Dreamweaver MX

ZetaMelOU · #1 07-20-2003, 10:12 PM

Hey guys!

Well I'm the webmaster of my chapter's webpage and recently another sorority on campus decided to raise the bar a little bit and hire a professional to do their page with it's own domain name. Everyone else uses free servers such as geocities and angelfire. Well, I want to stay on top of things and I can make professional graphics and such, but I'm having trouble using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX...what I'm trying to do is make a navigation bar that stays put all throughout the site with rollover graphics as links. I'm guessing i want to do this with a frame? I was just wondering if anyone is familiar with the program and would be willing to help me out. I'm currently using those corny tutorials they offer with the program but they're offering limited help. But yeah! any help would be appreciated very much so!

Rudey · #2 07-20-2003, 11:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ZetaMelOU
Hey guys!

Well I'm the webmaster of my chapter's webpage and recently another sorority on campus decided to raise the bar a little bit and hire a professional to do their page with it's own domain name. Everyone else uses free servers such as geocities and angelfire. Well, I want to stay on top of things and I can make professional graphics and such, but I'm having trouble using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX...what I'm trying to do is make a navigation bar that stays put all throughout the site with rollover graphics as links. I'm guessing i want to do this with a frame? I was just wondering if anyone is familiar with the program and would be willing to help me out. I'm currently using those corny tutorials they offer with the program but they're offering limited help. But yeah! any help would be appreciated very much so!

Dreamweaver is a really powerful program. Honestly, from the way it sounds, you might not even be able to take advantage of most of its features. If I were you I would try to understand the html of creating a frame (creating an html page for each frame and then another html page to pull in all of the frames, specify their size, location, etc.).

If you have trouble doing this on your own, go find a template with frames and open it in dreamweaver so you can change it i guess.

I would probably even move away from frames once you figure out more about this stuff. I can check over some of your pages if you get started on them this week, but starting next week, I'm doing 90+ hours a week and will probably not frequent GC as much so maybe someone else can help you.

-Rudey
--And those tutorials are really helpful, but don't just read them...actually try to do the designs while you read it.

ZetaMelOU · #3 07-20-2003, 11:33 PM

Well, I decided to make a template instead...my new concern is, I don't have my rollover graphics linked to anything yet cause I haven't created the pages for each. I guess I would set the links area as an area I can edit on the template?

chideltjen · #4 07-20-2003, 11:54 PM

Hey Zeta,

I swear by DW and have recently upgraded to MX. I would recommend getting a book called Visual Quickstart Guide to Macromedia Dreamweaver MX by Tarin Towers. I loved his DW4 book and it's pretty easy to understand. I am rebuilding our chapter site but will be doing it all as Photoshop slices and creating rollovers that way.

And if you want a cheap domain, check out www.caltheta.com. I wrote a lil blurb about it in "Chapter Operations."

decadence · #5 07-21-2003, 01:03 PM

Yep, creating a template is a good idea. Perosnally I think you'll be better off going with a set of tables, so you have a rectangular one at the top for your links and suchlike.
I use Geocities for my own interest group website actually, although I have registered a domain for it to, to go on our posters and suchlike. The company I regiesterred it with give you a control panel so you can set it to redirect to your geocities page when someone types it in. Doesn't cost too much to register the domain so may be worth looking into at some point. I'll look into what you asked in more detail later - I need to go eat right now

.

-- Richard

AGDPrincess70 · #6 07-21-2003, 02:10 PM

[hijack]

oooooooh dream weaver...I believe you can get me through the ni-ight!

Now the song's in my head. Hooray.

[/hijack]

texas*princess · #7 07-21-2003, 02:14 PM

I like decadence's idea of using tables. For me, they are much easier to handle.

I usually code out all my own stuff, and actually have dreamweaver MX, but I'm not too familiar with it yet.

One thing you could do is use a table and an inline frame. The thing I like about inline frames is that it doesn't take years for the new pages to load since the main page is already going to be loaded. (plus it also keeps the same overall 'theme' of the website so you don't have completely random backgrounds for every page.)