Archive for September, 2005
Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8
My latest book, Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website with Dreamweaver 8, is now available from Sitepoint. This book was written for Dreamweaver 8 and , through the process of building a standards compliant website using valid XHTML Strict and CSS, you will discover all of the new features in Dreamweaver 8 that make working with CSS far easier than ever before.
Currently available from Sitepoint, although it will eventually be in stock on amazon and at other retailers. Sitepoint also have, as always, some free chapters available for download – so you can check it out before deciding whether to get a copy.
Clearing space on the shelves
I’ve been clearing some needed bookshelf space and buying the books I need for my next Open University course at bargain prices at Green Metropolis. I don’t have room for any more bookshelves so I’ve had to promise myself that I’ll get rid of some books before buying any more, so this is an easy way to recycle those that I’m not going to need again.
Dreamweaver 8
The latest version of Dreamweaver – Dreamweaver 8 – has been launched today. I was lucky enough to be involved with the Beta and so have been working with this new version for several months. So, is it worth the upgrade?
If you use Dreamweaver for visual design, and in particular for CSS based layouts, then I think it is. There are some superb new features which make working visually with CSS far easier. The new Unified CSS Panel means that all of your CSS tools are in one place and you can edit CSS in the existing way – via the CSS Rule Definition Dialog – or edit properties in the Panel, while seeing the changes in Design View. When working in Design View, new Visual Aids help you to see how the different page elements in your layout work together, by showing you padding and margins applied to elements for example, or setting each positioned element with a different background colour. These Visual Aids are really useful, especially for those just getting to grips with CSS, as confusing issues such as how the Box Model works are highlighted clearly.
All of the above wouldn’t be much help if the rendering of CSS within Design View was poor, however this new version of Dreamweaver comes with a greatly improved rendering engine, and for most CSS layouts what you see is actually what you will get in a decent, modern browser. There are also many other improvements – new functionality to work with XML and XSL for example – and the product seems faster and more stable than the previous version.
There is, as always, a free 30 day trial available for download. If you try it out or upgrade I’d be really interested to know how you get on with it. As part of my work with WaSP I’m a member of the Dreamweaver Task Force, and we are keen to feed back to the Dreamweaver team our thoughts – good and bad – about this new version, with regard to how it supports designers and developers who want to work to web standards.
