Dreamweaver Training Tips

Below we've listed some of the basic considerations you should be aware of when creating or managing a web site. Keep in mind that it's not absolutely necessary to use Dreamwever but the alternative is essentially hand coding...that is knowing all the technologies involved so well you can write the code yourself.

Static or Dynamic?

Web sites come in two basic "flavors": static or dynamic.

A static web site is one where the content you put on the pages: text, graphics, etc., doesn't change until you change it and update the web site.

A dynamic web site is one where the content changes "dynamically" typically based on user input. Think of Amazon.com, say you're interested in a book but you forgot the title but remember the author's name. You go to Amazon and you type in the author's name and hit "enter". After a second or two a list of all the books by that author appears on the page. That information is typically being pulled onto the page from a database or some other external data file, such as an XML file. (An upcoming post will have more information about how XML files may be used in web sites.)

Dynamic web sites are cool but the techniques and technologies used in them represent a leap above the technologies used in static web sites. If you're interested in dynamic websites you still need to master the techniques and technologies needed to create static web sites. (We hope to post an article soon here on dynamic web site technologies.)

When creating a Dynamic Website typically you also need to pick an application server and scripting language. The reason for this is that pages in dynamic web sites typically have code in it that executes on the server, unlike html pages on static websites. Because the pages are doing more on a dynamic website, you need an application server that knows how to interpret the code that's on the page.

Below a quick reference to other techniques and technologies you will use in creating any web site, whether static or dynamic but don't be intimidated by that, in almost every case Dreamweaver will create the code you need for you and please note that all of them (except creating graphics, which is a separate class) are covered in our Dreamweaver Web Design class: http://www.multigroup.com

Graphics

Dreamweaver (or any other product that allows you to create or manage web sites) does not create graphics. You'll need some other application to create graphics for the web. Again, we're some what biased but Adobe does produce the industry-leading products in this regard, too.
Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks can all be used to create graphics for the web. (See our post on Fireworks but keep in mind Photoshop and Illustrator are also great products for creating graphics for the web though if I had to pick one product it would be Fireworks, then Illustrator and then Photoshop.. in my opinion and given my proclivities. (We hope to devout an upcoming post on the differences between Photoshop and Illustrator.)

Both Photoshop and Illustrator have their strengths and weaknesses and in the best of all possible worlds if you're serious about designing for the web and print you would use both.

Graphics formats that are supported on the web are: gif files, jpeg files and png files.

All of the above listed products can output these files.


HTML and XHTML

Web pages are basically html files, each html file is another page. Dreamweaver writes the html for you, strictly speaking no knowledge of html requited but in practice a little knowledge of html helps. (We provide html basics in our Dreamweaver class.)

Keep in mind that html is not a programming language, it's a mark up language and relatively simple to understand and use. Years ago I worked in a publishing company and I would watch the typesetters sitting in front of dedicated computers used only to set type for a magazine.

If they wanted to indicate to the computer that a word should be bold they would put the word inside of a bold tag. When printed by the computer those words would appear bold. Well that's exactly how html works, except it's the browser that makes the words bold when it sees the appropriate html tags around the word.

Note that html was not what was used way back when I worked for the publishing company with the dedicated typesetting machine. However that language was one of the sister languages to html created from SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language).

For More information SGML and how it relates to HTML see the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGML#Original_uses

XHTML is html's younger brother. For all intents and purposes you can simply think of it as the latest version of html and it is recommended that you use it. (The latest version of Dreamweaver will write xhtml for you by default and there is no practical reason that I can think of why you shouldn't.

For more informaton on XHTML see the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are a required supplemental technology in creating and maintaining web sites these days. (See our blog entry on using CSS to format text.)

We provide substantial information about using CSS both to format web pages and to create layouts with div tags, and you're in luck again because Dreamweaver will write the CSS code for you too, and CSS while not exactly a mark up language is also fairly simple. Here's a sample of CSS code designed to format paragraphs (note the reference to "p") with the Aral font, but keep in mind that Dreamweaver will write the CSS code for you.

p {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

Javascript

Javascript is another supplemental technology that may or may not be used on web sites today.
One common example of using Javascript on a web page would be to create a rollover effect: the user moves their cursor over a button and it changes (color, size or shape). That's typically done with Javascript. (Note Javascript is not the same as the programming language Java though it is a scripting/programming language... but have no fear-

Dreamweaver comes to the rescue again: it will write and create some of the more frequently used Javascripts for you without you having to write the code yourself, but keep in mind the Javascript that Dreamweaver writes for you is typically created by using the Behavior panel in Dreamweaver and it represents a subset of some of the more frequently used Javascript functions, not the entire universe of Javascript functions.

You can hand code it all if you're proficient with xhtml, CSS and Javascript, (for a static web site, dynamic web sites also require server-side scripting) or you can use Dreamweaver, the swiss army knife of web design.

Any questions about any of the issues raised here please email me at: kdurso@nmultigroup.com

Photoshop, Illustrator or...Fireworks

We see a lot of people taking web design classes at our Adobe authorized training center the Multimedia Resource Group
that are confused. They want to use Dreamweaver to create their websites, a great product and the number one product on the market for creating and managing websites, but it doesn't create graphics. Their confusion: Photoshop or Illustrator...which one should they learn first if they are primarily interested in creating graphics for a web site?

I usually surprise them by saying if they don't yet know either of those two great products (both of which can be used to create graphics for the web) I'd recommend Fireworks... Adobe Fireworks.

Usually this evokes a quizzical expression on the person's face. Chances are they've never heard of Fireworks or perhaps heard of it but don't know much about it. I then go on and explain: Fireworks was a product that Macromedia developed to create graphics for the web. That's all, just graphics for the web. They had bundled it with Dreamweaver. It's a great product that combines aspects of both Photoshop (bitmap/rastor graphic editing) and Illustrator (vector graphic creation). It exports gif, jpeg and png files, all of which can be used on the web.

And, just like Photoshop and Illustrator, Fireworks allows you to "slice" a layout, in other words exporting the pieces of the layout as individual graphics like a jigsaw puzzle, and exporting out the html file, taking those "pieces" (the slices, the exported graphics) and putting them back together for you in a web page (an html file). Which you can then open up in Dreamweaver to continue working.

Photoshop and Illustrator are great products with lots of bells and whistles for creating graphics for print and the web. Fireworks was created specifically to allow you to create and optimize graphics just for the web.

If you just need to create graphics for a web site, and you don't already know Photoshop or Illustrator, you owe it to yourself to check out Macromedia, oops... I mean Adobe Fireworks.
A one-stop solution to your web graphic needs.

Why You Need to Use Cascading Style Sheets on Your Web Site, Part I

Many people take our Dreamweaver class expecting to learn how to use Dreamweaver to create or edit a website. What they often don't realize is that they also need to learn Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) , too. Fortunately we provide significant information about CSS in our Dreamweaver class in addition to a new class just on CSS that we'll be offering in early 2008.

Why do you need to use CSS when creating a website? Well, one very basic reason, without CSS you would be using the html font tag to format text, what's wrong with that? The font tag is officially "deprecated" by the w3c, the World Wide Web consortium that controls and mandates standards for the web,. (http://www.w3.org/). "Deprecated" means it's on its way out, that some time in the future a browser is going to come out that does not support the font tag. In other words if you create a website today that uses the font tag to format text (choosing a typeface, a color, a size, etc.) it should be fine...for now, but what happens when a new browser appears that doesn't support it? All the text on your site will appear using default attributes not they way you intended it to look.

So using CSS now is recommended to avoid that problem, but that begs the question "Why is the font tag deprecated?" Or, put another way..."Why the big push to use CSS?"

In short, two reasons: one, CSS makes updating and maintaining your site a whole lot easier than using the font tag. Imagine if you need to change the color or typeface of the all the paragraphs in your site, using the font tag you'd have to go to every instance of it and change it, not just on one page but on every page of your site. On any medium to large site, this would be a long and tedious job.

With CSS, chances are that you'll make one quick change to change the color, typeface and size of all your paragraphs throughout your entire site.

The second reason to use CSS is that it there are loads of typographic controls that you have when using CSS that you just don't have when using html. For instance, line spacing (or "leading" as it's called by typographers), it's just not an option in html, but it is in CSS.

Also, CSS allows you to separate the content of your web site from the formatting/presentation of your site, which allows for the same content (the text, graphics,etc) to be layed out completely differently just be switching CSS files. This is a bit more advanced than just using CSS for formatting text, as we've mentioned previously, and I will discuss this issue further in an upcoming post.

For now, just remember using CSS for formatting text on your web site is THE way to go for ease of use, saving time and adding typographic control unavailable in html, but for those with a sentimental streak or html antiquarians remember there is still the forlorn, deprecated font tag still out there and still supported by all major browsers...for now.