templates viewing in dreamweaver 9

[Charlie Broown +]

Hi,

Question for those of you who are using dreamweaver to modify templates. I just purchased dreamweaver 9 and am in love with all the features. Viewing a dreamweaver tutorial I learned that we can view templates in a) by code. b) split. and 3) design.

I opened the first template; default>layout. I was not able to view the page as in would in a browser. So, I opened up both templates 1) default> layout and and later 2) purple > layout. I still could not view either templates in browser view.

What do I see? I see the page in codes.


Can anyone guide me to correct the view?

Thank you much,

Carlos

[Lhotch +]

What do you mean you see the page in codes?

[Charlie Broown +]

Thanks for the repy. I am new at this so I hope to make sense when explaining..

When I open then browers and am in the home page (to the left) I see ....

Navigation
>Home
>Search
>Contact

When I open dreamweaver and open the home template I see...

smarty.const. LANG TPL SEARCH
smarty.const. LANG TPL BROWSE
smarty.const. LANG TPL CONTACT

i hope to make sense of the obove reply. If no I will be happy to email a snap shot of exactly what I see.

Thanks again.

Charlie

[Lhotch +]

Then what you are seeing is exactly what you should see.

68C uses smarty templates. They have within them not only regular html and css but smarty variables and constants.

smarty.const. LANG TPL SEARCH
smarty.const. LANG TPL BROWSE
smarty.const. LANG TPL CONTACT

the above are smarty constants that are defined in the language file. By using a constant like above it allows the site administrator to select a different language and in turn a different language file is used. In the english language file the value of one of the above constants will be english but if spanish is chosen for example the constant will be in spanish.

In short, those "codes" represent other values. In some places those values will be pulled from the database and in others they will be specified in a constant file (like languages).

Just think of them as place holders for data that the scriptplaces in your site. Remove the pointer and your remove the templates ability to display something. Everything else however should be editable by you to alter the look and feel of your site.

[Charlie Broown +]

Again thank you.

[seymourjames +]

I think this chap was hoping to see the actual page generated/built with the dreamweaver preview function fro example. This usually works with a static site or static pages where all the information is available. As explained, you can only see the code in dreamweaver until the page (code) is uploaded and dynamically built. For that reason, many will work with text editors, CODA and a like. I am basically using dreamweaver with 68C as a text editor and FTP client only.

[Maffo +]

You need to install a WAMP (windows, apache, mysql, php) or LAMP(Linux) on your local machine to achieve this.

[seymourjames +]

Exactly. Not a trivial thing to do and maintain. From a practical point of view it is probably better (only my opinion) to upload from dreamweaver to a test server to see what you have. When done then go live. I tried with mac osx and made a mess of it all.

[Maffo +]

mac already has apache built in surely?

[Lhotch +]

Originally Posted by seymourjames

Exactly. Not a trivial thing to do and maintain. From a practical point of view it is probably better (only my opinion) to upload from dreamweaver to a test server to see what you have. When done then go live. I tried with mac osx and made a mess of it all.

This is exactly why I use the ZEND IDE. it allows me to just open and edit the files right on the sever (more or less) so when I press save the change is live, no uploading of edited files etc.

Of course its a programmers IDE and not a wysiwig editor.