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Dreamweaver Tips - Tips on tables, forms, CSS Styles, behaviors more

We've shared some really cool tips on Macromedia Dreamweaver in this article. They are handy tips that all Dreamweaver users should know about to allow more flexibility and creativity while designing sites in Dreamweaver.

Cool tips and tricks on Dreamweaver

1. Jump Menus, Pop Up Windows and Swap Images
   The Dreamweaver Behaviors panel makes it easy to create jump menus, pop up windows, swap images and more.
   Click here to learn more about Dreamweaver Behaviors.
   
    

2. CSS Styles
   Instead of using endless font tags, use CSS Styles in Dreamweaver to format text in your site. You can also use CSS Styles to create text rollovers and remove the underline from links.
   Learn how to create Style sheets in Dreamweaver
   
    

3. Links

   • Change the link colors from the default blue link color by going to Modify>Page Properties. Here you can change the link color, visited link color and active link color. All your links will change to the link color specified.
     
      

   • Have you ever wondered how to get a text rollover on a link? The answer is to use the a:hover style!
     Click here to see how it's done! (Cut 'n' Paste Code is also provided)
     
      

   • You can link to a particular section of a page by using a feature called Named Anchors. E.g. If I want a link to Rollovers I would link to this same page but would add a named anchor to go to the section Rollovers. Here's how you add an anchor. Position your cursor at the point you want the link to go to and click on Insert>Named Anchors. Give the anchor an appropriate name (in this case we would name it 'rollovers'). Now while linking all you need to do is add the # symbol along with the name of the anchor. An anchor is understood by HTML by the # symbol. In this case the link would be: <a href="#rollovers">Rollovers</a>

4. Customizing Form Objects and Validating Forms
   You can give a background color and font type to form objects using CSS Styles in Dreamweaver. You can also validate forms using Dreamweaver behaviors.
   Click here to learn how to customize form objects and validate forms.
   
    

5. Tables
    

   • Making table rows with heights less than 15 pixels sometimes seems impossible. Especially in Netscape! Here's a great tip - all you need to do is insert a transparent gif in your row and all your heights will be fine. You can find a transparent image called a shim in your Fireworks file. This is just a 1 pixel x 1 pixel gif. You could also export a transparent image from Fireworks.
     
      

   • Table with a thin border

     Have you ever wondered how to get a nice thin border instead of the thick border that is automatically generated using the 'border' property? Or have you ever wanted only the table to have a border and not all the cells. Well the answer to this is to make a table with the width you want and 1 as your cell padding. You then have to insert the actual table inside this table with width 100%.
     More Cool Table Tips 'n' Tricks

   
    

6. Custom Submit Buttons
   
   Have you ever wondered how to create custom 'Submit' or 'Go' buttons in Dreamweaver? Well, It's really simple. All you need to do is create your custom image, save it and in Dreamweaver click on Insert>Form Object>Image Field, to choose the submit button image. You now have your customized submit button. The code will look like this:
   
    

   <input type="image" border="0" name="imageField3" src="/images/submit.gif">

   
    

7. Rollovers

   Rollovers are very easy using Dreamweaver. All you need to do is export two images from Fireworks (the image itself and the rollover image). Next, in Dreamweaver, click on Insert>Rollover Image. Give a name to the image, choose the images from the folder icon and finally give the link to the image. That's it! You've now got a great looking effect for your site.

8. Best Time Saving Tips in Dreamweaver
   The best time saving tips in Dreamweaver are to use

   • Dreamweaver templates and

   • Server Side Includes
     
      

9. Check Broken Links Throughout The Site

   Before uploading your site you need to make sure that there are no dead links in the site. You can do this by going to your site map, right clicking on any of the files and then clicking on 'check links'. Now you can choose to either check links in the entire site or within the selected file or folder. If there are any dead links you can fix them by using the folder icon to select the right files.

10. Spaces

    • If you need to go to the very next line and not to a new paragraph use use Shift+Enter instead of Enter.
      
       

    • Ctrl + Shift + Space gives you more than one space between characters
      
       

11. Bullet Shapes and Types

    Customize bullets by using the Type attribute in the <ul> or <ol> tag.

    • Point 1

    • Point 2
      
      E.g. <ul type="square"> would give you a square bullet rather than the default circular bullet.
      See more examples
      
      
       

12. Resizing Images
    After resizing an image in Dreamweaver, click on Commands>Optimize Image in Fireworks. You will get a dialog box saying 'Editing image.gif. Do you wish to use an existing Fireworks document as the source of image.gif.' Click on No and then click Update. The image is now updated and optimized in Dreamweaver. This saves you the trouble of opening the image in Fireworks, resizing it and exporting it again.