I've seen people say (when asking for a .psd file to be sliced and the html page built) that they don't want the html page done with 'image ready' code, but rather with 'proper' code. My questions are....

A. What is wrong with a page built using the 'image ready' program from Adobe? What are the limitations or faults? Don't a lot of templates use this?

B. When I see "begin image ready slices" or similar code at the beginning of a template design, this means it was made using the 'image ready' program right?

C. Take TemplateMonster for example.... do their templates use 'image ready'?

D. Overall, what should people look for to determine how a page is coded, and what is 'proper' code?

Never having used Image Ready, I couldn't comment on what Image Ready code is, however HTML should conform to one of a number of standards, from HTML3.2, through HTML4, to XHTML1.0 and XHTML1.1.

Most templates don't conform to any recognised HTML standard, making most template designers hacks, IMHO.

A. Usually it creates incorrect html code

B. Not necessary. Slices can be made with Photoshop without starting ImageReady

C. I don't know, but their HTML code is awful.

D. Check page with different browsers (IE, Mozilla, Opera) and make sure page is easy to edit (should have comments in html code)

In later versions it can use XHTML compliant code, however it goes really overboard with colspans and rowspans.

Imageready makes decent code for keeping sliced layouts together, so I use it for slicing and I usually keep the html coding for that. It is tight, and you have a bunch of setting you can define in preferences for using spacer cells or images, td heights and a whole bunch of other stuff. But one has to be careful about making the slices. Try to keep a decent slice alignment in order to get code that does not contain the worlds whorst col/rowspans.
Also, making a whole page with imageready html would be suicide, since imageready actually only makes html to keep slices together. If you have a sliced header and menu, make that into one sliced table, and paste the whole thign in a top cell of your main layout table. As goes for bottom/footer. The actual content of the page is usually not made in imageready, only the images for it.

And most importantly: Imageready makes VERY VERY bad javascript code for rollovers and whatnot, so the most important thing to do if you use imageready for a menu, is to replace the rollover code with genuine script/dhtml from your html editor.
That's my ten cents anyway.

Thanks for the tip torgil, I'll know now to use code to make roll overs instead of imageready.

thanks again

Originally posted by AeroHosts
Thanks for the tip torgil, I'll know now to use code to make roll overs instead of imageready.

thanks again

Glad to help -- Personally I use Dreamweaver for rollovers, since I use it for most other javascript/behaviour code, and want to keep compatibility high.