hello all,

I have recently downloaded DreamWeaver Mx, and after my university exams am going to have a go at learning how to use it myself. Any tips or advise?

cheers,

myke

I've not used Dreamweaver MX, but I've used Dreamweaver 3 & 4...

My advice it just try it! Go through each menu and play about with the options to see what they do. Also, save some websites from t'Internet and open them in Dreamweaver to see how they can be edited.

Oh, and use stylesheets - not "font" tags. (Hopefully that will be default in MX but I can't be sure...)

Unless there's something in particular you're trying to achieve, the best way to learn it is to use it IMHO.

Get a third party book (visual quickstart guide to DW MX is good) and do the exercises, forget about the manual - it's pants.

Dreamweaver isn't terribly good at css so preview your work in at least three browsers regularly. You will find that your page size in KB will increase as DW does write an awful lot of code.

Get a bigger monitor - 19" is about right with all the tabbed panels

Forget 'Dynamic Html' and the timeline animation feature in dreamweaver - its [edited].

As Tony says, use stylesheets exclusively for text style and placement. It's a headache to begin with but soon your life will be much easier (although for small sites I still use tables & graphics for speed of development)

I would recommend you get the O'Reilly Book on CSS - it's thick and heavy but it is the business.

[Edited by Tony Ruscoe - swearing removed (even though you were totally right :lol: )]

Tritec, near Devonshire Green, run short courses in it.

Ack! Dreamweaver...no. Use Vi.

I'm a webdesigner who uses Dreamweaver. It really is an outstanding piece of software.

Make sure you've downloaded the free update to 6.1 from the macromedia site.

Originally posted by Hodge
Ack! Dreamweaver...no. Use Vi. If we're getting into that debate, I'd say "Ack! Dreamweaver...no. Use a text editor." :lol:

Originally posted by Tony Ruscoe
I've not used Dreamweaver MX, but I've used Dreamweaver 3 & 4...

My advice it just try it! Go through each menu and play about with the options to see what they do. Also, save some websites from t'Internet and open them in Dreamweaver to see how they can be edited.

Oh, and use stylesheets - not "font" tags. (Hopefully that will be default in MX but I can't be sure...)

Unless there's something in particular you're trying to achieve, the best way to learn it is to use it IMHO.

cool.. i'll jus try it.. hehe.. and then.. if i get stuck i think i will go and go to a course or try a self help book :P

cheers :D

Originally posted by Tony Ruscoe
If we're getting into that debate, I'd say "Ack! Dreamweaver...no. Use a text editor." :lol:

erugh, i only use the text editor for WML ;)

Front Page (used well) it the tops ;)

:o RPG - you disgust me!!!

I've never heard anyone ever say Front Page is good (nevermind "tops")! :lol:

Seriously ... I hand code everything in UltraEdit (http://www.ultraedit.com). You have so much more control over things. There are some things you just can't accomplish in FrontPage or Dreamweaver that have to be done by hand.

CuteHTML - like Notepad but with code colouring :)

FrontPage :o - Ok for a quick layout I suppose, but you then spend about 2 hours removing all the cr*p code it puts in.