Sitegrinder is a Photoshop plugin – not an ordinary photo-effects oriented plugin; but rather a Web Development tool. SiteGrinder allows graphic artists to layout the design for a website page (or pages) in Adobe’s Photoshop. Using the extensive Layer and Layer Comp facilities in Photoshop one can add sophisticated buttons, links, page transitions, galleries, and scrolling text to a website design. Then just let Sitegrinder churn out the code for you.
Many designers have already seen this kind of work done at ad agencies and Flash/Photoshop web development boutiques. A Photoshop visual layout design allows the client to get a good feel for what the Web Design will look like. At the same time it allows the graphic designer to hand off to the Web developers a firm design prototype with full coloring, layout, buttons and images – all laid out. Now all the Web developer has to do is cut and paste(yeah … like it is so easy!!!).
But Sitegrinder can make it easier – if the graphic designers adhere to Sitegrinder rules of the road for design web pages in Photoshop. And what is interesting, the generated code is primarily JavaScript+HTML. To be sure, the slide show , image galleries and forms in the Pro version of Sitegrinder can use Flash .SWFs. But this is really an AJAX app producer. Sitegrinder ideas and some of its features also appear to be part of the Flash Catalyst set of capabilities. But I would say that SiteGrinder has a distinct and wide lead on the Flash Catalyst reviewed here.