ICS 499: Playing with a new Toy

For my ICS 499 independent studies class, I’ve been working on the Devcathlon web user interface.  In the past weeks I’ve been reading up on incorporating JavaScript, the Yahoo User Interface (YUI), and Ajax with web pages.  So far it’s been a rough independent journey diving into these languages and widgets, without any guidance or knowledge what so ever. 

  

During this past week I have recently obtained a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 4, to help with the web user interface development.  For the past few weeks I have been using either textpad or eclipse to do most of my code editing.  These IDEs (Intergraded Development Environments) aren’t bad to use, but I needed something better.

 

Using Dreamweaver CS4, you can use the split view to see both the HTML page code and the actual page; instead of having to switch from window to window, unless you have multiple screens.  With this split view capability, you’re able to get a glance of the changes you make to the HTML, JavaScript, and CSS codes.  Also in the actual page view, when you click on an item on the page, the piece of code that handles that item is instantly located; beats scrolling up and down lines of code. 

 

There are more features of the latest edition of Dreamweaver, such as inserting items.  When you insert an item into a page, Dreamweaver creates the code for the user; making web implantation easier.  Plus the JavaScript behavior for that item is also written for the user. 

  

Inserting a jump menu item into a form, and adjusting it's settings.

The jump menu added to the page.

There is still much more learn on how to harness this powerful web editing tool. Adobe has published web tutorial videos to help on using Dreamweaver, along with more online tutorial forums.  My next mission in using Dreamweaver is on how to set up a test server and incorporate external widgets, such as YUI. I’m pretty sure there are a forums that instruct me how to do this.