Getting the best out of PHP and Dreamweaver
PHP, the most popular server-side language for web development, is easy to learn, but there are lots of pitfalls for the unwary. To help ease the process, David Powers has written a series of books about using PHP, both in conjunction with Dreamweaver and for those who want to learn more about hand-coding.
This site describes the books and has updates to information that has changed since they were published. It also contains tutorials for PHP, Dreamweaver, and related topics.
New tutorial: Converting a Spry Menu Bar into a PHP include
A lot of people have asked how to convert a Spry Menu Bar into a server-side include, so I have created a brief tutorial. What makes it slightly different from creating any other include file is the need to prevent Dreamweaver from deleting important code when you cut and paste the menu into an include file.
Dreamweaver Cookbook: useful code snippets
Late in 2009, Adobe decided to expand its Cookbook site to cover other programs and technologies. The original Flex Cookbook has proved extremely popular, with hundreds of contributions from the Flex development community. The Dreamweaver Cookbook section was looking rather forlorn, so I have added about 20 brief items, covering things such as uploading images to a website with PHP, creating a registration system that requires the user to validate the email address, and how to create nested lists from a recordset.
Get up to speed with CSS
My latest book, Getting StartED with CSS, is now available. It's not a door-stopper like The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4, but covers the whole of CSS2.1. It's aimed at complete beginners and everyone who finds themselves confused by CSS. The companion site for the book features a complete online guide to all CSS2.1 properties, values, and selectors.
New tutorial: Embedding a Bridge web gallery
Adobe Bridge, which is bundled with Dreamweaver CS4, creates elegant Flash-based photo galleries. The problem is that the HTML file created by Bridge displays the Flash movie full screen, making it difficult to incorporate the gallery into an existing website. I have created a new tutorial with step-by-step instructions on how to edit the HTML and JavaScript to fit a gallery into an ordinary web page.
Tutorials on customizing a Spry Menu Bar
Inserting a Spry Menu Bar in Dreamweaver is a breeze. It creates a CSS and JavaScript-driven flyout menu system in seconds. The problem is that many people are baffled by the CSS, and have difficulty styling the menu bar to fit in with their own design. I've added a tutorial that explains the basics of customizing horizontal and vertical Spry Menu Bars. There's also a tutorial on centering a horizontal Spry Menu Bar.
Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4 now on Kindle
My bestselling book about getting the best out of Dreamweaver, The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP is now available in the United States for electronic download from Amazon.com in a Kindle edition. The book contains a lot of screenshots, so has been been optimized for the larger Kindle DX
PHP Object-Oriented Solutions
PHP Object-Oriented Solutions is a gentle, but fast paced introduction to object-oriented programming in PHP 5. Details here...
