Dreamweaver?

Everything to do with using your own website to advertise your rental property. Design, usability, hosting, getting listed on the search engines, optimising your site, pay-per-click, etc, etc.
Cat7139
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Dreamweaver?

Post by Cat7139 »

I've just spent the best part of a couple of days attempting to get to grips with dreamweaver. Can I just add that I am not very computer literate and anything technical is totally beyond me unlike you computer buffs who may be reading this!

However, I've managed to lay out a few pages with text and images and was feeling quite proud of myself until today. They are beginning to look good.

I had been having a few problems with runaround text but had been following the tutorial. Then I discovered TAGS!! OH la la!

I thought the likes of Dreamweaver would sort all this technical stuff out for me. I've just spent the best part of half a day trying to add Tags to sort out my picture and text positioning. Obviously, haven't succeeded.

Can anybody advise using words suitable for woman who no understand tecno speak and is VERY frustrated.
Thanks,
Catherine
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

What do you mean by tags, exactly? Can you give an example? I would assume that you mean HTML tags, which look like, e.g.,

Code: Select all

<B>Bold Text</B>
<P>A new paragraph between these tags</P>
<A HREF="http&#58;//www.experienceburgundy.com">Link Here</A>
And are translated on a webpage as:


Bold Text

A new paragraph between these tags

Link Here


Is that what you mean?

If you have a sample bit of code from your site and could describe the problem, that might also help...
Brooke
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Yes Catherine, if it's not thousands of lines long, you could copy and paste the html into a post, then explain which bits are bothering you.
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Cat7139
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Post by Cat7139 »

I'm getting very confused myself.
I can't seem to cotrol the text to make it runaround a picture even though I've selected float right or left and applied.
Having gone to the help menu it seems to me that I need a div tag to wrap text classed as, writing code using the Tag chooser.
Is this the right thing to do to give me more ability to place my text around or next to an image?

Your destination<img src="Logos-Schematics%20&%20Treated%20Pix/Oval%20HdB%20copy.JPG" width="250" height="188" class="ovalrunround">
</span><span class="bodytext">


Your holiday destination is Bresse in South </span><span class="bodytextcolour">Burgundy</span><span class="bodytext"> bordering
the foothills of the Jura.

Our home, </span><span class="bodytextcolour">Les Lavandes</span><span class="bodytext">, is an 18th century farmhouse where cream
coloured charollais cattle graze in the surrounding fields. It is constructed
in a classical timber framed Bresse style with abundant beams and
a traditional low pitch roof.
Catherine
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

Looks like a 'Style Sheet' Problem, but you've not included the css that you've applied.

Have you included the css into the page or made a seperate file?

Either way, a simple 'image float left' should look 'something' like this

Code: Select all

<style type="text/css">
<!--
.ovalrunround &#123;
	float&#58; left;
&#125;
-->
</style>
Hope that helps :)
Cat7139
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Post by Cat7139 »

Oh Tony,
If only it did! I am concentrating on the layout in design mode and am finding the coding totally incomprehensible! (Well almost).
The more I fiddle the more difficulties I come across.
I have the design layout with texts, images etc but positioning where I want is another matter. I'm just unfamiliar with web design.

One of my other pages looks great on screen but when I view it in the browser, I have a huge gap in the middle and I can't resolve it at all.

It would look really good if I had more experience and more importantly time to play with it! Everbody else is taking booking and I can't even manage to get a site up and running. :cry:

Thanks for the info-it's much appreciated.
Catherine
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

lol, have you got the 'work in progress' up online somewhere?

I'd be happy to take a peek at the code for you :)
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Catherine,

It seems like if all you're doing is getting images to wrap properly and text to display in different colors, maybe stylesheets are not necessary for this...

What do others think? Stylesheets can be amazingly useful but they can also be a pain to bring online. I'm somewhat experienced at this and I struggled at first to get my css file to work because of silly syntax (not even syntax -- stupid things that shouldn't have mattered like white space) issues in the file.

When all else fails, why not just use <P ALIGN=LEFT> and <IMG VALIGN=TOP ...> and other such tags? It's not elegant or anything, but it works, and it's guaranteed to work on almost any browser (though so are stylesheets nowadays, I suppose).
Brooke
Cat7139
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Post by Cat7139 »

Brooke,
I'm using the css style sheets because I've been following the tutorial. If I change now I'll be even more confused. Yes, all I want to do is put in text with the odd colour word and images. Nothing too sophisticated but I want it to be in my style.The WYSIWYG is not really applying at present but I'm slowly getting there. Unfortunately, not enjoying the excersise!

Tony, I'd love you to have a look but it will take me an age to work out how to get the work in progress up and running. Please watch this space. May take me a few days.

Thanks,
Catherine
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

Yes, changing

<img src="Logos-Schematics%20&%20Treated%20Pix/Oval%20HdB%20copy.JPG" width="250" height="188" class="ovalrunround">

to .....

<img src="Logos-Schematics%20&%20Treated%20Pix/Oval%20HdB%20copy.JPG" width="250" height="188" align="left">

would get the text to wrap .... but personally, the more I use css, the more i wonder how i ever coped without it. If you're starting off, it's just as easy (difficult?!) to learn to apply css as it is to learn all the 'workarounds' for tags / spans / divs etc.

All good fun though isn't it? .... or have I finally passed the 'geek' threshold!
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Tony,

You're right, now that I think about it... the more I use stylesheets, the more I love them. And, once you have the general idea working, it's very easy to fiddle with it!

Catherine, don't worry, we'll be here in a few days. No rush! :)
Brooke
Cat7139
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Post by Cat7139 »

But Brooke,
I am in a rush!!
I've spent most of today working my website in word which is proving to be more satisfactory.

What is the main difference between working and publishing my web in word or dreamweaver?

Treat me kindly and give me an answer for dummies please!

Thanks,
Catherine
(this thread must be boring the knickers off most people-sorry chaps!)
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Catherine,

No doubt there are many people just starting and looking into building their own website, and they'll have many of the same questions you do -- so keep asking! :)

When I talk about publishing to the web, I'm talking about making the page available for anyone to browse by, so that you could give us a URL and we'd be able to find and view the page.

In terms of Word or Dreamweaver, I do not recommend using any Microsoft product to publish to the web. (Other than Frontpage, and I'm not even a big fan of that, but that's personal preference!)

The reason is that programs like Word and Publisher were not originally designed to create web pages. So, from a code perspective, their attempts to do so are awkward and inefficient. The resulting web page might look exactly like your Word document does (at least to someone with the same fonts and screen resolution), but it will take a very long time to load because the code will be far, far longer than it has to be, and it will probably be very hard to get good search engine results for a page like that.

Programs like Dreamweaver, on the other hand, are specifically designed for web pages, so they can create code that's fairly well-optimized for speed, clarity, and search engine rankings. It takes more of an investment up front from the designer, but the end result is far more manageable and typically far more productive in the long term.

There is a further discussion of this on this thread, if you are interested. The forum user who started it designed a website in Publisher, and it looks nice -- if you can bear to wait for it to load.

Incidentally, there is a discussion of CSS which may have some useful links in it on this thread, if you haven't yet seen it (though you probably have).

Cheers!
Brooke
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livinginitaly
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Post by livinginitaly »

ah .......... er ........ you're using word? <nervous shuffle>

I'm sure it's been covered in other threads and site reviews, but one of the major differences between 'word' and 'dreamweaver' sites, is that the Search Engines 'probably' won't be able to list your site properly in 'word'.

That's not the end of the world though, if you are relying on people finding you via 'links' and 'paid inclusion' on rental sites at the very least it will give people something to see.

Thing is, with a website, it's never really 'finished' anyway. So the important thing is to get something up online that at least shows a 'fair' representation of what you are offering.

It's not like dealing with a 'printed advert' where once you've sent it, it's final. You can improve the text and update images at your leisure :)
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

Treat me kindly and give me an answer for dummies please!
OK: Web-pages done in Word look awful! :D
Paolo
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