Dear Janine,

I’m a graphic designer here in Southern California and have been designing and (attempting) to create and publish websites for years. I absolutely couldn’t wait to dive into the Flash and DreamWeaver lessons. I spent the past weekend finishing up your DVDs and felt like I owed you a big thank you for what I learned in such a short time.

I have a question: I’ve worked on Photoshop since the early ’90s, and I’m very comfortable in that application. Is there anything that Fireworks offers that I can’t get from Photoshop? Also, in your opinion, is ColdFusion worth looking into?

Thank you for your time.
Chris

Hi, Chris,

Although Photoshop has many great Web-image optimization features built into it, Fireworks has a few added advantages in the slicing and exporting feature set. In general Photoshop is the more complex and advanced image editor overall, and Fireworks has a few features that make it slightly better for Web design.

That said, most designers seem quite happy with Photoshop, although I know a few professional Web designers who swear by Fireworks because they say it going back and forth between a design created in Fireworks and the page layouts in Dreamweaver is so easy. Fireworks seems especially popular among people who are working on many sites and appreciate the streamlined workflow you can get from using Fireworks and Dreamweaver together.

ColdFusion takes you to another level. If you’re relatively new to Web design, moving on to the kind of dynamic, database-driven sites you can create with ColdFusion can be a big step. In general, unless you have a really big site (100+ pages and growing) or you need many interactive features you want to be able to customize, you probably don’t need to take this step. But if you do want to create a dynamic site, ColdFusion is easier to use than some of the other options, such as PHP, JSP, or ASP.Net.

Hope that helps,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hello Janine,

I found your page online about Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. I’m in need of your assistance. I’m having trouble linking my pages and getting my images to view in the website. When I click on the first link, my logo doesn’t appear, and when I click on one of the buttons on the left, I receive the error message “Page Not Found.” Please let me know if you have any sugestions on what the problem is.

Thank you for your time,
Tphani

Hi, Tphani,

There are so many reasons why photos may not show up properly when you upload your Web site. It can be a bit tricky to find the problem sometimes, but one of the most common and easiest mistakes for beginners is to name your image files with spaces or special characters. Although they will work on a PC or Mac computer that way, most Web servers run on UNIX and they can’t handle spaces or special characters in filenames, so as soon as you upload the site, the image links break on the server.

If that’s not your problem, it may have to do with where your images are stored. You have to make sure that when you set links or insert images, they are in the same relative place on your hard drive as they will be on the server. The easiest way to ensure that is to save all your Web site files and images in a folder on your hard drive, and then upload the contents of that folder to your server when you’re ready to publish them. You can use sub-folders, such as an images folder for all your pictures; just make sure you copy your pictures into the right folder before you insert the image onto your page.

If you haven’t already defined your site in Dreamweaver, that’s a good place to start. Once you’ve identified the main root folder for your site, all of the files and images in your site should be stored in that folder. You’ll find instructions for how to define a site in Dreamweaver on my site at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver.

I hope that helps,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

I have seen most of your training for Dreamweaver from Total Training but cannot find any tutorials on creating “fly-out menus.” Can you please tell me if these can be created in Dreamweaver 8 and if you have any tutorials on the subject.

Thank you,
Ron

Hi Ron,

Dreamweaver 8 does not include any support for fly-out menus, but Dreamweaver CS3 does. Sorry to suggest you should upgrade, but you’ll find a fabulous new feature called the Spry menu in CS3 that makes it easy to create horizontal or vertical fly-out menus. (These are also called drop-down menus.)

If you want an idea of how this works, you’ll find a free tutorial on my Web site at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver. Reading through that tutorial and viewing the screenshots that go with it should give you an idea of how to do this in CS3 and why it might be worth upgrading if you want to add this feature to your site.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi,

First I want to thank you for your hard work in teaching people Web website design. I have watched the first DVD of your Adobe Dreamweaver Total Training and I have learned so much from it. But I have a question about the home page of the BBC website www.bbc.com, which has a feature of dragging and dropping of the boxes and repositioning them and I was wondering what program are they designed with?

Thanks again for your works….

Shanyar

Hi Shanyar,

Thank you for the kinds words about my video. The feature you describe on the BBC site is generally created by using a technology called AJAX. AJAX is a mix of CSS and JavaScript that can be used to create interactive features, such as boxes that can be repositioned (iGoogle.com has something similar).

Although creating movable boxes is advanced, even with Dreamweaver, you will find features in Dreamweaver that you can use to create drop-down menus and collapsible panels using AJAX.

You’ll find those features covered in my Advanced Dreamweaver CS3 Video from Total Training and you’ll find free written instructions for using AJAX and many other Dreamweaver features on my site www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver.

I wish you all the best with your Web design,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi Janine,

Bet you’ve seen this question before: Which do you prefer, Dreamweaver CS3 or MS Expression Web? I’m a novice, not by any means at the PC computer, but at web site design. I was given Dreamweaver CS3 and PhotoShop Extended CS3 and bought the “essentials” tutorials of both; then noticed the MS Expression video series at Total Training.Thanks. I enjoy your work. Am reading an article of yours in Layers. You are a gifted woman. Keep up the fine efforts.

Chris

Hi Chris,

Whether you use Dreamweaver or Expression Web is very much a personal choice. They are similar programs (at least compared to Dreamweaver vs. FrontPage) and both have much to offer.

Here are two things to consider as you make your decision. Dreamweaver is a more mature program than Expression Web. It’s been around for many years, was upgraded with the new CS3 version to feature even better CSS support, and Dreamweaver is by far the top choice among professional Web designers.

That said, Expression Web is a major improvement over FrontPage, it offers good CSS support, follows standards better than FrontPage ever did, and shows great promise. If you generally prefer Microsoft products or work with a developer who uses Visual Studio to create ASP.NET, you may also find some advantages in compatibility with Expression Web.

As for my videos, I’ve created videos on both programs for Total Training including Dreamweaver Essentials, Advanced Dreamweaver, and a short video designed to help GoLive users make the transition to Dreamweaver, as well as Expression Web Essentials, Advanced Expression Web, and a short vidoe to help FrontPage users make the transition to Expression Web.

Whichever program you use, I wish you all the best and I’m pleased know that my articles have been helpful to you,

Janine

Hello Janine,

I really appreciate your teaching skills in Total Training for Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. Thank you for helping people like me learn Web design!

I am designing a site for someone who wants to make frequent text updates on a page. How can I set them up to make the updates from within the Web site, similar to a blog (they don’t know Dreamweaver)?

Can you help me?

Thank you,
Rebekah

Hi Rebekah,

Thank you for your kind words about my video.

By using the most advanced features in Dreamweaver to create a dynamic site with PHP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, or a similar technology, you can create a Web interface so someone can update your site the way they’d update a blog. But I have to warn you, this is a complex way to create a Web site. Blogs make it seem easy, but the underlying technology that makes blogs work is quite complex to create.

An alternative exists, however, that may solve your problem with much less effort and still make things easy for your friend to update the text on the site: consider using Adobe Contribute. This program is much less expensive than Dreamweaver and designed to make it easy for anyone to “contribute” to a Web site created with Dreamweaver. You can learn more at www.adobe.com/products/contribute/.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi Janine,

Thanks for the awesome Dreamweaver videos on Total Training. And thanks for being accessible to us.

You said in the video that with rollovers on a site, the yellow alert bar will show up on Internet Explorer. Can this be prevented? I don’t want my visitors to feel cautious on my site, especially the first second they arrive.

Thanks,
Russ
Atlanta, GA

Hi Russ,

There’s no easy way to prevent the alert bar, but here’s the saving grace. If all you’ve done is create a rollover image, it should only show up when you are viewing the pages locally on your own computer. That’s because Microsoft considers scripts running on your computer to be a greater potential threat. So, the good news is that once you’ve uploaded your Web pages and view them online, you shouldn’t see that warning anymore, and neither should your visitors.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi Janine,

First of all – I don’t blame you if you delete this email and I never hear back but I just had to take a stab at it! I have benefited so much from your Dreamweaver 8 training so thanks again. I have upgraded to CS3 and it has gone well. I have created my website complete with template and style sheets. On my template I have one editable region with the properties defined in my style sheet. The challenge is this: in Contribute the align text options are grayed out for my editors and I am certain it’s because I have applied a style sheet but I can’t figure out a workaround. Can you point me in the right direction with this bit of info? If only to tell me it can work and keep looking, that would help at this point! I would even promise to buy your new book or CS3 training!

Thanks in advance for anything!

Thomas
Christ Memorial Church and Schools

Hi Thomas,

I never delete emails like yours, but it does sometimes take me a few days to get around to answering them… I’m not an expert on these details of Contribute (although you’ve made me curious enough I may go test it out myself). I suspect you may have a problem because the styles are controlled by the style sheet, which is attached to the template and not available for edit from Contribute… Maybe that will help you find the problem and if you do find an answer, I’d love to know about it.

I wish you all the best with your Web site,
Janine

Thanks Janine!

I did find it and it was DEEP in my style sheet. I had created an editable region and associated a style sheet, but the problem was located in the body section of my template and it was in that style sheet that I defined the attributes of the text. Your advice kept me digging deeper! Thanks a million and I have added your tutorials to my fav’s.

You are terrific!

Thomas

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi Janine,

I have viewed Total Training for Dreamweaver CS3 and enjoyed your tutorials.

I viewed your tutorial on image swapping. I am interested in swapping an image for a small Flash movie. Can this be done and if so, what is the best way? I edited the video in Premiere Pro CS3 and exported it to a .flv file. I can create the movie (.swf file) in Flash CS3, but I’m not sure how to make it work in Dreamweaver.

As you can probably tell, I am a novice. Thanks in advance for any suggestions and taking the time to read this email.

Bob

Hi Bob,

Thanks for watching my video. If you just want to have a still image appear before the video starts playing, the simplest solution is to add the still image as a frame to your FLV file so that it displays before the video is watched. You’d add the frame in your video editor, export the FLV file, and then insert the file into your site by using Dreamweaver.

On my Web site, you’ll find written instructions for adding Flash and Flash video files (note they are different) – at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi,

I made a web page copying your methods for a Robin Eschner page and then saved it as a template including a .dwt suffix. I put it in a template folder. When I opened it to use it to make another page it previews fine, but it opens with all the content, but as though there is no formatting at all. The navigation bar, for example, has returned to a bulleted list. The code is visible, but is not in bold lettering.

Might you have any idea of what I have done wrong?

Thank you, Margaret

Hi Margaret,

It sounds like you’ve somehow broken the link to the style sheet. From what you report, I assume you created an external style sheet and that it’s somehow gotten detached from the pages created from the templates. Templates have special link settings that must adapt to wherever the new page is created.

I suggest you open the template file you’re using to create the new pages. Attach the style sheet to the template (if it’s already there, delete it and reattach it). Save the template and update all of the pages created from it. Then check the page you created to see if the styles are back.

If you get the styles back with your design, all of the formatting should return at once.

If that still doesn’t work, you may have to start reviewing the different style settings one by one to restore them.

I wish you all the best with your Web site,
Janine

Hi Again,

Thank you for responding so quickly. I agree that some how I have broken the connection to the CSS styles. I did not put them in a separate sheet. The CSS styles are internal to the document. I am sending you the code for the template (.dwt) which appears fine and has all styles applied and second the code for a page that I started using the template. In this second batch of code the CSS is lost for some reason.

Thanks for any help you can provide.
Margaret

The problem is not in the details of the CSS, Margaret, but in how they are being displayed when you create new pages.

Make sure that you are not “opening” the template to create new pages, but using the File > New > Create from Template option to create new pages generated from the template.

I also strongly recommend that you save your styles in an external CSS file so that they can be attached to all of the pages created from the template. This will save you having the same list of styles in multiple pages and make it easier and more efficient to add more styles or edit them later.

Hope that helps,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.