| CityLinkPCs » Information-technology » Dreamweaver's Approach To CSS |
Dreamweaver's Approach To CSS
|
View PDF | Print View |
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) has become as pivotal a technology in the building of websites as HTML. Originally, CSS was mainly used for defining the appearance of text (font, size, colour, etc.). However, with the improvement of browser compatibility with the CSS specification, CSS is now the recommended method of controlling all aspects of the presentation of HTML documents within the browser window.
Adobe Dreamweaver is a very widely used platform for developing web sites and web content and, although used by experienced developers, is also widely used by non-specialists for whom Dreamweaver's user-friendly visual interface takes the pain out of web site creation. The way in which Dreamweaver implements CSS is very important for the casual user, since it will influence the kind of sites they end up producing.
Dreamweaver CS3 is the first version of the program which assumes that the user will want to use CSS to control the layout of their web pages. To assist inexperienced and would-be web developers, each time a new page is created, the program allows the user to choose allocate a preset CSS layout to the page. There are about 30 such layouts and they come in single, double and three column varieties.
Pages created using CSS rely heavily on the use of the HTML DIV element, a multipurpose container of web content. Choosing one of the Dreamweaver CSS presets creates a page containing a series of DIV elements complete with placeholder text and the CSS code necessary to control the position and dimension of the DIVs. The placeholder text and HTML code both contain brief explanations of the techniques used and advice on how to customise these basic pages for your own purposes.
The CSS code for pages created using Dreamweaver's preset layouts is embedded in the page itself. If a user creates a series of such pages, each one will have its own CSS code making updating very time-consuming. It is far more efficient to have all of the CSS code in one external file and link each page to this one file. At present, Dreamweaver doesn't really make this clear to new users. However, it does have an excellent feature for moving embedded CSS code into an external file. You simply select all of the CSS definitions you wish to externalise then choose Text - CSS Styles - Move CSS Rules.
This ability to move blocks of CSS is an excellent feature but one has to ask if new users will see its significance and actually use it. The fact is that, given the increasing importance of CSS and Dreamweaver's role as the fledgling developers best friend, the program could use some improvement in the way it handles CSS.
It is also disappointing that Dreamweaver still automatically generates CSS styles called "style1", etc. each time the user applies a font or colour to selected text. Surely it would be easier to simply remove these basic attributes and just let the user either apply a style to the selection or, if no styles exist, create a new one. Perhaps this will be introduced in the next release of this excellent program.
About the Author
The The writer of this article is a training consultant with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver training courses at their central London training centre.
Rating: Pending (37)
