Adobe Dreamweaver templates are one of the most powerful development aids that the program contains. Basically, a template is a master design which can be copied repeatedly to generate an limitless number of web pages each one containing the same shared elements. Obviously, each time the template generates a new page, the page can be customised and the requisite elements added to it to make it unique. This is achieved by a technique of locked page regions and editable regions.

When the template is applied to a page, locked regions cannot be modified. (You have to return to the template to alter them.) Only the areas of the page designated as editable regions can have content added to them.

To create an editable region anywhere on the template, you simply position the cursor in the desired part of the layout and choose Insert – Template Objects – Editable Region. Enter a name for the new region and click OK. One frequent problem experienced by new users of Dreamweaver is the accidental positioning of and editable region inside a heading or paragraph tag. This means that when the template is applied to a page, only text can be placed in the editable region. To fix this problem, return to the template, click in the editable region and examine the Tag Selector on the left of the Status bar. Having located the offending tag (usually h1, h2, p, etc.), right-click on it and choose Remove Tag from the context menu.

To apply a template to an existing page, open the page and choose Modify – Templates – Apply Template to Page. Next, double-click on the name of the template to be applied. Strangely enough, there is no Dreamweaver command that enables you to apply a template to several pages at once. However, here are two suggestions for applying a template to multiple pages reasonably quickly.

Firstly, you can select multiple pages in the Files panel using the classic techniques of Shift-click or Control-click (Command-click on a Mac). Then, you can right-click one of the selected files and choose Open from the context menu to open all of them. Next, activate the Assets panel (Window – Assets) and click on the Templates button (the second icon from the bottom). Finally, drag the icon of the required template onto each of the open pages. To speed up the process, use Control-Tab to switch from page to page.

To create a page based on a template, choose New from the File menu and, when the New Document window appears, select the Page From Template option, click on the site that contains the template (It should already be highlighted.), then choose the template. To get the most benefit from a template, before clicking the Create button, make sure that the option “Update Page When Template Changes” is activated.

When you choose New from the File menu in Adobe InDesign, you may have noticed the option to create a new book without ever knowing exactly what a book is. Well, in fact, books are a fairly nifty feature: they allow you to take a series of related InDesign document and treat them as a single entity; a book. All documents in the book can then share resources such as paragraph and character styles, colour swatches, master pages, sections and page numbering.

Once you’ve created a book, by choosing File-New-Book, the Book panel is displayed. It contains a panel menu with all the options necessary for managing a book. The first task is to add some documents to the book: from the Book panel menu, choose “Add Document” and select the documents you want to be treated as part of the book. The book panel will now act as a launch pad for each of the documents it contains: simply double-click a document to open it.

The book file can then be saved. The book is a separate file and a separate entity to the documents it contains and the documents in a book do not have to reside in the same location as the book or indeed as each other. To save the book, choose Save Book in the Book panel menu: to save each document in the book, simply used File-Save, as per usual.

Next, elect one of the documents in the book to be treated as the style source. The document chosen as the style source will be used as the master document in the process known as synchronization whereby InDesign replaces the colour swatches and styles of all documents in the book with those in the style source document.

To control page numbering across the whole book, choose Book Page Numbering Options in the Book panel menu. The default behaviour is “Automatically Update Page & Section Numbers”: this will number pages in the documents within the book according to the order in which they are listed in the Book panel.

Books are a wonderful tool for division of labour since the fact that a document is part of a book does not stop it from being a regular InDesign document. If a book contains six documents, six different people can work on each of those documents and then, at the end, the whole book can be preflighted, printed and output as PDF as a single unit.

Both tables of contents and indexes can also be generated for the entire book as well as for a single document. Simply create the table of contents or index in the usual way but activate the option “Include Book Documents”.

As you work on your web pages in Adobe Dreamweaver, you constantly need to review them in a web browser. To facilitate this process, Dreamweaver allows you to configure as many browsers as you would like to see use for previewing. You can specify one browser as your primary, or preferred, browser; you can then specify a secondary browser and as many additional browsers as you want.

Naturally, the first step is to make sure that the browser software is installed on your computer. Next, to specify your preferred browser, go to the Edit menu and choose Preferences. (This is the Windows location of Dreamweaver Preferences: on a Macintosh, go to the Dreamweaver menu and choose Preferences.)

The various categories are displayed on the left of the Preferences window. Choose the Preview in Browser category. You may have already configured a browser as your primary browser and possibly another as your secondary. If you wish to change this, simply click on the appropriate checkboxes to specify which is which.

If you would like to add an additional browser, just click on the plus sign (+), locate the browser software and double-click to open it. You can carry out this procedure as many times as you like.

To preview a page using one of your configured browsers, click on the preview icon (the globe) located on the Document toolbar which is normally displayed at the top of the document window. From the drop-down menu, choose the browser that you’d like to use. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts: to preview using your primary browser press Shift-F12 on Windows or option-F12 on a Macintosh; to preview in the secondary browser press Control-F12 on Windows or Command-F12 on a Macintosh. Alternatively, simply choose the name of any other browser.

Once you’ve looked at the preview, to return to Dreamweaver, simply close the browser window.

It is also possible that sometimes you’d like to preview pages without saving the changes you’ve made to your document. Dreamweaver makes this easy but, first, let’s have a look at what normally happens when you preview a file that has been modified.

Dreamweaver shows us a dialogue box asking us if we’d like to save the changes. If we click “No”, we are given a preview of the last version that was saved rather than the version that we’re currently working on. If we click “Yes”, Dreamweaver will save our changes before previewing the file. This behaviour can sometimes be inconvenient, since you may not be ready to save your changes.

If you’d like to preview files at any time without saving your changes, return to your Browser Preview section of Dreamweaver’s Preferences and activate the option “Preview Using Temporary File”. When this option is switched on, Dreamweaver will always create a temporary file containing the latest version of your document and then shows you a preview of it. When the browser window opens, look at the name of the file being previewed. It will be a temporary file name generated by Dreamweaver and not the name of document you are working on.

Adobe Dreamweaver has rapidly established itself as the chief website creation software available in today’s market. There are many companies as well as private individuals that would like to have their own website but cannot afford the services of professional web designers. With Adobe Dreamweaver, almost anyone can successfully create a web site. Adobe Dreamweaver is comparatively easy to use, adopts current web standards, and allows even inexperienced web builders to put together a decent, functional website.

Just as the use of a graphical interface has changed computing, making it more user-friendly, the use of Adobe Dreamweaver renders people with limited understanding of web construction capable of putting together a quality site. It is also an excellent platform for learning how web sites should be put together. For example, when you create a new page, Dreamweaver lets you choose from a series of standard layouts based on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the recommended specification for creating web pages. The code produced by Dreamweaver contains useful comments explaining how the page layout works.

Many smaller companies have already started relying on Adobe Dreamweaver to build and manage their own website, building and altering pages and then uploading them via FTP to their live server. Those organisations with who have a more pressing need to make an impact may still turn to professional web development outfits to get them up and running and then use Dreamweaver for updating their pages, often saving themselves a ton of cash.

Another way that companies can save money is by getting web designers to create Dreamweaver templates and then using these templates to generate their web pages. This also offers the benefit of permitting organizations to maintain control of their website right from the start.

Although Dreamweaver is simple to use, it is unlikely that the average user can simple load it onto their machine and start using it effectively. Most people will benefit from having some Dreamweaver training. This will show them which are the essential aspects of the program and the process of creating a basic site and making it live. A good Dreamweaver training course will also give users an overview of the many web technologies, the underlying code, which Dreamweaver automatically generates as the users visually create their web pages.

One of the best ways to make a site useful for visitors is making it interactive, allowing users to search for the specific content that they want. By attending an advanced Dreamweaver training course, staff within an organization can learn to add database-driven content to their website using technologies such as ASP, PHP or ColdFusion. And, here again, Dreamweaver does the lion’s share of the work, allowing users to create sophisticated search and results pages using the same simple point-and-click and drag-and-drop techniques used to create basic content.