Evaluating Adobe® Dreamweaver®
Downloading Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS3;
Creating a "site;" Creating a test essay.
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1. Downloading a trial version of Dw CS3:
I had a few initial difficulties with Dreamweaver. However these were probably mainly due to our lack of knowledge and inexperience. A more qualified user might have had no problems at all.
This proceeded well until Vista detected a program Bonjour
Service that was attempting to act as an Internet server.
Vista issued a frightening warning message. I elected to err on the side of
caution by preventing that program from acting as a server.
Apparently it is a program that Dw uses and needs, because the download
was not completed properly.
After reading about Bonjour Service on the
Internet, I repeated the Dw download. Enabling Bonjour
Service allowed the download to successfully complete.
2. Creating a "site" in Dw:
Since probably 95% of new Dw users would already have a
functioning website that they want to download into Dw. I
assumed that there would be prominent help essays shown that describe
how to import an existing site. I was unsuccessful.
I did stumble across
the "Manage Sites" option on the "Site" pull down menu. This
enabled me to create a "site" -- a folder on my office computer to house all of
the files associated with our website.
Clicking on "New" and selecting
the Site option opens up a Site Definition window. The Advanced tab opens a new window. Selecting the "Local info" category
allowed me to select a name for the site that would be used only internally
within DW. It also allowed me to define the folder where all of the files
associated with the site would be located. A video of this process can be seen
at: http://www.adobe.com/ Unfortunately, the video is for a Mac operating
system, and the voice explanation is extremely fast. A Windows version would
have been much easier to understand.
Selecting the Remote Info category allowed me to specify the access method. I chose FTP. This opens a form
to fill out the web host location, the directory on the host, the login
identification, and the password. I selected passive FTP although I haven't the
foggiest idea what this means. The "Test" button allows the FTP link to be
checked.
At first, Adobe Dw was unable to connect to the website. The
failure occurred because I had used the same prefix for the web host location as
we used in our Ipswitch WS_FTP program: "ftp://". Through experimentation, I
found that the prefix had to be "ftp." At this point, the Test button
worked.
The Remote Info screen allows one to "Enable file
check in and check out." This option is used when there are multiple people
involved in the web site maintenance. I left this unchecked because I
am the only person involved in site maintenance. The system then reverts to file
transferring by "getting and putting." "Getting" means to
transfer a file from the remote site to the Dw site on the office computer;
"putting" means to transfer a file from the office computer to the remote site.
3. Creating a test essay:
I created a new essay by clicking on the New option in the Dw File pull down menu. The New Document window opened. I selected a:
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blank page, |
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type HTML, |
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1 column elastic, centered layout |
and clicked on Create. It created a test essay Untitled-1.htm
The default for Dreamweaver is to use the html extension. I changed to the "htm"
extension via the Preferences option on the Edit pull down menu, on the New Document option.
I changed the essay and saved it. A window opened asking if I wanted to "put"
the dependent file -- that is, upload the document to our server. I clicked on
"Yes." The default can be changed in the Site category of the Preferences option of the Edit pull down menu. The FTP activity is
shown as the essay is transferred to the server.
References used:
- "Get files from a remote server," Dreamweaver help files at: http://livedocs.adobe.com/
Copyright © 2008 to 2010 by Ontario Consultants on
Religious Tolerance
Originally published: 2008-JUL-20
Most recent update and review: 2010-AUG-31
Author: B.A. Robinson
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