooperating with my computers lately so I've been trying to tablet it up with little success because I am very critical (and veryyyyy rusty). Trying to get a program that I don't hate.

Resolutions: Umm my desktop is somewhere around 1900x1200 or something huge and has two monitors. My netbook is 1024x600 and is what I use more often (I have no qualms about moving to my desktop if I need a better view but I like being able to reach menus and stuff on the netbook so I can get things on it if I really need to.)

[StarFyre]

Design/Coding: Textpad for everything.

Webhosting: Silveredmagic is hosted on inMotionHosting, nexusdragons is hosted on site5 - both are paytoplay

Art: Pencil and paper -> scanner -> Photoshop CS3 OR art from scratch on my tablet PC (though that's rare)

Resolutions: 1366x768 on my new X220 tablet and some obscenely high resolution on the desktop monitor that I use.

[Dray]

For coding I mostly just use notepad or wordpad -- I used to use Textedit on my mac laptop, which was infinitely better for a basic writing program, but since moving to a PC I've had to settle.

I get my webhosting through dreamhost. Not too cheap but also nothing to complain about in the two years I've had it.

For drawing, I don't have a scanner anymore, so I do my drawing on my old Graphire 3 tablet in either Paint Tool SAI or Photoshop CS 5. Sometimes I switch back and forth between the two, using SAI more for linework and painterly effects, and photoshop more for layer editing and because I'm more familiar with the little tweaks it has to offer.

My screen resolution is 1920 x 1080, and the laptop is a about 3/4's that size.

[Neishai]

Thanks guys!

I could not for the life of me remember the name of textpad, which I used "way back when," and sadly is not currently on my computer.

Some of you have killer resolutions and I have contemplated using the second monitor when I art.

As far as domains go, it's looking like my free service will be good for now (though they've been having database issues this last week which makes me nervous). But I'm glad I could get some feedback about paid domains for my use in the near future. :)

[StarFyre]

Hah. Textpad is my god. The only reason I have OpenOffice on my machine is because I occasionally need the excel equivalent or to open rtf files. It is a wonderful program.

[Dray]

Is textpad free, or do you have to pay to use it? O.o I'm contemplating snagging it, but am still recouping my Christmas losses! ^^;

[delyar]

Textpad is free. It occasionally asks you to buy it, but the trial lasts forever (as far as I know anyway).

[StarFyre]

It's a pay software, but you can get an evaluation copy to see if you like it *shrugs* http://www.textpad.com/ it's only about $27, so it's not too expensive in the long run, thankfully.

[Neishai]

I've thought about getting OpenOffice myself. But my only experience with it is that one of my instructors tried to open a PowerPoint presentation with the OpenOffice equivalent and it did not look right.

I'll have to go check out TextPad. WildEdit looks helpful too.

[StarFyre]

OpenOffice is free, and... useful, I guess. If you need to open or save doc or rtf files. I've never seen the great advantage of them, though - I mean, sure, you can add things like bold and italics in a doc or rtf file, but that doesn't outweigh the overhead that those file formats create. I had so many long files on my computer back when I was switching everything over to txt that I cleared out somewhere around a GB worth of space. Spreadsheets are about the only worthwhile thing (for me) in the whole deal.

[Dray]

Now that you can make spreadsheets via googledocs, openoffice isn't especially advantageous on that front, either. I've had only a little success with that program... I've found that it tries to be Word but it messes up a few things along the way, and has bizarro-land keystrokes and options to get things done. (It used ctrl-[insert stroke here] when I was on a mac, for starters, which kept messing me up. XD)

[StarFyre]

Good point. I keep forgetting about googledocs. Though, to be honest, I tend to abuse SQL databases in place of spreadsheets these days =P