Dreamweaver - setting page width - confused!

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

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Hi guys

I am having a hearty attempt at giving Dreamweaver CS4 a go, it's my first proper attempt (using design view) and this set of tutorials: http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/dreamweaver-cs4-tutorial-1.shtml and it's going ok so far.

What it doesn't seem to mention though is how I set the width that I want the webpage to be.

I was wanting it to be 1024 pixels across as that seems to be a pretty common standard now but I think currently it's about 1500 across....nothing worse than having to scroll a website so am I missinga simple option to resize it or is it more complicated than that?

Many thanks in advance for any answers! :)
 
1024 is going to be too big on a monitor that is 1024 wide as there needs to be room for the scroll bar ----> and any other tiny spaces added by the browser.

is design view with the code or just simple drag and drop style? sorry have never used dreamweaver. if with code can we see what you got?

if you post code here remember to wrap it in code tags
 
Thanks for the posts.

OK, I've looked at the CSS styles panel, but I can't see anywhere where it says (in laymans terms), left column = 300 pixels, right column = 1200 pixels (for example).

Can you give me a pointer as to what I should be changing please...total Dreamweaver noob here!
 
Page width

You should double click on ' . . . . . container' in the styles panel and then adjust the box width in the rule definition panel that opens.
 
Ummm, sorry, I'm still a bit unclear :( (this is embarrassing!)

Am I looking in the right place?

4g28b8.jpg


From what I understand it, that shows me the details for all the 'boxes' making up the webpage. I've clicked on container as you have suggested...is container the 'box' round the whole page then?

amcv0k.jpg


Again, I'm not exactly sure what I should be changing :( I'm guessing it's something to do with the 80%, but I don't want to change anything and knacker it up.
 
Last edited:
Well, you want to change the width of the container. Which property do you think that would entail changing?

I'll give you a hint, it's the opposite of height. :)
 
Ok ok smartypants lol give us noobs a chance ;)

I think I've figured it out, it just clicked that I'm looking at % instead of pixels...so I changed the value to pt, made it 1024...well it sort of worked...it chopped off the right side of the site :eek: but I think I've 'clicked' with it now.

Those values for sidebars etc. are all the sections of text...so if I shrink them slightly so their pixel sizes add up to 1024 I should have a website that's a standard size for viewing on 1024x768 monitors?

That seems a hell of a faff to change, I'm sure I am either doing it very wrong or an awkward way that will present me with issues later in the build...:confused:
 
Width

Bit of a noob myself, but the container is the main div so set that at the width you want. I think 955 is recommended for 1024 monitors. Then you can set the widths of the sidebar and main content. You should be able to set the sidebar at a fixed width and then set the content to auto to fill the rest of the space in the main container. Just have a play with different settings using pixels or % and see what works best for you.
 
OK, that's brilliant, just what I needed to hear!

Thanks very much for the help, hopefully I can move on with it a bit more easliy now! :D

This CSS is a bit of an odd one...way back in the day (at college) we did a bit of HTML coding and that seemed easy enough to just set your pixel width. I used to use Netobjects Fusion as well and that really was WYSIWYG, just drag the width to whatever you want...hopefully this new fangled way of doing it will be worth it...either that or I'm getting old and can't learn things the way I used to :rolleyes: lol.

Thanks again for the help! ;):D
 
Hi, yes pt was a mistake, I'm trying to get everything into px so I know where I am with it.

As konicky suggested I have made the main body smaller but the actual page itself (containg everything) is 1024, do you mean that the whole thing is too big? Should I shrink it to...1000px to allow for the extra bits you have mentioned?
 
TheBigCheese said:
Should I shrink it to...1000px to allow for the extra bits you have mentioned?
Click to expand...

yes as setting it to 1024 would still leave a horizontal scroll bar across the bottom which would show nothing extra to the user of a screen 1024 or smaller. i like to take at least 40-50 pixels off from the resolution i'm making the site to so that the page fits nicely in, e.g. the beautiful borders for the site or the content wont go right to the corner of the screen.

what screen size are you developing on? best thing would be to make a few quick demos of your site at slightly different sizes, 900 950 980 1000 etc and see which works best.
 
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