Help Resources
There are days when tutorials just won’t cut it. Is your question too advanced for the forums? Need to talk to a person instead?
Try connecting to a community of developers. Yahoo! Groups and the Figleaf Mailing Lists are great ways to find and talk to the pros. The ones I subscribe to are:
- Dreamweaver on Yahoo! Groups
- ActionScript Tiger on Yahoo! Groups
- Flash Newbies on Figleaf
- Flash Coders on Figleaf
Some quick tips before asking your first question:
- Search the archives. Chances are good that someone else had the same trouble.
- Be specific. If your question is too broad, it won’t get answered.
- Be brief. 2 page diatribes aren’t read. They’re trashed. Bonus points for clear, concise messages.
- Try a format. E-mails that can be skimmed are good. The ones that get responses are similar in format: a short paragraph to explain your problem, a question at the end of it, a few lines of code after. Complex questions sometimes have 3 paragraphs, a question or two, then some lines of code.
- Mark it OT if it’s a discussion question or off-topic. It signals to others that its something to read at leisure, not a pressing issue.
Kaizen: Gardiner Angus Ranch
I would like to preface this project with a short reflection. The Gardiners are nice people. They are always polite, like many of our clients. And yet, what truly makes them stand out from our other clients is their ability to trust.
When a new customer comes to us and asks for a new web site, they often ask for one “like the Gardiners.” Unfortunately, they often make the mistake of micro-managing the details. They dictate the look, the color scheme, the font choice, and every other piddly little detail, only to find they are disappointed with the end product. The secret to the Gardiners’ great site is trust.
They trust us, as like-minded professionals, to provide them with the best of our abilities and expect nothing less. This hands off approach reaps them many rewards.
Gardiner Angus Ranch: 73.25 hours.
- 4 hours – no original .psd, rebuilt design from scratch
- 6 hours – tentative CSS layout
- 3 hours – CSS tweaks, first revision
- 60.25 hours – plugging in content
For a small department like ours, Gardiner is a massive web site. They update frequently, add new content often, and grow continually. I started with a 278 MB folder that held a mess of files: randomly placed images with no naming convention attached, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, SWFs, and web pages sprinkled everywhere.
Sometimes learning how to improve the pages I put out for all the world to see can feel overwhelming. Partly because it is hard to figure out where to start, and partly because I know there is so much left to fix or improve. Gardiner Angus Ranch was no different. Their rebuilt site is live, but it still has so many technical issues left to address. However, what you see is a start. Think of it as a mile marker on the 1,000 mile journey.
In my first attempt to ‘fix’ the Gardiner site, I cleaned up the GoLive site file. I deleted numerous unused files and moved images to a central location (images folder, anyone?). It sped up the ability to open the GoLive file, something was immediately appreciated by everyone who had to update the site.
The second time around, I organized the .swf files and deleted the old ones. Because Gardiner is such an important client to us, everyone was afraid of erasing old files, even after successfully updating a page. I had the original .fla files and knew I could republish any of the .swfs I accidentally erased.
The third time is/was the massive rebuild. The aim was to improve the user’s experience. The majority of their visitors have Internet Explorer 7, Flash Player 8, and JavaScript enabled. Paradoxically, the majority of the visitors are also on dial-up connections.
So, to take advantage of their up-to-date software, I updated the Flash intro (but only to Flash Player 7, so I could have access to ActionScript 2), took advantage of I.E. 7′s support of .png images (among other CSS updates), added a touch of JavaScript, and ran away with the project. I am confident that the Gardiners’ visitors are going to stand up and take notice.
All of the standard practices we have been implementing were put in to place for their site: switch out image-only rollovers for live text and a:hover in the CSS; switch out a fixed-pixel, table-based layout for a fluid CSS layout, so their content will not break the design. Get rid of spacer.gif and add padding to the CSS boxes instead. Streamline the Flash intro and take out all the unused items adding weight.
In going beyond the standard stuff, the layout is liquid – not in the sense that the layout will grow or shrink with your preferred text size, but literally liquid: stretch or squeeze your browser window and it will grow and shrink with it. [Considering the time it was originally built, their site offered the best of the best...but six years later it was starting to show its age.]
Also added to my CSS experiments were specific divs:
- featured items, with live text over a pretty gold button instead of image-only, for accessibility
- sire listings, with the purple background a single cached image for faster loading speeds
- two-column layouts within the content area, for variety and better content presentation
- styled horizontal rules, to add to the signature Gardiner look
The small piece of JavaScript I added was the Smooth Gallery slideshow, implementing CSS, HTML, and mootools (a super lightweight web2.0 JavaScript framework) and created by JonDesign. Did I mention it is accessible to boot?
And there you have it. A bit of Flash, a bit of CSS, some chunks of HTML, a piece of JavaScript, and a better web site. It is not perfect yet – no I.E. 6 CSS, no ActionScript 2 to make the intro lighter, no JavaScript to sniff the browser and switch style sheets for mobile devices – but it is a big improvement. Read: average loading time for 56k users to see the GAR Sires page before: 6 minutes, 40 seconds; and after: 40 seconds.
Common GL2DW Questions
Sifting past the Trolls, Flames and Complainers so you don’t have to: pulled from the Adobe Forums, here are some useful common questions and answers about migrating from GoLive to Dreamweaver, using the Migration Extension Tool.
If you would like step by step instructions on manually migrating from GoLive to Dreamweaver, visit Adobe’s web site. They have an excellent set of tutorials by Garrik Chow.
1. Does the GL2DW extension work with GoLive 6, GoLive 7 or GoLive CS1?
No, it only works for GoLive CS2 and GoLive 9. But don’t despair, there are workarounds. If you can’t get your hands on GoLive CS2, download the free trial version of GoLive 9. Open your sites in GoLive 9, then convert to Dreamweaver CS3 using the GL2DW extension.
And if you have CS2, do not upgrade to GoLive 9 and then convert to Dreamweaver CS3. It will only complicate things – the interface to GoLive9 has changed [along with some features removed or simplified] so it becomes harder to track down the errors and fix them.
2. Can I download the GL2DW Extension somewhere?
Not yet. Adobe has packaged it with: Web Standard, Web Premium, Design Premium and Master versions of Creative Suite 3. No support or upgrades formally announced for the extension, either.
3. Where is the GL2DW Extension located?
In the Creative Suite 3 Web Premium version: Content disk [the second disk] >> Goodies folder >> Dreamweaver folder >> Migrating from GoLive folder.
If you downloaded CS3 instead of ordering disks, you may have to contact Adobe’s customer service. The migration tool was not included in some of the first digital deliveries of CS3.
4. Where do I find the instructions on how to install and use this thing?
For a quick start, check the Read Me file that comes with the extension. The GL2DW Site Migration Extension Guide has detailed instructions that will get you up and running.
The GL2DW FAQ page has additional resources to help answer any other questions you may have.
Visualize Your Progress with TrackIt
TrackIt is handy little Mac OS X widget that tracks any number you want over a period of time. I have one that tracks how many sites use CSS for their layouts and one for the GoLive to Dreamweaver migration. Sometimes visualizing your progress is enough to keep a goal sustainable – it’s the silly things that keep me motivated.
Style Gallery Unveiled
Tim has built up a formidable library of web designs after the last rush for new websites began in January. As busy season slides into a slow season, he suggested that we take all of our unused designs and post them to a website. Then Rich could direct new website clients to the [now named] Style Gallery* and pick a look. Once they choose one, that particular look is immediately taken down and customized to the new client’s demands: add their logo, change the color scheme if requested, etc. We posted our designs and dropped the original files in a single folder, numbered instead of named, in an effort to follow the advice Keep It Simple, Stupid.
The new Style Gallery site would benefit both sides: clients get to choose from an array of looks to find one that suits their tastes, instead of the typical route, where we used to send them three designs to pick from. For the web team, it saves us time to have a specific drop folder where all the designs can be found instead of trying to track down the needle in a hay stack. Tim and I used to save our individual designs on the hard drives of our own computers. A shared drop folder means we no longer have to hunt down where that durned file that randomly disappeared.
Now all our new clients get the benefits of a painless process when they say “I want a website. I have no idea what it will look like, but I’ll know it when I see it.” It took Rich a wonderfully brief five minutes to explain to the customer where to go to find the Style Gallery and then explain that these are exclusive designs- not templates- that will disappear from the Gallery once it is chosen. The client found one a few moments later. Rich said ok, I will inform my developer and have them put that on the test site for you today. After Tim sliced up the PhotoShop file and built the layout for the web, Rich e-mailed them a few hours after the initial contact to inform them that the look was online, waiting for their approval. If they approved it, please send along your content and we will have it live in no time.
Wow. Even I was impressed. Not everyone is going to be so easy, I know. Not all problems and solutions for every client will be as painless, I know. But I have to admit, it was a great start to a new process.
*Note: If you want to see the designs Tim and I have built, you can check them out here. The sites marked as NEW! are ones we have built. The other sites are a mix: some of the designs we inherited from our predecessors, with a few of ours sprinkled in between.
