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Dreamweaver & CSS help/tutorials.

Does anyone know of any tutorials on Dreamweaver MX, video preferred or standard text is just as good? I need to brush up on my skills in order make an online portfolio. Anything that’ll re-teach me the basics so I can navigate myself around the program with ease. Also, general stuff like setting up/managing the layout, site management…etc. I need to know how to make a image rollover and managing frames always gets me confused.

Any direction in where to look would be appreciated.

Also, what is the easiest/simplest type of code that gets the best results? HTML, CSS or another code. I hear that CSS is the way to go. You just worry about site content and it manages the layout itself, but what does this mean and how would it effect my design. (I can explain it it necessary)

Many thanks.

CSS compliments HTML it does not replace it entirely. CSS gives you more control over how the page is rendered, it also removes the need for a lot of redundant HTML code. Example:
Straight HTML

Code:

<font color="#000066" size="-1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Line 1</font><br>

<font color="#000066" size="-1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Line 2</font><br>

<font color="#000066" size="-1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Line 3</font>

The above is 3 lines of text with font attributes specified in HTML now imagine that throughout an entire site and you can see what i mean about redundancy, not only that but if you need to come back and change the font type or size at a later date its a pain in the ass.

Heres the same thing in HTML using CSS

Code:

<style type="text/css">

<!--

.medium-text-example {

        font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

        font-size: 12px;

        color: #000066;

}

-->

</style>

</head>



<body>

<div align="left" class="medium-text-example">Line 1</div>

<div align="left" class="medium-text-example">Line 2</div>

<div align="left" class="medium-text-example">Line 3</div>

Now you can update all the text on that page, by simply changing the properties of .medium-text-example. If you save your CSS as its own file and link it to all the pages in your site like so

Code:

<link href="/main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

When you update the CSS file the entire site will change.

You may also redefine entire HTML tags with CSS, say you wanted to use Verdana throughout all the text in your site, with out the need to apply styles to every scrap of text this does so

Code:

body {

        font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

}

Or how about Verdana for the body text, and Times New Roman for all the table cells. Also simple.

Code:

body {

        font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

}

td {

        font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif;

}

This will save you a lot of work when it comes to designing and updating your site.

Try a search for CSS basics on google you will turn up loads of material. The above examples should give you enough incentive to want to go look it up.

Forget rollover images, as for frames they can come in handy in certain circumstances but in 100s of designs I've probably made one page that uses them. Try if possible to get your site done without them, same goes for iframes and such, only use them if you have to.

David :)

oh one other thing if your just starting out to a large extent its much easier to create a fixed width site (stick all the content in one big fixed width table). Try and keeps your designs free of scrolling text, fade outs ec cetera. Keep it as simply as possible and spend as much time on the navigation as you do on making it look nice, most people fall down with this, the site looks good but you cant find **** all on it. The first simply Maya went the way of all things because it looked nice but people just couldn't find anything on it. Don't use anything that flashes or beeps or plays annoying midi files. Try and avoid Java applets unless you really need then. Basically just keep it simple.

Any questions just ask.

David.

Cheers for the info. I found a site called W3Schools.com, there loads of stuff in there and mako4css.com should get me started. I’ve used Dreamweaver before, about 4 years ago at school and Go Live at college around a year and a half ago so I’m not a total beginner to HTML, but am gonna start as one to make things easier.

I do have another more simpler design, which i may use first and work on the main one after. Time isn’t a problem as I first gonna have some decent work to fill it :p, so I have plenty to time to learn and play.

Thank again :)