Can anyone tell me the most efficient and reliable way to update a website by way of converting the HTML to CSS based design? We use Dreamweaver 8 and would like to stay compatible with that. I have read that Dreamweaver CS3 will do it in "two easy steps" but do not want to upgrade and am leary of how "easy" the two steps are. I have also seen a shareware proggie that says it will do it but then possible compatibility issues. So, I would rather use what I have or a freeware proggie if there is one?Nightmare.

CSS-based design is fundamentally different from pre-CSS design. I can't imagine that any program that claims to be able to separate style from content can do it in a way that is particularly satisfactory to a web designer.

You see, without CSS, quite a variety of styles may be used, with only subtle differences. But a CSS-converter would consider each of these a completely different style, assign it an arbitrary class ID and leave you with virtually unintelligible and incoherent stylesheet.

When converting to CSS-based design, you have to take an overview of your entire website and make some stylistic decisions. I defy a machine to do that better than a human. And I predict that a converter is likely to CREATE more problems than it solves.Many thanks for your reply Rob. I suspected, as with all software marketing it seems, they are long on claims and short on functionality in the product. But not having actually tried it and not being a web designer myself, I thought I would ask for educated opinions. The conversion "manually" is far too daunting a task I am afraid. I can appreciate the need for the overall design theme/flowchart with CSS.Out of interest, what sort of size is your CURRENT website - how many pages?Quote from: lsoul on April 03, 2007, 03:32:19 PM

But not having actually tried it and not being a web designer myself, I thought I would ask for educated opinions. The conversion "manually" is far too daunting a task I am afraid. I can appreciate the need for the overall design theme/flowchart with CSS.