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November 1999
Dreamweaver 2.0
(but DW3 is pretty much the same)

Here's some help emails I wrote to a friend about using the excellent webpage creation tool called Dreamweaver. He was switching over from the absolute piece-of-shit rip off of DW called Microsoft Front Page (surprise surprise, Microsoft did a half-ass ripoff of a very good program and came up with something with maddening shortcomings), so these instructions are a little Frontpage-centric, but they should be useable by anyone.

 

>I've got Dreamweaver. 

congrats

>Looks pretty cool.

yes.  when i first poked around it seemed pretty minimal, like it didn't do that much, and now it seems like some super powerful behemouth.  it's got a weird philosophy, i suspect one that comes from the unix types, which is that it does very little but lets you configure the hell out of it in very fundamental ways, so in the end, as you learn the prog, its monstrous.

>  I opened up some pages from FP
>and played a bit.   I could use some starter tips. 

Here goes:

As in FrontPage, it's got a Site Manager section and a Webpage Editing section.  First thing you'll want to do is configure things by going to the preferences dialog area.  You get to it from the sitemanager, edit/preferences.  Almost every configuration you can make to DW is in this area.  Note that it's relatively unconfusing and uncluttered.

The changes I made:

External editors
  html, set to notepad (windows/notepad.exe)  (By the way, the version of notepad I like is called Notepad+.  Go to download.com and search for "notepad plus".  It's another one of those sighs of relief after using the piece of crap regular notepad.)
  image editor, set to photoshop

HTML rewriting
  uncheck all boxes.  this way it won't fuck with your code unless you tell it to.  (you can sigh in relief now)

Preview in browser
  add netscape, IE, etc. here.  make sure netscape is checked as "primary browser".  now when you're editing pages, just hit F12 and it shows you the page in netscape.  Note that the way it previews is different than FP  it saves it to a temp file, then opens that temp file in netscape, so you don't even need to save the page before previewing.

Site FTP
  I like to show local files on the left (it defaults to right).  seems more intuitive to me, more like what we're used to with CuteFTP.  you'll be showing the server's files on the right once you get everything setup.


Now you're ready to define your site.  You do this once then you're done with it.  So in the site manager, go to site/new-site.  In the window that pops up

  Site name = whatever you want to call it (I call mine wrybread)
  Root folder = where your site is on your harddrive.  If you're still going to use FP, or at least in the transition period, point it to your FP web.
  HTTP address = http//wrybread.com/gametone/.  I'm not sure what this does, but what the hell.
  I check the cahce management box at the bottom.   That's another minor thing, it makes the link updating faster if you move files around and change the links.


Then at left scroll down to the category "Web Server Info". 
  Server Access = FTP

That should make more options appear.
  Now put in the same data as is in CuteFTP, which is
  FTP Host = Wrybread.com
  Host Directory = /gametone/ (I put just /, but I guess you'd put /gametone/)
  Login= wrybread
  PW= whatever the hell our current pw is
  Check the "save" box.
  Click OK.


Now you should see your list of local files on the left side.  You browse through the site exactly as you do in FP (no coincidence).

Now to connect to the server, click the little "connect" icon that's in the center top of the screen.  If your settings are correct in the ftp setup, you'll see the server files on the right, exactly as in CuteFTP.

Two ways to upload/download

Note that it uses the term "get" to download from the server, and "put" to upload to the server.  The most common method you'll use to upload to the server is by clicking your local file and selecting "put". 

Neat DW feature #1  It will upload that file to the exact corresponding directory on the server.  So if your local file is gametone/foo/index.shtml, and you click on the index.shtml file and select "put", it'll send it to "gametone/foo/index.shtml" on the server.  You don't need to sync up the server and local folders before uploading as you do in CuteFTP.

Neat DW feature #2  By default, it will ask you "include dependant files?".  What it wants to know is whether you want it to also upload all the images and ram files etc. linked to in that file.  So if you write a page with 30 images in it, you just click "put" index.shtml, and it will send that page as well as the 30 images, and it sends them all to their proper directories.  If their directories don't yet exist, it will create directories for them. Amazing, brilliant.

Neat DW feature #2a  Conversely, when you download a page it asks you if you want to include dependant files.  So, for example, if you want to download a page I've been working on, and you click "include depenant files", it will download that file as well as all its images.  Phew.  (Sidenote however, since your Site is at /gametone, you might have to define a new Site to download stuff from just the root /.  That's easy to do, you can have many Sites in DW no problem. Just call the second Site "wrybread", and set the root folder in the FTP configuration to just "/").

If you turn off the "include depenant files" dialog, you can turn it back on from the preferences menu.

Note that DW doesn't have the "publish new pages" of FP, but you'll get used to that quickly, fear not. 

The other way to up/download is to drag and drop. The advantage of this method is you can place files in whatever directory you want.


EDITING WEBPAGES

Click a page in your site manager to open it. Maximize the window that opens up (they have a maddening habit of opening up small).

Now you'll see a bunch of pallettes ala photoshop.  The pallette you'll use the most is the "properties" pallette, so close all the other pallettes for now.  At the properties pallette's bottom right is a "more/less" arrow.  It defaults to "less" for some reason.  You always want it in "more" mode, so click that arrow.  It will then always be in "more" mode.  ("More" mode shows you more info). 
The properties pallette changes as you click on different things.  Click on regular text and you get text info, click on an image and you get image info, click on a table and you get table info. 

It's settings are semi-intuitive, and the best way to learn them is just to screw around.  This is the central control interface in DW, so take your time and learn it well.  Don't rush this one. 

So to get you started, try highlighting some text.  Now set its font to something.  I almost always use the "verdana, helvetica, whatever" one. You can add new font combinations here later if you want. (Note that what the "verdana, helvetica, whatever" is tell the browser to first show the font as verdana if they have that font on their computer, and if they don't have verdana, try helvetica, etc.)

Now click inside an existing table.  You'll get the table cell properties by default, and if you want whole-table properties, hit ^A (for select all).  There's your table properties.

For images, click it and you get image properteis. 

As I said, learn this one well.  My advice would be to fuck around with it when you're not trying to get something done, but just trying to explore the prog.  The properties are important.


PULL-DOWN MENUS

Obviously not everything is done from the properties pallette; you'll also use the pull-downs at the top.  The logic here is a bit different than FP, so give your brain some time on these as well.  Once you learn it though you'll love it, trust me.  Just push through it here.

The two pull-downs that I use most often are the Insert and the Modify.  You do things like insert images and tables using the Insert menu, and you edit them using the Modify.

So for example, if I want to insert a picture, position the cursor where you want it, then hit insert/image.  You browse your harddrive to find the image.  The first time you do this it'll probably start in a directory outside your site, but next time it'll start where your last image was.
Then note that you can click on that image and get it's properties.  It doesn't put in any irritating alt text by default, and if you make a link from the image it defaults to border=0, halleluja. 

So click the image you just inserted.  In the center of the properties pallette you'll see "Src", which is the relative location of the image (since the html tag for an image is "image src=/[location]"), and then below that you'll see "link".  If you want to make the image a link, click the little folder next to the field and browse to what you want to link to.  Easy.

Note that you can EDIT THAT IMAGE IN PHOTOSHOP by right clcking the image, and select "edit image". That will load it in your external image editor, which you previously set to Photoshop. And unlike FP's way of doing this, it actually works.

**DW Problem #1  Dreamweaver doesn't like Frontpage's image maps.  This is a serious pain in the ass.  The only solution I've found is to completely redo the imagemaps.  So all those old links we did in imagemaps, either don't edit them at all (in which case they'll be fine, since DW doesn't rewrite anything without asking you first), or, if you need to edit them, just delete the damn thing and reinsert the image. If you want to do an image map in DW, right click the image and select "map".

If you want to CHANGE THE IMAGE DIMENSIONS, you'll see the fields at left on the properties pallette for that.  Note that if you want to change only one variable and have the other variable adjust proportionately, delete variable X before changing variable Y.  In other words, if you want to change the dimension of an image whose original dimensions are, say, W=100 and H=75, and you want to make it 150 pixels wide and have the height change proportionately, first delete the height variable, then change W to 150.  If you want to change W-150 and keep H=75, just put in W=150, H=75. Note that it bolds any dimensions that have been changed. Voila, try it, it's easy. As with everything in this program, you sense human intelligence behind it, as opposed to some lazy piece of crap slapped together program from Microsoft.

As with all the various incarnations of the properties pallette, play around with the different options just to see what they do.  There really isn't that much to this program, so it's easy enough to try absolutely everything the program can do.


INSERTING A TABLE is very similar, you just hit from the pull-down menuss insert/table, then fill in the options.  Then you click and drag the table dimensions around. 

Neat DW feature # whatever  FP had trouble inserting tables inside tables, which goes a long way towards relegating it to the realm of crap ass Microsoft product.  One huge way to get design control over your pages is to "nest" tables, i.e., put tables inside tables inside tables.  In DW it's a snap, just position the cursor, hit insert/table again.  And again, whatever.

To put background images in tables
- to put a background to a cell, click on that cell, then note that there's two fields in Properties called "Bg".  That's annoying, but it's semi self explanatory when you see that one has a folder next to it and one doesn't.  The one with a folder is to browser for BG image, and the other one is for setting BG Color.

To insert rows/columns
- it's under the Modify pull-down.  Modify/table/insert-row or insert-column.  Note that the option just below that, which is "insert rows or columns", gives you the extra option of inserting before or after the current row or column.
- you can also this by right clicking in the table cell.

YOU CAN ACCESS A LOT OF OPTIONS IN DW BY RIGHT CLICKING.  It's almost exactly like the properties pallette, the way the options change depending on where the cursor is.



SETTING PAGE PROPERTIES

You set your page properties, such as page name and bg color, either by going to modify/page-properties, or, as you'll do more often, hitting ^J.

Note that DW has an absolutely fabulous color picker. It's like photoshop in that you can click anything on that page and use its color. So you can click an image (that's open in DW) and use that color, or you can select from its pallette of websafe colors. You get to the color picker in text color, table bg color, table cell color, wherever. It's great.



EDITING YOUR HTML

You can click F10 to see your HTML, which works semi well. Note that unless you click on the HTML pallette that pops up when you hit F10, things are confusing.

A better way to edit your HTML is to use an external editor. Enter Notepad+. If you set things up correctly in your preferences, you should just have to hit ^e (control-e, for external editor). Now your page is open in Notepad. You can make any changes you want, then save your changes and close notepad. Then when you tab over to DW, it will say "this page has been edited outside DW, would you like to reload it?" Clicking yes will reflect any changes you made in Notepad. Nice. This they refer to as "Roundtrip HTML", and it's considered one of the great features of DW.

An advantage to using F10 to make small changes in your HTML is that it will prompt you to the spot in the HTML where your cursor is. So I use F10 for minor changes, and external editor for making major changes.

**NOTE THAT THE INSTANT YOU OPEN A PAGE IN FRONTPAGE, ANY CODE YOU HAVE WRITTEN WILL BE REWRITTEN BY FP IN ITS VERY SLOPPY AND UNREADABLE WAY. So any page you create in DW you'll want to keep away from FP, at least try your best to. Of course there's no real harm done by opening in FP, but you lose the nice neat code that DW creates. Code that DW creates is very easily understood by humans, whereas the stuff FP creates is a massive garble that only computers can read, if at all. HTML is pretty simple, but you don't know that when you only use FP.



KNOWN DREAMWEAVER PROBLEMS

1) I already mentioned the image map thing

2) sometimes it puts in an extra hard return at the bottom of the page and between objects. This is irritating. The only way to get rid of it is to click where the extra space is, then edit out the return code in the HTML. So click where the space is, then hit F10, then you'll see a

code. That's the paragraph code. You have to delete it and it's contents, which will probably be " ", which is the code for hard-space. Get the closing

code as well. So the full code you're deleting is "

 

", which is a paragraph code surrounding a hard-space. (Sidenote DW puts the hard-space code in there just so the html code will have some contents, since html codes with absolutely nothing between them get ignored by browsers).

3) DW also doesn't like the forms we've been using to get feedback from the site, and it will rewrite them without asking you if you move the form around. I don't know why. It's the only time DW rewrites something without asking. It's a bug. It adds a single property to the form that will semi screw things up. The property it adds is a "name = "submit"" after the " ", so the full line reads . What you have to do is delete that extra value from the form. It's not the end of the world if you don't, since all that happens is in the message you receive there'll be the words "Submit send it" at the end of your message.


IMPORTING FILES TO YOUR WEB

Dreamweaver has a differnet and much more intuitive way of thinking about your site than FP does. FP saves everything in extraneous files that save info like what files are in your site, etc. Hence to bring a new file into your FP web you have to "Import" that file. Ugh. In Dreamweaver, just copy the file directly in. So to import some images, just copy them to the folder you want them in Dreamweaver and it's done. In other words, if you want to copy some images to gametone/foo/pictures/, just drop those images in taht directory on your harddrive. Halleluja. That's also why I say DW and FP are compatible DW will be able to work with FP with minimal fuss, though if you add any files through DW you'll still have to Import them in FP for FP to recognize them, that damn klutz.


PREVIEWING IN BROWSER

Hit F12. You'll do this all the time. As I said, it creates a temporary file so you don't need to save your file first. A minor problem is that DW doesn't like .shtml files, just as FP doesn't. It'll preview them fine, but it won't open any links to .shtml files. Minor ugh.


JAVASCRIPT ROLLOVERS

Easy as pie
position the cursor
hit insert/rollover-image (look for it, it's there)
The options here are semi-selfexplanatory. Name the image any old thing or keep the default Image1, and note that you have to have a link for all javascript events, so use "#" for no link. (The # makes it so if someone clicks it, nothing much happens, since "#" is the html code for "bookmark", as in when you want to load a page to a certain point in the page.)


MAKING STUFF FLY AROUND

This is the really fun stuff. The principle is you're using something they came up with in 4.0+ generation browsers called Layers, and then you're controlling that layer with javascript. Surprise surprise, you don't do shit, you just tell DW what to do. It's easy.

1) Create a layer. For practice, do this on a blank page (hit file/new page, then save that page.). Then hit insert/layer.

2) Now type something in that layer.

3) Now notice that when you click on the layer you get little boxes outlining the layer box. If you don't get these boxes, it means you're not clicking right on the layer itself, so keep clicking around until you do. You can use those to resize the image, and clicking on the large top left box lets you drag the layer around.

4) Right click on the layer. You should get a pulldown menu containing the option "Record Path". If you don't get that pull down menu, then first left click on the layer until you get the layer outlined with the boxes, then right click on the layer again.

5) Once you have the record path option visible, select Record Path.

6) Now drag the layer by the big top left box. If you don't see the top left box on the layer, go to (3).

7) Now drag the layer around. This will be the path that your moving layer takes. You should see a dotted path being left behind the layer. If not, go to (3).

8) When you've dragged the layer around to your heart and mouse's content, stop.

9) Now you have to open the Timeline Pallette. Note that dreamweaver probably opened this window automatically when you dragged the path of the layer. But if not, like all pallettes, you open it by going to the Window pull-down menu. So hit window/timeline.

10) Now you'll see some data on that timeline. That's the path of your layer. If you record more paths or add to that path, you'll see it added to the timeline. If you want two things moving at once, you'll add it to the timeline. Play around with this, it's powerful. FPS= frames per second, and it's the speed that your timeline plays back. But for just a single basic single thing moving

11) At the top right of the timeline pallette you'll see the options "autoplay" and "loop". If you don't see the "autoplay" and "loop" options, widen the Timeline Pallette. Check both of these. That will make the layer move when you load the page, and loop will make the movement repeat. You can edit all these things at any time.

Now preview the page in your browser by clicking F12. If your layer isn't movingn around, make sure the layer contains something. Maybe you didn't type the text directly into the layer, maybe you typed it underneath the layer, etc. Play around.

You can also put images, tables, whatever in the layers. You can resize the layer however you want. Just don't put a layer inside a layer (which is a "nested layer"), since Netscape can't handle it yet (IE can).




PART II, a bit more advanced, but still easy.


USING THE BEHAVIOR PALLETTE

After the Properties Pallette, the Behavior Pallette is the biggie. The "behavior" is short for "javascript behavior", which means it's the interface DW uses to apply javascripts to elements in your page. No, you don't need to know a thing about javascript to use it, that's why it's called an "interface". It has all been automated.

So for example, create a javascript rollover using that method we did earlier (insert/rollover-image). Now click on that image and open the Behavior Pallette. You'll see:

onMouseOut - Swap image restore
onMouseOver - Swap image

The first line tells it to restore the original image when the mouse moves off the image (MouseOut = mouse moves away), and the second line tells it to swap images when the mouse moves over the image (i.e., onMouseOver).

You can click either of these parameters to edit their behaviors. So if you want to change the image that will appear onMouseOver, click the second line (the one with onMouseOver in it).

Note that there is also a little pull-down arrow in the center of that field. Clicking it lets you decide what sort of event triggers the behavior. So click the second line, which is currently set to trigger the event when the mouse moves over the image (i.e., onMouseOver). Note the other options on there. Experiment with these options, they're pretty self-explanatory.

Just for practice, switch the Swap Image parameter to "onClick". (Click the parameter, then click the center pull-down arrow). Now preview the page in browser (F12). Now click the image. Notice that it no longer switches images on MouseOver, but only onClick (i.e., when you click your mouse).

Important Sidenote: you can only apply javascript behaviors to something (text or image) with a link. So notice that DW made that image a link to "#". That's a standard dummy link. YOU NEED A LINK FOR ALL JAVASCRIPT BEHAVIORS, so if you're not using a regular link, use "#".


So, go back to DW. For practice we'll make some text which opens up a new URL if you move your mouse over it:

1. Type some text, and make it a link to # or anything else.

2. Click somewhere on that text, then in the Behavior Pallette click the + (plus sign). That's how you add a behavior. Note that a menu appeared.

3. Now, just for kicks, select "Goto URL".

4. Then in the field type in any URL, it can be relative or absolute. For now, type the absolute path http://wrybread.com/crackcam.

5. By default, DW assigns the action "onClick" to that behavior, which means if someone clicks that text, it will go that URL. So, just for kicks, change that behior to "onMouseOver", which will load that URL the instant someone's mouse goes over that text. To do so, 1) highlight that parameter on the behavior pallette, 2) click the pulldown arrow in the center of that parameter, and select "onMouseOver".

6. Preview in browser, and you should be directed to that URL when you move your mouse over that text.


USING DW PLUGINS

That list of behaviors that are displayed when you click add Behavior (as in step 2 above) are in fact just a bunch of html files that someone has written and placed in the directory dreamweaver/Configuration/Behaviors/Actions. They're very modular, and anyone who knows how to can write them and add them to DW at any time. The only restriction is that DW has to be restarted whenever something new is added.

So you can download Behaviors for a bunch of websites, three very good ones that I've found are:

http://www.cybernet.ch/users/massimo/

http://alaji.home.mindspring.com/dreamweaver/

Follow their links section and you'll be solidly in the DW underworld.


Neat DW feature # whatever: Every configuration you make to DW is stored in the folder dreamweaver/Configuration. So if you copy that folder and copy it onto another computer and open DW, DW will look exactly as it does on your regular computer. JUST REMEMBER THAT YOU HAVE TO RESTART DW WHENEVER YOU CHANGE SOMETHING N THE CONFIGURATION FOLDER.

In that folder the things you'll play with most are:

Behaviors - we just did that
Commands - are similar to behaviors but insert chunks of code. Play with the Commands Pallette to get an idea of what those are.
Objects - similar to Commands. Play around.


USING TEMPLATES

Dreamweaver has a template feature which is sort of fun. You use it if you're creating multiple-pages with repeating objects. The advantage of using a template is that, even after finishing the pages, you can change one of those repeating objects and it will be changed on every page that uses that template. So, for example, on the pages at http://wrybread.com/baja, all those pages have the same background, and all the content is in the same table. So, if those pages are in a template, and I want to add an element at the bottom of the page to every one of those pages, all I do is make changes on the template and DW will update every page that uses that template.

Creating a Template

First create a model page. It can have content which won't appear on your template.

1. Hit File/Save-As/Template

2. Call it whatever you want

3. Highlight the text that you want replaced on the template pages (in other words, the text that you don't want repeated on every page, but instead you want to replace that text with other text.). So highlight that text, then

4. click Modify/Templates/mark-selection-as-editable. Name it whatever you want. Notice that DW will highlight that text.

5. Mark whatever regions you want as editable. These are the areas you'll be able to edit on pages that use this template. Anything not marked as editable, you won't be able to touch. It's rigid like that.

6. Now save that template (file/save).

7. Start a new page (file/new).

8. Apply the template to that page by selecting Mofiy/Template/Apply-Template-To-Page. Select your template from the list. If you had more than one template created, they would all appear on that list.

9. Notice that you can only edit the areas you marked as Editable Regions on the template itself. You can create more editable regions at any time by editing the template file, and every file using that template will reflect it.

10. You can create as many files as you want based on that template, and every time you edit the template it will apply those changes to the pages that use the template. Note that after it makes changes to the pages, obviously you will have to reupload those pages if you want your site to reflect those changes.

11. You can detach the page at any time from the template with Modify/Templates/Detach-from-template.

12. Note that the templates are all saved in a directory in your site called "Templates", and they have the extension .dwt (dreamweaver templates).

 

 

     
   
Questions?

   
     

 

 

     
   
Answers:
 
A friend had some DW questions, I figured I'd post the email here:

>Fonts: I want to use a Kaufman font (occasionally). What if someone's
>browser doesn't have that font?
>Will they see garbage, or will their browser put it in another, still
>readable font?

You can specify more than one font, and if the person doesn't have the first, it'll try the second, then the third, etc. If you look at DW's fonts, you'll see they're all in groups. Those are groups of similar fonts, and you sort of have to use a group of fonts since PCs and Macs have different fonts. For example on a PC you have Arial, on a Mac you have Helvetica. The one danger is that there seem to be slightly different versions of fonts, and if the person has a different version of that font they might display boxes instead of any font. That's what happens when Mic looks at Red's homepage (http://www.ekt.org), for example.

So if you want to use Kaufman, you can specify "Kaufman, Arial, Verdana" or whatever, and the browser will first look for Kaufman, then Arial, then Verdana. IF you specificy only Kaufman, that's fine too, since if the browser doesn't find Kaufman it will use the default font, which is on PC Times New Roman, and Helvetica on Macs.

Those lists of fonts on DW are semi-arbitrary, and you can create new lists easily using the option "define new group" or something like that. It seems like a shortcoming of DW that it doesn't just let you choose directly from your font list though.


>Also, do you just use 7, 6, 5, 4, +1, etc. for font sizes, or do you use
>style sheets?

I use stylesheets for font type, and sometimes I'll specify sizes in the body. I like to use -1 for narrative text, and -2 for small text. I havn't experimented yet with using Point sizes in the style sheet. As far as I know, you can't use a stylesheet to specify things like fontsize=-1. You can use the "basefont" code for that though, which I don't think DW will do, but you can put it at the top of your doc. Search on google.com for "basefont" and you should find some tutorial on that.

I should say that I'm still sketchy with style sheets, so I could be wrong about any of this stuff.

>I wouldn't want to use style sheets as they can't be used by pre-4.0
>browsers, but
>they do allow nice Word- (ahem ... Word Perfect, for temps who work for
>lawyers ... :))
>style formatting.

Style sheets are still a semi-mess since different browsers support different aprts of them, and no browser supports all of them. Generally speaking IE has better support for stylesheets, but neither of them conform to the Web Standards Project yet. But I've heard Netscape 5.0 will. But they work well for some things. They're great for specifying font, but not that great (in my opinion) for specifying font size. Have a look at most of my newer pages and you'll see a stylesheet in the header tags, go ahead and copy it and use it for a starting point.

Another useful thing in stylesheets is you can change line spacing, but be aware that you will have problems with images overlapping text. It'll take experimentation, and be sure to preview your page in both Netscape and IE. And let me know what you find out.

>I assume that +1 is the same font size as 4, being that 3 is the default
>browser font size, right?

I guess so, though I think some people specify different system font sizes

>Do you create two versions of your site for people with pre-stone age and
>post-stone age
>browsers?

Well, only if I'm doing stuff with layers. And even then only if it's a high-traffic page. Layers are a 4.0 browser thing, and the problem with them is antique browsers display them totally wrong (always flushed against the left margin). I use layers on my gateway page to get the loaves flying around. You can only apply DHTML stuff to layers. So I use a javascript that sends people with a 3.0 browser to one place, and a 4.0 browser to another. So if you look at my gateway page (http://wrybread.com) with a 3.0 browser you see a totally different page (index.shtml) from a 4.0 browser (index4.shtml). I wouldn't worry about that yet, but if you want to try, it's in the DW behavior list. Might take you a bit of figuring out, but to get you started, go to the top of the page, then click "body" in the bottom left of your screen. That puts you in teh Body tag of the doc, which is where you need to be since javascripts can only be in a body tag or on a link. Read my earlier help file for more on that.

>Related to fonts and style, are the default style that come with
>dreamweaver the same thing
>as styles? (I'm referring to Paragraph, Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) Is
>there a way to re-define
>them? What do you use? (Do you use "None"?)

Nope, totally different from styles. Style sheets go in the header, either actually contained in the document or referred to externally. To start with, use internal style sheets. Just copy the info between the <style> tags on the top of, say, my sitemap, and you're rolling.

A nice thing about styles is that antique browsers simply don't read them, so there's no errors or anything like that, they just have default font sizes and fonts.

I forgot the order of preference that a browser reads font information, but I think it's Style sheet first, then internal font tags. So a font tag will affect a font, but if there isn't a font tag, it'll show the style. But I'm not sure. Glassdog.com has a good stylesheet tutorial.

>How do you repeat an action? There doesn't seem to be a "control-Y"
>feature in Dreamweaver -
>let's say I want to unbold all text throughout a page, or make it all size
>5. Does this involve
>using a style sheet and defining a style as size 5? Or something more
>simple? (a repeat key
>would be nice)

Don't think it has one. If you're comfortable in the HTML, you can search and replace codes.....


>Frustrating: How do you put a double space? If I type a double space in
>DW, it just puts a single
>space.

HTML only allows single spaces without some extra work. To get an extra space, you need the hardspace code, which in DW is control-shift-space.


>Also, when I paste from Word, paragraph marks don't carry over, and I have
>to re-insert them.
>Is there a way to copy paragraph marks (the two types of pasting in DW
>don't seem to copy the
>paragraph mark) ...

I havn't done any Word to DW conversions, but when I was looking at the new features for the still-unreleased DW3 I noticed something about improved Word conversions.....

>O.k., last question. I inserted an image that wasn't in my "root"
>directory on my local hard
>drive, and I was asked if I wanted to copy it to the root directory, or
>else it might not upload
>when I uploaded the page. As I understand it from your notes to Mike, (is
>it Mike or Mic,
>by the way?),

Mic

>directories on your local HD will be mirrored on the server
>when uploading
>the info., with new directories created on the server as needed. So I
>guess if I start putting
>all my images in an "images" directory off of my local root folder, they'll
>upload properly to
>an "images" directory on Wrybread.com/india ...

yes. copy everything to the folders on your harddrive where you work on your site (i.e., subfolders of your "root" directory).

>And related to that, is there a way in FTP to move files from one folder to
>another on the wrybread
>server without having to re-upload them?

Yes. I think DW can do it, or an FTP program can do it. This is a bit confusing, but what the hell: you use the same syntax as absolute links in a webpage. So if you wanted to move a folder from /india/images/audio to /india/images/, you'd type at the move command "/india/images/" (all the slashes are important). But try dragging and dropping in DW, though dragging and dropping on the server side is dangerous, since you can conceivably fuck up my stuff, so please be careful.

-------

d

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TEST

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What free web servers can I use DW to upload web pages to?

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huh

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Excellent pages for the Dreamweaver user, thanks!

Does anyone know a NICE way to move the DW Site Configuration
from one PC to another?

Upgraded my workstation and installed DW, now I have to put
in all of the sites by hand again?

Seems like there would be a
better way...

Mike

mike@fujitsu.com

-------

Sure, it's easy, just copy the coniguration folder. By default on a PC that's at c:\program files\macromedia\dreamweaver\configuration. Copy the folder and all it's subfolders and you'll have identical settings on both Dreamweaver instances. It'll also copy all your behaviors and all that.

ONe thing to be careful of is copying that folder between Dreamweaver 2 and 3. I've found it best to only copy the behaviors and objects etc. folders.

-Hugh Mann

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test

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I have a site that has about 50 pages i made in FP..augh!! I am trying to use the template feature in Dreaweaver to apply to all of them.
After making my editable regions in the template I go to 'apply to the page'. It prompts me to pick only one of the editable regions, and throws out the rest.

When I pick one it applies that one and then adds all of the other info to the template page. So I have two sets of information on the page.

I know this sounds confusing..but I don't know how to explain it better than that.

Any idea how can I get it to adjust all of the editable regions at once?



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Hi,

Firstly I'd like to say a HUGE thankyou for this amazing site. I'm an ex FP user and am just seeing the light with DW3 (truly a piece of programming wizardry!).

I need to insert a movie into my site. The problem is that it's in Windows Media player format and I just can't figure out how to insert it into a new DW page.

Any advice.....please :o)

Thanks
kelly

-------

sorry, wish I could help you with that one, but I havn't played around with Windows media player yet. I imagine there's a plugin out there for it, I've used a plugin for embedding RealVideo and it works great, as at:
http://wrybread.com/wryradio/04-13/flaming-video-stream.shtml

If you'd like that plugin, email me wrybread@wrybread.com.

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make table

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I have constructed my site entirely in dreamweaver ( writing only the basic HTML b4hand) and it works fine in local mode on my hardrive, but when I try to upload it runs awful, files are not where they should be, some files although uploaded are not present, some of the HTML files won't load up to sever causing CuteFTP to log off and on continuously, and layers are all over the place, can anyone help I'm tearing my hair out

-------

I have constructed my site entirely in dreamweaver ( writing only the basic HTML b4hand) and it works fine in local mode on my hardrive, but when I try to upload it runs awful, files are not where they should be, some files although uploaded are not present, some of the HTML files won't load up to sever causing CuteFTP to log off and on continuously, and layers are all over the place, can anyone help I'm tearing my hair out
If anyone can my mail is savory@bun.com

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head to http://www.dungeonofdespair.com for free online java games!

-------

is there a web resource somewhere for sample templates for web layout???

bpence@celestialsoftware.net

-------

When I change the height of a table row to something between 0 and 10, it doesn't display the row with that height. Instead it looks like it is still 20 heigh??

-------

I saw your question on the DW forum and wondered if you had any joy in keeping layers in the same position irrelevant of the screen size? I am trying to do the same and am pulling my hair out!!!

Thanks in advance

john

john@skinnyjohn.com

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I am using a navigation using drop down menus by incorporating layers functionaliy. Within the layer I have assinged onmouseover events that highlight a
background when you move your mouse over it. It works fine in IE but I cant seem to get it to work in Netscape. Any clues?

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I have my homepage all set up and it looks good in preview. The problem is getting the other pages to show in preview. I think I have them linked together correctly, but when I preview them it is just a blank screen.

HELP!

Thankyou.

-------

I'm new to DW, and think my biggest problem is terminology. What I want to do is simple I think, but I can't figure out what it is called to find out how to do it.

I want to provide a definition in a little rectangle when the curser touches the word in question. I see that behavior all the time in Web pages and software, but how do I do it? I don't want to change images, so I finally figured out that it is not a "rollover" I want. Do you understand what I'm asking?
Thanks,
Trudie

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Excellent Site!

I have question that's probably very easy, but I can't seem to figure it out. HOw do I create a link that will allow users to download a file??

Thanks!

Linda

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looking for the html code for bookmarking my homepage at the click of a button.

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how to insert background music


-------

yes

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real

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how can i print a framset?

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Hello there, i have to say that I totally agree with you about DW being 100 folds better than FP...however, I have this problem, I work for the local government and their budgets only can pay for Frontpage 98 for 100s of staff within the organisation..no thats not the problem I`m working up to it....I`m the unfortunate one who has to build a Template for this organisation and I want to be able to lock regions within this template on FP rather than DW (as the organisation doesnt own a copy), so that when anyone uses the template they can only edit the correct areas and not completley destroy the format. I've searched through the awful help guide in FP and found ...... nothing as usual. Any help would be brillant, please could you either post it like you seem to have with others below or email to

rob.dickinson@plymouth.gov.uk

thxs!

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how do you walk away?

-------

how do you make pop-up list when you roll over a botton link?

-------

how do you make her take it up the ass

-------

zxcvzdg

-------

how do i embed sound?


-------

how do i embed sound?


-------

gre

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Hi. I'm creating a webpage using Dreamweaver. I'm trying to password protect part of my site. I'm wondering how to do that. I have been messing around with java script, which I'm not terribly good at, and still haven't gotten the page passworded yet.
Thank you so much.
-yolks
yolkieyolks@yahoo.com

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Is Dreamweaver compatible with Unix? I am doing research for a company, and I need to know if Dreamweaver is compatible with a Unix based system. Please reply to me at gig3@lehigh.edu
Thank you,

Giancarlo

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Hej!
Hefjd

-------

hello

-------

I have some dreamweaver questions - do you have any time for helping? My name is Ethan and my email is cbsmba@aol.com

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Hi I'm quite new to DW and to be honest the tables are really pissing me off!
I've cut my Photoshop file up into Gifs and imported into DW making sure the table cells are correct sizes etc but when I look at it in the browser it screws up completely. What m I doing wrong????
Help!!!!!!

-------

FrontPage Include

-------

I have a DW 3 question.

When I create documents from a template, and then preview the document in IE, the graphic images don't show up. The problem doesn't exist when I preview it in Netscape.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
thks,
Aaron


-------

What is the trick to having tables in DW display the same in Netscape & IE?

-------

Hello. Fantabulous site that you have here.

How come DW shows a different background color (in design view) than the color I selected? But when I go and test it (F12) it gives me the right color?

i shall appreciate your help.
thank you.

my e-mail is hotrod_007_us@yahoo.com


-------

how do you upload files with
dreamweaver 4 ftp

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I want to display hidden layer onmouseover effect in dreamweaver

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gdsg

-------

I designed a site with tables, and the header, footer, as well as the navigation bar appear on every html page. I named the html pages for my five featured stories "feature1.html, feature2.html, feature3.html, etc." I also named my graphics "feature1a.gif, feature1b.gif, feature2a.gif, etc."

The problem I'm having is that every time I do an update (every time I change the featured content and graphics) people only see the old stories and graphics unless they clean out their temp files and hit refresh. Is there any way around this? I'm not sure what I can do to fix it without naming the graphics and stories a different name every time and if I do that I'll have to change the links on every page, which could take hours!

Someone told me Dreamweaver would solve my problem, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Thanks,

D.P.


-------

How do I insert a Powerpoint show onto a web page, created in Dreamweaver?
Thanks

-------

I would like to know How I can have a multicolor background with DW without using a background image.
Thanks for your help.
Isabelle


-------

how do i add a counter to my homepage in dw?

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ok

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Have used frames in Dreamweaver to make a left nav bar and top logo appear on most pages. Some pages feature a photo gallery however and I would like them to appear in a new window. Have specified blank as the target and this works OK as the user can link back to the previous page and view it where it was intended to be viewed i.e mainFrame. The problem is that the pages set to appear in 'blank' are always minimized when loaded. This is annoying for the user. Have tried various uneducated stabs at javascript to resolve this but to no avail.
Any ideas? Thankyou very much for your time and an informative site.

Yvonne

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i have design my webpage on photoshop 6 and i would like to put it on dreamweaver ultradev.
a.sheikh
mc_demon666@hotmail.com

-------

this is a .sheikh
mc_demon666@hotmail.com
please answer my question and e-mail me i really need some help

-------

how do you get drop downs


-------

how to make flash text cause image to appear elsewhere on the page

-------

i'm using frames, and have a list in the right frame and the linked content opening in the left. when the content opens in the left frame it is left aligned and to the top of the page (out of the table that fills that frame). what the heck?!

-------

how to your own flash made button & link it to html page

-------

how do you create a drop down menu from the user rolling over a navigation button?

-------

how do you load text into a page?

-------

ftshss

-------

how do set windoww dimensions, so a g to page is set at a certain size

-------

I have created a page with a frame, but every time I try to save it, I can only save the frameset and not the frame. How do I save the page as a whole? I have tried "save all", and that turns the frame into all of the page. This is probably such an idiot question, but it keeps ruining my work.... I don't know what to do! Thanks for any help you could give me!

-------

gdf

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Hi,
I need some help with frames.
I have a standard (frameless) page as the front for my site. It contains links that should go to the different sections. The other part of the site is a frameset (frames.html) with two frames. (nav & content). How do I make the links into the frameset load the page I want? If I link to the frameset, it loads whatever was last saved there. If I link to the individual section pages, it loads them without the navbar frame.

Any help is appreciated.
Joe
fatula3@attglobal.net

-------

why is my insert>layer option always unavailable

-------

ryrtyrty

-------

is there any good wed sites to download dreamweaver mx

-------

could you tell me a good wed sites to download dreamweaver mx for free

-------

Hi. I'm a REALLY beginner user. But it seems that FP is more user friendly. How do I insert a counter in DW? Thanks!!

-Moe

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how can i save my website on CD?

-------

Hi,
Using templates in dreamweaver What u mean by in step 10-
You will have to reupload those pages if you want your site to reflect those changes. how to reupload those pages?

Please reply urgently to
varaich_jagjit@hotmail.com

Regards,
Jag

-------

Hi,
Using templates in dreamweaver What u mean by in step 10-
You will have to reupload those pages if you want your site to reflect those changes. how to reupload those pages?

Please reply urgently to
varaich_jagjit@hotmail.com

Regards,
Jag

-------

Hi,
Could please send me how can i embed my flash animation in my dreamweaver page.

my e-mail id is varaich_jagjit@hotmail.com

regards,
jag

-------

Hi,
Could please send me how can i embed my flash animation in my dreamweaver page.

my e-mail id is varaich_jagjit@hotmail.com

regards,
jag

-------

how to create Display Propertes ?.

-------

how to change the curser using dreamweaver


-------

I had FP now have a test version of DWMX and it's sooooo harrrrd. I even bought Dreamweaver MX for Dummies but the floating boxes aren't where they should be..... found some good hints in your explanation though - thanks, I'll now resume tearing my hair out xx.

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fuck

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I am new to DW, Fireworks, etc. I am enjoying it though still find it all a bit confusing. I have simply worked my way around it and have built our website on my own. I have a few questions to put to you.

1. The pages that I built in Fireworks and then imported to DW are small. How can I extend the border/pages so that I can add more info to them (text, pictures)so that it scrolls down?

2. How to make a thumbnail go to full screen.

3. How to place a mini border around the header.

4. How do you do a scrolling marquee across the page (anywhere)?

If you would like to see a preview (even though it's not all that great) go to www.brewerutah.com and maybe that will give you a better understanding of my questions. I would like to add more information to my pages, but this was all I could fit in there. I know these questions may sound foolish to you, but I have tried working them out, tried the macromedia website, but have not been able to figure it out on my own. If you have the time, please respond. We have 3 websites that I am working on and I need to get them running well soon. Thank you for your wonderful website and help.

Heather
hkbslc@aol.com

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flash

-------

Stephanie is so cute

-------

how ru today

-------

i am so hot

-------

I'm trying to save a page with frameset in dreamweaver mx. However, all the pages the frames point to get saved as absolute links when I save the frameset. DW is automatically changing the links from relative to absolute. How can I stop this?

-------

to the person with the absolute links in their frameset: have you tried saving the nested pages first?

-------

my gifs only loop 1 on the web but in preview they do it always
john@aztao.com


-------

Nice tips on your site.
I have dsigned a site where I have used overlapping layers (dreamweaver 4) for images. They work fine viewed in IE on Windows, but when viewd in MAC, the images in alyers are all over the place! Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?

-------

How to install Macromedia Dreamweaver 4.0 in my computer from internet?


-------

I created a 10 page website based on a DW template which has a flash header, FW nav bar under the header and a flash lt. side nav panel. I created an editable content region which contains the text for the different pages. All the pages have this template attached and load their content into the editable region. Upon viewing in browser and clicking links on the navbar, however, new browser windows open up containing all elements and redrawing the whole page. This is distracting, and wastes memory.

How can I create a template page which only loads the changed content into the same page layout without opening new browser windows I created a 10 page website based on a template which has a flash header, nav bar under the header and a flash lt. side nav panel. I created an editable content region which contains the text for the different pages. All the pages have this template attached and load their content into the editable region. Upon viewing in browser and clicking links on the navbar, however, new browser windows open up containing all elements and redrawing the whole page. This is distracting, and wastes memory.

How can I create a template page which when different nav buttons are clicked load only the changed content into the same page layout without opening new browser windows?

agyeman@wt.net________________
A. A. Agyeman?


-------

I created a 10 page website based on a DW template which has a flash header, FW nav bar under the header and a flash lt. side nav panel. I created an editable content region which contains the text for the different pages. All the pages have this template attached and load their content into the editable region. Upon viewing in browser and clicking links on the navbar, however, new browser windows open up containing all elements and redrawing the whole page. This is distracting, and wastes memory.

How can I create a template page which only loads the changed content into the same page layout without opening new browser windows I created a 10 page website based on a template which has a flash header, nav bar under the header and a flash lt. side nav panel. I created an editable content region which contains the text for the different pages. All the pages have this template attached and load their content into the editable region. Upon viewing in browser and clicking links on the navbar, however, new browser windows open up containing all elements and redrawing the whole page. This is distracting, and wastes memory.

How can I create a template page which when different nav buttons are clicked load only the changed content into the same page layout without opening new browser windows?

agyeman@wt.net________________
A. A. Agyeman?


-------

I am creating a form that emails the info. However the content of the email comes out in onne long line even though i have "%0D%0A%0A" in the code.

Any ideas / alternatives

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