Presentations
Using Web Standards with Macromedia Contribute
Introduction
- who am i?
- what is this all about?
- what is contribute?
- what are web standards?
- contribute and dreamweaver - joined at the hip?
- questions for the audience
Looking at Each Site
Childcarepolicy.net
- potentially more than one author
- wanted to access from different spots
- already using contribute on another site
- transitional table design
Inproject.ca
- potentially more than one author
- fully CSS design
- incorporated non-Contribute parts of the site
Comparison Between Contribute 2 and Contribute 3
| Feature | Contribute 2 | Contribute 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Can make areas of the page non-editable by users? | Yep. | Yep. |
| Renders CSS | Not positional. | Yep. Pretty well. |
| Hides CSS | Not at all | Yep. |
| Hides Scripting | Yep. | Yep. |
- Using transitional vs. compatibility mode
Rendering CSS-P
Contribute 2
- What's the trick to creating a CSS-P site? Includes!
Contribute 3
- Uses same rendering engine as Dreamweaver 8
- Don't forget to pick "as in web page editors" in the Pargraph Spacing Tab to keep your code clean (Edit > My Connections > Administer > Users and Roles > Edit Roles Settings > Editing > Paragraph Spacing)
Hiding Styles
Old Way
- Link positional stylesheet via an include
New Way
- CSS Filtering
- Filtering won't work in a transitional environment
Using Includes
Contribute without Dreamweaver
- Menu System and admin pages
Contribute 3
- Using Dreamweaver?
Integrating Contribute with other applications
- using a "Not-Dreamweaver" HTML editor
- using an administration page available from within Contribute - make it the Home Page
Resources
Macromedia Products and Standards
Web Standards General Resources
Learning how to code to the standards
- W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
- W3 Schools
- CSS-Discuss - the mailing list is great - but the Wiki is invaluable
- Netscape DevEdge
Setting up Dreamweaver to Produce Compliant Code
Standards Advocacy
- WaSP (the Web Standards Project)
- MACCAWS (Making a Commercial Case for Adopting Web Standards)
- CSS Zen Garden
- Web Standards Awards - beautiful real-world sites that are standards compliant!
Other Resources
- TOevolt
- SitePoint - lots of interesting how-to articles
- Digital Web - an online magazine with lots of great articles
Tools
- W3C validator
- HTML tidy
- Vischeck - to simulate colour blindness
Buttons, tabs, nav-menus and other nifty things
- SimpleBits - I've linked to an article about slanted navigation tabs, but the whole site has lots of resources so take a look around.
- Tabbed navigation: Part 1 This links to part one of a two part article on tabbed navigation. But again, this site is chock-a-block full of great how-to articles - so read up.
- Tabbed navigation: Part 2 This links to part two the article on tabbed navigation.
- Tons of styles of CSS navigation - using lists in both horizontal and vertical style with buttons, rollovers, tabs - you name it!