The Restrictions and Capabilities of Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver tutorial

Dreamweaver is a coding editor that allows you to put together webpages. Sites comprise of a lot of different elements, everything from pictures to video. Knowing Dreamweavers capabilities and restrictions is vital when building a website. It’s main purpose is for editing and generating code and this should be understood.

Dreamweaver can do a number of things when it comes to images. Features are provided to enable you to adjust the position of your images or resize them. In depth editing of an graphic is however not possible and will require the use of a graphic manipulation application such as Photoshop or GIMP. It is possible to give images borders or make them hyperlinks using Dreamweaver. Though Dreamweaver can’t change the content of animated GIFs it can position and resize then like normal images. However rollover images are a different story. Rollover images change when you hover the mouse cursor over them. Dreamweaver provides a handy wizard for creating these types of images. This involves adding Javascript to your code, which Dreamweaver can put together for you. All these techniques have an associated Dreamweaver tutorial online if you wish to pursue them further.

It is also possible to resize and reposition Flash animations with the help of Dreamweaver. Exercise caution when expanding a Flash animation however as it can effect the content. For creating and editing animations Dreamweaver is not appropriate. A copy of Adobe Flash would be required for that purpose. Dreamweaver also cannot be used to change video or audio clips but it does give the user wizards to allow you to easily embed relevant players into your webpage. When it comes to audio editing you can download a copy of Audacity for free online. With video editing you may struggle to find a worthwhile free editor and it might be worth considering purchasing a copy of Final Cut. Once again, a Dreamweaver tutorial can be found online for any of these methods.

Dreamweaver can also be used to generate some simple PHP code. A prime example of this is adding buttons and text fields to your page to create forms. Dreamweaver can then provide the code to link the form to your database. This is pretty basic PHP though, if you’re looking to do something more complex like setting up a subscription plan or ecommerce on your website you’ll need to code this yourself as Dreamweaver does not provide wizards for it. If you’re planning to set up any site with money involved additional care needs to be taken. If you mislead a visitor in any way you could end up on the wrong side of the law.

The main advantage of Dreamweaver is that it allows you to preview your site while you code and also lets you directly adjust the design without adjusting the code. The tools are there to format text, create shapes and adjust images to build up a site how you want it to look. External files including images, animations and embedded players can be repositioned and such but for in-depth editing you will require different applications. If you’re ever stuck trying to do something a bit more complex and the tool to use isn’t clear then it is highly recommended to look up a Dreamweaver tutorial.