Iain Young

When I was talking about advanced, I was thinking more along the lines of coding custom dhtml widgets / controls etc (cross browser compatible dhtml drop down menus for example) rather than interfacing with backend systems.

When you start getting into php, jsp, velocity, structs, servlets etc, Dreamweaver becomes pretty useless in my experience. I'd much rather just code the pages by hand using the editor I'm currently using to code the backend (i.e. a java ide, or VS.Net). Makes debugging etc so much easier

mrfuzzyfelts

show us one of ur advanced sites then??

Iain Young

Well, you could look at my personal website, but it's not very advanced at all...

http://www.iainbyoung.co.uk/


The stuff I'm working on is web based application software, using a servlet / database back-end, a web front-end (driven by servlets), which also allows access via web services etc. It's all top secret stuff, but there may be an announcement on our website in the next few weeks. Suffice to say that each page has several hundred lines of hand written javascript, has custom written dhtml drop down menus, custom right click menus which popup when you click on certain objects, dhtml dialogs, dynamically changing pages, custom written dhtml tree views etc etc....

It's going to be a very good product, and we're all quite excited about it

angrynorth

My God, the world is ending. Here I am agreeing with Iain again.

If you really want to get into the web design thing, you NEED to know what does what and what will happen if something is in the wrong place. For instance all browsers have little quirks, some that showup in your dreamweaver edit panel some which don't. The only way to learn what is actually causing these things is to hand edit the code yourself.

For a beginner I would suggest reverse engineering everything, that's the best way to learn IMO. By all means build something in dreamweaver first, but then pick it to pieces in a text editor removing bits and pieces to see what does what.

Personally my workflow is a bit like this and its very efficient.

Photoshop template>>> Photoshop Sliced HTML

Dreamweaver to delete spacer images>>> SKeDit (Mac only ) to recode and make it work.

If you want to do anything advanced you will have to step out of the constraints of Dreamweaver, and I don't mean to sound condescending or "holier than thou" here nor do I want to get into a "my dads bigger than yours" type thing but, the 2 sites you preview there are not that advanced, with all due respect of course.

Back to the original point, for learning ignore Frontpage and only use Dreamweaver as a stepping stone to help you forward.

Iain Young

Now I really am beginning to get worried

SJ_Skyline

Iain - nice site

other sites of interest:
http://www.w3.org/ - World Wide Web Consortium (particularly HTML, CSS and WAI sections)
http://bobby.watchfire.com/ - Bobby accessibility checker


Again, pretty basic! http://www.sjskyline.com

Iain Young

Thanks, your's too (Some good pics on there - I especially like the bridge at the top of the pictures page).

scatter_wrx

I was going to ask if it would be worthwhile buying an older version of dreamweaver for a beginner, as having looked on amazon, MX 2004 is over £320!.

However, just been over to ebay & there's an "academic verison" selling for £82!

paulr

Thanks,you're right,i want to keep it simple to start with.

cheers
Paul.