Techy question - Dreamweaver

[Almiche V]

Dreamweaver - Nightmaremaker at the moment.

Can anyone tell me how to insert a link over a picture please? Everytime I insert a link it gets placed above or below my front page pic. Is it possible to position it in the middle over the pic?

If anyone can help I'll do them a massive favour - just name it.

[9while9]

Dreamweaver - Nightmaremaker at the moment.

Can anyone tell me how to insert a link over a picture please? Everytime I insert a link it gets placed above or below my front page pic. Is it possible to position it in the middle over the pic?

If anyone can help I'll do them a massive favour - just name it.

Why can't you just select the image and hotlink it?

or put the pic in the bg of the table and insert a grid over it add text
and hotlink....shake well

[mh]

You could make the picture the link if it's for the front page. I don't know Dreamweaver at all, but if you're familiar with the backend HTML code it's dead easy.

Code: Select all

<a href="whateverblah.htm"><img src="moreblah.jpg" border="0"></a>

Otherwise you're talking about CSS, div elements, and whatnot.

[markfiend]

It's difficult to know what you mean; something like this is what you will get if you...

put the pic in the bg of the table and insert a grid over it add text
and hotlink

[Rise&Reverberate]

Do you want the link to apply to the whole picture? If so just assign a link in the properties.
If you only want the link to apply to part of the picture just draw a hotspot over it and assign the link to that.

[lazarus corporation]

You could make the picture the link if it's for the front page. I don't know Dreamweaver at all, but if you're familiar with the backend HTML code it's dead easy.

Code: Select all

<a href="whateverblah.htm"><img src="moreblah.jpg" border="0"></a>

Otherwise you're talking about CSS, div elements, and whatnot.

The problem with any WYSIWYG html editor is that you don't have complete control over the code. I've heard that Dreamweaver does an OK job of CSS (it's certainly better than that obscene monstrosity that is MS Frontpage), but it doesn't do it as well as I do (even though I say so myself! ).

Use Dreamweaver to learn on, but always check the source code it produces, and start to teach yourself to handcode standards-compliant HTML (and/or XHTML) and CSS as soon as you can.

[Quiff Boy]

^ wot he said

[9while9]

^ wot he said

Damn programmers think they know everything.

I need to learn more..

[Dark]

that obscene monstrosity that is MS Frontpage

I take exception to that, good sir. I use FrontPage for every page on my website, because if you just want a plain website without all the Flash and s**t that diverts from the message of the page itself, then FrontPage is perfectly good.

[9while9]

that obscene monstrosity that is MS Frontpage

I take exception to that, good sir. I use FrontPage for every page on my website, because if you just want a plain website without all the Flash and s**t that diverts from the message of the page itself, then FrontPage is perfectly good.

Yeah, you don't want all that aesthetic beauty and quality design. It just distracts from bland eye chart layouts that put people to sleep.

Infact you should put an option in here for Dark so he can switch to
all white background and all black text.

[aims]

Aesthetic beauty on the internet is a load of crap.

Sure, it looks nice, but if your market lies outside of able-bodied internet explorer using twenty-somethings, then you have issues. Flash isn't indexable by search engines, it's generally untouchable by screenreaders, shiny colour-schemes are a pain for the visually impaired, AJAX driven menus break the whole Back/Forward navigation system, background music is a complete pain in the arse when you're using an audio-input card that doesn't like being shared between applications.

In an ideal world, everything would be XML + XSL/CSS with SVG images for any layout work (allowing true scalability of the page) and PNG where raster is absolutely necessary (photos being just about the only example I can think of).

But that's just my inner HCI nazi speaking. Motz gegen UI crimes

[lazarus corporation]

that obscene monstrosity that is MS Frontpage

I take exception to that, good sir. I use FrontPage for every page on my website, because if you just want a plain website without all the Flash and s**t that diverts from the message of the page itself, then FrontPage is perfectly good.

My complaint about Frontpage is not about what you can do with it, but the quality of the code it produces - even for a fairly plain page - which is undeniably poor and unsurprisingly non-standards-compliant.

It inserts Microsoft proprietary code at the drop of a hat (which frequently breaks when viewed in any browser apart from IE. The conspiracy theorists may say that's a deliberate move by Microsoft. They may be right.) and its code is incredibly bloated - loads of unneeded tags which make a simple page far larger (in file size) than one which is correctly hand-coded.

If you want a plain website, don't use FrontPage - it does the opposite.

[mh]

If you're managing a SharePoint site then FrontPage is an absolute necessity, otherwise I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, myself. Visual Studio .NET 2003 is actually the best web page editor I've ever used - it's fast, lean, nothing to get in the way, no reliance on any proprietary extensions or 3rd party guff, and has an excellent HTML editing mode.

[9while9]

[quote="Motz"]Aesthetic beauty on the internet is a load of crap.

Sure, it looks nice, but if your market lies outside of able-bodied internet explorer using twenty-somethings, then you have issues. Flash isn't indexable by search engines, quote]

Load of crap > yes I've seen your site

And just don't build the site entirely in Flash ( search engines ).
I could go on ( boring )..

I knew you were a Nazi...
And a Texas Vegetable........

[lazarus corporation]

...AJAX driven menus break the whole Back/Forward navigation system

To be accurate, it's badly written JavaScript menus which break the whole Back/Forward nav system. I haven't seen AJAX used for menus - can't see the need to asynchronously access an XML file using the XMLHttpRequest object just for a menu.

it's generally untouchable by screenreaders

I'm not having a go at you, Motz, but Frames also give big problems to screenreaders as well as to other users with disabilities.

[Almiche V]

Thanks all, have linked the image for the moment. Will work on text links later now that I have a vague idea what to do.

It might take a while, must remember to blink.

[aims]

...AJAX driven menus break the whole Back/Forward navigation system

To be accurate, it's badly written JavaScript menus which break the whole Back/Forward nav system. I haven't seen AJAX used for menus - can't see the need to asynchronously access an XML file using the XMLHttpRequest object just for a menu.

Sorry, should be more accurate. I meant AJAX based sites, of which the menu system is indeed just JavaScript. Google gets brownie points for this one, since they've properly hooked the back/forward events to undo the last operation

Though if we're being pedantic, dynamically generated menus could be potentially quite useful if you've got a constantly changing hierarchy which you want to use for multiple purposes. A good example would be if you wanted to make Slashdot's comments or Dominion's archives use a true tree hierarchy, grabbing the replies to a post and expanding it on screen, rather than sending you to another page. I'd actually find that quite useful, but I'm very much digressing

it's generally untouchable by screenreaders

I'm not having a go at you, Motz, but Frames also give big problems to screenreaders as well as to other users with disabilities.

Exactly why I don't advocate frames, either

That and they're a pain to use in lynx while firefox is still compiling on a fresh Gentoo install

Load of crap > yes I've seen your site

And just don't build the site entirely in Flash ( search engines ).
I could go on ( boring )..

For what it's worth, the majority of visitors to that site were on Firefox and those that weren't could still access the content. The fact that IE6 can't handle PNG transparency of CSS is unfortunate. That as a web dev you'd so quickly incriminate yourself by not even double checking it in a Gecko or KHTML/WebCore based browser is doubly unfortunate. Then again, I suppose your site degrades gracefully on non-Win32/IE platforms?

No wait, on 64-bit *nixes it won't even f**king try and load.

Your job is to get execs to pay for aesthetically pleasing yet semantically disgusting interfaces. Mine is to present information which, no matter how it degrades, will allow anybody, able-bodied or otherwise, with a web browser, be it as archaic as Mosaic or as minimalist as w3, to access what they need. I may not be a web designer, but HCI is my pet field and any supposed web-dev who uses non-default font colours on a themeable forum without any apparent regard for potential visual conflicts is hardly asking to be taken seriously.

[James Blast]

now get a job and keep that fire in your belly Mike, it can get kicked out of you pretty damn quick, I for one know

[aims]

Fair point, James

I've come across it to a certain extent already. A lot of the Computing stuff we're taught at school (at A Level, ffs ) is quite obviously bollocks and they know so, but we have to swallow it. I'd like to think that people in the big wide world actually cared about things like standards compliance and accessibility, but I guess if the schools are only churning out Frontpage/Visual Basic/Access drones then that's not bloody likely.

And that's before we even touch on the extraneous corporate s**t which you're no doubt alluding to

I guess I'll stick to my idealistic fantasies and occassional open source project contributions

[James Blast]

I guess I'll stick to my idealistic fantasies and occassional open source project contributions

Keep that in mind Mike, just don't take the lefthand path like I strayed down. Middle Management is where the power is, sadly.

Hard work means nothing.

[Dark]

that obscene monstrosity that is MS Frontpage

I take exception to that, good sir. I use FrontPage for every page on my website, because if you just want a plain website without all the Flash and s**t that diverts from the message of the page itself, then FrontPage is perfectly good.

It inserts Microsoft proprietary code at the drop of a hat (which frequently breaks when viewed in any browser apart from IE. The conspiracy theorists may say that's a deliberate move by Microsoft. They may be right.) and its code is incredibly bloated - loads of unneeded tags which make a simple page far larger (in file size) than one which is correctly hand-coded.

I noticed these in the page head:

Code: Select all

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">

They look somewhat pointless. I'll go on a mass purge. If they turn out to actually DO something.. well, I'll back up the pages first. If not, then all sorted.

EDIT: From removing a whole load of repeating code, I've saved.. 9kb of space. Oh well, I needed to kill some time.

[Dark]

Yeah, you don't want all that aesthetic beauty and quality design. It just distracts from bland eye chart layouts that put people to sleep.

Our website is about our music. Neither entity is a multi-coloured orgasm of design.
If I wanted to have a s**t Flash intro that wastes bandwidth, or a series of inconsistent colours all over the page, I'd have made a MySpace or Piczo page. The fact is that we have no desire to win people with our "aesthetic beauty and quality design", they should either like us for our music, or not at all. Simple as that.

Infact you should put an option in here for Dark so he can switch to
all white background and all black text.

The "Bandwidth Saver" boardstyle was close to that before it was removed. But I prefer the "Dr Jeep" style. Grey, black, orange, with a bit of yellow. Suits me.

Now go play elsewhere.

[aims]

Code: Select all

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">

They look somewhat pointless.

Ironically, you've caught the remotely useful ones. Granted they're not that important if your server's setup properly, but they're certainly not the worst offenders

[Quiff Boy]

aye

the least you can get away with using:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/

though this is much preferable:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1



also, w3schools have some good pointers on how to code:
http://www.w3schools.com/

[hallucienate]

I find that best way to code a web site is to make a complete hash of your first couple of attempts, then wait until some kind soul pops along and offers to re-do your site for you. Then you can bung some poorly written PHP code into it and hope it works.