Working for a company that runs Dreamweaver training courses, I am increasingly finding that there is no longer a typical user of this great web development program. Dreamweaver users now seem to come from all different types of company and from all walks of life: private individuals, financial people, marketing people, people in the health service, academicians It seems everyone needs to learn the basics of web development nowadays.

Just as the use of a graphical interface has changed computing, making it more user-friendly, the use of Adobe Dreamweaver renders people with limited understanding of web construction capable of putting together a quality site. It is also an excellent platform for learning how web sites should be put together. For example, when you create a new page, Dreamweaver lets you choose from a series of standard layouts based on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the recommended specification for creating web pages. The code produced by Dreamweaver contains useful comments explaining how the page layout works.

Many small organisations have already learned to rely on Adobe Dreamweaver to build and manage their own website, creating and modifying pages and then uploading them via FTP to make them live and available to the public. Those organisations with a more urgent need to establish a web presence may still turn to a professional web development companies to get them started and then use Adobe Dreamweaver when changes need to be made, often saving themselves a small fortune.

Another way that companies can save a few bucks is by commissioning web designers to create Dreamweaver templates and then using these templates in-house to build the website themselves. This also has the benefit of allowing organizations to maintain control of their site from the outset.

Although Dreamweaver is simple to use, it is unlikely that the average user can simple load it onto their machine and start using it effectively. Most people will benefit from having some Dreamweaver training. This will show them which are the essential aspects of the program and the process of creating a basic site and making it live. A good Dreamweaver training course will also give users an overview of the may web technologies, the underlying code, which Dreamweaver uses as the users visually create their web pages.

One of the best ways to make a site useful for visitors is making it interactive, allowing users to search for the specific content that they want. By attending an advanced Dreamweaver training course, staff within an organization can learn to add database-driven content to their website using technologies such as ASP, PHP or ColdFusion. And, here again, Dreamweaver does the lion’s share of the work, allowing users to create sophisticated search and results pages using the same simply point-and-click and drag-and-drop techniques used to create basic content.

Author is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver training courses at their central London training centre.

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”.

A behavior is simply a pre-written JavaScript function which can be triggered by a given event. To make the Behaviors window visible, choose Behaviors from the Window menu. Next select the element to which you want to attach the JavaScript. Finally, choose one of the available behaviors from the menu in Behaviors window. (The behaviors which are available will depend on the item you have highlighted.)

Whenever you attach a behavior to a web page element, Dreamweaver attempts to guess what the event which should trigger the JavaScript (mouse click, rollover, etc.). If Dreamweaver fails to assign the event that you actually want, simply choose a different event from the drop-down menu next to the event name.

Dreamweaver has a wide selection of behaviors. However, they fall into four main categories: images, windows and alerts, forms and form fields and CSS. To see how behaviors work, let us look at some examples of some behaviors in each of those categories.

Perhaps the most frequently encountered JavaScript function is one that changes the appearance of an image when the mouse passes over it. Dreamweaver creates this functionality with the “Swap Image” behavior. You can also add this behavior automatically by choosing Insert – Image Objects – Rollover Image. Dreamweaver automatically adds a second behavior/function called “Restore Image” which changes the image back to the original when the mouse leaves the image.

As far as alerts and windows behaviors is concerned, as well as the simple “Pop-up Message”, which just causes a system alert box to appear, Dreamweaver also offers the more sophisticated “Open Browser Window”. This Dreamweaver behavior allows you to create a pop-up window of any specified dimension and allows you to choose the attributes of the window: the HTML file it displays, the presence or absence of the title bar, scroll bars, etc.

The most important and useful form-handling behavior is “Validate Form”. This can be triggered either on submission of the form (“onSubmit”) or when a given text field loses focus (“onBlur”). When you assign the behavior, you choose the type of validation you wish to perform: ensuring that the field has not been left blank, contains a valid email address, contains a number or contains a number between two specific values.

An example of a behavior which manipulates CSS attributes is “Show/Hide Elements”. This enables you to control the visibility of the content inside an HTML element, such as a DIV, heading or paragraph, based on user action. So, for example, when if you have a picture of a product, you can create DIVs with information on various aspects of the product and have the appropriate DIV content become visible as the user mouses over various parts of the product image.

Each behavior that you choose will create one or more JavaScript functions within the head area of your page. Part of the process of optimising your website (both in terms of accessibility and search engine compatibility) is to transfer this code to an external JavaScript file and then link the web page to the JavaScript file. To do this, you need to be in Code view and locate the function(s) generated by the behavior(s) you have used on your page. Cut all of the code between the opening and closing SCRIPT tags and place it in a text file which needs to be saved with a .js extension. Next, enter an src attribute inside the opening SCRIPT tag, for example ‘SCRIPT src=”scripts.js”‘.

You can find out more about JavaScript training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering JavaScript training courses at their central London training centre.

categories: Dreamweaver,Adobe Dreamweaver CS3,JavaScript,behaviors,web development,website accessibility,computers and the internet,computer software

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) has become as pivotal a technology in the building of websites as HTML. Originally, CSS was mainly used for defining the appearance of text (font, size, colour, etc.). However, with the improvement of browser compatibility with the CSS specification, CSS is now the recommended method of controlling all aspects of the presentation of HTML documents within the browser window.

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.

CSS page layout is based in the DIV element, an HTML container which can be used to hold an arbitrary amount of web content. The CSS rules control the appearance and positioning of DIVs on the page. Dreamweaver CS3’s preset CSS layouts create a series of DIVs containing placeholder text and basic formatting. The placeholder text, as well as the code underlying the page, both contain useful explanations of how the page has been constructed and a few tips on how to personalise them.

CSS works most efficiently when you can place all of your CSS code in one external file and link that file to each of your HTML pages. Dreamweaver CS3 still does not make it easy for inexperienced users to create CSS-based pages in this way. If the user creates ten web pages based on Dreamweaver’s preset CSS designs, each will have its own code embedded within the page itself. There is, however, a great feature for moving embedded code across to an external CSS file. You just select a series of CSS definitions, right-click and choose “Move CSS Rules” which is available in the “CSS Styles” section of the context menu.

Although this ability to move CSS around is really great, it’s not something that beginners will necessarily think of doing. It points to the fact that Dreamweaver could still do with a few enhancements to its implementation of CSS.

Another area where Dreamweaver still handles CSS inefficiently is the way in which it generates CSS class styles with names like “style1″, “style2″, etc. whenever the user applies attributes like font, size or colour to highlighted text. This must be really confusing for beginners and can easily be solved by simply removing these “raw” attributes and replacing them with CSS-friendly options.

The writer of this article is a developer and trainer with TrainingCompany.Com, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver training courses in London and throughout the UK.