Tables - Frontpage to Dreamweaver

Why does it turn to mush in Dreamweaver

[Mikefnz]

I have created the following page with a fairly critical table in Frontpage.

www.blah-blah

I have been trying to change over to Dreamweaver which I find great for many tasks. However, editing this table in Dreamweaver is difficult because it's a mess! It appears as a neat and tidy table in Frontpage but it's spread over about a kilometre of screen in Dreamweaver!

Any hints on how to adjust to make the table sensible and more workable in Dreamweaver would be much appreciated.

Regards

Mike

[edited by: caine at 10:36 pm (utc) on Mar. 18, 2004]
[edit reason] url drop - against Terms of Service [/edit]

[PatomaS]

Hello

well FP is not a good editor, but taking this idea apart, the problem with it is that use to write a lot of extrange code in many tags, specially strange style values.

It use to write some webbots that doesn't helps when you open the document in other editor...

But, dreamweaver, has good tools, for example: clean html in the commands menu.

Is a good idea too that you try to validate the page in [validator.w3.org...] This service will tell you a lot of code that you can deleted or substitute.

But the better way to take out all the mess of the page it to take strings and use the find and replace tool in dreamweaver.

Well, hope it helps...

good luck

Bye

[vkaryl]

Bottom line: start over. Draw on paper (yah, REALLY!) how you expect the table to look when the page is finished. Start DW, and start with a brand new page. Insert the appro doctype and body tags.

Then using DW's documentation, put your table back together again RIGHT. FP is about the poorest excuse for an editor there ever was, and you need to get beyond that. Remember that WYSIWYG is practically the only reason for using FP - BUT (and it's a BIG one....) what you see in FP is almost NEVER what it really looks like to others with browsers outside IE's "norm". And in point of fact, IE itself will quite frequently choke on some of the more outré examples of FP stuff out there.

Now, here's another thought: once you've put your table together with DW, consider "taking it apart" again - and doing it REALLY RIGHT, this time with CSS. It CAN be done, and is a much more elegant solution. As a learning experience, changing a table (or a three-frame site page!) from "old" html to "new" CSS is just about the same as expanding your knowledge of basic math into working knowledge of algebra.... it might seem impossible to begin with but once the logic hits home, you're on your way!

[Lilliabeth]

PatomaS:

Baloney.

[vkaryl]

PatomaS:

Baloney.

Which part?

[hazardtomyself]

>>the problem with it is that use to write a lot of extrange code in many tags<<

Without a doubt this is true. I have only found this to be true when a bunch of cut and pasting and highlighting and changing fonts/styles/sizes is going on from the "Normal" tab.

If you make many changes from the "Normal" tab, you need to go back throught the code and clean it up. You have to know basic HTML in order to produce a good site with FP, so you can go back and clean it up. I do everything with FP2000. On the contrary I think making tables is pretty easy, but you have to be able to understand the code from the "HTML" tag. FP is a great way to learn HTML.

[piskie]

There is an Extension Specificaly designed for removing FP quirks from the HTML. You should find this in several places if you search on Google.