I’ve just written a tutorial for CreativePro.com on using Lightbox (a great, free, JavaScript program) to make sophisticated looking image gallery pages. You can see an example at: http://www.creativepro.com/img/story/VSGallery/gallery_finished.html
I’ve included instructions on how to use Dreamweaver to create the gallery. The tutorial is free and you’ll find it at: http://www.creativepro.com/story/howto/26043.html.
I have a new tutorial up on CreativePro.com that covers Dreamweaver CS3’s new Spry Form validation tools:
http://www.creativepro.com/story/howto/25935.html
The Dreamweaver team has posted a list of features currently available in Dreamweaver CS3, that they’ll remove in the next version of the program. These features have been around for several versions of the product and are considered not that useful to the vast majority of Dreamweaver users; they also require a lot of work on the part of the Dreamweaver engineers to maintain.
Here’s the list:
In general, this is a great move. Supporting .NET and Java Server Pages just doesn’t make a lot of sense; Microsoft now has its own visual Web authoring program that supports .NET, and JSP is a rather complex technology that most Dreamweaver users don’t need. This also means that the Dreamweaver team can MORE energy into improving the aging server-side tools for PHP, ColdFusion and ASP.
The Site Map is pretty much useless, since it doesn’t provide a real map of your site, just a bunch of lines showing EVERY SINGLE LINK between pages–usually TOO MUCH information to glean an accurate overview of a site.
I’ll also be gald to see Flash elements, Flash buttons and Flash text gone. There are better methods of achieving the same effects: for example, the new Spry framework incorporated into Dreamweaver CS3 for example can create more useful slideshows and navigation buttons, and SIFR (http://novemberborn.net/sifr3) is an easier and more accesible method for creating Flash-based text headlines.
You can read Adobe’s TechNote on the issue at http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb402489&sliceId=1.
I was recently interviewed by Alan Asherdorf about my new book “Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual.” The interview ran on the long-lived radio show “Let’s Talk Computers.” It’s available from their Web site at www.lets-talk-computers.com/guests/oreilly/cs3_missing_manual/
Buy them today!
