Part II: Appreciating Web Design Options in Java

Encoder QR Code in Java Part II: Appreciating Web Design Options

4 Click OK to close the dialog box and save the setting The new setting is applied when the dialog box closes In this example, the color of the About Us link changed to the new color after the dialog box closed

After you create a template, it s time to put it to use You can use one template to create all the pages in your Web site or create different templates for different sections For example, in a site, such as my consulting firm site at wwwArtesianMediacom shown in these examples, I created one template for the English version of the site, and a second template for the Spanish version After you create a template or a collection of templates, using a template to create a new page is similar to creating any other XHTML page

7: Saving Time with Dreamweaver Templates (And More)

To use a template to create a new page, follow these steps: 1 Choose File New The New Document window opens 2 In the list on the left, click the Page from Template option, as shown in Figure 7-8 3 In the Site list in the middle of the page, choose the name of the site that contains a template you want to use The templates in the selected site appear in the Template for Site section just to the right of the Site list in the New Document window (see Figure 7-8) 4 In the Template for Site list, select the template you want to use Notice that when you click the name of a template, a preview of the selected template appears on the far right of the New Document window In the example shown in Figure 7-8, I selected the artesian template from the Artesian Media site

Figure 7-8: From the New Document window, you can preview and select any template saved in any defined Web site to create a new page

5 Click the Create button A new page is created from the template and appears in the main work area 6 Edit any region of the page that s editable with Dreamweaver s regular editing features and save the file as you would save any other HTML page When you create new pages from a template, you can change only the editable regions in each file created from the template When you edit a template, only

the regions that aren t defined as editable can be used to make global changes to all the pages created from the template In the template shown in this example, both the main content area of the page and the big banner image at the top of the page can be edited in the page created from the template

The great advantage of templates is that you can automatically apply changes to all the pages created with a template by altering the original template For example, say the navigation links are an uneditable region in a template, and I decide to add a new section to the site I can add a new navigation link to that section by editing the row of links at the top of the page in the template, and the new link is added to all the pages in the site created from that template To update files in a site that were created from a template, follow these steps: 1 Open the template file Note that template files are distinguishable by the dwt extension and are saved in the Template folder If you re not sure which template was used to create a page, its name appears in the top-right corner of the page (see the upcoming Figure 7-10) If you don t see the template name, choose View Visual Aids Invisible Elements to turn on the feature that displays the template name Alternatively, you can open a template from any page created from a template, by following the steps in the next section 2 Use Dreamweaver s editing features to make any changes you want to the template Remember that only changes to uneditable regions are updated automatically In this example, the logo and navigation elements are locked regions and can be edited to make global changes Thus, if I add a new link to the row of links at the top of the page, it will be added to all the pages created from the template 3 Choose File Save The Update Template Files dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 7-9 The Update Template Files dialog box lists all the pages created from the template 4 Click the Update button to modify all pages listed in the Update Template Files dialog box Click the Don t Update button to leave these pages unchanged If you click Update, Dreamweaver automatically changes all the pages listed in the Update Template Files dialog box to reflect any changes made to uneditable regions of the template

7: Saving Time with Dreamweaver Templates (And More)