Tips for Slicing

talk design
1

Hey there,

Ive been playing around with a layout in photoshop but when I do want to publish it and place it in dreamweaver, Im not sure how to use the slicing tool. What I want to ask is:

  1. Could you not have to slice and use the whole layout and just insert it into a table?
  2. What do you need to slice?
  3. How detail does the slicing need to be? (every square, rectangle, color, text?)

If theres anything else I need to know about slicing, please tell me also.

2

Slicing is handy because

a) It often reduces file size (you can make whichever images you want hi qual and the rest low qual
b) It’s quite useful if you want to do rollovers
c) You need it if you want for example to put contents into a table and still preserve your design

As for your question you cannot just insert your jpg into a table, or if you do that’s either a simple image or an image map.

3

the lines when your slicing should snap together on the newer versions of photoshop. Also after your done slicing go file>save for web and it will export an html file for you that already has the tables coded for the image slices. You can then open that up in notepad or dreamweaver and start from there.

4

You can always use hotspots in dreamweaver or frontpage.

5

But people still use 56k (believe it or not) and slicing is the best way for those poor soles who have to put up with slow download times. Just using hotspots won’t help reduce the file size. But still a good idea.

6

I would slice in PS or FW. Then you can edit the html in DW. And replace certain graphics with bgrd colors. And reuse some images by making a tiling smaller image for repeating areas. And use DW roundtrip editting with FW to optimize certain areas. All this can be done to improve site dload.

7

Very true. I was refering to making links as apposed to speeding load times. :slight_smile:

8

Ah right. Sorry, I think i just misunderstood what you were saying.