I've just discovered in ImageReady, that you can have your sclices positioned with CSS, instead of creating a table. How stable would be my site? Even if all of my content will be placed on layers, is still possible that the slices get disaligned? (Not counting the 3.x browsers that noone uses...) THanks fuli

Finally, someone found Image Ready. I always use it in combination with Photoshop. I do my web layouts in Photoshop and apply all the effects then jump over to Image Ready to slice it all up. Photoshop can do slicing but you have more control over the slices with Image Ready. You can save it as is and it will produce the HTML (table style) with any JS needed for preloading of over states and saves an images folder with all the images created from the slices. If you want to use CSS instead of tables then you have all your images optimized and ready for CSS. As for stability? Hmmmm, i've learned never to please Netscape. Opera i'm not sure of, IE 4.x and up seems ok but not always. I also use a program called Topstyle Pro 3.0 which has a "Style Checker" that checks your CSS syntax and warns of browser-related problems.

I've let ImageReady use CSS to position the slices. I've looked at it with a Netscape 4.6 , IE5, Opera6 used all every kind of text display size on the browser, and the slices stayed true! I've tried to do some DHTML on the site, but I could not hide/expose the layers (slices) with the tables version. It worked on Netscape but then not on IE, then it worked on IE but parts were showing. Thanks for the advice! Topstyle is the tool that I've always used for stylesheets (with Homesite for html/javascript), I didn't know they've had a 3.0 version out. ImageReady is a great tool, even if I want save a simple GIF I use to go over to ImageReady, they come out much nicer with it. One feature I am missing (sort of) is the possibility to create transparent areas on a GIF image. Yes, I've read the manual, theoretically it's possible, but still I can never get it right, so I still have to sometimes go back to good ol' PaintShop to do transparent gifs.

With the table version, make your slices. If you want some slices not showing in HTML, use the Slice Select Tool and hold Shift key to select the slices you want visible. When you go to File - Save Optimized As:, Save As Type: HTML and Images and in Slices choose Selected Slices. By choosing Selected Slices, Image Ready will create the HTML code with spacer gifs for the Unselected Slices.

Making transparent areas on a GIF is very easy to do. Same as making a GIF. First you must make sure to change Background to a Layer in your layers palette. You can do this by double clicking on Background (in layers palette). Layer Options pops up with a name of Layer 0. Click ok. Using the magic wand or marquee, make your selection(s) you want transparent and hit delete key. You will see the grey/white checkerboard showing through. In the Optimize palette (top right) make sure you select GIF in settings then go to File - Save Optimized As - Save.

thanks for the infos! I'll try these out soon. I didn't much luck with transparent gifs with imageready, i hope it'll be as easy as it sounds. thanks I've playing with slices and CSS, and had very little problems. With Netscape4, when you create a rectangle, and you set the slice option as 'No image', and you write some text, the rectangle will collapse around the size of the text, and will not take up the size of your original rectangle.Its color will not show as a result. This is a bug in Netcsape though (it does not support the height property of divs for example). You just have to make sure that the divs, that contain text, are filled with 'something' (a table for example). The table has to be the size of your rectangle.

Sorry about all the typos, it's almost 6a.m. here!

Yup, sometimes I slice up whole thing then go into Dreamweaver and pop out some of the slices and stick in a table to hold space for text. I have several versions of Netscape .. not for use .. just to test my web stuff lol. Netscape 4.04 is the worst ... I also have a higher version of 4. (can't think)on my other machine then I have 6.2. Netscape 6.2 is getting closer to IE but never close enough.