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 describes 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 quickly established itself as a viable technology with a huge range of real-world applications. One of the main reasons for its 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 environment creates its own unique type of binary file which only it can understand. When data is exported in XML format, it becomes a known quantity, independent of the environment in which it was originated.

The PDF format is another example of a platform-independent format which has gained worldwide acceptance. Once a document is saved in PDF format, 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 document. However, where the PDF format concerns itself mainly with the presentation of information, XML is used to describe and encapsulate the information itself.

Though XML itself is still fairly new, the idea behind goes back a long way. In the 1970s, Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) was developed in an attempt to create an application-independent method of describing data. SGML is a text-based language which employs the concept of adding mark-up to data which describes the data itself. An SGML document contains both the original data and a set of rules defining the structure of that data. SGML is a fairly complex language and, unlike XML, has never become mainstream. In the early 1990s, SGML was used to develop and specify the rules of HTML and in the late 1990s, SGML was again called upon, this time as the basis for the development of XML. In many ways XML is really a restricted form of SGML. Read the rest of this entry »

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

When displaying elements in a browser window, the XSL elements which allow us to loop through an XML tree and carry out decision-making really come into their own. One of the key methods used in XSL for looping through all occurrences of a given XML element is the “For-each” element. This uses the “select” attribute to specify which XML element is to be used in the loop. The “For-each” element uses both an opening and a closing tag and any lines of code 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, let’s say we have an input XML file containing a list of companies and the addresses of their websites. Let’s also say that the element which we will be targeting in the XSL “For-each” statement is called “company” and that, for each company element, we have a “name”, “telephone” and “website” element. Before beginning our “For-each” loop, we could output the opening tag of an HTML “ul” element (an unordered or bulleted list). Read the rest of this entry »

Because of its ability to separate design from content, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) has become an extremely important technology in web development. A single CSS document can contain information regarding the position of elements on all the pages in a web site as well as style information such as font, sizes and colours. In terms of building websites, CSS definitely represents the future.

Adobe Dreamweaver is a very widely used platform for developing web sites and web content and, although used by experienced developers, is also widely used by non-specialists for whom Dreamweaver’s user-friendly visual interface takes the pain out of web site creation. The way in which Dreamweaver implements CSS is very important for the casual user, since it will influence the kind of sites they end up producing.

Dreamweaver CS3 is the first version of the program which assumes that the user will want to use CSS to control the layout of their web pages. To assist inexperienced and would-be web developers, each time a new page is created, the program allows the user to choose allocate a preset CSS layout to the page. There are about 30 such layouts and they come in single, double and three column varieties. Read the rest of this entry »

JavaScript is a simple, client-side scripting language which enables you to add exciting and interesting functionality to your HTML pages. It is built in to most web browsers and, although it can be deactivated, most people will have it enabled within their browser. JavaScript’s uses includes the validation of entries within an HTML form and the detection of browser versions and presence or absence of plug-ins. Dreamweaver’s implementation of JavaScript centres on the use of what it calls “behaviors”.

Behaviors are editable Dreamweaver resources which generate one or more JavaScript functions. Each behavior needs to be associated with an element on your web page. After highlighting the element, you click on the Window menu and choose Behaviors. In the top left of the Behaviors window, you then click on the Add Behavior button an icon which looks like a plus sign ( ). Choose on of the available behaviors to associate it with the highlighted element.

Dreamweaver attempts to guess the event that you would like to trigger the behavior such as an onMouseOver, onClick or OnDoubleClick. If it guesses the wrong event, simply choose the correct event from the drop-down menu next to the name of the event. Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe Dreamweaver is a multi-purpose web development tool aimed at inexperienced and experienced users alike. It uses standards-compliant web technologies such as XHTML and CSS. Web content can be imported into the Dreamweaver at any time without the danger of the program modifying your code. In the same way, pages created in Dreamweaver can be exported from the Dreamweaver environment and used elsewhere.

The program does not rely on custom solutions which will only work in the Dreamweaver environment. Although Dreamweaver is not necessarily the best solution for creating all types of website, it is not an environment which one easily outgrows. It is suitable for creating both basic static content consisting of client side pages as well as more sophisticated dynamic content which includes server side pages. In other words, it is suitable for developing the content found on the majority of websites. So, let’s examine this content in more detail.

Most web sites are hosted on web servers owned by specialist hosting companies. A large website will have a dedicated server or even servers, whereas most typical websites will share space on a server with other sites. Visitors to a website are called clients. Read the rest of this entry »