Another GUI, web project, or any other kind of prototype that needs to be dissected by developers is designed beautifully and it’s time to send it for coding. To make sure that your design will be implemented perfectly – you may need to help the front-end developer by creating a reference sheet with annotated measurements for your mock-up.
Of course, you can use standard Photoshop tools to draw arrows and type annotations but, as you can imagine, it will take a considerable amount of time. Not to mention that it is extremely tedious.
There are tools for Photoshop, extensions and scripts, that automate the process. I’m not going to go into detail about each of them, and although some have little more features than others, these tools are all pretty basic. These Photoshop “plugins” measure distance, draw rules, and type-in pixel values for you, saving you time.
There are drag and drop website builders, hosted CMS / blogging platforms, and other options for creating websites. You have reviewed them all but decided that you need a custom solution.
Whether you are building a website yourself or hiring someone else, you still need to take care of two things. In order to be publicly accessible, the files of your website must be uploaded to a server permanently connected to the Internet. There are companies that provide space on such servers. These companies are called web hosting providers and the service of providing that space with public access is called web hosting.
Your future website also needs a web address. This address is called a domain name. It will be pointed to the space on the server with your files.
Video Tutorial: How to Make a Gradient Transparency in Illustrator
This video shows three methods of creating a gradient to “nothing” in Adobe Illustrator (the methods are; blending modes, “Fade to Black” which is a function implemented in CS4, and using opacity masks). There is another way of creating transparent gradients by blends (different from blending modes), but I’ve decided to not include it in this video. It will be a separate one.
