![]() The precise control over HTML available when code is written by hand was (and often still is) seen as the only way to assure quality Web pages. ![]() WYSIWYG EditorsĬreating Web pages in a text editor was long considered the best method of building Web sites. See Chapter 9 to learn more about how Dreamweaver handles writing and editing code. In addition, Dreamweaver can open many other types of files commonly used in Web sites, such as external JavaScript files (.js files), so you don’t have to switch to another program to work on them.ĭreamweaver 8 adds a lot more hand-coding power, including tools to make editing and viewing code easier. ![]() Unlike many visual Web page programs, where making a change in the WYSIWYG mode stomps all over the underlying HTML code, Dreamweaver respects hand-typed code and doesn’t try to rewrite it (unless you ask it to). ![]() Switching back and forth between the visual mode-called the Design view-and the Code view is seamless and, best of all, nondestructive. In Dreamweaver, you can edit the raw HTML to your heart’s content. Macromedia realized that many professional Web developers still do a lot of work “in the trenches,” typing HTML code by hand. You may feel more comfortable creating some of your HTML by hand, for example, or you may want to tweak the HTML that Dreamweaver produces. Every now and then, even in Dreamweaver, you may sometimes want to put aside the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) view and look at the underlying HTML code of a page. Chapter 11 explains how you can use these behaviors (ready-made Java-Script programs in Dreamweaver) to bring your pages to life. While JavaScript can do amazing things, it requires time and practice to learn.īut Dreamweaver relieves you of having to learn JavaScript for these purposes the program makes it easy to add complex interactivity with just a click of the mouse. You’ve probably seen Web pages where a graphic (on a navigation bar, for example) lights up or changes appearance when you move your mouse over it.ĭynamic effects like this-mouse rollovers, alert boxes, and navigational popup menus-usually require programming in JavaScript, a programming language that most Web browsers understand. As in a word processor, which displays documents onscreen as they look when printed, Dreamweaver provides a very close approximation of what your Web page will look like in a Web browser.Ĭomplex interactivity, simply. If you put an image on your page, Dreamweaver shows you the picture on the screen. Not only is this approach prone to typos, but it also separates you from what you want the page to look like.ĭreamweaver, on the other hand, takes a visual approach to building Web pages. When your boss asks you to add her photo to the company home page, you launch your trusty text editor and type something like this. If you’ve spent any time using a text editor to punch out the HTML code for your Web pages, you know the tedium involved in adding even a simple item like a photograph to a Web page. While Dreamweaver has always prided itself on leaving the HTML code you write exactly as you wrote it, Dreamweaver 8 offers more features for hand-coded Web pages. Dreamweaver happily opens Web pages and Web sites that were created in other programs without destroying any of your carefully handcrafted code. If you’ve never used Dreamweaver before, but have already built one or more Web sites, you won’t have to start from scratch. Best of all, Dreamweaver 8 does the programming for you. You can even create Web pages for updating and deleting database records, meanwhile keeping designated areas of your site secure from unauthorized visitors. You can now turn your company’s database of products into a constantly updated online catalog-or turn that cherished recipe collection into an online culinary resource for an adoring public. It’s also a serious tool for creating dynamic (database-driven) Web sites. Dreamweaver 8 continues the trend started in MX 2004 of integrating advanced CSS creation and editing tools into Dreamweaver. It stands for Cascading Style Sheets, a formatting language used to design HTML Web pages. Get used to the acronym CSS, which you’ll encounter frequently in this book.
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