NEED HELP WITH DREAMWEAVER!!

[LAURA]

Hi, I created my design business site in Dreamweaver. It is a work in progress and everythig has been going relatively smoothly. I made a few changes yesterday to some images etc. as I am going along. Now, all of a sudden, when I go onto my site some of the pages 'move' when you first go on them. You can see what I mean by going to the site, www.fruitiongraphicdesign.com and you will see the that the homepage 'shakes' to the left and right when you first click on. This wasn't happening to any of my pages before and I have no idea why it is happening now, PLEASE HELP me with how to fix this in Dreamweaver!!! Thank you. Sincerely, Laura

lAF

[Ulysses]

It isn't a dreamweaver thing perse ... but a general WYSIWYG editor problem. That is to say, dreamweaver requires a certain level of pre-knowledge and attention when designing at times, unless you're competent to develop in code mode - which I suspect you don't, having looked at some of your source code (which is not a bad thing for a web design newbie - we all used something like dreamweaver when we started, I know I did). Speaking of which, your problem is related to the different WIDTH and HEIGHT values you have set for the elements into which your title images and menu images are inserted into.

Anyways, I suggest making one page exactly as you like it, then duplicate it 4 more times (these'll be templates for you to make amendments to, to create your 5 pages in the main menu - this method makes designing much quicker, for pages like yours, where the page remains more-or-less static and only a few things change from page to page) ... then just change the elements that are specific to each different page. That sould help keep things inline, and avoid the annoying shifting you're seeing. You could expand on that by learning how to develop templates in dreamweaver too.

I create my sites in a text editor these days, as I it is just as quick for me after all these years, and it allows me to have complete control over the deisgn - something you no doubt realise is lacking at times in dreamweaver's design mode. You'll just have to learn it's quirks like the rest of us, and learn what methods work best for you as you develop your particular style of sites - which by the way, I like very much. Reminds me of the kind of thing I used to like doing, but somewhat cleaner than I managed.

Stick with it though Laura, and learn some basic html ... this will alow you to better understand WHY your dreamweaver pages misbehave at times, and allow you to better realise the full potential of your obvious vision.

Remember, the design view in dreamweaver helps you to see what is what, but the underlying structure is always html code, and html has explicitly developed rules to adere to, and so dreamweaver must comply to those rules, albeit if it does seem to impose somewhat illogical restraints on what you're doing.

Good hunting Laura.

Post Edited (Ulysses) : 11/29/2004 10:22:21 AM GMT

[LAURA]

Ulysses, Thanks so much for your thoughtful response, I appreciate it and it's very helpful. I actually did create the pages the way you mentioned, by creating one page and duplicating it so sizes would be the same but still run into problems that are a bit beyond me since I am new at this. Could you tell me, is there a way to 'lock' my tables and my page size? Thanks again for your feedback!

lAF

[Ulysses]

Locking tables ... you can do this if you create actual dreamweaver templates (check the dreamweaver help files out). However, if the elements - particularly images - within your table cels are larger than the cel's decalred values, you will always find the table cel and the table itself will expand to accomodate this. The same also applies to page (main table) width and height too unfortunately ... tables generally, are great for creating fixed sized blocks, but soon as it's content exceeds it's intended dimensions, tables' role is to then accomodate the content (hence unexpected re-sizing).

Considering that you're does this the way I initially suggested (duplicating one page, and changing it's content), I suggest starting again. This time, rather than editing the newly changed images in design mode, do it in design/code view. This way, when you slect you image that you want to change, the relevant code will be highlighted in the code section ... then just change the image name by hand. This is the easiest way to ensure dreamweaver does not change any height or width values (because it only does that in design view), and it will also help you over time, to learn html (no bad thing) ... assuming the images you're swapping are of equal size that is. So for example ... <img src='../images/resumetitle.jpg' width='339' height='98'> becomes <img src='../images/contacttitle.jpg' width='339' height='98'> for example. This really is your best option, and it used to work for me until I understood html better.

Hope it works for you too Laura.

[Dakota1]

Hi Laura


A really good book to take a look at is Foundation Dreamweaver MX 2004.Chapter 7 deals with creating templates.http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590593081/qid=1101775444/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-0005928-7831048?v=glance&amp;s=bookshttp://www.graphicdesignforum.com/emoticons/burger.gif