New designer learning Actinic

[turbonostics]

Hi there,

Firstly Merry Christmas to all and a very happy new year.

I was approached by a client to create a website with a database, so a friend of mine suggested Actinic. It is a very nice program, however, I find programming inside of Dreamweaver easier and I do understand that Actinic supports dreamweaver, can anybody tell me please, if it is easy to import the catalogue information from Actinic and visually design the site with dreamweaver? I would like to create the visual layout with dreamweaver, because the layout themes in Actinic are rather common place. If you know what I mean?

The client would like some elements of ramdonising images, which would require PHP. I am more of a designer than a programmer.

If anybody could point me into the right direction, I would be very grateful.

Thank you,

Best Wishes

James

www.atmmultimedia.com

[RuralWeb]

Hi James,

What you want to do is possible with Actinic ie design the layout in DW - what I suggest you do is read the getting started manual, the Advanced user guide and do a search on the forum. Since V8 was launched in July many of the getting started questions have been answered in depth already.

Failing that I can recommend the Designer course that Actinic run.

[fatoftheland]

Designing an Actinic store in dreamweaver is kind of possible but not as easy as designing an entire store and then dropping it all into Actinic.

Actinic's V8 stores are comprised of two main layouts. These are simply the innerlayout and the outerlayout.

The outerlayout can be completely designed in DW and registered with Actinic via the DW extension and then this will become your main outer design for say the toolbar and left menu leaving the main page area to be controlled by the innerlayout.

The innerlayout cannot be designed by DW as such. What you will need to do is learn (as many of the designers here have, me included) what each of the variables within a specific layout are. So for instance you'll need to look at the first innerlayout you wish to customise, say for instance a product layout. Take a look at this in the design tab and then you will have wrap all of the actinic variables in custom CSS which is referenced in your outerlayout's .css file

Then by trial and error you can see what your css is doing to your design. Of course you can sketch the design out in DW first by building your CSS tags together, but you will need to insert these into actinic to see if your css really works!

Hope this helps

[RuralWeb]

Then by trial and error you can see what your css is doing to your design. Of course you can sketch the design out in DW first by building your CSS tags together, but you will need to insert these into actinic to see if your css really works!

Better to link to your external css and delete the Actinic css - details in the AUG.

[Donald Gray]

Actinic's V8 stores are comprised of two main layouts. These are simply the innerlayout and the outerlayout.

The outerlayout can be completely designed in DW and registered with Actinic via the DW extension and then this will become your main outer design for say the toolbar and left menu leaving the main page area to be controlled by the innerlayout.

The innerlayout cannot be designed by DW as such. What you will need to do is learn (as many of the designers here have, me included) what each of the variables within a specific layout are. So for instance you'll need to look at the first innerlayout you wish to customise, say for instance a product layout. Take a look at this in the design tab and then you will have wrap all of the actinic variables in custom CSS which is referenced in your outerlayout's .css file

Hi All - as the new guy on the block, last time I used Actanic was v2 (or was it v3..?)

I am bootstrapping, with extreme difficulty, to V8. (I feel like I'm swimming in cold treacle at the moment.)

I would be most grateful for a little more clarity on the above quote...

Inner an outer layout? Do you mean the outer layout to be the html pages OUTSIDE the actalog directories or the outer shell of Actinic?

I too use Dreamweaver and would dearly like to port the templates therein...

[pinbrook]

if you go the the Getting started Guide that comes in the box with Actinic you will find a section on how to design within the software.

There is also a section in the "Help" menu on the DW interface.

[RuralWeb]

would be most grateful for a little more clarity

As jo says its all in the book and has been discussed on the forum for the last 4 months so a search will show all. Failing that I can recommend the design course at Actinic HQ.

[Donald Gray]

As jo says its all in the book and has been discussed on the forum for the last 4 months so a search will show all. Failing that I can recommend the design course at Actinic HQ.

1) I am a new guy to this forum and still very much feeling my way - don't be too brusk. I have respect for the wealth of knowledge and skill in this place and for your input to the many questions. Maybe its because I am tired (working on a 'PageFooter' problem untill 02:00 this morning) but I read your reply as a "go away and read the book"! My question was quite fair and simple. A fair and simple reply would have been appreciated. Your reply was far from giving a new guy a helping hand.

I only found this forum at 0200 this morn and have yet to discover all of its atributes...

The last thing I want to do is cross swords with the gurus in this place, so forgive if I have transgressed in some way and misunderstood your response.

2) I have a contract to do a large ecommerce site and have downloded 30 day trial of V8 with a view to recommending the client to purchase it. I have only 6 days experience and have created a workable site but would be happier in DW where I can. I have trawled the Getting Started user guide that is under the 'Help' for dreamweaver info. Cant find any reference - What page?

3) I ask again for clarity on the meaning of 'Inner & Outer layout' What bit is the Inner and what bit is the Outer? There is no reference to inner or outer layouts in the Help

thanks

[RuralWeb]

I have only 6 days experience

Fair enough - but if the information you require is easily available you will only be pointed in the right direction.

If you do a search on the forum there are several threads eg http://community.actinic.com/showthr...t=outer+layout

[RuralWeb]

For any other new users picking up this thread then plaese read this first http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=25620.

If you have just purchased Actinic then you have 30 days telephone support direct from Actinic to get your site up and running.

There is a design course http://www.actinic.co.uk/training/index.htm which is very good - I suggest all commercial designers go on this.

And of course the user manual and tutorial built into the software.

[Jan]

The client would like some elements of ramdonising images, which would require PHP. I am more of a designer than a programmer.

This was your original question, where do you need random images? On the front page, in a section or in the product details? The only way that I can think of doing this would be to use scripting of some sort on the web site to pick images out of a set for a product or use Actinic PHP blocks to change the image offline (Actinic generates static HTML pages) and upload frequently ... however I am not a web designer so someone else will probably know how to do this.

Regards,

[pinbrook]

I ask again for clarity on the meaning of 'Inner & Outer layout' What bit is the Inner and what bit is the Outer?

in my view this pretty well sums it up.

The outerlayout can be completely designed in DW and registered with Actinic via the DW extension and then this will become your main outer design for say the toolbar and left menu leaving the main page area to be controlled by the innerlayout.

The innerlayout cannot be designed by DW as such. What you will need to do is learn (as many of the designers here have, me included) what each of the variables within a specific layout are. So for instance you'll need to look at the first innerlayout you wish to customise, say for instance a product layout.

Sadly the whole design mechanism in V8 takes a while to learn, it is not easy to explain in a couple of sentences how to do it. It certainly is a case of trial and error and be prepared to chuck out several tries along the way.

[Donald Gray]

Fair enough - but if the information you require is easily available you will only be pointed in the right direction.

If you do a search on the forum there are several threads eg http://community.actinic.com/showthr...t=outer+layout

As a matter of fact, I did do a search for "Inner Layer" & "0uter Layers" (with Quotes) and then a further search within those treads for those wordings. The posters who used the phrases 'inner/outer layers' did so in a context that to a beginner on v8 did not give information as to what part of the concept is which.

Perhaps if I 'Rise for the third time to ask...' what bit/section/portion is the inner layer and what is the outer layer? (Inner workings or Outer workings?)

Or can't you define it or help me with a direct answer, please say so. I dont mean to be sarcastic but I am getting very frustrated in trying to comprehend the general design concept and even more frustrated at being told to 'go find it yourself' when I have tried to seek the answer elsewhere.

If there is a simple way of defining the two layers concept, I would be VERY grateful for an answer here. Please.

[Donald Gray]

If there is a simple way of defining the two layers concept, I would be VERY grateful for an answer here. Please.

Pearhaps I should not try to understand the 'two layer' concept until I have got to grips with V8 in general. Maybe I will suddenly say "Of course...It was so obvious...!) At the mo, it is not obvious...

My frustration comes from a problem with 'PageFooter' and its variable. Not wanting to userp the original posters thread, I will ask about that in another thread.

Thanks for your replies...

[Jan]

There is a page in the Actinic program help that explains layouts well, to get to this, go to Actinic, hit F1 to bring up the help. Select the search tab and enter inner layout as the search term, click on list topics and choose the 4th item down which has the title of Page Layouts, it basically says that the outer layout controls how the page looks overall, so say for a section page, the outer layout might control where the breadcrumb trail is show or whether to include a section list in the side bar, the inner layouts control the content of the page, they determine what appears as page content and how it appears.

Regards,