Dreamweaver Training Can Be Interactive
When it comes to computer learning, people tend to be more receptive to interactive training methods and ways of doing things. With this in mind, imagine trying to read an entire book on how to use Adobe Dreamweaver.
Now imagine trying to remember everything you read in the book and then having to cross-reference it multiple times while using the program. Luckily, there is there is a better way than textbook education for learning programs like Adobe Dreamweaver. Better results can be obtained through video training programs which offer interactive techniques and a hands-on teaching approach to learning Adobe Dreamweaver.
Adobe Dreamweaver video training software can be a great asset to your business or, indeed, to your personal knowledge. It doesn’t matter if you’re learning how to use Dreamweaver for your job, personal use, or for your professional career. Everybody has a more fun, more productive time by learning the program via interactive training. This is because interactive video training allows you to see firsthand what you’ll experience when you actually use the program. You can check out all of the different parts of the interface and get a walkthrough of each different aspect of the software. Most people find it much more useful than any textbook information.
Interactive videos can make learning Adobe Dreamweaver a much more pleasant experience for you, your employees, or your students. There are so many ways of using Dreamweaver that the types of users that benefit from interactive video training are seemingly endless. You may be a professional web designer looking to add to your resume, or you may just be someone who wants to build a website with a really cool program. Adobe Dreamweaver can be learned and used by anyone, for any reason, as long as they have the right training. Hands-on learning is always going to be much more effective, though, because you can see and experience the product first-hand. This means you’ll know better what you’re doing when it is time to use the program yourself.
Everybody learns a lot better by example than by simply being given information. For years, it has been a proven fact both with children and adults, that learning is simply more easy when the information is shown rather than told. It doesn’t matter if you’re learning Adobe Dreamweaver professionally or for pleasure. If you want to make the most of this great piece of software, you need to take the time to experience interactive software training instead of just reading books. The results you will obtain will be much more impressive, and you will become a more skillful user in the end.
Author’s company runs public courses in ASP.NET 3.5 in London and throughout the UK.
Dreamweaver CS4’s HTML Properties Inspector
Dreamweaver’s Properties Inspector is normally displayed at the bottom of the screen and is extremely versatile. It is context sensitive, in that it displays options which are relevant to the currently selected item. These options provide useful feedback and allow you to modify the attributes of the selected element.
The Properties inspector has two different sets of options: HTML and CSS. These may be accessed by clicking on two buttons on the left of the panel. When formatting text, the HTML section contains options which allow you to assign structural attributes to your text. From the Format drop-down menu, you can specify whether the text is a heading (h1, h2, h3, etc.) or a paragraph (p). In the ID box, you have the option of assigning a unique ID to the item which could then be used in CSS or JavaScript to reference the item.
The drop-down menu labelled “Class” displays any CSS classes which have been defined either within the current HTML page or in a linked external CSS file. These classes or styles can be applied to the selected text simply by choosing one of their names. If an entire paragraph or heading is selected, Dreamweaver will associate the class with the heading or paragraph tag. Thus, your code will read, for example, ‘ p class=”greenpara” ‘. If, on the other hand, only section of a paragraph is selected, Dreamweaver will surround the selected text inside a SPAN element and attach the class to it. Thus, your code will read ‘ span class=”greenpara” ‘.
Below the Class drop-down is the link box, which allows you to convert the selected text into a hyperlink. Dreamweaver offers a variety of methods for creating the link. Thus, for example, if the link is to an external website, you can simply enter the entire URL into the link box. If you are linking to one of your own pages, one of the fastest techniques is to use the Point to File button. Simply drag the Point to File icon onto any page listed in your Files panel and Dreamweaver will create a link to it.
The HTML section of the Properties tab also features buttons for Bold and Italic. These cause Dreamweaver to surround the selected text with the strong and em (short for emphasis) elements, respectively. The default rendering for strong is normally bold, in modern browsers, and for em, italic.
The Unordered List button converts the selected text into a bulleted list; while Order List converts the text into a numbered list. The Text Outdent and Text Indent buttons can be used to promote and demote elements within lists, thus enabling you to create nested lists. If the selected text is not a list item, clicking the Text Indent button converts it into a blockquote element.
Author conducts Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 training courses and HTML/XHTML training all over the United Kingdom.
Typical Rookie Errors Made By New Users Of QuarkXPress
If you have recently started using QuarkXPress, you may well find yourself making some of the errors outlined in this article. Take a moment to read through our top beginner pitfalls and spare yourself a little frustration in getting to grips with your new software.
When you create a new project in QuarkXPress, the New Document window appears. Users new to QuarkXPress will often create a new project and click OK without taking the slightest notice of the settings in the New Project dialogue. Quark keeps the settings from the last project you created. If these are unsuitable for the document you are about to create, adjust the page size, orientation, margin and column guides as needed.
Having set margins when creating a new project, many new QuarkXPress users will still feel inclined to place their text and picture boxes inside the margin guides, leaving an extra outer space. Remember, the blue outline correspond to the margin guides not the edges of the page. Normally, the edges of your text boxes will need to be positioned on the margin rather then inside them.
There are two main ways of aligning elements on a QuarkXPress page: ruler guides and measurements. Most new QuarkXPress users are seduced by the ease with which guides can be created (just drag them onto the page from either the horizontal or vertical ruler) and end up with a page covered in these green guides. Guides are very useful but it is often just as easy to change the X and Y measurements of elements. Making the X measurements the same aligns left edges, Y aligns top edges. The measurements window will also perform basic calculations for you. For example, to double the gap to the left of a text box, just tye “*2″ (i.e. multiplied by 2) after the current X value and press Enter.
When using QuarkXPress, it’s often the case that you want to align a new element with something that’s already on the page and, if you are fond of using guides for alignment, you will probably drag a guide onto one of the edges of the existing element and then snap the new element to the guide. Bear in mind when you do this, however, that only the second element is actually properly aligned with the guide, since dragging a guide close to an object doesn’t snap the object to the guide; only the reverse is true. To have both elements correctly aligned, you will need to also snap the first element to the guide.
When you create a new project in QuarkXPress, you will notice an option marked “Automatic Text Box”. This feature is designed to be used with long documents consisting mainly of text. It’s not really meant to be used for short documents or documents consisting of only one page.
The automatic text box feature is great for long documents. However, you will often see QuarkXPress users activating this option when creating short documents or even documents consisting of a single page. They make the assumption that all the feature does is to save them the trouble of creating a text box. In fact, if the text box ever becomes filled with text (which can easily happen as you experiment with different text formats), a new page is immediately generated and your single page document becomes a two page document.
Users new to QuarkXPress will often develop a strange fascination with the text box tool and try to assign it powers that it doesn’t in fact possess! For example, they will attempt to edit text by selecting the text box tool and clicking on the text. In fact, the only thing the text box tool can do is to actually create the text box in the first place. Thereafter, the content tool should be used for entering and editing the text.
You will also often see new users attempting to edit text or move a picture inside a picture box when the Item tool is highlighted. This is a non-starter since the contents of a box can only be edited with the content tool. Admittedly, most users will eventually realise this if only through trial and error.
Another common Item/Content tool error is that new users will often insist on selecting the Item tool when resizing a box: in fact, resizing works fine regardless of whether the Content or Item tool is selected.
QuarkXPress novices also tend to create far more text boxes than they need to. The worst error people will make is to create a separate box for each different style of text. In actual fact, you can put as many different formats as you like in a single Quark text box. You only need separate text boxes for items which have no direct relation to each other within the layout or which require conflicting text box attributes. So if some of your text is spans two columns and another bit spans one column, you will clearly need to boxes.
Focusing on the box rather than the content is another basic error made by inexperienced QuarkXPress users. Unless the user specifies otherwise, QuarkXPress text and picture boxes do not print. Only their contents will actually print. However, many users insist on carefully vertically centring the text within a box forgetting that, to all intents and purposes, there is no box there. The solution to this one is F7 (a shortcut for View – Guides) which hides margin and ruler guides as well as the frame normally shown around text and picture boxes.
The The writer of this article is a training consultant with OnSiteTrainingCourses.Coms, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Illustrator Classes at their central London training centre.
Tips For Making Text Selections In Microsoft Word
Before you can edit or format a block of text in Microsoft Word 2007, you need to select it. Selecting the text is a way of telling Word that you want to work with a certain piece of text. (Selecting is also referred to as Highlighting.)
The most straightforward way of highlighting text is to position the cursor where you want to start highlighting, click and hold the mouse button down and drag to the position where you want the highlight to end. It is not essential to drag across every single line that you want to highlight. It’s sufficient to move the mouse in a straight line from the start to the finish. To deselect your text and get rid of the highlight, click anywhere in the text. The blinking cursor will then reappear.
Highlighting entire lines
Another way of highlighting text is to click multiple times. To highlight a word, double-click on the word. To highlight an entire paragraph, click three times on the paragraph. To highlight the entire document, click three times in the left margin.
Highlighting complete lines of text
As well as highlighting characters by dragging across them, Word also allows you to select lines of text. To do this, position the cursor in the left margin and you’ll notice that the cursor changes to an arrow pointing to the right. Once the cursor has changed, you can simply click to select a single line or click, hold down the mouse button and drag to select several lines.
Multiple clicks
Another simple way of highlighting text is to select the entire document. This is done with the Select All command. In Microsoft Word 2007 the Select All command is found in the Editing group of the Home Tab of the Ribbon. Click to obtain the drop-down menu; click on Select and then choose Select All. The Select All command is found in lots of programs and lots of environments. It can also be accessed via the keyboard using Control-a: that is to say, hold down the Control key while typing the letter “a”.
The author is a training consultant with a UK IT training company offering Microsoft Word 2007 training courses, as well as Word VBA training in London and throughout the UK.
Customizing Adobe Dreamweaver CS4’s Preview In Browser Settings
When working on your web pages in Adobe Dreamweaver, you constantly need to check them in a web browser. To make this process smoother, Dreamweaver allows you to configure several browsers for previewing your pages. You can specify which browser is your primary, or main, browser; you can then elect a secondary browser and as many further browsers as you want.
Naturally, the first step is to make sure that the browser software is installed on your computer. Next, to specify your preferred browser, go to the Edit menu and choose Preferences. (This is the Windows location of Dreamweaver Preferences: on a Macintosh, go to the Dreamweaver menu and choose Preferences.)
The various types of Preferences are displayed on the left of the window. Click on the Preview in Browser section. If you already have a browser configured as your primary browser, and possibly another as your secondary, you may wish to change these. To do so, simply click on the appropriate checkboxes to specify which is primary and which is secondary.
To add other browsers, just click on the plus sign (+), navigate to the browser software and double-click to open it. You can repeat this procedure as many times as you need to.
To preview a page using one of your configured browsers, use the Preview icon (the globe). This is located on the Document toolbar which is normally displayed at the top of the document window. From the Preview drop-down menu, choose the browser that you’d like to use. You can also make use of the keyboard shortcuts: to preview using your primary browser, Shift-F12 on Windows or option-F12 on a Macintosh; to preview using the secondary browser, Control-F12 on Windows or Command-F12 on a Macintosh. Alternatively, you can simply choose the name of any other browser.
Having looked at the preview, to return to Dreamweaver, simply close the browser window.
It is also possible that sometimes you’d like to preview pages without saving the changes you’ve made to your document. Dreamweaver makes this easy but, first, let’s have a look at what normally happens when you preview a file that has been modified.
Dreamweaver throws up a dialogue box asking us if we’d like to save the changes. If you choose “No”, it gives us a preview of the last version that you saved rather than the version that you’re currently working on, If we choose “Yes”, Dreamweaver saves your changes before previewing the file. This can often be inconvenient, since you may not be ready to save your changes.
If you’d like to be able to preview a file at any time without saving your changes, return to your Browser Preview category of Dreamweaver’s Preferences and activate the option “Preview Using Temporary File”. When this option is activated, Dreamweaver will create a temporary file containing the latest version of your document and then opens it in the browser. When the browser window opens, you will notice that the file name does not correspond to the name of your document it a temporary file name generated by Dreamweaver.
The writer of this article 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.
Build Website Faster With Adobe Dreamweaver Templates
Adobe Dreamweaver templates are one of the most powerful development aids that the program contains. Basically, a template is a master design which can be copied repeatedly to generate an limitless number of web pages each one containing the same shared elements. Obviously, each time the template generates a new page, the page can be customised and the requisite elements added to it to make it unique. This is achieved by a technique of locked page regions and editable regions.
When the template is applied to a page, locked regions cannot be modified. (You have to return to the template to alter them.) Only the areas of the page designated as editable regions can have content added to them.
To create an editable region on the template, you simply position the cursor in the desired part of the layout and choose Insert – Template Objects – Editable Region. Enter a name for the region and click OK. One frequent problem experienced by new users of Dreamweaver is the accidental placement of and editable region inside a heading or paragraph tag. This means that when the template is applied to a page, only text can be placed in the editable region. To fix this problem, return to the template, click in the editable region and examine the Tag Selector on the left of the Status bar. Having located the offending tag (usually h1, h2, p, etc.), right-click on it and choose Remove Tag from the context menu.
To apply a template to a page that already exists, open the page and choose Modify – Templates – Apply Template to Page. Next, double-click on the name of the template you wish to apply to the page. Strangely enough, there is no Dreamweaver command that enables you to apply a template to several pages at once. However, here are two suggestions for applying a template to multiple pages reasonably quickly.
Begin by selecting multiple pages in the Files panel using the classic techniques of Shift-click or Control-click (Command-click on a Mac). Then, you can right-click one of the selected files and choose Open from the context menu to open all of them. Next, activate the Assets panel (Window – Assets) and click on the Templates button (the second icon from the bottom). Finally, drag the icon of the required template onto each of the open pages. To speed up the process, use Control-Tab to switch from page to page.
To create a brand new page based on a template, choose New from the File menu and, when the New Document window appears, select the Page From Template option, click on the site that contains the template (It should already be highlighted.), then choose the template. To get the most benefit from a template, before clicking the Create button, make sure that the option “Update Page When Template Changes” is activated.
The Author of this article is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver Classes in London and throughout the UK.
How To Create And Distribute Acrobat 9 Forms
One of the many uses of PDF documents is to provide us with a way for people to harvest information via an interactive form. Adobe Acrobat has some nifty features for creating such forms, distributing them and tracking responses.
The PDF format is a great option for forms since it will allow the user to see the form exactly as it was created. Web forms, by contrast, can vary depending on the operating system and browser software being used.
There is moreover immediacy and flexibility of distribution. The form can be emailed to a collection of users at the same time. The distribution of the form then becomes a single process. PDF forms can also be distributed via CDs and DVDs.
The capacity to create forms has long been a feature of Adobe Acrobat. However, Acrobat 9 Professional takes form creation to a new level in terms of effortlessness and cleverness.
Acrobat 9 has traditionally been a “magpie” application, relying on other applications to create all of its content. Now, however, forms can be produced in Acrobat based on a wide variety of pre-created templates: Invoices, timesheet, expenses etc.
As with previous versions of Acrobat, forms created in other packages can be used as the starting point for an Acrobat form. Adobe Acrobat will even automatically recognise the form layout and generate form fields automatically.
You can also utilize a printed form as the basis for an interactive PDF form. Simply choose the Scan From Paper option when creating the brand new form.
Once you have the fundamental form created, you can add in all the standard form controls. In addition to text fields, PDF forms support combo boxes, option buttons, checkboxes and, of course, submit buttons.
One more great feature in Acrobat 9 is to create a form which allows Acrobat Reader users to save form data when they have filled in the form. (This feature is normally only available with a full version of Acrobat.) To activate this facility, just choose “Enable Usage Rights in Acrobat Reader” from the “Advanced” menu.
To send off the form to group of recipients via email, simply choose “Distribute Form” from the “Form” menu. A Microsoft Outlook address book can be used to generate a mailing list or you can just type or paste in a list of recipients.
Returned forms are saved inside a special Acrobat file known as a dataset. When users complete the form and email it back to you, you simply click twice on the attached form. Acrobat 9 opens a special window marked “Add Completed Form to Data Set”.
Once all the forms have been returned and the data added to the dataset, you just open the dataset and export it as a CSV (comma separated values) file. This format is compatible with programs like Microsoft Excel 2007 and Access which can subsequently be used to store and analyse responses to your forms.
The writer of this article is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Acrobat Classes in London and throughout the UK.
Creating Dynamic Web Sites Using Adobe Dreamweaver
Hardly any people would argue that Adobe Dreamweaver is one of the most widely used web development packages around. It has gained its popularity by appealing to users with a broad variety of profiles. Its user-friendly interface appeals to inexperienced users with a small amount awareness of the technologies that underpin web pages. At the same time, it allows practiced web developers to interact with code in a variety of constructive ways.
Adobe Dreamweaver enables developers to create dynamic web sites whose content is derived from a data source. Such sites feature server-side pages, written in a scripting language such as PHP, ASP or ASP.Net, which need to be executed on the server. It is therefore crucial to stipulate a testing server as part of the site setup while defining such sites within Dreamweaver.
A Microsoft invention, Active Server Pages (ASP) is one of the easiest such languages to configure. Now referred to as classic ASP to distinguish it from ASP.Net, the current incarnation of Active Server Pages, ASP was initially released in the late nineties and revolutionised the way in which web sites were developed. ASP is designed to run on Windows 2000 server and on Windows XP Professional. It is part of Internet Information Services (IIS), an optional Windows component. Once installed, IIS converts your PC into a web server running a default website located in a folder called “wwwroot” which can be accessed with the web address “localhost/”.
Once ASP is up and running, Adobe Dreamweaver is equipped to start creating dynamic web sites. The features on hand in Dreamweaver for generating the necessary server-side content are to be found in three panels: Databases, Bindings and Server Behaviors. The Databases panel is used to create connections to data sources. In the case of ASP, the most frequent solutions are Microsoft Access and the more powerful Microsoft SQL Server. As soon as a connection to the database is in place, the Bindings panel is used to retrieve data into a recordset. The dialogue box which Adobe Dreamweaver uses for creating recordsets automatically generates fragments of SQL as the user interacts with the related data objects. However, some familiarity with SQL (structured query language) is needed to be able to retrieve specifically the data necessary for a given recordset.
The Server Behaviours panel is where nearly all of the action takes place: It contains a wide variety of pre-built scripts which can be used to add dynamic content to web pages. For example, the Insert Record server behaviour can be used to create a form which adds new records to a database table via a web page or it can be used to create an enquiries sheet which adds every enquiry to an enquires table and afterward takes the visitor to a thank you page.
The Author of this article 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.
The Best New Additions To Dreamweaver CS4’s List Of Features
Dreamweaver’s New Related Files facility
HTML is a fairly limited environment which relies on files created with other technologies to add functionality to web pages. Typical examples of related files are server-side includes, CSS, JavaScript and XML. Dreamweaver now includes a feature called “Related Files” which enables you to edit the content of such files, without having to open them separately, and to instantly see the effect of your changes on the main file.
In Dreamweaver CS4, the Property Inspector contains buttons which allow you to switch between HTML and CSS options. When working in the CSS options, you can now target a specific CSS rule before choosing an attribute or, if necessary, create a new rule.
Additions to Dreamweaver’s Spry Widgets
There have been some nice new additions to the Spry form validation widgets. The Spry Validation Password widget allows you to specify the minimum and maximum number of characters, numbers, uppercase and special characters which can be included in the password entered. The Spry Validation Confirm widget checks that the entries in two fields are identical and displays a customizable error is they are not. This makes it ideal for creating “Password/Confirm Password” or “Email/Confirm Email” functionality.
Photoshop images are can be inserted using the same techniques as inserting any other image file: Insert – Image; dragging from the Files panel; dragging from the Assets panel; or using the Insert toolbar. A Photoshop-style Optimise window automatically appears and you can choose the settings appropriate for that particular image usually GIF, JPEG or PNG.
Once the image has been imported, an icon is displayed in the upper left of the image indicating that it is a smart object. Also, in the Property Inspector, the location of the original PSD file is shown in a box marked “Original”.
HTML is a notoriously sparse environment which relies on files created with other technologies to add functionality to web pages. Typical examples of related files are server-side includes, CSS, JavaScript and XML. Dreamweaver now includes a feature called “Related Files” which enables you to edit the content of such files, without having to open them separately, and to instantly see the effect of your changes on the main file.
Whenever you open a file which contains linked files, Dreamweaver displays each of the linked files in the Related Files Bar. To access a related file just click on its name. If you make any changes to a related file and asterisk appears next to its name in the Related Files Bar to remind you to save your changes. When you do, the impact of the changes is immediately visible in the main file.
HTML is a notoriously sparse environment which relies on files created with other technologies to add functionality to web pages. Typical examples of related files are server-side includes, CSS, JavaScript and XML. Dreamweaver now includes a feature called “Related Files” which enables you to edit the content of such files, without having to open them separately, and to instantly see the effect of your changes on the main file.
The Photoshop integration which was begun in Dreamweaver CS3 has been enhanced in CS4 to offer via the use of Adobe’s Smart Objects technology. A Photoshop file can be imported directly into Dreamweaver and will automatically come in as a smart object.
New ways to edit CSS
The Property Inspector can be used to change the attributes of any element you select on an HTML page. In previous versions of Dreamweaver, changing the attributes of highlighted text would cause the program to create CSS classes with names like “Style1″, “Style2″, etc. in the head area of the current page. This random creation of styles was often responsible for getting new web developers into bad habits.
The fact that the image is a smart object means that if we resize it in Dreamweaver, it will automatically be re-optimised and a new version of the image will be generated with the new dimensions. (In previous versions, resizing an image would mean that the browser was responsible for resizing leading to poor image quality.
The author is a trainer and developer with TrainingCompany.Com, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver Classes at their central London training centre.
Excel In-house Training Should Be Customized To Meet Your Specific Requirements
One of the pivotal components of the Microsoft Office 2007, Excel is a uniquely powerful spreadsheet. If you bought this sophisticated piece of software, it makes sense to ensure that your staff members know how to use it effectively. Having allowed them a week or two to get used to the new environment and go through some online tutorials, you will probably want to get them properly trained. Tutor-led software training has the benefit that delegates are able to ask questions as they learn and have complex concepts explained and demonstrated to them until they fully understand them.
Booking your staff on a public Excel course is of course one possibility. However, increasingly companies are demanding to have this training customised to meet their specific demands. Microsoft Excel can be used for a variety of data analysis and storage tasks: not everyone uses it in the same way. Perhaps you will be using it for complex business modelling. Or, you may be using it to create interactive forms and reports complete with complex calculations. Maybe your staff will be using the program in a database role recording information under column headings. Booking a customised course will ensure that you only pay for instruction which is relevant to your requirements and reflects the way in which you will be using Microsoft Excel.
Before you start contacting Excel training companies, it would be a good idea to ensure that you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve by using Excel and that your expectations are realistic. When you approach training companies, you should make it clear that you do not simply want them to deliver their standard Excel courses but that you require a customised programme of training. Between you, a schedule of topics to be covered should then be drawn up and the duration of the program decided.
The customisation process may also involve identifying different requirements within your own organisation. Different people may need to do different tasks with the program and therefore need different skills. For example, some of your users will be primarily interested in using Excel for business analysis and projection. Their primary areas of interest will be the “What if” analysis tool like goal seek, scenarios and pivot tables. On the other hand, you may have people who are interested in create charts and reports either for printing or for use in PowerPoint presentations.
Most training companies offering customised Excel courses should be willing to accommodate the specific needs of your organisation and the different profiles of the staff members: accounts, sales and marketing, etc. Between you, you can then create a program of study which satisfies the needs of all users. Perhaps this may mean, having different courses for users with different profiles or perhaps the best approach will be a modular one whereby some modules are taken by everyone while others are only attended by certain user groups.
The author is a training consultant with On-SiteTrainingCourses.Com, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel Classes in London and throughout the UK.