Problem Coding For Dreamweaver User

[ccemmett]

A friend redesigned his site using frames (ugh) and got a lot of complaints from visitors about them. As he hasn't any real web skills, and relies on Dreamweaver to do all the work for him, he ended up creating a problem he didn't know how to solve.

So I decided to make a workaround for him with DHTML that got rid of the framed document, added some javascript to make some things work and included as a compromise an inline frame for him to display his content in as he had originally intended.

NewDesign (http://home.alamedanet.net/~blackwick/kunstler/)

Problem: When he opens this new page in Dreamweaver he says he can't access, or apparently even see, its parts, quote:
"Dreamweaver doesn't seem to be able to isolate or select each particular box."

As a hand-coder with no experience with DW I am at a loss.

Thanks for your time! -CC

[ronaldb66]

DreamWeaver is just a tool; you can't expect to magically solve any lack of skills.

If you want to make authoring easier for the person you've built the site for, you might want to look into some sort of Content Management System (CMS); there's a number of free ones available, but you'll have to do some researching.
Considering the blog-like character of the main page, you might want to look into something like the WordPress blogging system; it allows for easy authoring, requires little or no skills on the side of the author and allows creating static pages which can be authored in a similar way to blog entries.

[cryonic]

If your friend rely too much on DREAMWEAVER for a start without knowing and understanding the basics, it isn't going to help much. I know how easy it is to use DREAMWEAVER to create website, for beginners.

Regarding the 'problem'. Well, we hand-code designers... don't see that way. It isn't always fully WYSIWYG tool. iLOL. We do sometimes rely on DREAMWEAVER to fill up data easily. For the main designs or templates, we would just hand-code it.

DREAMWEAVER does come with the function 'CLEAN UP HTML' or 'CLEAN UP XHTML'. Why not use that? Although... from my personal experience, we only use that to identify typo mistakes or some missing, unclosed tags.

COMMANDS > CLEAN UP HTML...

[ccemmett]

Thanks for your timely replies.

When I first started learning how to do this stuff I decided it was easier to learn how to hand-code then to learn how to operate a WYSIWYG editor.

What do you think- true or false?

-CC

[ronaldb66]

It depends, but I would agree; a WYSIWYG editor can be a great tool and a time saver; without knowing what goes on "under the hood" though, there's a good chance that the end result is unsatisfying, or at least sub-optimal. Learning to hand-code can go a long way towards getting comfortable with HTML and style sheets.

[ccemmett]

Thanks for your reply. Seems at present that he has figured out a solution using frames. Frankly I am pleased as trying to figure out how to make my solution work for him has left me with a spinning head.

More perhaps later as things develop.

-cc

[Nightfire]

I'd handcode all the time and have done for many years. Handcoding can give good clean code, but wysiwyg can give alot of crap even after their clean up tools.

Handcoding can also leave bad coding from people that don't understand (x)html and css properly.