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A little help for a few days


Virtual-Instructor

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Greetings all, I am looking for someone who is semi proficent in the use of Dreamweaver. I have been learning PHP for about a month now and have learned a lot. I am at the point where I feel that a little practical application is now in order. If there is anyone willing to lend a hand to a newbee to help me get started I would appriciate the help. Nothing too advanced as I will probably be beginning my KillerSites University training at the end of this week. For now though I would really like some help in fine tunning some forms that I am working on. If anyone is willing to help please send me a note.

Edited by Virtual-Instructor
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Ok Ben, but just remember that you asked for it! :unsure:

 

 

In a previous post I noted that the bulk of my HTML experiance is in MS Front Page. Using that program I was able to insert and edit the size of cells and parts of the page as I saw fit. I am at a loss of how to make that happen with Dreamweaver. I'm sure that with a little work I will be able to make things happen fairly quickly. I'm pretty comfortable even if just at the novice level with making very static and boaring forms, however since I am planning the majority of my forms involves them showing as pop up windows, I would like to be able to control the overall size of the page.

 

I am aware that CSS controls how my pages look. But up to this point the only thing that I can do is add a rather unexciting solid color. I'm pretty good with graphic programs and can easily produce something that will look nice for all my forms, but I have no idea how to link to it.

 

While I am on the topic, how do I control the alignment of inputs, their size and the alignment of the input descriptions. I know that these seem like simple things but at the moment they seem larger than life to me.

 

I head back to work tonight so no major rush on these.

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I'm pretty comfortable even if just at the novice level with making very static and boaring forms, however since I am planning the majority of my forms involves them showing as pop up windows, I would like to be able to control the overall size of the page.

I'm not completely sure what you are asking here. If you are really planning on having all of your forms appear within popup windows (please don't -- it's a terrible user experience.) then you would control the size of the page based on how large you set the popup to be.

 

But up to this point the only thing that I can do is add a rather unexciting solid color. I'm pretty good with graphic programs and can easily produce something that will look nice for all my forms, but I have no idea how to link to it.

But you can add background images, correct? http://www.tizag.com/cssT/background.php

 

While I am on the topic, how do I control the alignment of inputs, their size and the alignment of the input descriptions. I know that these seem like simple things but at the moment they seem larger than life to me.

Those should all be controlled with CSS. You can set CSS classes on your inputs/labels, and then add styling to those classes. It's also possible to use tables to hold form elements, though that is generally frowned upon since tables are intended for tabular data, not layout. I do have a six part series on PHP/Javascript validation of forms which is available in the KS University (and also in the videos you purchased, I believe), so that should help you a bit here.

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I'm not completely sure what you are asking here. If you are really planning on having all of your forms appear within popup windows (please don't -- it's a terrible user experience.) then you would control the size of the page based on how large you set the popup to be.

 

Let me put it another way. When a mentor completes a training flight they will need to make a log book entry (a table in the dbase) so that the students progress can be tracked. I've already worked out the functionality that will allow the mentor view their scheduled flights for that day and display them in a very boaring table. What I am trying to figure out at the moment, (and I already have the form built) is how to click a button next to a specified scheduled lesson that would then open a pop up window, say maybe 500 x 300 px that displays the logbook entry data with some of the data pre populated. Once the mentor completes and submits the form, the window will automatically close. I'm not trying to make every single form appear as a pop up, just the quick forms. I know it sounds difficult on the user, but the way I have it planned out will actually make it very easy to use the system.

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Rather than a popup window, perhaps modal windows would be a better option? The issue I have with a popup is that it unnecessarily clutters the user's window with additional browser windows. Modal windows may be a better solution, since you get the same basic effect without generating new browser windows.

 

For example, look at something like this: http://fancybox.net/ or http://colorpowered.com/colorbox/. They are easily customizable, in the case of Colorbox it includes several differnt themes, and you can load an external .php file in them, so you get the same result as using a popup.

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Rather than a popup window, perhaps modal windows would be a better option? The issue I have with a popup is that it unnecessarily clutters the user's window with additional browser windows. Modal windows may be a better solution, since you get the same basic effect without generating new browser windows.

 

For example, look at something like this: http://fancybox.net/ or http://colorpowered.com/colorbox/. They are easily customizable, in the case of Colorbox it includes several differnt themes, and you can load an external .php file in them, so you get the same result as using a popup.

 

I really like that fancybox sugestion, now all I have to do is figure out how to use it! :clap: I have downloaded the files but am not sure what to do with them now. I'm also wondering if the Iframe size can be customized to control the overall size of the frame?

Edited by Virtual-Instructor
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Take a look at the files you downloaded. There should be samples showing which files you need to add (most likely one .js file and one .css file) and how you use jquery to call the modal window. Yes, the iframe size can be customized pretty easily.

 

Fancybox is what we used on the KillerSites Video Tutorial Library, actually.

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Take a look at the files you downloaded. There should be samples showing which files you need to add (most likely one .js file and one .css file) and how you use jquery to call the modal window. Yes, the iframe size can be customized pretty easily.

 

Fancybox is what we used on the KillerSites Video Tutorial Library, actually.

 

Thanks a million, this is an outstanding way to do what I'm looking to do. I think this is the way to go. I'm still not sure where to go from here. I think if I can get one form laid out using this, the rest will fall into place.

Edited by Virtual-Instructor
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You can safely ignore those. Those are hidden files within Mac OS that stores info about the files. If you notice those folders within any of my videos/courses, let me know? I usually strip them out of the zip files before I upload things.

 

In the Dreamweaver PC files they are in every single folder. If I can ignore them, I will simply delete them and put all chapter videos into a single chapter folder vs. a chapter and part.

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