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You Don’t Need To Be A Programmer to Get Professional Website Design Results

Starting out many years ago only a few website design programs were available for the average website owner. Either you hired a professional or you learned how to program in HTML, the Internet programming language. Needless to say it was tedious and frankly, pretty frustrating just getting up the most basic of sites. It would take hours upon hours of trial and error to get a site up and running. The other drawback was of course broadband was not yet available everywhere and you needed to do all of this with a dial-up line. You can imagine that didn’t make anything easier. There was always a sense of pride that you were able to conquer html and build a site, but it was bittersweet because the end result was pathetic.

Since that time life has changed dramatically, but there were a few changes before getting to where we are today. Some of the first WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs that were better but still difficult to manage and create websites that looked the same on all monitors, operating systems and web browsers.

A major breakthrough took place in the mid 2000’s that would change everything, XSite Pro went on the market. It was introduced as a new generation of web design software programs specifically built for speed and functionality. It was targeted to Internet Marketers and Small and Home based businesses. Being an “early adopter” I purchased my first copy. I was creating multiple websites within minutes. I was so impressed with it that I took one of my early web sites and re-created it in XSP so that i could update it and add new functionality easily. What took me weeks to do I was now doing in a few hours, with, I might add professional results.

XSite Pro introduced a new and easier way to build websites. It was a much more intuitive approach to web design. It still used HTML but it wrote the HTML in the background as you were designing so you never needed to program. Of course if you still wanted to write some special code you could. XSP is highly flexible. Making any type of a change took minutes not hours.

Just when you thought you had seen it all, Intellimon the developer of XSP, came out with a completely new version of their product. XSP didn’t need an overhaul, but XSP 2 brought in dozens of new advancements that added more marketing functionality such as payment acceptance mechanisms, RSS feeds and the ability to utilize additional advertising, like Amazon and Oxado, from within the program itself. Along with the new program came special manuals to explain every single feature in detail.

The best part of XSite Pro 2 is that you still don’t need to understand one line of code or script to get a fully functioning website up and running within hours, not weeks or months. This is a distinct advantage when you are trying to promote affiliate products, or your own product. There is also payment functionality built into XSP 2 for accepting payments on your website.

I couldn’t enumerate all of the features of XSP in this article, so I’ve put a direct link below to the features page at XSite Pro. One feature that deserves mention is the cost, XSP 2 won’t cost you a small fortune to buy. In fact it’s far less than most of the web design software available today. You won’t need to add additional plugin functionality, it’s already there. There are also dozens of professionally designed templates to use with one-click implementation.

You could start to take an expensive training course on how to use some of the most popular and costly web design programs available today or you can go the the links I’ve provided below to get the whole rundown on XSP 2. Do yourself a big favor and click below first.

Check out he features page for XSite Pro 2 to see a complete listing of all of the XSP 2 features. Already sold? Go directly to the XSP 2 purchase page.You will not be sorry that you did.. This article, You Don’t Need To Be A Programmer to Get Professional Website Design Results is available for free reprint.

Looking At Web Design Phoenix

You may already have your own website. However there are some people and companies who have sites that are either outdated or could do with some new features. Equally if you are looking to start your own it is worth enlisting the services of a web design phoenix company.

Whether you choose to use a web builder and make one yourself or talk to a professional there are certain factors you need to consider. A designer will make a site according to your instructions. They will do the best job they can and may offer you advice but it is vital to know what is right for your needs.

Different companies will charge various amounts for their hosting packages, so you should look around for the best deal. This equally applies to professional designers. With web builder programs you should also see if they offer tuition. Whatever decision you make there are certain features that the site should have.

A good site should be easy to navigate. This can either be done with a site map or a drop down menu. Ideally the menus should have no more than six or so topics with relevant sub categories. For example if you were a baker you would have one with bread that would then list various types of bread, with another menu for different types of cake and so forth.

Make sure you clearly state the things that you want and how often you want to update. Some companies will be quicker at this than others. If you need your site to be updated a lot look for companies that offer regular updates. Customer feedback should give you an idea if this is right.

Whatever you choose to do there are certain basics that should be done. Menus should be clear and offer simple navigation. The fonts should be legible against their background. Avoid clashes such as red texts on black backgrounds. This often puts people off when looking at a website. Pictures supplied to a designer should be high resolution. They should not be compressed or stretched and should be centralized. Images that are not centralized are quite off putting.

A good web design phoenix company should give you a quote based on your individual needs. You should also ask them about the right SEO keywords that are appropriate for your business. Do not be afraid to ask questions and shop around for the best possible quote. People in your local area will often be happy to meet in a neutral location like a coffee house in order to informally discuss the project. It is generally recommended to use a company directory to find the right designer for you.

Learn more about Phoenix web design. Stop by Jason Turnquist’s site where you can find out all about web design in Phoenix Arizona and what it can do for you.

Pain Free Web Development Using ASP.Net

There are many benefits of choosing ASP dot NET web development. This type of framework was created by Microsoft and is used specifically to create web applications, web service sand web sites. Unlike previous frameworks ASP. NET utilizes common language runtime. This means that there are many different languages that are supported by ASP. NET.

The types of pages that use. NET are called web forms and these are the building blocks of web applications. These aspx forms can contain static info as well as web controls and user controls. There are also several different types of dynamic code that can be used in programming the application or web forms.

A lot of the directories and controls can be completely customized and these areas include BIN, APP_browsers, APP_WebReferences, APP-code, APP_GlobalResources, APP_data and APP_Themes. There are many other different file extensions that can be incorporated into your ASP. NET applications that include asax, edmz, ascx, svc, ashx, skin, asmx, sitemap, axd, resx, browser, master, config, dbml and cs/vb.

When using ASP. NET you will find that your application will run faster than before. This is mainly due to the fact that all of the code is saved on the web server in one or more DLL files. With ASP. NeT this is done automatically when the page request is made. You then can place the ASPX on any server that is compatible with ASP. NET.

Web developers find ASP. NET much easier to use then other frameworks as it uses a lot of functions that is found in Windows. Much of the controls and user interface is the same. Unlike previous frameworks ASP. NET is positive for even driven GUI and is not as positive for web scripting events.

A few of the other differences between ASP and ASP. NET include the multi-language capabilities involved in the common runtime language for ASP. NET, the runtime error handling has been greatly improved in ASP. NET, you can cache the entire web page which increases the performance using ASP. NET and the compiled code allows the applications to run faster.

If you would like to learn more about ASP.NET training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering ASP.NET training courses at their central London training centre.

Adobe Dreamweaver’s Server Behaviors Saves Hours Of Coding

Behaviors and server behaviors have been in use in Dreamweaver since the days when it was owned by Macromedia; in fact, since the days when there was a variety of Dreamweaver called Dreamweaver UltraDev. They both refer provide a method of adding interactivity to a web page by generating a variety of scripts which would often be time-consuming to create manually. The difference between the two types of behavior, as the names imply, is that server behaviors generate client-side scripts while server behaviors automatically create server-side code.

Dreamweaver Behaviors will always generate code written in JavaScript, by far the most commonly-used client-side scripting language. The code generated by JavaScript behaviors perform a number of useful function such as plug-in and browser detection and form validation. Some of these behaviors are a bit long in the tooth, have not been updated for several versions of Dreamweaver and, in some cases, have been superseded by Spry, Dreamweaver’s implementation of Ajax.

Server behaviors, by contrast, can generate code in no fewer than five server-side scripting languages: ColdFusion, ASP, JSP, ASP.Net and PHP. The language chosen is determined by the language specified as that which should be used on the testing server. This is part of the site definition and dictates the default document type for all new files.

Dreamweaver’s preset server behaviors provide quite a broad range of features but most of them relate to the manipulation of data objects which are the main thrust of Dreamweaver’s server-side development capabilities. One of the first behaviors new Dreamweaver developers will encounter is “Repeat Region”. This allows you to select any element or region of a page and specify that it will repeat for as many items as there are in a given set of data. A classic use of this is the repetition of a table row or list item. Naturally, dynamic data, such as a product name, product image, product description, will also be inserted within the area being repeated.

The Show Region server behaviors are also very useful. There are six different variations on the same theme: “Show Region if Recordset is Empty”,”Show Region if Recordset is not Empty”,”Show Region if First Record”, “Show Region if not First Record”, “Show Region if Last Record” and “Show Region if not Last Record”.

The first two variations allow developers to create a region of a page which will only be displayed if a given data set is either empty or not empty. So, for example, you would select the entire repeat region mentioned above and use the “Show Region if Recordset is not Empty” behavior. Then you would create a message such as “Sorry, no records match your search criteria.”, highlight it and use the “Show Region if Recordset is Empty” to make its display conditional.

You can find out more about Dreamweaver training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Dreamweaver training courses at their central London training centre.

Dreamweaver Templates Make Web Development A Breeze

Whenever the computer training company I work for runs Dreamweaver training courses, we always ensure that the topic of templates is included. They are such a great time-saving feature. Templates can be used in two ways: firstly, a new page can be based on a template and, secondly, a template can be applied to an existing page. To create a new page based on a template, proceed as follows.

1. Choose New from the File menu.

2. Click on Blank Template, in the first column of the New Document window.

3. In the second column, choose the “Page Type” you would like to create (HTML, ASP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, JSP OR PHP).

4. In the third column, marked “Layout”, you may optionally choose one of Dreamweaver’s excellent CSS layouts.

5. Finally, in the fourth column of the New Document dialog, specify whether you would like your CSS code placed in the head area of the template, in a new CSS file or in an existing CSS file. (Naturally, this option only applies if you choose to use one of the preset CSS layouts.)

If you wish to apply a template to an existing page, perform the following steps.

1. Open the page in question.

2. Choose Modify – Templates – Apply Template to Page.

3. Double-click the name of the template you wish to associate with the page.

Dreamweaver templates use a system of editable regions to mark areas of the page which may be modified whenever the template is used. Editable regions may contain placeholders such as text or graphics. Graphic placeholders are ideal for marking an area of a page where an image is to be inserted. Each time the template is used, a different image can be substituted for the placeholder. To replace a graphic placeholder, do the following.

1. Create or open a page based on a template.

2. Double-click the graphic placeholder.

3. Navigate to the image which will replace the placeholder.

4. Double-click the name of the image.

The name of the template controlling a page is displayed in the top right and the name of each editable region is shown above the appropriate area of the page. The editable region labels compromise the WYSIWYG display of your page slightly by pushing elements down. To switch off the display of template and editable region names, choose View – Visual Aids – Invisible Elements. Use the same command to reinstate them.

Dreamweaver normally places a light blue rectangle around editable regions in both templates and documents based on them. It also places a yellow rectangle around any page based on a template. The same yellow highlight also shows up in code view to mark the locked regions of a page based on a template. Dreamweaver allows you to change these highlight colours.

1. Choose Preferences from the Edit menu.

2. Click on the category heading Highlighting on the left of the window.

3. Choose a colour from the pop-up palettes next to Editable regions and Locked Regions

From time to time, you will have pages which you need to treat as independent and which you do not want controlled by a template. Obviously, you can simply avoid attaching a template to such pages. However, you will often find it useful to apply a template to the page, to obtain formatting elements and then to detach the page from the template. To detach a page from its template, choose Modify – Templates – Detach from Template.

If you have the Assets panel open, you can also update the current page by dragging the appropriate template icon from the Templates section onto the page. This technique can also be used to apply a template to a page or to change the template on which a page is based.

To learn more about Dreamweaver training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Dreamweaver training courses in London and throughout the UK.

Using Adobe Dreamweaver’s Files panel

Most of your work in Adobe Dreamweaver is done in one or other of two views: files and document. The Files panel gives you an overview of the entire site and work with the entire site structure. It shows listings of the files in your local root folder and on your server. When you open any document, by contrast, you work on one HTML page at a time, adding and modifying content as necessary.

When you click OK after creating a new site, Dreamweaver will open the Files panel automatically and the site you have just created will be the active site. You can also enter site Files view at any time by choosing Window – Files. You can activate a particular site by choosing its name from the site pop-up menu. You can also choose Site – Manage Site and then select the desired site name and click Done.

There are two listings in the Files panel: on your right, the files in your local root folder are displayed; on your left are shown the files on your server. The toolbar above the file listing contains tools for uploading and downloading files to and from your server. Moving your mouse over an icon displays a tooltip explaining its function. The Connect button is used to establish a connection to the remote server. The Put button uploads the selected file(s) to the server. The Get button downloads files from the server.

Before putting any content into your web pages, the firs step is usually to create all of the HTML files your site will need together with any necessary subdirectories. To create a new file or folder in a particular folder, right click the name of the folder (or of one of the documents inside it) and choose New File or New Folder from the context menu. You can also highlight the relevant folder (or a document inside it) then choose New File or New Folder from the File menu. When creating documents, be sure to enter the necessary file extension: you may type either “.html” or “.htm”. Naturally, folder names do not need an extension.

One of the chief advantages of creating all the files needed for a web site in Files panel view before beginning to edit any documents is that links between pages can then be created by browsing for the linked page which otherwise would not yet exist. Dreamweaver also has a useful Point to File facility whereby a link can be created by dragging from the link object to the linked file.

Next to each folder which contains items, Dreamweaver displays a plus sign (+) is shown. To display the contents of a folder, simply click once on the plus sign. When the contents of a folder are displayed, the plus sign changes to a minus. To hide the contents of a folder, click the minus sign.

Working with Files panel view is very similar to working in Windows Explorer or the Macintosh Finder. To delete a file or folder, click once on the item to highlight it then press Delete or Backspace. You can also right-click on the file or folder and choose Edit-Delete from the context menu. It is also important to remember that the site listing is a live indication of a section of your hard disk. When you delete a file or folder, you are deleting an item from your hard disk in real time.

To highlight a non-contiguous range of items, click on the first item then, with the Control (Command) key held down, click on each of the items you wish to add to the selection. The items being selected can be in separate folders and you may collapse and expand folders during the operation without destroying the selection.

To change the name of a file or folder in Files panel view, click on the item with the right mouse then choose Edit – Rename from the context menu. As with Windows Explorer and the Mac Finder, you can also click twice on the current name of the item, taking care that the two clicks are on slightly different parts of the name. The name will then be highlighted, ready to be edited.

If you want more information Dreamweaver training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Dreamweaver training courses at their central London training centre.

Designing Audience-Friendly Web Pages

With so many organisations using the internet as an electronic storefront for selling their wares, web page design has become a fast-growing occupation. However, there is still a lot of argument as to how best to design a web page with those having a background in graphic arts opting for a website that has visually appeal and those with a more technical background preferring web page design to incorporate elements that are inviting to internet search engines. These two approaches will often collide on the site’s structure, but the common goal is surely to drive more traffic to the website in question.

These two different viewpoints, if combined, can often deliver the best of both worlds and not only help visitors to the site find the information they are looking for, but also make it easy for users to find the site in the first place. Design-oriented web developers may be forced to rely on advertising, such as Google Adwords, to bring visitors to their site. Developers who are more technically aware may not create sites with a strong visual appeal. However, they may end up attracting more organic search engine traffic.

Regardless of the approach, the important aspects of a website will always be the same: content, usability and design are the three most important elements to web page design and pages that are strong in all these three areas have a better chance of attracting an audience and being successful.

While some attractive websites may have an initial aesthetic appeal, if they are laden down with graphics, audio, Flash or video files, they may be slow to load. This can frustrate potential visitors and can lead to less traffic than would otherwise be the case. Each page in a website should take just a few seconds to download.

Content is also extremely important. Both search engines and humans are attracted to good content. If your site has original content which is not available elsewhere on the Internet, it stands to reason it will get visitors. If users visit a site and it does not contain the kind of information they want, they will simply leave in search of better information.

When planning and designing your website, a useful exercise is always to try to place yourself in your visitors’ shoes. What are they searching for? How much of it can you give them? How can you make your version of it more attractive than what’s on offer from your competitors?

For more information on Dreamweaver training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Dreamweaver training courses at their central London training centre.

Creating Cascading Style Sheets With Adobe Dreamweaver

Because of its ability to separate design from content, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) has become an extremely important technology in web development. A single CSS document can contain information regarding the position of elements on all the pages in a web site as well as style information such as font, sizes and colours. In terms of building websites, CSS definitely represents the future.

Adobe Dreamweaver has long had support for the use of CSS and has responded to the growing importance of this pivotal technology. Dreamweaver’s implementation of CSS is all the more important since many of the people using the program are not specialist web developers and rely on Dreamweaver to guide them through the maze of technologies which drive web pages.

One of the most noticeable changes in this the latest version of Dreamweaver is that users are now positively encouraged to create web pages using CSS for page layout rather than tables. Each time a new web page or template is created, Dreamweaver offers you a choice of basing the page on one of about thirty preset CSS layouts with names like “3 Column Elastic” and “3 Column Fixed”.

CSS page layout is based in the DIV element, an HTML container which can be used to hold an arbitrary amount of web content. The CSS rules control the appearance and positioning of DIVs on the page. Dreamweaver CS3’s preset CSS layouts create a series of DIVs containing placeholder text and basic formatting. The placeholder text, as well as the code underlying the page, both contain useful explanations of how the page has been constructed and a few tips on how to personalise them.

The CSS code for pages created using Dreamweaver’s preset layouts is embedded in the page itself. If a user creates a series of such pages, each one will have its own CSS code making updating very time-consuming. It is far more efficient to have all of the CSS code in one external file and link each page to this one file. At present, Dreamweaver doesn’t really make this clear to new users. However, it does have an excellent feature for moving embedded CSS code into an external file. You simply select all of the CSS definitions you wish to externalise then choose Text – CSS Styles – Move CSS Rules.

This ability to move blocks of CSS is an excellent feature but one has to ask if new users will see its significance and actually use it. The fact is that, given the increasing importance of CSS and Dreamweaver’s role as the fledgling developers best friend, the program could use some improvement in the way it handles CSS.

Another area where Dreamweaver still handles CSS inefficiently is the way in which it generates CSS class styles with names like “style1”, “style2”, etc. whenever the user applies attributes like font, size or colour to highlighted text. This must be really confusing for beginners and can easily be solved by simply removing these “raw” attributes and replacing them with CSS-friendly options.

If you would like to learn more about Dreamweaver training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Dreamweaver Classes at their central London training centre.