I would like to see VSD move more toward client editing after the site is developed. I don't like to use in the style sheet program, as I am not that great at the coding part. So it would be great to create editable regions within VSD so that when the site is uploaded, I can turn it over to the client to update content online. Maybe there is already a way to do this and I just don't know about it, but it would be nice.

Hey Coffee,

A couple of little tweaks to make the program flow faster:

- A bigger "show page" menu
Page scrolling/selecting starts getting very time consuming when projects are more than 100 pages. Maybe instead of a menu that scrolls vertically, have it open up horizontally so that more pages are available

- Get rid of the "illegal character" message when typing underscores and hyphens to the Page ID
Good seo almost requires the use of underscores and hyphens.

- Have the ability to add more coffee cup programs to the left icon bar.
I use the menu builder and the flash firestarter quite regularly but they aren't list on the side.
(This one isn't a big one, it take 2 seconds to pull up the program in the start menu)

These are the only suggestions that come to mind.
This program is pretty sweet and easy to use for building quality websites. It's hard to think of improvements because it's already loaded with tons of cool features!

Jason

I have to agree with Chad about a lot of things he said.
I definitively can't get one of my pages to have a different link color it's driving me crazy.
Chad said he got around this I shure would like to know how he did it.
If you read this Chad please post your answer here.
Also there's no where when you create a link that it opens up in a smaller window like a pop up.
Thanks Vince

VSD can't do this, but I work around it by placing an editable part inside a VSD design. For this I use the HTML box. Inside the box I copy with "iframe" (a HTML command) another website that is easily editable, so any BLOG website. I give you an example VSD design with a blog created with Weebly (www.weebly.com), but any blog will do, Wordpress, Blogger, whatever. This way you can add guestbooks too, or even any other website (maybe Google?...). First you have to register a blog, and then paste it's address inside the HTML box with iframe. The VSD example design explains itself (I hope..). By clicking on the HTML box in the example you can see the code that has been used to insert a weebly blog, but I give it here too with comments (after the #):
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<IFRAME
SRC="http://visualsitedesigner.weebly.com" #replace with your web address
WIDTH="794" #explains itself
HEIGHT="662" #explains itself
frameborder="1" style="border: single rgb(0,0,0)" #0=no border, single/double border, color
SCROLLING="1" #0=no scrollbars, alsways choose 1
</IFRAME>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hope this works for you!

(P.S. I had to zip the VSD example, otherwise the attachment is't accepted).
(P.S.-2. I couldn't attach a ZIP file either -why?-, so give me your email address please and I'll mail it to you. Sorry!)

VSD can't do this, but I work around it by placing an editable part inside a VSD design. For this I use the HTML box. Inside the box I copy with "iframe" (a HTML command) another website that is easily editable, so any BLOG website. I give you an example VSD design with a blog created with Weebly (www.weebly.com), but any blog will do, Wordpress, Blogger, whatever. This way you can add guestbooks too, or even any other website (maybe Google?...). First you have to register a blog, and then paste it's address inside the HTML box with iframe. The VSD example design explains itself (I hope..). By clicking on the HTML box in the example you can see the code that has been used to insert a weebly blog, but I give it here too with comments (after the #):
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<IFRAME
SRC="http://visualsitedesigner.weebly.com" #replace with your web address
WIDTH="794" #explains itself
HEIGHT="662" #explains itself
frameborder="1" style="border: single rgb(0,0,0)" #0=no border, single/double border, color
SCROLLING="1" #0=no scrollbars, alsways choose 1
</IFRAME>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another option is to use the Coffeecup Flash blogger software for this, and put the address of the blog website you made with this software inside the iframe code. This way you are independent completely and have no ads!

Hope this works for you!

Here is a "life" page illustrating what I mean. You can download the VSD example there too http://www.johnvanhulst.com/vsd/index.html , so you don't need to give me your email address anymore

VSD needs to recognize dashes in file & page names, as this is important to SEO.

Need a drop down menu box on VSD that lists all of the files/elements used on that page. This would let you select which text box or image to grab, instead of having to move the text box off of the image before moving the image. If you needed to grab the bottom element on a set of stacked elements, you would simply choose that element in your drop down menu at the top of VSD.

Text boxes need the ability to be able to use more than one space or to tab between words. If I need some spacing between words, I have to use separate text boxes, which do not display well in some browsers, as you get overlapping text. I also can not indent with VSD, which would be useful.

I have a website that has a page for each state. Since VSD only lets you open 25 pages at once, I have to make sure that I don't have all the pages open, due to the page limit in VSD.

I need for VSD to NOT start from the beginning and upload the whole site if there is an error in uploading. With bigger sites, this means that the whole site has to be uploaded each and every time any little change is made--which then produces another error in uploading, which means some image or other element is a nice red X on some webpage (or several webpages) in the site. The fix for this is to have a list where I can pick which page I want VSD to upload, and only upload that page. Then I can save & upload each page as I change it, instead of having VSD decide which pages should be uploaded, based on if it thinks the page was changed or not. Or else only have VSD upload the pages that you have open at that moment, versus all the pages it thinks it should upload. Again, anytime there is an upload error, VSD wants to upload the whole site the next time (even when using the upload button).

Need a "help" button on the top menu of VSD, which then links to the online VSD tutorials.

Need the ability to save the code from your website that has been published online, so that even if you change computers, you can just download your website content to your VSD program. This would then solve the problem of 2 people in different locations (or 1 person who works on the website at an office and then at home) having the most up-to-date changes made to the website.

You also need a tutorial on how to use an outside FTP to publish a VSD created website, for those of us who are having uploading error problems.

I had difficulty selecting items to place in rows. I found out you have to use "shift". I wanted to use "control". Not worse, just different and not intuitive. Put Mozilla in the "preview in browser" menu so I don't scratch my head for days trying to figure out what went wrong. Make red lines for "object" boxes move in or out to resize. Couldn't figure out how to make box smaller (get rid of blank rows) for days. I lost my website (I think) by removing website files. I had uploaded a different site made in Publisher and wanted to replace it with the replacement site made in VSD so I think I hit "remove website" and it didn't just remove the Publisher website from public_html but every website file made by VSD. I read in the forum and was able to download the "backup" and recover without having to start over. That was a genius ideaI whoever thought of it! I just started using the program a few days ago and I think I've made a pretty good website for a club I belong to that's having a benefit dance. www.obcevansville.com. You can find out all of the information about the benefit and the organizations involved, email committee heads and even buy tickets online from Paypal. It's been a big success. I'd also like to have more of a choice which programs to "bundle". I like the "bundle" option but would like to be able to pick and choose which myself & get a % off the total if I "bundle" 3 or 4 or something.

AUTOSAVE

Seems this valuable feature is only found on shopping cart creator. I got bit hard today, and lost over three hours work when VSD crashed... I know, I know...I know the deal, I should have saved once in a while, but I was on a roll... VSD has crashed upon exiting several times, but this is the first time I have lost anything. If I somehow missed it, and it is already incorporated, please let me know where to find the files !

Thanks.

Thanks for an excellent program. I have only been using VSD for a week, but it's very well though-out. Here are a few suggestions I found missing which I DO find in other graphics programs:

1. Guides visible on all pages; makes positioning items that need to be in the same exact location (like menu tabs) on all pages an easier task. There ARE numeric location indicators, so it's doable, but snapping items to guides would be quick and visual.

2. Guides that snap to objects when placed, rather than only objects snapping to guides.

3. Ctrl+drag to duplicate objects, including guides. Ctrl+drag should duplicate object properties, regardless of pipette or default settings.

4. Pipette is very nice! I would like to see a method of transferring pipette color to objects, rather than simply establishing default for new objects. Maybe Ctrl+pipette = insert color... the reverse of the pipette action when copying colors.

5. I agree with the need to text wrap as mentioned above.

6. I agree - Zoom tool is very useful.