Joomla! Discussion Forums

OK... call me pedantic BUT....(these two questions are pretty much related)
First question:
Does anyone know an OpenSource tools to design sites in Joomla using DIV's ? failing that for play purposes any FREE one...

The opensource is important .... Im starting up a business doing opensource support ... and for production sites I want to say on my website it uses 100% Opensource....this includes all images and all processing on the images...

(My present 1.011 site is 100% Opensource (with the exception of some of the images which I "developed" using closed source software...  (BibblePro)... this is a bit hard to get round since I can't get the same results from dcraw or opensource RAW image converters... but I mean to go back and reprocess the RAW images since they are perfectly acceptable for web use... just not pro photography use.(my TIFF's are 25-30MB each)... )  )

(Incidentally the only closed source SW I *use* is VMWARE/NX server etc. AND a whole vmware machine just to do OCR???)

Anyway playing with 1.5 and general advice from people who know is I should learn DIV's and CSS....
The problem .... in 1.011 I used NVU to prototype sites.... I'm no web designer then transfer to something that understands PHP to do the nitty gritty... (Quanta/BlueFish)

However NVU just creates a whole mess with 1.5 index.php's... and I 'need' something to help me visualise layout...yes I'm lame...   I just can't visualise the template the same way I can with tables... perhaps its just practice ... when I first made tables I couldn't visualise those either   now I can knock something up withput a GUI if I need....

Second question....
Buttons, Logo's etc....
Yep Milkyway looks very slick and cool.... but can it be done with OpenSource ? 
The buttons look cool but can I make them using opensource tools (Milkyway images are all done in Fireworks) ....hence by my own definition I couldn't use them on my site....  (I realise this is pedantic.... I would no problems doing this for a client but I want a 100% dogfood site)  ...

This sounds like you are trying to do a production site on Joomla Beta 1.5. Is that correct? If so, it is defintiely not recommended that you try to bring up a production site using this beta version of Joomla.

Regards

Dave

Erm nope....?
My production site is 1.011 however if that wasn't clear (and perhaps my English isn't so great today since I haven't said a word in English all day)



The operative word being playing....
It seems obvious that I need to do this if I wish to use 1.5 in the future.... and I'm not a web programmer ...indeed pretty much a n00b to web development but I have created several templates for 1.0.x  which will obviously need modifying for 1.5 when the stable comes out.  (Indeed CVS from the night before last legacy mode is completely broken... and so far noone seems to be able to say if it will even be in Joomla 1.5 when its released and if it is how long it will be available for)

So the bottom line is I need to work out how to create 1.5 templates and by biggest impediment by far is I can't find an OpenSource editor which can handle them ....
The second part is I can't find an OpenSource template which uses only opensource tools...
The irony being ....the default (in 1.011 as well) OpenSourceMatters logo itself is created in Fireworks!  (seriously is that not irony?)

(As is the Logo on the OpenSource matters site....)
(For that matter the OpenSource logo is not quite in compliance with the license but that's rather semantics ....since
http://www.opensourcematters.org/images ... source.gif probably links itself with the original...or perhaps they changed it after it was linked... I don't think they will mind since the main thing is to link not use a static image ....)

So my question still stands... and stands for 1.011 as well.... that I can't seem to find an OpenSource GUI editor (in the GUI visualisation) that handles the index.php but that this is made much worse with the 1.5 templates since NVU actually destroys them as opposed to just not handling them very well... ??