HJDS Computer Services Computer Systems Support and Installation.

One of the essential components of Adobe’s Creative Suite CS4, Dreamweaver is an outstanding environment for developing web content. If you have invested in this sophisticated bit of software, it makes sense to ensure that your staff knows how to employ it effectively. Having permitted them a week or two to have fun with the package and practiced the tutorials it contains, you will probably want to get them educated. Tutor-led software training has the benefit that delegates are able to ask questions at the same time as they gain knowledge of what the software does and have involved concepts explained and demonstrated to them until they fully understand them.

Booking your workforce on a open Dreamweaver CS4 course is of course one possibility. However, increasingly organisations are demanding to have this training customised to meet their precise demands. Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 can be used for a variety of web-related tasks: Not everybody uses it in the same way. Perhaps you will be using it to develop complete websites or intranets. Or, you might be using it to develop just one little section of a bigger site. Maybe your personnel will be using the program primarily to create newsletters or promotional material to be emailed to clients. Booking a customised program will ensure that you just pay for tuition which is important to your requirements and reflects the way in which you will be using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4.

Before you start contacting Adobe Dreamweaver training companies, it is a good idea to make sure you have a clear understanding of what you intend to accomplish by using Dreamweaver and that your expectations are realistic.For one thing, Adobe Dreamweaver is not a tool which can be used to design websites: Its role is principally to build and take care of web pages and other web-related content. When you get in touch with training companies, you must make it clear that you do not simply wish for them to provide their standard Adobe Dreamweaver courses but that you require a customised programme of training. Between you, a schedule of topics to be covered must then be drawn up and the duration of the course decided.

The customisation process might additionally require identifying specific requirements pertinent to your own organisation. Different people possibly will need to do distinct tasks with the program and therefore need different skills. For example, you may have some people who will develop into web specialists and will need to learn the program thoroughly enough to build complete sites, create CSS style sheets and build Dreamweaver CS4 templates and library items. On the other hand, you may have people who will be web content editors and simply need to edit pages but not necessarily create them.

Nearly all training companies offering customised courses ought to be willing to accommodate the particular needs of your organisation and the various profiles of the team who will be attending the classes. Between you, you can therefore create a program of study which satisfies the needs of all users. Perhaps this may mean, having various courses for users with different profiles or perhaps the best approach will be a modular one whereby certain modules are taken by each person while others are merely attended by certain groups of user.

Posted under Software

Hardly any people would argue that Adobe Dreamweaver is one of the most widely used web development packages around. It has gained its popularity by appealing to users with a broad variety of profiles. Its user-friendly interface appeals to inexperienced users with a small amount know-how of the technologies that underpin web pages. At the same time, it allows skilled web developers to interact with code in a variety of practical ways.

Adobe Dreamweaver enables developers to create dynamic web sites whose content is derived from a data source. Such sites feature server-side pages, written in a scripting language such as PHP, ASP or ASP.Net, which need to be executed on the server. It is therefore crucial to stipulate a testing server as part of the site setup while defining such sites within Dreamweaver.

A Microsoft invention, Active Server Pages (ASP) is one of the easiest such languages to configure. Now referred to as classic ASP to distinguish it from ASP.Net, the current incarnation of Active Server Pages, ASP was initially released in the late nineties and revolutionised the way in which web sites were developed. ASP is designed to run on Windows 2000 server and on Windows XP Professional. It is part of Internet Information Services (IIS), an optional Windows component. Once installed, IIS converts your PC into a web server running a default website located in a folder called “wwwroot” which can be accessed with the web address “localhost/”.

Once ASP is up and running, Adobe Dreamweaver is equipped to start creating dynamic web sites. The features on hand in Dreamweaver for generating the necessary server-side content are to be found in three panels: Databases, Bindings and Server Behaviors. The Databases panel is used to create connections to data sources. In the case of ASP, the most frequent solutions are Microsoft Access and the more powerful Microsoft SQL Server. As soon as a connection to the database is in place, the Bindings panel is used to retrieve data into a recordset. The dialogue box which Adobe Dreamweaver uses for creating recordsets automatically generates fragments of SQL as the user interacts with the related data objects. However, some familiarity with SQL (structured query language) is needed to be able to retrieve specifically the data necessary for a given recordset.

The Server Behaviours panel is where nearly all of the action takes place: It contains a wide variety of pre-built scripts which can be used to add dynamic content to web pages. For example, the Insert Record server behaviour can be used to create a form which adds new records to a database table via a web page or it can be used to create an enquiries sheet which adds every enquiry to an enquires table and afterward takes the visitor to a thank you page.

Posted under Software

One of the pivotal components of the Adobe Creative Suite, Dreamweaver is an excellent environment for developing web content. If you have invested in this sophisticated piece of software, it makes sense to ensure that your staff knows how to use it effectively. Having allowed them a week or two to play with the package and go through the tutorials it contains, you will probably want to get them trained. Tutor-led software training has the benefit that delegates are able to ask questions as they learn and have complex concepts explained and demonstrated to them until they fully understand them.

Booking your staff on a public Dreamweaver course is of course one possibility. However, increasingly organisations are demanding to have this training customised to meet their specific demands. Adobe Dreamweaver can be used for a variety of web-related tasks: not everyone uses it in the same way. Perhaps you will be using it to develop complete websites or intranets. Or, you may be using it to develop only one small section of a larger site. Maybe your staff will be using the program primarily to create newsletters or promotional material to be emailed to clients. Booking a customised course will ensure that you only pay for instruction which is relevant to your requirements and reflects the way in which you will be using Dreamweaver.

Before approaching training companies, it is a good idea to make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve by using Dreamweaver and that your expectations are realistic. For example, Dreamweaver is not a tool which can be used to design websites: its role is mainly to build and maintain web pages and other web-related content. When you approach training companies, you should make it clear that you do not simply want them to deliver their standard Dreamweaver courses but that you require a customised programme of training. Between you, a schedule of topics to be covered should then be drawn up and the duration of the program decided.

The customisation process may also involve identifying different requirements within your own organisation. Different people may need to do different tasks with the program and therefore need different skills. For example, you may have some people who will become web specialists and will need to learn the program thoroughly enough to build complete sites, create CSS style sheets and build Dreamweaver templates and library items. On the other hand, you may have people who will be web content editors and simple need to edit pages but not necessarily create them.

If a training company offers customised training courses, they should be willing to accommodate the specific needs of your organisation and the different profiles of the staff members who will be attending the course. Between you, you can then create a program of study which satisfies the needs of all users. Perhaps this may mean, having different courses for users with different profiles or perhaps the best approach will be a modular one whereby some modules are taken by everyone while others are only attended by certain user groups.

Posted under Software