A Webmaster’s Toolkit and Tricks

Written by Jason OConnor


TERMS OF REPRINT You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long asrepparttar bylines are included and you follow these rules: *Email distribution of this article MUST be opt-in email only. *If you post this article on a website, you must set any URL's inrepparttar 132339 body ofrepparttar 132340 article and most especially inrepparttar 132341 Author's Resource Box as hyperlinks. Please send usrepparttar 132342 URL. *Please send email to Jason@oakwebworks.com when posting or sending to a list

A Webmaster’s Toolkit and Tricks Author: Jason OConnor Copyright: 2004

If you own a website, operate or run a website, or you’re a webmaster, this article is for you. A successful website is created and managed by a person with an effective toolkit who knows how to use each tool. There are a huge amount of software applications out there for people to use for creating, building, coding and running websites. Here arerepparttar 132343 ones you’ll find in my tool box. I’ve been using these for many years and have had wonderful success with each one of them.

As a bonus, I am going to include a few tricks for some ofrepparttar 132344 tools that may be of interest to you. (These ‘tricks’ are for pc users only.)

** Toolkit Item 1 – Dreamweaver ** I have a client who owns and runs a small business website and who has been using Microsoft Frontpage since he started. He is not a programmer or Web designer and has been very frustrated managing his website. Frontpage adds strange html code behindrepparttar 132345 scenes that takes control away fromrepparttar 132346 user and often produces undesirable results. I suggested that he try Macromedia’s Dreamweaver, which isrepparttar 132347 software I have been using for many years. It’s excellent and does exactly what you want, does not add extraneous code and makesrepparttar 132348 life of a webmaster a breeze. After playing with it for a while, my client thanked me profusely for suggesting it. Get it at http://www.macromedia.com.

Dreamweaver Trick: To make a global change in your website, that is, change some specific text or html code on every page in your site, here’s what you do: In your top menu bar, choose ‘Edit’ > ‘Find and Replace . . .’. Inrepparttar 132349 dialog box that pops up, choose ‘Entire Local Site’ inrepparttar 132350 top dropdown box labeled ‘Find In’. This will allow you to make a global change. Also, noterepparttar 132351 other choices inrepparttar 132352 dropdown box. Using this feature will save you lots of time.

Dreamweaver Trick: Did you know Dreamweaver has a ‘Check Spelling’ feature? If not, go torepparttar 132353 top menu bar and click on ‘Text’ and then choose ‘Check Spelling’ atrepparttar 132354 bottom ofrepparttar 132355 menu. Or you could simply use your ‘Shift’ F7 keys.

** Toolkit Item 2 – Photoshop ** Since images onrepparttar 132356 Web are both illustrations and photos, Adobe’s Photoshop is hands-downrepparttar 132357 best choice for graphics manipulation for a webmaster. It has a little bit of a learning curve, but well worth it if you want to include awesome graphics on your website. It allows you to create buttons, borders, shapes, symbols and of course, it allows you to change, alter, edit and improve any kind of digital photograph. Get it at http://www.adobe.com.

Photoshop Trick: The Web allows two main graphics file formats, .jpg and .gif. Therefore, any image you plan to use on your website needs to end in one of these two extensions. (The Web allowsrepparttar 132358 .png extension too, but you ought to use either .jpg or .gifs only). So, whenever you plan to use a graphic on your website that you created or edited in Photoshop, you need to save it as one of these two file extensions. And you also want your images to be optimized so they are not large causing long download times for your site visitors. Do this by going to your top menu bar and choosing ‘File’ > “Save forrepparttar 132359 Web . . .’. You will then be able to choose .gif or .jpg inrepparttar 132360 top right ofrepparttar 132361 dialog box that opens up. You’ll also be able to see 1, 2, or 4 versions forrepparttar 132362 same image, optimized in different ways and having different sizes for you to choose. Always use this tool in Photoshop for Web graphics.

Photoshop Trick: Want to create soft, almost rounded edges on your rectangular images? Here’s what you do: In your vertical ‘Tools’ window in Photoshop, chooserepparttar 132363 top left tool called ‘Rectangular Marquee Tool’. Then click and drag your mouse on your image to make a rectangle that is 5 to 10 pixels smaller than your actual image. Make sure that it is equidistant on all four sides. Then go to your menu bar and choose ‘Select’ > ‘Inverse’. This chooses (or selects) everything outsiderepparttar 132364 rectangle you just made. Finally, go to your menu bar and choose ‘Filter’ > ‘Blur’ > ‘Gaussian Blur’ and type 1-5 pixels inrepparttar 132365 dialog box. That’s it, and now your image will have soft edges.

How To Design Your Web Site With CSS

Written by Herman Drost


Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allows you to create fast loading pages, increase your search engine rankings, and modify your whole site with one style sheet. So why don’t more people use them? This is because they got so used to html design and are afraid or too lazy to upgrade their skills. Some will also use ready made templates that contain flashy graphics, bloated code and sometimes even contains hidden code embedded inrepparttar page.

In this series of articles I will show you how to create a simple web site using CSS, so you will have no excuse to begin incorporating them into your future designs.

What are Cascading Style Sheets?

Cascading Style Sheets isrepparttar 132336 name of a simple language that allows you to add any style (font, colors, graphics, links, layouts) to your web pages.

Benefits of Cascading Style Sheets

1. Separate content from presentation – you can separate your HTML markup, text, graphics and multimedia from presentation.

2. Consistent site wide look and feel consistency – you can apply one style for 100s of web pages all at once. So if you had to changerepparttar 132337 color of all pages on your site, you only have to edit one style sheet. This saves you a huge amount of time, especially if you had to edit each page separately.

3. Web site maintenance - apart from being able to make site wide changes easily through one CSS file,repparttar 132338 clean code it generates makes it easier to update. Properly marked up web pages permit them to be maintained by more than one person. It will also work in more browsers. Web site redesigns will take much less time.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
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