Software

This is Version 2 of the my47chevy website.

I started Version 1 using Dreamweaver 5.5 on a Windows XT desktop computer. I used the following web site as a starting point to begin the web page layout:

It contains a very helpful tutorial and I would recommend it to any beginner starting out.

To start, I had a very limited experience in web design. I wrote some html code in Front Page about twenty years ago to add weather information to an existing company website, but I had done nothing since. I used "Thewizard" template to create Version 1 as shown below.

 

In 2014 I switched to Adobe Dreamweaver Creative Cloud 14.0 for my Macbook (getting away from Microsoft). At the same time I took a short Continuing Education course in Web Publishing at our Louis Riel School Division. I switched to CC 14.1 and then back to CC 14.0 after discovering many bugs in the CC 14.1 version.

I started Version 2 using my second domain my47chevy.com. I have since copied it over to my47chevy.ca making both sites identical. In version 2, I applied a more fluid grid layout, responsive web design for different sizes of media, and top navigation bar with drop down menu. I also switched to Adobe Dreamweaver Creative Cloud 2015 (for Macbook).

 

I followed an on-line you-tube tutorial by Channaret Doeun to develop the layout for the index (home) page as shown on the left. Once the index page is finalized, it is stored as a template.

The template is then used as the basic outline to develop all the other pages. The major change was adding my own navigation bar at the top and setting it's position to fixed.

In Channaret's tutorial he programmed his CSS style sheets to query mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops in that order. In my CSS sheets I queried in the opposite order. This was probably due to my habit of always working on a desktop, so I wanted to get it working first!.

 

In developing Version 2, I made several trips to the Apple store to test run my software on their various platforms to see what tweaks I needed to make. The live view in Adobe is handy, but it is not always accurate for some reason.

I found that there is a bug in the original Apple Ipad IOS that causes the screen to zoom when switching from portrait to landscape. This bug was corrected in later versions of the IOS, but versions beyond 5.1.1 cannot be loaded in the original Ipad. There are a few fixes out there that corrects part of this problem in CSS (cascading style sheets) code but I have not been able to find one that works 100%.

I also used a CSS and HTML validator to check my code. There is one available in Dreamweaver but it comes up saying the link is obsolete. I used the following site to validate my code:

 

Note

Dreamweaver Versions 14.1 and 15.0 CC do not allow the user to switch to design mode from live view. This creates a problem because spell check only works in design mode. This seems to be a problem with the fluid grid layout. To get around this problem, I had to modify a line in the fluid.css file.
I changed: dw-num-cols-mobile: 4; to: dw-num-cols-mobile: x4; in line 10 (inserted an x before the 4). Save, close, and re-load the file and presto - design view and spell check are available. After spell-check, I changed it back.

I have since switched to Creative Cloud 2017. I have found that spell check does not work for CC 2017 as well as CC 2015 described above! I have not yet tried the solution above.

I currently use FileZilla version 3.25.2 to publish to my website.
https://filezilla-project.org

Things that I still have to work out:
1. The nav bar is not fluid. I have yet to figure that out!
2. I now have an Iphone 6s, an Ipad 4 and a Macbook Pro 2015 at my disposal. I have to check the site using other sized tablets and Iphone 7's. I usually check the Apple products at the Apple store at Polo Park. The sales people have become very interested in my web site!