Welcome to the new How To Gurus Blog

Where you can always find my latest Demos and YouTube Videos. You will find samples taken from my Training DVDs and also exclusive videos created specifically for my online audience.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

In Dreamweaver how do I make a page open in a new window when clicking on a link?

Real Easy, Put your cursor on the link on the page, then in the Properties Palette, just under the link you will see a drop down list named Target. Set that to _blank and you are all set.

You will find that the Target dropdown menu is in a different place in the Properties Palette if you are working with an image that has a link attached to it, but same _blank will do the trick.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Do you have Mac versions of your software?

We are coming out with Mac compatible versions later this summer. But the videos in the current versions are able to be played on a Mac using QuickTime. You can find out more information on using the current titles on a Mac at www.howtogurus.com/support.html

Friday, June 24, 2005

I did an 8 page spread in InDesign, when I print on our office machine to make the book the pages print out of sequence.

The mixed up page order comment you just left gives me an idea. The problem may be in how you have laid out the pages. If you set up your file with the pages in sequence, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 etc. then try to print the layout you will have the pages all out of order. The reason for this is that the pages should not be printed in order if you want the type of layout you mentioned.

It is a little hard to explain, easy to show with a demonstration. Here is what you need to do. If your document is 8 pages and you are printing that yourself, then you should put together a dummy layout first. 8 pages would be printed on 2 sheets if you are folding the paper in half. So take two sheets of paper, put them together properly, fold then as the final would be done. You now have a blank book, but it is folded properly.

Now looking at the blank book, write the page number on each page. Page one is the cover, fold on left side. Then open the book and write page 2, then the next page is page 3, etc. Now take the two sheets of paper apart and you will see that the page numbers are not following in sequence. The inside page has pages 4 and 5 on top and pages 3 and 6 on the bottom, the outside piece of paper has pages 2 and 7 on top and pages 1 and 8 on bottom. This is how the InDesign layout needs to be done.

You also need to test your printer and see which sheets of paper it prints first and if it prints both sides, and when is the second side printed. For instance if it prints the inside first then your first page would be page 4, then page 5. If it prints the back side of the first sheet second then your next page would be page 3 followed by page 6. Again, a little hard to explain but if you play with a dummy layout you should see the problem.

If you were sending the document to a professional printer, they would do the rearranging to fit their printer and you wouldn't need to worry about it.

I use a Mac, in Dreamweaver can I drag a Word doc into Design view to add content?

On a Mac when you drag a Word doc into the design view you will automatically get a link to the document.

In the Windows version when you drag a Word doc into the design view you get a dialog box that asks if you want to insert the contents or place a link. What I normally do is to select the text I want in a Word doc, then copy and paste that text into the Dreamweaver page. This works on both Macs and Windows machines.

Unfortunately for Mac users Macromedia and Adobe have both put their main efforts into the Windows versions of their software, so the Mac versions frequently don't have all the bells and whistles. Nothing to do with the quality of the Mac as a computer, everything to do with their main market being Windows users. That aside Adobe is just about the best company out there for making their software run as close as possible on both platforms. Adobe just purchased Macromedia, so we will probably see improvements in the Mac versions down the road. (this also means that Adobe's GoLive will probably be phased out)

How do I make web pages in ImageReady and then use them in Dreamweaver?

ImageReady creates html pages, so all you really have to do is to open that new html page in Dreamweaver and you are set to go. When you click on Save Optimized in ImageReady it saves the html file using the same name as the original Photoshop file, then it also saves the images into the images folder (if one does not exist ImageReady creates one).

But this is not how I personally use ImageReady. I much prefer to create my tables or layers in Dreamweaver. What I do is to use ImageReady to slice the image and make the rollover images. It is also a great place to test the look of the rollovers. I then select File, Save Optimized As..., and save Images Only. This gives me the images and doesn't create the html page since I won't be using that. I then create a clean table structure in Dreamweaver and place the images into the new table manually using the insert commands in Dreamweaver. This is more work, and I frequently have to do some notes on a piece of paper first listing the sizes of my images before I build the table, but Dreamweaver gives me much more control over how the table is constructed, so that it behaves exactly the way I like.

I have found in general that it is often best to do things the long way with these programs and to bypass their quick solutions. I take ImageReady at its name, that it is a program designed to make Images Ready for the web, not to create final pages. You can create final pages and complete web sites in ImageReady, but the html code will not be as clean as what you would get if you did all your coding in Dreamweaver.

How can I speed up page load times on a page with lots of jpeg files?

The main thing that causes pages to load slowly is the size of the images. Try and compress your images as much as possible while still keeping a halfway decent quality. You will need to sacrifice some quality for a fast loading page.

There is an article about Image Optimization in our web site Guru Guides section.

http://www.howtogurus.com/free-articles.html

How do I create Flash style scolling windows without using Flash?

You can create a similar effect using layers in Dreamweaver. Simply place a layer into your page (Insert menu/Layout Objects, Layer)

Click on the box in the upper left corner of the new layer. Then take a look at the Properties palette at the bottom. There you will find an Overflow field. Set that to Scroll and you are all taken care of. The content on the page that is visible will be controlled by the size of the layer bounding box. Any extra content in the box will be controlled by the Overflow setting.

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