Webdesigning on a Mac - From a PC User's Prospective

Question

Webdesigning on a Mac - From a PC User's Prospective

I just recently purchased a mac to start using for design...now, I've been using a PC since 1993 and eventhough I've heard mac's are best for every type of multimedia design/production, I purchased one and made the switch.

Now, here's my issue:
Working in Photoshop is obviously still as easy and all for me (as on the PC).
I decided to start back up on a website to see how Dreamweaveit doesn't look the same at all. The DW settings are still set at default - so I haven't changed anything. The mac seems to apply font smoothing to everything. Don't get me wrong, it makes the text content look great(!)...but it's not what I'm used to seeing on IE/Firefox. The font size point is not the same as the PC version - a size 9 on PC looks normal as in browser - on Mac it looks like a size 10 bold - hmm? (don't know what I'm missing). Has anyone else noticed this?

Also, DW is creating styles from my tags... umm I just want a simple inline font tag, if I wanted a style, I would create one myself.
What plays a factor in this? Do I need to change some sort of system preference? DW feature? Resolution size or the fact that I'm on a widescreen monitor? Not sure what to research first.
Any other mac users out there who can help me untangle this would be most appreciated.

iMac G5 Intel Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on May 10, 2006 10:28 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,258 points

May 10, 2006 10:46 AM in response to Suzykaploozie

You might also want to take your questions to the forums run by the company that produces Dreamweaver:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/index.cfm?forumid=12

Reply

Answer 2

May 10, 2006 10:50 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thank you, I will do that as well.

I wasn't sure if it was something as simple as a mac preference that needed to be switched or an actual software problem...this is the first time I try the html design on this machine.

Reply

Answer 3

May 10, 2006 12:28 PM in response to Suzykaploozie

is your monitor resolution set the same on both the windows machine and the mac?

if you don't want font smoothing you can turn it off in system prefs>appearance. you can also set it to turn off font smoothing for a certain size and smaller.

Reply

Answer 4

May 10, 2006 4:30 PM in response to john.grayson

No, they are not the same resolution but I can't see why that would affect why the webpage in the WYSIWYG editor not to look anything like it would in the browser...and I've tried viewing in both Safari and Firefox and it's way off. Maybe if I supplied some screenshots it would better explain the issue I'm having.

Ugh, I really hate comparing it to the PC and I just cringe at the thought of going back to one but I'm trying everything possible to personally prove my boss wrong, when he once said - "...no matter what, you'll always need a PC for the web design part".

I'll try turning off the font smoothing on the mac and see if that helps but I'm not sure it will. I'll be back to post my findings.

Reply

Answer 5

mduser63

Level 2

480 points

May 10, 2006 10:57 PM in response to Suzykaploozie

It's a little hard for me to answer your questions because I only used Dreamweaver on the PC for a short time before I switched to the Mac. So I've got a lot more experience with the Mac version of DW than the PC version.

Regarding your question about inline font tags versus styles, were you using an earlier version of DW on the PC than you are now on the Mac? One change made from Dreamweaver MX (not sure on MX 2004, never had it) to Dreamweaver 8 that I noticed is the very issue you raise. Dreamweaver 8 is much more CSS reliant, and uses styles for several things that previously were done with HTML tags. I personally greatly prefer DW 8's use of CSS, but I can see where it might frustrate/annoy some people.

I'm pretty sure you can change this behavior by going to Dreamweaver->Preferences->General and then unchecking the box that says "Use CSS instead of HTML tags" under Editing Options.

As for the font display issues, you might try changing the settings in Preferences->Fonts.

Hope this helps.

Reply

Answer 6

May 11, 2006 1:23 AM in response to Suzykaploozie

Actually the font sizing and rendering is a Microsoft bug.

Microsoft IE actually renders fonts incorrectly, but because it almost monopolises the game, the solution everyone uses is to have an anti-bug bit of code that re-renders the fonts correctly. Unfortunately this makes correctly coded HTML appear to render too large.

It is very similar to a postscript error that Quark XPress had that had been universally corrected by the PostScript RIP writers, so when Quark finally fixed it the anti-bug now showed up as an error.

As for your screen font rendering bolder this is an artifact of OSX's screen rendering and smoothing. Go to your Preferences > Personal > Appearance > down the bottom are 2 settings > "Font smoothing style" and "Turn off text smoothing for font sizes [ X ] and smaller". Play with these till you are happy with the result.

Reply

Answer 7

May 11, 2006 7:42 AM in response to Peter Breis1

Thank you very much for all your help. Everyone's post has been much help in understanding the reason why this is happening. I suppose I just need to play with DW some more until I get used to what I see - I've worked on DW on the PC for about 6 years now, so it will take me some time.

As for editing the preferences for my OS, I guess this too will take some time to get used to. I played with this and the font look with no smoothing is not something I'm used to seeing either, haha - I know, call me weird.

This community has been such help. Thank you all for making it such a nice transition for me. I really love my mac and the network of friends that come with it 🙂

Reply