Using Dreamweaver 8 for Web Development in Java

Drawer USS Code 39 in Java Using Dreamweaver 8 for Web Development

No matter how graphics-intensive or dynamic you want your site to be, you ll always come back to the fact that you have to build your Web site with something In Macromedia Studio, Dreamweaver is the Web development workhorse You can use Dreamweaver, shown in Figure 3-1, for a host of practical Web development tasks: Create and edit HTML or ColdFusion Markup Language code (or code using ASP, JSP, XML, and the like) Dreamweaver 8 s Code Collapse and Zoom features make editing code easier than ever Create Sites a confusing Dreamweaver term that means a location either locally on your computer or on a remote server where you keep all the content for your Web site When your content is in a Dreamweaver Site, you can set up page templates and run various reports on your site content Upload all your Web pages from your local computer to a Web server on the Internet that houses (or hosts) your site Set up connections between your Web site and a database to make the site dynamic Preview your work using Macromedia s Preview in Browser tools before you publish it on the Web Review code for errors and badly formed code The best way to think of Dreamweaver is as the glue that binds your site together Other Macromedia products like Flash and Fireworks help to add flair and pizzazz to your site, but to actually assemble and include the files that these applications produce in your site requires the HTML and publishing tools that only Dreamweaver offers Ultimately, most of your content ends up in an HTML or CFML (ColdFusion) page (or, depending on your server technology or content distribution needs, an ASP, JSP, XML, or other kind of page), so if you don t have Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, Dreamweaver can also be used to create content as you would in a word processing program

Fireworks is easily the most versatile of all the tools in Macromedia Studio As shown in Figure 3-2, Fireworks is primarily geared towards creating the graphical design of your site With Fireworks, you can accomplish the following tasks: Create graphical elements that make up the look and feel of your site by using the Fireworks text and editing tools Apply filters that create photo-quality effects for the imagery in your site Manipulate text to be used in graphical elements such as navigation buttons and banners Use layers to manage the depth and positioning of elements on the screen during your graphics development Slice up your page design into multiple images in preparation for integration into HTML using Dreamweaver (See Book III, 6 for more information about slices) Optimize the size and color of images on your site

These are just the core elements of Fireworks In addition to being a powerful graphics development tool, Fireworks also incorporates elements of FreeHand, Dreamweaver, and even Flash, providing you with additional functionality, such as the following: Creating vector images that can be used in Flash animations Creating basic animations and publishing your images as a Flash movie Creating image rollovers that are common to most sites nowadays using the JavaScript scripting language Generating the HTML to accompany your sliced images

After you ve got a few Web sites under your belt, you may find that HTML and graphics alone seem lifeless Sure, they re necessary, but soon you ll

begin to wonder what else you can do to add some pizzazz to your sites That s where Flash comes in Enter Flash, which enables you to add animation, sound, video, and interactivity to your site Flash, shown in Figure 3-3, can radically change the way your site works, allowing you to create a more compelling user experience Gone are the boundaries created by HTML and limited graphics Although you still need help from the other Macromedia Studio products, you can think of Flash as an entirely new development platform for building your site In order to view the Flash movies you create, visitors to your site will need to have the Flash plug-in installed in their browser Luckily, almost everyone with a standard graphical Web browser like Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Firefox, or Safari has some version of the Flash plug-in installed