Announcement

**omulcock** · 13-Feb-2005, 01:11 PM

I have not tried yet but any words of advice wouldn't go a miss.

Cheers,
Oliver
The Classic Network

**jont** · 14-Feb-2005, 09:48 AM

Integrating with Dreamweaver (or any web editor) is relatively painless but you have to keep in mind that as a lot of the templates are being added to a parent template (usually the Act_Primary template) that most of the <table></table> tags are missing - so viewing the page in Dreamweaver looks bizarre. The simple way round this is to add the <table> </table> tags at the appropraite place in the template to view the layouts - then remove before saving.

Layout is a little funny as the Actinic tags (CustomVar etc) can force table cells out of alignment in the preview mode so you will need to save and preview the page again under Actinic itself.

With DW it is always best to work in either code view or split view - this is to ensure if you start moving some of the Actinic codes you take all the tags with you. The only issue I have found with DW was introducing Fireworks code straight into the Actinic templates - DW tended to merge some of the <javascript> tags with resulting errors - the simple workaround was to import the Fireworks code into a blank page and simply copy and paste the code into the <head> and <body> tags accordingly.

Other than the little quirks above (mainly the table tags) DW is fine - I used to use Frontpage and that was a nightmare.

**Mikey Lazy** · 14-Feb-2005, 01:13 PM

I have found DW quite confusing in the past and ended up editing the preview pages as opposed to the correct templates. I've also found that sometimes, I edit the templates and once the site is uploaded, it's fine - but the offline preview doesn't appear to change.

Is there a simple way of know which templates I need to edit. In the Actinic user guide, it says to view a preview of the page you want to edit offline then copy the address and open in DW. Then the Actinic Tags indicate which template is being used. But as has just been said, the view of the template is strange and it stumps me.

Is there a simple way of know which templates I need to edit? Or has anyone got some 'quick and easy' rules for sucessful DW intergration?

Many Thanks

**jont** · 14-Feb-2005, 06:21 PM

The list of templates are availble in the online help and in the advanced users and design guides.

You need to keep in mind that the actual page you see on the internet is made up by Actinic compiling various templates and merging them into 1 page that can be understood by the web browser.

The Actinic variables actually appear in the preview page when using DM or similar - this is because DW reads the items such as CUSTOMVAR:PAGE1 etc as text that you have entered - Actinic reads CUSTOMVAR:PAGE1 differently and inserts the relevant information from elsewhere to compile the page.

You generally need to edit just a few of the Actinic templates to get a major change to the site:

Act_Primary - this is the master "background" template over which all the product and section details are added

Act_ProductLine - this is the master template for the product layouts

You are really best editing the templates rather than the previewed pages as this can become very tedious if you wish to make alterations to the site at a later date you will have a lot of alterations to do - using the templates is simply a click away to update under Actinic.

When you save the changes in DW simply switch back to Actinic and hit Page Preview to show the result of the changes

**pinbrook** · 14-Feb-2005, 06:40 PM

When I started out I used the Template Manager within Actinic to help locate the correct template to edit. (Now I just hack and hope

)

I then opened the template in DW and made the changes. Often with the product layouts I put the <table> </table> tags in temporarily to help with the positioning.

With DW it is always best to work in either code view or split view - this is to ensure if you start moving some of the Actinic codes you take all the tags with you.

This is very sound advice, you do need to ensure you bring all the tags that go with a NQV.

**omulcock** · 15-Feb-2005, 11:53 AM

Many Thanks everybody.

Announcement

Dreamweaver and Actinic

Dreamweaver and Actinic

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment