Editing Actinic layouts in Dreamweaver ????

[Epiclines]

How do you take your product layout page out of actinic and into dreamweaver so you can simply move the images/text around and then put it back into actinic. This was so simple in version 7. Iv been told that now in V8you can only take dreamweaver files into actinic and not vise verser. is this so????? if this is true its going to make editing so much more painful....

Cheers Dave

[leehack]

Inner layouts can only be amended within Actinic as i understand.

[Epiclines]

Does anyone know??????

[leehack]

Amend them within Actinic, Dreamweaver and the inner layouts are not available yet.

[RuralWeb]

This was so simple in version 7. Iv been told that now in V8you can only take dreamweaver files into actinic and not vise verser. is this so????? if this is true its going to make editing so much more painful....

It was very very simple in V7 as you say. When V8 was designed it was, as I understand it, thought that designers did not do much work on product layouts so the ability to edit them in DW was removed. It is now only really possible to edit them from within Actinic. You can try and copy and paste into DW but the layout is pants - this is one of my bigest gripes with V8.

[kessock]

Dreamweaver

Hi,
I have read that Front Page cn have issues so I think I will ditch it before I even start using it.
I am thinking of buying dreamweaver, however I dont want to shell out yet more money if the importing and exporting of parts of actinic are not simple.
How easy is it, to say re design the look of my site in Dreamweaver whilst staying away from frames.
As you can see I am green, but extremely keen to learn and get my site noticed in my industry.
Please advise.
Thanks.
Mark

[RuralWeb]

I am thinking of buying dreamweaver, however I dont want to shell out yet more money if the importing and exporting of parts of actinic are not simple.

The outer layout can have Actinic content inserted easily its the inner layout that has problems in DW

How easy is it, to say re design the look of my site in Dreamweaver

Its easy IF you know how to use Dreamweaver and a graphics editing package such as photoshop or Fireworks. Learning Dreamweaver is a huge task on its own - V8 is simple in comparison

After you have paid out for DW, Photoshop and the time to learn them it will have been cheaper to have paid someone to do the job for you! - but then I would say that

[jont]

I have read that Front Page cn have issues so I think I will ditch it before I even start using it.

Depends on which version you have - the earlier versions mangled the code terribly - I think it was 2002 onwards when they took control and editing in HTML view was fine.

A lot of issues people raised as primarily down to

a. using proprietary tags (eg DHTL)
b. peoples loathing of all things Microsoft

If used sensibly (no fancy tags) it is more than competent - the main issue is the lack of integration that v8 shares with DW ... although this is not much to shout about as it is about as much use as a chocolate fire guard once you have designed the outer layout (which you can do in Frontpage, Fireworks, notepad etc but with a little more integration graft).

Once you have the outer layout sorted you are "best" using the design tab and hacking the HTML .. which kind of defeats the purpose of the design orientated focus of v8 but is the only true way to ensure the layout works as you require.

[RuralWeb]

but extremely keen to learn and get my site noticed in my industry.
Please advise.

As I understand it your site is currently V7 - if you are considering the cost of DW etc I think a better option would be to upgrade to V8 and use one of the newer templates. You can then build on a good base rather than spending time/effort on redesigning a V7 site.

As jont says you can play with the design view IF you know a bit of html.

I would also look at your current SE rankins as you pages were very badly constructed by use of the frames. This problem is gone and you need to look at making your title tags a little better - a forum search will give lots of info on this. Your aim should be to get all your pages out of the supplimental listings on google and "Get your site noticed".

A combination of site design/usability and better SEO should work well.

[kessock]

Input

Thanks for the input.
I don't really want to upgrade to V8 if the version I have (7) will do the job.
You say " workon your title tags" is there a right and wring way of doing this?
I will try and gen' up on this but find the amount of time spent searching for info a pain.
Thanks again.
Mark

[RuralWeb]

will try and gen' up on this but find the amount of time spent searching for info a pain

It may be but the time spent writing about things that have already been discussed at length is also a pain - at the end of the day its your site and you need to make the investment in time to build the site.

[kessock]

Ok

Fair enough.
Just thought I would ask.
I would still like to know if there is a right or wrong way of dong my title tags.
Thanks.
Mark

[fatoftheland]

Their is no need to learn or buy dreamweaver at all to edit product or section layouts. All design editing is done in Actinic simply by wrapping custom css around the actinic content.

If you know CSS and HTML then you can edit the layouts in Notepad!!

Go here: http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

That will tell you just about everything you need to know about css. I would suggest you read this and look at the code Actinic have use to customise the product layouts already there. This will give you an idea of how css is affecting the layout.

Attached is a CSS layout which I have customised just by wrapping actinic content in css. The custom css file which is reference in the outerlayout is also attached. CSS is quite self explanatory but fiddly!

Hope this helps. - Note that most of this applies to V8, but I am certain that the same principles apply to v7 only the code needs to go into each template and not into the design tab of actinic. Granted it is easier to edit templates with actinic... You could just download a trial of DW from the adobe site and then you'll have 30 days to get your templates sorted!!

PS. Here is a page with the product layout being used:

http://www.wholesaleheating.co.uk/ac...owers_411.html

http://www.sitepoint.com/books/html1/ - This is also a good book on CSS & HTML - Sitepoint books are very helpful

[RuralWeb]

Here is a page with the product layout being used

I assume the link to mambo in your outer layout is accidental

[fatoftheland]

link to mambo?