This is my first op on Mouthshut, so forgive me if I offend anyone, because I've just ploughed straight in.
The days when the mobile telephone was the ultimate status symbol have long since gone. These days, the thing you have to have if you're in with the In Crowd is a website (and a domain name if you can stir your stumps) and if you're serious about building your own site, then you will undoubtedly have happened upon the subject of this evening's op from the skilful pen of the opinion writer laureate, dave27. What DO you mean, ''What am I talking about?'' You know it's gotta be the weaver of dreams.
This splendid series of application programs is now up to version 4, but I thought I'd offer my thoughts on version 3, which is what I use.
Dreamweaver is a surprisingly easy to use website development tool which allows you to build a page in much the same way that you would write a Word document which includes graphics, and then the program develops the HTML (hypertext markup language) code on which the website is built automatically. You never need to know how to write HTML yourself (although there are advantages if you can edit the code) and I can't emphasis strongly enough how extremely easy and intuitive this all is.
There is, of course, one extremely bad aspect of the DW experience, however, and that, as nearly everyone will be able to tell you is the price. A new copy of Dreamweaver on its own will run you nearly £270 including VAT, while a package with the Macromedia graphics design program would stack up at around 400 notes.
You undoubtedly get extremely good programs for that money, but it's an awful lot of dough to shell out if you just want to mess about and design a few web pages. Conversely if you want to get into websites in a big way or even professionally then DW is virtually mandatory and you can't manage without it. So it's a case of you pays your money, you takes your choice.
Version 3 came to the market around March 2000, which was a couple of years after the first version of DW saw the light of the day and it served to bolster Macromedia's monopoly of the high end web authoring market. PC Pro's write up of the new version was fairly typical of the reviews at the time: ''For Web professionals and enthusiasts alike, Dreamweaver has been a godsend ever since its introduction. The way it balanced design and layout elements with an elegant interface and a comprehensive set of useful tools has secured it a place on PC Pro's A List ever since.''
The hype in this particular case is thoroughly merited and I have to say that DW3 is extremely good for both novice and professional alike, as it combines extreme simplicity and ease of use with extremely powerful and flexible features.
I cut my teeth on DW2 and learned (in my bumbling, shambolic way) how to design rudimentary, rough and ready web pages with that particular package, which I had as a trial version from one of the freebie disks you get on the PC mags. After the 30 day trial had ended, I was so absolutely dependent on the package that I immediately went and laid out the necessary to get my sticky mitts on version 3 and found it truly indispensable and very made to measure.
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Just a quick note before we go any further - when I started producing web pages using DW3, I just slung a load of layers slapdash on the canvas, but quickly got to know that though it may look fine and dandy to you on the monitor you designed it on, it can look a really amateurish mess on other monitors or other browsers. One trick you need to learn to make sure the pages come out in the way that you intended is the judicious and well planned organisation of tables to keep your material set out how you want them to look.
DW3 is extremely good at manipulating tables, allowing you to merge and demerge cells exactly how you wish and using nested tables allows you to ensure everything stays exactly where you intended. It's a bit fiddly at first and you need to think about what you are doing, but a little pre-planning is well worth the effort.
Okay, back to the script.....
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When you open the Dreamweaver package, it closely resembles a graphics package in both style and feel, and once you get used to how everything works, it is probably even easier to use.
There are two interface views - the first is the Site View and the main one is the Design View (tricky stuff this!). The Site View gives an excellent graphical display showing how all the pages link together and relate and is good for keeping an overview of how your site is organised. I have to say that I have never really gotten into using this view and have done all my work in the Design View. It hasn't done me any harm, so rest assured that if you want to, you can get along just fine with just the one interface.
When you first open the Design View, at first it looks EXTREMELY CONFUSING and COMPLICATED, in common with many of the graphics packages. It has a multitude of windows and tools palettes and unless you can get them organised properly, you can get a very fussy and ugly looking desktop where it's difficult to understand what it all means.
The key palette you need to know about is the object properties window, which allows you to do all stuff like formatting, picture descriptions, URL links, alternate text for your images, etc and if you use it properly this is a great helper with productivity.
The way you set up the pages is by the use of layers, and as I've said already the best way to ensure control is the use of tables, so I normally just open one layer, which I anchor at the top left hand corner of the page and then insert a table into it.
If you need to insert an image you just Insert Image at the appropriate location, remembering of course that the image will have to be located in the site folder along with the pages. You also need to remember that all the file names need to be completely lower case as capital letters pay absolute havoc with Dreamweaver. One key tip for decent organisations is to dump all your image files in a separate sub folder in your main site file and this can help productivity significantly.
To insert text anywhere, all you do is simply type.
Another immensely productive tool is the template. You can set up a template and base all the pages in your site upon it in order to ensure a standard look and feel for your site. This can save you an awful lot of time, particularly if you're setting up a lot of pages, but you need to bear in mind that you won't be able to vary the page title, description, keywords and meta tags between different pages without detaching them first from the template. Oh well, a small price to pay for such great productivity, but you will probably come to curse this particular issue.
DW3 is excellent for setting up frame based sites, but again I have to say that I've never been fond of frames and normally stick to flat pages.
DW3 also gives you the facility to edit the HTML code itself so if you're an experienced programmer, you can make it look even more exactly how you want. There is also the option to customise the menus and overall set up if you're of the inclination, although that's always been a step too far for me.
Okay, those are the main features and facilities you get with DW2. Now, how good is it?
Well, let me tell you, it's BLOODY EXCELLENT, very flexible, powerful and well designed and yet at the same time VERY SIMPLE TO USE once you understand the basic principles and key features. This one gets one of those ultimate dave27 seals of excellence that denotes a best of breed product.
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