Friday, September 24, 2010

Web Tutorials



I've completed Adobe's Developer Connection tutorial Creating Your First Website in Dreamweaver CS4.

I'm used to creating CSS by hand, as like when I design table-based eblasts at work, which seems to have been a great point of entry in learning code. What I've learned about designing eblasts might be worth it's own post, for sure. Very interesting stuff.

So what was new to me here was Dreamweaver's CSS style palette which allows you to change and apply the styles on the fly. And when you use this palette it not only applies the styles right away to your html source code, but it also updates the linked external style sheet...very intuitive. Also learned in this area was the ability to position div tags in a layout using CSS and not table structure, something I was keen to start to learn.

Similar to the CSS styles palette is the Files palette. If used to manage files, instead of managing them outside Dreamweaver, it will relink and auto-update across your predefined site which is pretty cool.

I was also introduced to Spry elements. Are these element specific only to Adobe products? I think so. In this case we used a dropdown javascript menu bar. And then modified the associated CSS. Pretty complex but the tutorial points you to the only files you will need, so that helps. I don't know how much I'll be interested in using these items in the future.

I read somewhere that you should do tutorial with your own files. So having done this once, I might do it again to with my own files and post the results to my server. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

What's Important

"Focus" is what we ask the kids to do a lot of. To stay on task. I could use a bit of my own medicine I think. I've found I can make a difference when working on something by figuring out what is most important about that given task. And using that to guide my decisions. Often I get bogged down in the details. They really trip me up, frustrate me, and I lose sight of the big value of what I'm doing. Asking myself "what's important" is a simple way to help me get past the sticky details and more easily achieve the full value of the task I'm doing at that given moment. Something to think about anyway.

Thanks for the Links!

OK, it's been a long summer and I've been preoccupied with other things. But I was checking out a few personal blogs that I enjoy, and I noticed that I'm on their blog feed. Wow, thanks! And then I noticed that I haven't posted in 2 months, uh, sorry.

Here are a few things that I'd like to blog in the near future, so please stay tuned.

-- I set the goal for myself to learn a bit of Dreamweaver and create a portfolio website for myself by the end of the year. I've found some great free tutorial resources out there and will make a point to share the links and my musings on the subject.

-- Earlier in the year I wrote about book illustrations. There's a specific illustrations in a sailing manual that I've been meaning to share. They've long been a source of inspiration for me.