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Terminology and Concepts

Computers and the Internet

Live versus Test
Live pages are visible to the public. Our test area is ‘safe’ – not visible and will have no affect on your ‘live’ website.
Web server
A computer used to store and display web pages.
Dreamweaver site
Defines locations of your ‘local files,’ ‘remote site’ (your files that are on the test server), and allows you to ‘GET’ and ‘PUT’ files and folders remote site — your area of the test server.
Local files
Your Dreamweaver files that you have stored on your C:, P:, U:, or I: drive.
Upload
PUT to the server (copy from local to remote)
Download
GET from the server (copy from remote to local)
Web browser
Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.
Path
Location of files on a computer
URL
The address of a web site or web page, made up of host name ( www.depauw.edu) and path (/yoursite/somepage.asp)
Default home page
We use ‘index.asp’ for our default home pages. Naming your home page ‘index.asp’ allows www.depauw.edu/yoursite/index.asp to be shortened to www.depauw.edu/yoursite/ .

HTML (hypertext mark­up language)

Body
Contains the part of your page that displays in the browser window
Tags
Important parts of the language used to code web pages. Web browsers interpret tags in order to display web pages.
Metatag
Special HTML tags such as those used for ‘header content’
Header Content
Text used by search engines, such as title, description, key words. This text is not displayed as part of the web page.
CSS ‘Cascading Style Sheet’
Used to apply consistent styles to web pages
Heading or Title
In contrast to ‘header content,’ the heading or title is displayed on the page.

Web Concepts

Usability
Ease of accessing information from a website
Chunking
Grouping information so that it is easier to grasp as viewed on the web
Accessibility
Providing the accomodations that allow people with disabilities to access information from the web
Navigation
Set of links used to access web pages
Link
A graphic or text that, when clicked, takes the browser to another page
Include file
Separate file that is displayed as part of a web page, such as navigation.asp

Development & Dreamweaver

Horizontal menu
Menu across the width of a page. The Dreamweaver top horizontal menu contains standard submenus such as ‘file,’ ‘edit,’ ‘view,’ ‘insert,’ ‘modify,’ ‘window.’
Site Definition
Set up for working on a website in Dreamweaver – includes specifics such as location of local files and remote files
Connect
Access files in the remote area (which is the same as the web server)
File manager
Displays your local and remote files two­column view, expand, collapse — Display of both local and remote files and folders side by side is the ‘expanded’ view.
Get, Put
GET: download from the web server (remote)
PUT: upload to the web server
Template
A file used for creating consistent web pages. It contains editable and non­editable regions, and has built­in formatting.
Template Properties
Access these from the horizontal menu: ­> modify ­> template properties. There are several options for customizing your pages.
Subsite Root
A template property that specifies the path to your website. It must be set in order for your pages to display correctly.
Stub
A pattern page that is derived from the template. You can customize it and then ‘clone’ it to create other pages. When you create a stub, remember to set the ‘SubSiteRoot’ property to your path. (Example: /acad/english) ‘windows’ menu — found on the Dreamweaver top horizontal menu. Check the panels that you wish to see. Be sure that ‘properties’ is checked, so that you can fill in links, select formatting options, etc., in the properties panel. paste special, text only — When copying from your ‘old’ site, use these commands to avoid transferring formatting to your new page.

Images

Pixels
A unit of screen (and image) measurement.
Image size (width and height)
Usually requires modification when inserting into a page. Be sure to change the size in Fireworks, not Dreamweaver.
Sharpen
Reducing image size often causes blurring. To counteract this, select filters ­> sharpen.
File size
Images usually start out as large files that would be slow to download. save for web — In Fireworks, to prepare an image for the web, select File ­>
Export Wizard
The Web. The ‘.jpg’ format usually works better than .gif for photos.
Alternate text (alt text)
Brief text to describe an image, making the content accessible to screen readers (such as ‘Jaws’ which vocalizes content for the blind)

Other Tools

Link checker
A program that checks your web page for broken links. Firefox has a link checker extension which is a free download from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/532/.
Fireworks
Graphics tool that comes with Macromedia Studio 8. If you downloaded the entire suite, you have Fireworks.
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