Anita -

On the table size, often you can't make a table smaller because there is something in the table, hidden or out of view, that is keeping it from shrinking. For instance, one of the columns may contain a transparent gif, or gotten set with a size in absolute pixels.

Sometimes you need to switch to the Split view that shows both wysiwyg, along with the code. Then you can see in the raw html the offending setting.

Bruce,

Thanks for the tip! I'll be working on Dreamweaver later this weekend and I'll try your suggestion. Anita

I have never read a "Dummy" book, are there any of them that are worthwhile or is the entire series reprint nonsense?

Eric --

A few Dummies books serve their purpose. I just picked up XML for Dummies - luckily, I found it at Half Price Books, so it was only $12. I only need to know a few things about XML, and the alternative was a $40, 800 page book, of which 500 pages would probably be too advanced for what I needed. So this particular one filled a niche.

But many of the ones for programs probably have no more info than you can get from the help files. There are also a whole slew on non-computer Dummies books. I saw one in the library "Beer for Dummies" -- I guess it's for those people who need help with the flip-top.

Thanks Bruce, it's an entire industry. i assume the first one - I can't remember what it was - was helpful and hat spawned and empire. I shy away from things that purport to be written for dummies, hence my ignorance. I am a dummy about the dummies.

Sometimes I look at it as a trend that ate the company. I co-wrote one book, "Windows 2000 Secrets", with Brian Livingston for IDG Books. At that time, the Dummies series was a minor imprint of IDG. Then as it grew, IDG diverted more and more resources to the Dummies series, and less to the Secrets series. They then temporarily changed their name to, I think, "For Dummies" publishing, and while in mid-transistion got smacked with the IT Crash. The entire IDG books got sold of to Wiley, and everyone I know involved with the book division got dispersed.

With all this commenting you are doing, I take it all's quiet on the family front?

Dawn took Lily to a birthday party, the process is underway but seemingly not immediate - my guess is early to middle next week.

From what I've found, using Dreamweaver extensively from version 1 up to MX (I have yet to get the newest version,) Dreamweaver is good for setting things up, but you need to be somewhat fluent with HTML before you can really take advantage of everything it offers. The built-in manual and outside books offer very little real help. It really seems you have to know what you can do with HTML really well before getting DW to actually do it. (Which kind of negates the point of using it, in some respects.) As a full-time web-designer, it's a time saver for me - no more hand-coding tables or other annoying crap, but I still spend a great amount of time tweaking that code by hand anyway. And DW's visual handling of CSS positioning is nightmarish. As much as I hate to recommend a Microsoft product, I'd recommend FrontPage over Dreamweaver to most "weekend webdesigners." It's made to make this stuff easy, and yeah, it's got some funky requirements when it comes to your server (it must handle FrontPage extensions) but a lot of hosts will have those available now.

The greatest resource for Dreamweaver? Try searching Google's newsgroup archives. Chances are that someone else has had exactly the same question you did (limit your search to the Dreamweaver groups to make it easier.)

Thanks, everyone, for all the helpful tips about Dreamweaver and Frontpage.

Yes, the Dummies series varies in quality. It's like anything else -- you have some good writers and some not so good, I guess.

Now...which one of you is going to write "Blogging for Dummies"???

best software for html creation: a good 'ole text editor.

i'm not kiddin'.

it keeps you "in the game"...you have intimate knowledge of your html, which makes it easier to deal with future problems.

i tried Dreamweaver once...and when i couldn't figure out how to make the thing create a style and then apply it ("div style=blah>"), i quit and uninstalled the application.

Notepad is indeed the designer's friend, but when you do it for a living you really need something to speed up the process. I created many sites strictly in Notepad while I worked at Boeing, and they were a bear to keep updated. Dreamweaver saved me from going insane. Like I said, you have to get used to its quirks - my favorite being the "completely random crash with no warning" in which you lose everything since your last save. It's really fun because you'll just innocently click something and bam! - Dreamweaver's gone, no warning box or anything.

But I gotta disagree on the use of stylesheets in Dreamweaver - it couldn't be easier! Highlight want you want to add a style to, right-click, goto 'CSS Styles' and select the style you've created. It literally could not be easier. Creating styles themselves is just as easy. Mark, you gave up waaaaay to fast! Give DW another shot, especially the new one that's either just come out or will be out shortly.

not gonna happen tom.

i'm just not a UI/IDE kinda guy.

i think highlighting and right-clicking is a big pain in the ass.

...and a lot slower than just keeping my fingers on the keyboard.

(by the way, this'll show my age...but my preferred text editor is Emacs)