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Topic: I can't figure this out!
| Author | Message |
| Julianna808 | Posted – 7/24/2008 11:57:56 PM | show profile Okay, I know that most journalism grads are learning new skills in online media to get ahead these days. Which I understand completely. But for the life of me, I can't understand why online/new media employees need to know Dreamweaver. What kind of duties would a person do using Dreamweaver? How do these duties differ from those done with a Content Management System? |
| ashiahmoon | Posted – 7/25/2008 12:17:17 AM | show profile It's just a way to show off that you're web design savvy. CMS requires practically zero HTML knowledge. Knowing Dreamweaver shows you at least know how to design a whole web page without the help of something easy like CMS. |
| jobhunter08 | Posted – 7/25/2008 1:12:58 AM | show profile To the poster above me: That still doesn't have much to do with investigative journalism imo. |
| foodlit | Posted – 7/25/2008 12:26:56 PM | show profile You don't need to know dreamweaver unless you plan to build websites. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/25/2008 1:36:55 PM | show profile >> I can't understand why online/new media employees need to know Dreamweaver. << Because Dreamweaver (an Adobe App) seems to be the standard. Why wouldn't an "online/new media employee" not be expected to at least be able to "post" or "get" from a web site? (For example, if an editor asks you to make a small copy editing correction in an online story, can you do that?) I wouldn't sweat it though -- the basics of Dreamweaver are pretty easy -- I don't think you would be expected to design and build pages with it using "editable regions" and MySQL database integration. I think they probably just want you to be able to open Dreamweaver, add content to a page, and upload it, as well as make editing corrections on the fly. That stuff is almost intuitive, especially for anyone with a basic understanding of FTP and how web sites work. You could pick it up in one community college course (I recommend doing an accredited course instead of some fake community college shiest) or teach yourself with "Dreamweaver for Dummies" or whatevs. Good luck. |
| snappiness | Posted – 7/25/2008 2:17:23 PM | show profile I use Dreamweaver to maintain my own Web site. Saves me a lot of money. I got someone to do the art, and I just make changes and upload new info or create new pages using the same basic art template whenever I need to. So, my input is that you can learn Dreamweaver pretty easily just by playing around with it (I never took a course), and also that there are uses for Dreamweaver even if you're not building web sites. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/25/2008 2:42:17 PM | show profile snappiness, you might be interested in knowing that the FTP programs for Firefox (Filezilla, and even better: the one that is embedded as a plugin in Firefox so that the FTP program opens in a tab) are far superior to Dreamweaver's FTP function. I use Dreamweaver to edit web pages, but I use Mozilla's FTP programs (Filezilla or the Firefox plugin) to actualy send the programs to the server. I find that Dreamweaver's connection isn't nearly as stable, and to make a connection takes longer. Basic Dreamweaver is easy, but I find some of the more useful features are difficult to figure out at first, such as editable regions (a part of a web page that you can edit and it makes the changes to all the web pages that share that editable region -- very useful, but a little difficult to figure out at first). And I've never ventured to use the ASP, ColdFusion or other more complicated plugins and features. (And I can barely set up a MySQL database.) It would be hard I think for a lot of people to learn Dreamweaver without a course. It's like Photoshop -- we all know how to use curves and "save for Web," but most people would be lost working in channels, or using curves correctly (hint: did you ever wonder what the eyedropper was for in the curves options box?) or a million other things Photoshop does faster than the weird backwards and time-consuming way people learn to use Photoshop, myself included. This becomes apparent if you've ever seen a MFA do something in Photoshop in three minutes without touching a mouse that would take you hours with lots of trial and error. Dreamweaver is similar, albeit not nearly as complicated as Illustrator or Photoshop can be. |
