Dreamweaver 2004 Page Designs (CSS)

[Quackers]

I'm not web page guru, so i need a little help in this department.

If you have Dreamweaver 2004 and Click New, Page Designs (CSS) and say select Three-Column Right Nav, as a nice template design, then all is good, and you can fill in the content. The point i get confused with is how do i get the content in the center to change while keeping all the menu's around the same when i click one of the links for example? I know how to do things like "" with asp files, but i do not think thats what i am suppost to do here. Am i being thick?

[Nij.UK]

I think what u are trying to do you can do with using Standard HTML Frames.....

But i am not sure what the design template is and have never used it....

[ChrisH]

You need to follow some css tutorials really to get your head round it. Your you can basically define the style for every type of element in every area.
I learned from tutorials on the macromedia site.

[TechMonkey]

If you are writing in standard HTML then the only way to do this is with frames. There is no equivilent to INCLUDE in HTML. If you are using PHP there is an equivilent. It can't be done in CSS as it is not a scripting language.

HTH

[webman]

Or use Dreamweaver templates - they're a bit awkward at first though.

[triggmiester]

I'm no expert, but I would go >Insert>Template Objects>Editable Region

As i understand it, this would make the centre content change and all the navigation stay put, (or something like that)

[Quackers]

I'm no expert, but I would go >Insert>Template Objects>Editable Region

As i understand it, this would make the centre content change and all the navigation stay put, (or something like that)

If i do that, do you know how i make a page load in it.

[Domino]

to load into it you'd need and inline frame, or iframe.
best bet is to go to csszengarden.com and look at the designs. almost all of those have centred content, which is what i think you want

[triggmiester]

I have now come across this site - http://www.cssplay.co.uk/layouts/fixed.html, I'm not sure if there is a tutorial on how to do it

I have just started to really get into css over the holidays and can't believe that I haven't sooner, how simple is it????

Anyway hope this helps, hope it is still relevant to your query???

[SimpleSi]

AFAIK what you want to do, needs to be done by frames. (or very, very, very clever CSS/PHP)

There are many things on the web to try to simulate frames but thats what they do - simulate - not replace.

I've managed all my sites in the past using frames but now I'm looking at using Content Management Systems as the way forward.

CMSs can seem to offer nearly the same functionality as frames and if most of your content is directly held within its database or files then they both look and can feel the same.

However, you have to accept that when you want to display content from without the CMS, it will end up just being in its own webpage without any navigation and you'll need to rely on the users pressing the back button to get back to your site

If you want to see what I mean try out
www.hoole.lancs.sch.uk and test out opening a newsletter in the old site (frames) and then on new site (CMS)

regards

Simon

[srochford]

The trouble with frames is that (unless you're very careful) no-one can bookmark particular pages and you can't give links to them.

I've been to far too many sites where the URL of every page appears to just be www.site.tld - not easy to work with!

The other thing to be aware of is accessibility - frames aren't always easy to use with screen readers.

Lots of web servers (including Apache and IIS) do support server side includes in plain HTML - try putting:



and see what happens (you might need to have .shtm or .shtml as the extension)

[beeswax]

I'm not web page guru, so i need a little help in this department.

If you have Dreamweaver 2004 and Click New, Page Designs (CSS) and say select Three-Column Right Nav, as a nice template design, then all is good, and you can fill in the content. The point i get confused with is how do i get the content in the center to change while keeping all the menu's around the same when i click one of the links for example? I know how to do things like "" with asp files, but i do not think thats what i am suppost to do here. Am i being thick?

this site I did uses I-frames. Basically a static page with a call to an html page so that it appears in the body of the main site. The I-frame code is really quite simple, see here. hope this helps

[dhassen]

Easiest way to do this is with Dreamweaver templates.

Create the new page (design) as you've mentioned. Then select the entire content div (where div id="content") and as someone above said, choose Insert > Template Objects > Editable Region. Call this region content and click ok. Now change all the links etc (although you won't yet have the content pages to link to presumably) - the stuff you want to stay the same on all pages. Now save this page as a template. (File > Save As Template)

Now to create all your pages just go File > New and then click on the 'Templates' tab in the dialog box, then your site on the left then your template in the middle. A preview should appear on the right. Click create and now you have your 1st page. All you can change is the content in the content editable region. Add your content, save and and repeat this step as many times as is necessary.

Then you can go back to your template (should be in Templates folder in your site and have .dwt extension) and change the links to all your new pages. Then save the template, and let dreamweaver update all your other pages. Easy! Hope this helps.

Frames are bad for accessibility as far as I'm aware.

[limbo]

You have to think about css sheets in two sections really to make up your template.

The css style sheet defines the text styles for the different named areas.

Then if you want standard menu's and headers that get globally changed then really you need to be looking at using include files (Frames are OK - but they will give you a headache if you get them wrong and personally I like the fact that the whole page scrolls up and down with include files rather than just the one pane with frames).

Is it not an option to use the asp include command on the server you are going use to host?