Every business relies on effective communication with its customers. Communication doesn’t just convey information, it inspires trust, builds credibility, stimulates involvement and generates loyalty. But in today’s global, hi-tech, rapidly changing business environment, how do you ensure you’re communicating effectively?

In this article you will find the 5 things your web host must have. When you are researching a web host and you come across one that does not have these 5 things just click away to find one that does have what you need. 5 Features Your Web Host Must Have -

Greatest Control Panel: The control panel is the place you will be visiting most often, so it should be easy to use, have all the features you need, etc. You can find a great control panel with cPanel, which provides one of the best control panel user experiences among all of the others. Read the rest of this entry »

HTML is a markup language used to create documents designed to be accessed across the World Wide Web using browser software such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. The version of HTML in current use is known as XHTML, a stricter, rationalised version of the original HTML specification. One key thing to note about HTML and XHTML pages is that they describe the content and structure of the page rather than the position and presentation of the elements on the page.

The first significant difference between an HTML and XHTML page is the document type definition. There are several ways in which this specification can be done in Adobe Dreamweaver. One of the most convenient is to go to the Modify menu and choose Page Properties. Here, in the category marked Title/Encoding, one of the options reads Document Type (DTD).

There are a good few options available in the drop-down menu next to this setting, some relating to HTML version 4 and some to XHTML version 1. These DTD settings control the rules for the mark-up language so that the browsers can render the content correctly. For any new content you are creating, the best specification to choose is XHTML 1.0 transitional since it uses the current XHTML specification while allowing backward compatibility with slightly older browsers. Read the rest of this entry »

When creating a new website in Dreamweaver, you do not simply start creating web pages willy-nilly; you begin by defining a new site and then you create the various pages within it.

Creating a new site is simple: just choose Site – New Site. The Site Setup dialog window which appears has four categories of information: Site, Servers, Version Control and Advanced Settings. This arrangement represents an improvement over previous versions. It is clearer and gives you rapid access to just those site settings that you need to change. This is particularly true if you do not yet have all of the necessary information and just want to plug in the bits that you do know and then move on to building the site.

There are two key elements in defining a new Dreamweaver site: the Site category and the Servers category. Site information applies to details of your personal, local version of the site-the version that only you can see; stored on your workstation or laptop. Information supplied in the Servers category tells the program how to connect to the server hosting your site-and, if necessary, other servers that you may want to use for testing purposes. Read the rest of this entry »

Our company runs training courses on Adobe Dreamweaver, the industry-standard web development software. And we are increasingly finding that the profile of the person wanting to learn Dreamweaver is becoming distinctly, well, frankly, unpredictable! It seems that just about anyone nowadays can find themselves needing to build a website or to create web content in some shape or form.

Our conclusion is that the vast majority of people learning Dreamweaver nowadays are not specialists in web development or web design. They are simply people who need to develop web content in some shape or form and who have chosen or been recommended Dreamweaver as the best tool for the job. Dreamweaver is perceived as the obvious choice for both casual and professional web developers.

Dreamweaver has become the industry standard web development software, seeing off rivals like Microsoft FrontPage. And it deserves its position. It is a great software package with powerful features and an approachable interface which lets anybody who can use a computer embark on a basic software development project and, with a bit of patience and knowledge of a few fundamentals, bring it to a conclusion. Dreamweaver has attained this dominant position because its creators have always aimed to satisfy the needs of all the different types of users of their software. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have ever wanted to build your own website, you might not even know where to start. If you’ve done the research and you’re looking for the simplest program for regular users, it’s likely that you’ve heard of Adobe Dreamweaver. This is one of the simplest web design programs to use, and the fact that it includes an HTML editor just makes it that much more useful. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to create a website for fun or for business. There’s something for everyone in Adobe Dreamweaver, but before you get stuck into design, you need to learn how to use the program properly.

There are so many different books and tutorials out there for Adobe Dreamweaver training, but you might not know how to choose the right one. First of all, if you want learning the program to be as easy as using it is, you’ll need to leave the books on the shelf.

Textbooks are great for other things, but when it comes to web design, having that hands-on experience can make or break your success in using the program. Just like children, who learn the alphabet better by seeing it and writing it, our brains are wired to learn things through example and by being shown. It’s human nature for us to be more “show me” than “tell me” when it comes to learning. Read the rest of this entry »

Dreamweaver’s New Related Files facility

HTML is a fairly limited environment which relies on files created with other technologies to add functionality to web pages. Typical examples of related files are server-side includes, CSS, JavaScript and XML. Dreamweaver now includes a feature called “Related Files” which enables you to edit the content of such files, without having to open them separately, and to instantly see the effect of your changes on the main file.

There have also been some nice new additions to the Spry form validation widgets. The Spry Validation Password widget allows you to specify the minimum and maximum number of characters, numbers, uppercase and special characters which can be included in the password entered. The Spry Validation Confirm widget checks that the entries in two fields are identical and displays a customizable error is they are not. This makes it ideal for creating “Password/Confirm Password” or “Email/Confirm Email” functionality.

Photoshop Smart Objects Read the rest of this entry »

HTML is a markup language used to create web pages designed to be accessed across the World Wide Web using browser software such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. The version of HTML in current use is referred to as XHTML, a stricter, rationalised version of the original HTML specification. One important fact to note about HTML and XHTML pages is that they describe the content and structure of the page rather than the position and presentation of the elements on the page.

The first significant difference between an HTML and XHTML page is the document type definition. There are several ways in which this specification can be done in Adobe Dreamweaver. One of the most convenient is to go to the Modify menu and choose Page Properties. Here, in the category marked Title/Encoding, one of the options reads Document Type (DTD).

There are quite a few options available in the drop-down menu next to this setting, some relating to HTML version 4 and some to XHTML version 1. These DTD settings specify the rules that the mark-up language must follow so that the browsers can render the content correctly. For any new content you may be creating, the best specification to choose is XHTML 1.0 transitional since it uses the current XHTML specification while allowing backward compatibility with slightly older browsers. Read the rest of this entry »

XML schema definition languages are based on the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They use XML 1.0 syntax and aim to explicit describe the structure of XML documents and constrain the data which they may contain. They offer a distinct improvement on the more limited schema features offered by the Document Type Definition (DTD) recommendation which formed part of the original XML specification released in 1998. The most widely used schema language is the one defined by the W3C in 2001: W3C XML Schema. However, there are alternatives, such as RELAX NG and Schematron.

XML Schema documents are the successors to DTDs and overcome some key limitations associated with them. Firstly, DTDs do not support data types. Secondly, DTDs do not support namespaces. Thirdly, DTDs do not allow developers to accurately define the number of permitted occurrences of elements within their parent element.

An XML schema is concerned with the structure of an XML instance document by defining what each element must or may contain. An element is limited by its type. For example, an element of complex type can contain child elements and attributes, whereas a simple-type element can only contain text. The diagram below gives a first look at the types of XML Schema elements. Read the rest of this entry »

Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) has very rapidly established itself as a viable technology with a huge range of real-world applications. One of the main reasons for its growing importance and wide acceptance is the fact that it offers a working solution to one of the key problems faced by software developers and computer users alike: the exchange of incompatible data. Each software program creates its own unique type of binary file which only it can understand. When data is exported in XML format, it becomes a known, clearly defined quantity, independent of the environment in which it was originated.

Adobe’s PDF format is another example of a platform-independent data format which has gained wide acceptance. When a document is saved as a PDF file, its format is set in stone, it can viewed and printed with its layout and formatting intact, without the need for the software which created the original file. However, whereas the PDF format concerns itself primarily with the presenting information, XML is used to describe and encapsulate the information itself.

Though XML itself is still fairly new, the idea behind is over thirty years old. In the 1970s, Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) was developed in an attempt to create an application-independent method of describing and storing data. SGML is a text-based language which relies on the concept of adding mark-up to data which describes the data itself. An SGML document contains both the original data and a lexicon of rules defining the structure of that data. SGML is a fairly complex language and, unlike XML, has never gained wide popularity. In the early 1990s, SGML was used to develop and specify the rules of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and in the late 1990s, SGML was again called upon, this time as the basis for the creation of XML. In a lot of ways XML is basically a restricted form of SGML. Read the rest of this entry »

Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a technology closely related to XML which is used to transform XML data. XML file are used to set out the ground-rules for a given body of data and to describe the data itself. XSL allows us to take the original XML data and convert it into information which can be displayed in a web browser window or opened with a text editor. XSL can also be used to create an XML file which is a modified version of an original XML file.

When displaying XML elements in a browser window, the XSL elements which enable looping through an XML tree and decision-making really come into their own. One of the key methods used in XSL for looping through elements in an XML file is the the “For-each” element. This requires the “select” attribute to specify which element is to be used in the loop. The “For-each” element normally requires both an opening and a closing tag and any lines of markup placed between the opening and closing tags will be repeated each time the element specified in the “select” attribute is encountered in the XML file.

For example, suppose we have an XML file containing a list of companies and the addresses of their websites. Suppose, as well, that the element which we will be targeting in the XSL “For-each” statement is called “company” and that, within each company element, we have a “name”, “telephone” and “website” element. Before starting our “For-each” loop, we could place the opening tag of an HTML “ul” element (an unordered or bulleted list). Read the rest of this entry »