advice for working with a web designer

[kfcatvera]

my html5 output is too blah according to management. I wouldn't argue. they want more of a design to each landing page, and I just look at it as one webified book. so I've been partnered with our ux/ui designer. any advice on how to collaborate with someone who won't be using MadCap directly? can I just hand her my standard stylesheet and have her go to town?

[GregStenhouse]

Great question - I guess it depends on what the UI designer is tasked with. If it just the styles within topics then you can probably hand over the stylesheet and have them work with that. They won't be familiar with the propriety MadCap styles though (e.g. xrefs, miniTOC, breadcrumbs, popups, autonumbers etc) so you'd need to educate them on that. Also they may want to do CSS magic (e.g. cascading styles, selectors etc) that means the CSS can't be managed within the Flare editor - you may be locked into using a text editor and styles may not appear nicely in the Flare UI when selecting them in topics. It may be a matter of saying "stick with the styles set up, and just tinker with font sizes/colors/spacing etc".

If they are tasked with reskinning other areas of the help (e.g. TOC styles, search bar, logo on the banner) then things get more complex. We have set up a second "overrides.css" that the UI designer uses to override core styles, and also work closely with them to figure out where JavaScript code and other changes go (e.g, skin or masterpage). They will typically work with the published help, - modifying things using their tools. And then we do a compare and figure out the best way of replicating changes in Flare so it is built close to the look that they want. It's not always easy - but collaboration is definitely the key (they specify requirements, you set it up and replicate it in Flare).

[NorthEast]

Show the designer the building blocks of the Flare output; e.g.:

* Topic content, and the styles you use in your topics.

* Master pages; i.e. that you can have different page 'templates'.

* Skins: Use the top nav skin, or the tripane skin?
- If using top nav, show the menu proxy and search bar proxy.
- If using top nav, bear in mind you can switch off parts of the top nav header.

* Proxies: Breadcrumbs, mini-TOC, etc.

If you're doing responsive layouts:
* Show that stylesheets have 'tablet' and 'mobile' mediums for doing responsive layouts.
* Mention that Flare includes small parts of Foundation - mainly just the Grid - so you can use its grid styles for responsive layout too.

[kfcatvera]

the engineers are already reskinning things. I think this has more to do with page layout within a topic. they want it to look more like a stylized web page. i'm old school. Left justified, etc. so it sounds like Flare might not play nicely with advanced changes the designer might want to introduce. hmmmm.

[NorthEast]

the engineers are already reskinning things. I think this has more to do with page layout within a topic. they want it to look more like a stylized web page. i'm old school. Left justified, etc. so it sounds like Flare might not play nicely with advanced changes the designer might want to introduce. hmmmm.

That's why I suggest showing them the building blocks of how a 'page' is constructed. They need to play nicely with Flare, rather than the other way round.

[JenniferSmith]

Useful information, thanks!

[kfcatvera]

so attempting to get designers and engineers to play nicely with Flare has left me at risk of needing to change tools. I'm wondering if hiring someone with Flare experience to create a pretty new skin. Thoughts?

[NorthEast]

so attempting to get designers and engineers to play nicely with Flare has left me at risk of needing to change tools. I'm wondering if hiring someone with Flare experience to create a pretty new skin. Thoughts?

What's their problem designing for Flare?

If you're designing a website, it's unlikely you'll have free reign about how to do it - for example you might using a particular framework (bootstrap, foundation, etc.), or be using certain plugins.

Using Flare is no different, you have just to spend time to understand what you're using.
Flare's output and building blocks are not rocket science, and should be understandable for anyone familiar with HTML/CSS.

[kfcatvera]

<rant>it's a startup, we all wear multiple hats, the lead designer is an artist first, i'm a relative newbie with flare, my css/html skills are limited, there's little patience for limitations...the first big roadblock we hit was their desire to mix aspects of top nav and tripane. then there was the question of why we couldn't just use wordpress with all the ready-made templates available for purchase. there is little grasp of my top priorities: single-sourcing, translation costs, and managing to do all the technical communication by myself. and i don't have an artistic bone in my body. </rant>