Murphy's CSS

I could have called this post Murphy’s Dreamweaver, Murphy’s Code, many things.

Last night, I presented on Web Standards and Dreamweaver to the Chicago Creative Coalition. It was both a challenging yet educational experience. I’ve been using Dreamweaver for 8+ years. However, since I’m a coder, I primarily develop web content in code view. The audience for this presentation was creative folks, very few though who create web sites on a regular basis. My goal was to illustrate the importance of adhering to a web standards approach when designing for the web. The tool for choice in this case, was the Dreamweaver WYSIWYG environment. It, and a surprising effect while creating a horizontal menu, would prove to create that Murphy’s moment.

September Chicago Dreamweaver Meetup Wrap-up

Click here to check out The Chicago Dreamweaver Meetup!

On Tuesday, September 9th, I attended the Chicago Dreamweaver Meetup. The presenter this evening was Michael Tanimura from Silver Image Creative. The topic was “How To Write a Winning Website Proposal.” Michael provided sound advice from his many years of experience with his over 15 years of experience. He also provided an example as a take away for all attendees.

August Chicago Dreamweaver Meet-up Wrap-up

On Tuesday, August 12, the Chicago Dreamweaver Meet-up hosted a presentation on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Linda Ryder, from Ryder Web Design & Development, presented a primer on CSS that also touched upon some of the more advanced topics, such as using a reset style sheet and which DTD to use (I learned about the impact Strict vs. Transitional has on the target attribute of the anchor tag (<a>)). The presentation can be viewed below.

Following the presentation, we has a roundtable discussion on CSS, its extent of use by the members, table vs. tableless layouts, etc. This roundtable discussion as a recent addition to the meet-up and was well received.

Kudos to Stephen Starr, organizer of the Chicago Dreamweaver Meet-up and owner of Stephen B. Starr Design Inc. In the few months I’ve been attending this meet-up, it has really taken off and become engaging and exciting. And as always, I lok forward to the follow-up month’s meet-up.

If you’re located in the Chicagoland area and are interested in Dreamweaver and/or web design, consider joining and stopping by.

View Chicago Dreamweaver Meet-up website…

Chicago Dreamweaver Meet-up Wrap-up

Attended our monthly local Dreamweaver Meet-up and again, a great event. We had a great turnout with a good group of newcomers. The topic this month was productivity tips using Dreamweaver. The presenter was Patrick Elward, operator of Chicago Web Management, and a certified Dreamweaver MX Professional Developer. Additionally, he leads the Chicago Webmasters Meetup Group. Thanks Patrick for a great presentation!

I wanted to share the productivity tips for Dreamweaver provided, as well as provide my personal commentary. Enjoy!

Productivity Tips using Dreamweaver

1. Library items
   • “includes” are used DW-side (on local server)
   • Bad, because it updates only local files and those all need to be re-uploaded
   • Can be buggy to change/modify

   Comment: As Patrick stated, Library items can be effective, however, their value is diminished once you understand the power of server-side includes (see below).

2. Snippets
   • Saved code or text values for reuse
   • Insert type ‘drops in’ a block of code
   • Wrap type ‘drops code’ around a block selection (tags, for example)

   Comments: I’m fairly new to snippets but have become a big fan of their use over the past couple of months. A great time saver.