This is Apple’s definition of revolutionizing. Hang on to your seats kids, it’s gonna be as mind-blowing as…

A root canal…

In a third world country…

With a rusty screwdriver…

I could go on about my disdain for the iPad, but I’ll spare you. For now. Maybe I’ll get into that some other time. But what I will say is this: What kills me about this ongoing battle between Apple and Adobe (and Apple and Google…and Apple and any other perceived threat) is that Apple is no longer the company that thinks different. The innovative little company (the one with the Albert Einstein ads that Jobs brought back from the brink of death) is no longer the underdog David versus the titan Goliaths of the tech world. Apple has now become what it fought so hard against. Innovative my ass. Locking out Flash developers is not innovation. Releasing products that are completely locked down and controlled is not innovation. Removing FireWire from your line of MacBooks is not innovation, it’s a god-damned pain in the ass.

So what’s killing me about all this is Apple isn’t going after Adobe for some lofty moral principle to enrich their customer’s experience. They’re power-playing the market, completely disregarding what their customer wants. I want Flash on my iPhone, I want an open, expandable platform…and you can bet your external hard drive that I want FireWire on my damn laptop. It would be like the Ten Ton community saying, “We wanna see Ten Ton E-Commerce,” and me saying, “Listen, I know what you want better than you do; what you want is Ten Ton Commodore VIC-20 Essentials.”

What makes Apple think they know what I want better than I do?

Here’s what I’ve come to realize in the past few months: I don’t care about Apple. You know, I don’t even care about Adobe. There I said it. Wow…that feels so much better…

Wanna know what I do care about? I care intensely about is getting shit done. I care about completing projects that I’m passionate about — be it a training DVD, a new song, or a cool new piece of art. And I want to get these projects completed in the most efficient, user-friendly way possible. To speak metaphorically, I’m not hung up on what brand of pencils I use…I’m hung up on the drawing itself. I’m not loyal in the least to any dinosaur corporation…I’m loyal to my art.

If my art can be completed in the most efficient manner using an Adobe product, great. An Apple product? Fan-freakin’-tastic. But these dinosaur corporations had better seriously watch their blindspot…cuz shit like WordPress and Linux and Android and GIMP are comin’ up hard and fast on the inside. To them, it’s about openness and community and sharing and helping one another…and real innovation, not the kind that’s a marketing angle. Which is pretty much the opposite of market share, profits, and shafting other development platforms.

That’s the way I see it anyway.

I’m Geoff Blake, and I just brought the thunder!

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If you have content in one site that you’d like to use in another site that you’ve defined in Dreamweaver, you could certainly copy your files to the second site’s local root folder on your hard drive. However, there’s a much easier way to do this is directly from the Assets panel itself.

Here’s how to copy assets to other sites:

1. In the Asset panel, open the category that contains your asset, then select it.
2. From the Asset panel’s Option menu, choose Copy to Site, then select the site you’d like to copy the asset to in the sub-menu.

Not only does Dreamweaver copy the asset into the second site, it also creates any necessary folder structure that the current site has.

For example, if you copied a file that was saved in “img / products / camping” and the new site has an “img” folder, but not the “products” or “camping” subfolders, Dreamweaver will create them for you. Further, if the copied file was a part of your Favorites asset list in the previous site, Dreamweaver will add it to your Favorites in the new site. How smokin’ is that!?

To copy a folder of favorites to anther site, try right-clicking on it (Control-clicking on Mac), and choosing Copy to Site.

3. Click Refresh Site List at the bottom of the Assets panel.

This updates the Assets panel. If you add or remove assets, either within or outside of Dreamweaver, the Assets panel won’t reflect the changes right away.

Note: Because colors and URLs have no file to copy, they’ll only appear in the Assets panel’s Favorites when they’re copied to another site.

Here’s another cool tip: A really helpful fella is the Locate in Site command. Wanna know where an image is stored in your site? Right-click on it (Control-click on Mac) and choose Locate in Site. The Files panel opens (unless it’s already on screen) and highlights the corresponding asset.

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Alrighty, welcome to the third and final part of our look at 25 cool Acrobat features. Hopefully you enjoyed the first two parts. This time around, you’ll find out about adjusting page numbering, using Acrobat’s commenting tools, security, and if ya make it all the way to the end, ya might find yourself a wee Acrobat bonus! So put down the phone and check it out!

Secret #17: Mark It Up With Watermarks!

Did ya know you could stamp good ‘ol fashioned watermarks right across the pages in your PDFs? Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of co-workers like FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY, DO NOT COPY, or my personal favorite, THIS DOCUMENT WILL SELF-DESTRUCT. Toying with your co-worker’s emotions couldn’t be easier in Acrobat, so get started by choosing Document > Watermark > Add. In the Source area of the Add Watermark dialog box, type a threatening statement into the Text field, or click on File and browse for an image to use as a watermark. After that, monkey with the Appearance options (for example, scaling, opacity, and so on), and below that, the Positioning. That’s all there is to it!

Secret #18: Get Those Page Numbers Synching With This Nifty Command!

You know what drives me nuts? When the page numbering within a PDF—that is, the numbering that appears in the footer of each page—is out of sync with the page numbering in Acrobat. In other words, to Acrobat, Page 1 might be the document’s cover; meanwhile, Page 1 of the document might be way down on the 8th page of the file. This is usually caused by front matter, lengthy tables of contents, and so on. So whadda ya do about it? First, open up Acrobat’s Pages Panel (View > Navigation Panels > Pages); then in the Options menu at the top, choose Number Pages. This handly little dialog box’ll letcha specify the page ranges you want to renumber, the numbering style, and so on. For example, the document’s table of contents may span from Page 3 to Page 8 and use lowercase roman numerals as a numbering style. Make sense? So the Number Pages command in Acrobat’ll letcha sync up those page numbers, and make it ten times easier to get around inside your files. So whatcha still reading for? Get syncing those page numbers in Acrobat!

Secret #19: Attach A File Or Two To Yer PDF’s!

Here’s somethin’ that’ll come in handy once in a while: the ability to attach a file to a PDF. Maybe you want to include a chart or a logo along with a PDF for the client to approve, or maybe you’re reviewing and editing some content, and you want to attach some revised materials—who knows, but it’s cool stuff. To give ‘er a try, open the Attachments panel (View > Navigation Panels > Attachments); then at the top of the panel, click on Add and browse for the file you’d like to attach—any file format will work, which is cool. And that’s really all there is to it. The great part is that the file gets embedded into the PDF, so if you email it or post it online, the attached file will go with it. But watch those file sizes—no embedding DVD rips of Smokey And The Bandit, now!

Secret #20: Break Up Those PDF’s With Extract Pages!

Here’s the situation: you have a large PDF, maybe containing fourteen or fifteen chapters, and you want to break the document apart into individual chapters. You could do a whole lotta File > Save As, and deleting of pages, but hey man, it’s the 21-st century here! Just use Acrobat’s Extract Pages Command. Here’s how she works. Choose Document > Extract Pages; then in the dialog box that appears, set the page range that you’re after, and let ‘er rip. Further, you can make use of the two options below the page range area, Delete Pages After Extracting, and Extract Pages As Separate Pages. In other words, delete the pages from the original PDF; and save the extracted pages as separate PDF files. Easy stuff!

Secret #21: Forget Red Pens And Deciphering Scrawl, It’s Acrobat Commenting!

More and more people are starting to use this feature in Acrobat, which is awesome, but as I’m sure you’ll agree, all the world must know! Commenting in Acrobat (also known as Markups, or Annotations) replaces the old-school method of printing off hardcopies and going at them with a red pen during editing and revision processes (gahh, hardcopy!). Keeping everything electronic in Acrobat saves a lot of things, like time, stress, and trees. Ready to give ‘er a try? Head to View > Toolbars > Comment & Markup, and go to town on your PDFs. There’s a ton of tools to choose from, but by far my favorite is the Sticky Note tool, which lets ya drop yellow sticky notes all over the PDF. Go nuts with the commenting tools, then manage ‘em all by choosing View > Navigation Panels > Comments. In the Comments panel, you can delete ‘em, sort ‘em summarize ‘em, and even export ‘em! Happy markup!

Secret #22: PDF Lockdown Mode, It’s Acrobat Security!

Many folks think PDFs are secured by default—I hope ya know this is not the case. If you want your documents locked, you gotta say so in Acrobat. There are a few ways to do this, but try choosing File > Document Properties; then click on the Security tab; then from the menu at the top, choose the type of security you’d like. For example, you could go with Password Security, which gives you the option of putting two passwords on the document, one to open the file, and one to make changes—you could use just one of these, or both. Just remember, whatever you do, don’t forget your passwords!

Secret #23: Need The Images In That PDF? Just Export ‘Em!

Have a PDF that contains a few images that you’d like to use elsewhere? Easy stuff. While you could manually convert each page of the PDF to an image with Photoshop, then crop out the images you’re after, there’s a much faster way. Choose Advanced > Document Processing > Export All Images. Next, choose where you want to export the images to, and the file format that you’d like to save them in. Hittin’ Save will finish the job. Now you’ll have all the PDF’s images saved and ready for use where ever you like!

Secret #24: Convert That PDF To A Different Format!

So whadda ya do when you have a PDF, and you need it in a different file format? Well, there’s a few things you can do. To begin, try choosing File > Save As. In the Save As dialog box that appears, the Format menu at the bottom will give ya lots ‘n lots of options for converting your PDF. Ya got yer image file formats, like JPEG, TIF, and PNG, as well as Microsoft Word, PostScript, and a buncha other goodies. With most of the formats, you’ll be able to click the Settings button to set a few additional options for your conversion. Now if the conversion doesn’t go so well, don’t get too upset. I’ve found it depends a lot on what’s inside the original PDF, and how it was created. Hope this wee function’ll help ya out, though!

Secret #25: Text Editing, Acrobat Style!

Get editing text in those PDF’s! While it has it’s limitations, this is great for those last minute changes. Head for the Advanced Editing toolbar (View > Toolbars > Advanced), and choose the TouchUp Text tool. Highlight the text you’d like to fix, and after Acrobat loads in your fonts, start typin’! Now, Acrobat’s editing abilities aren’t powerful enough to recognize margins or multiple columns, so it might be a bit frustrating. Fonts can be an issue, too, so try right-clicking on some selected text; then choose Properties. In the TouchUp Properties dialog box, you can change the font, set a size and color, and a buncha other cool things. Have fun!

So there ya go, 25 super-killer Acrobat secrets to make your PDFs really rock. I hope you enjoyed this series, and as always, post comments and questions below!

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Welcome to Part 2 of our look at 25 cool Acrobat features. I hope you enjoyed the first part, and I’m sure you’re gonna love this installment, too. Here you’ll find out about some cool navigation tricks, how to manage mulitple PDF’s, and how to use audio and video in Acrobat. And for all you traditional print designers, I’m gonna finish off with two must-know Acrobat commands that’ll make your pre-press life a breeze. So let’s get to it!

Secret #9: Articles: Navigatin’ Complex Documents With Ease!

Articles—you know in newspapers it’ll say “story continued on A15,” or something like that, right? Then you have to flip until you get to the right page. Well, articles in Acrobat’ll let you simply click to jump to continue reading—it’s yet another way to nagivate through a PDF, and it works really well for newsletters or any sort of file that has mulitple stories within it. Head for the Advanced Editing toolbar (View > Toolbars > Advanced Editing), and click on the Article tool. Click and drag a box around the column of your first article; then navigate to where the article continues and drag a second box around that column. Keep dragging boxes for for each of your article columns; then when you wanna test it out, grab the Hand tool and give your article a click. Keep clicking to navigate all the way through the length of the article.

Secret #10: Wow, Convert An Entire Website to PDF!

This next one’s kind of a weird one, but cool none the less: you can convert not just a web page, but an entire website into a PDF. Sounds pretty cool huh? If ya think this sounds like fun, head to File > Create PDF > From Web Page. The rest is kinda self-explanatory. Throw in a URL, decide how many levels deep you wanna go, and hit Settings to decide how you want the conversion to go. Sound sweet? Only thing is, when the heck ya gonna need this? I used this once when I was on my way to New York, and needed to review the client’s website beforehand. I converted their entire site to PDF and reviewed it on the plane ride down. Cool huh? Beats the heck outta the in-flight peanuts, anyway!

Secret #11: Manage ‘N Navigate Those PDF’s With Organizer

Acrobat’s Organizer is awesome. It’s like a mini file manager, allowing you to browse through your files visually. Choose File > Organizer > Open Organizer to get started. Once open, you can sort through, view, manage, open, and even print and email PDFs. Use the column on the left to choose how you want to navigate through your PDFs . Use History to show ya all the PDFs you’ve opened today, yesterday, or as far back as a year ago (holy hell!), or browse through PDFs by location. For example, see all the PDFs on your hard drive, or on a network drive. Finally, you can browse your files by using something called Collections, which are really cool—read up on ‘em if you have a sec. Now, once you find the one you’re after, double-click on that sucka, and he’ll open up in Acrobat, ready to go.

Secret #12: Use PDF Package To Make Your Proposals Sing!

PDF Packages are hard to describe, so you’re definitley gonna have to check this one out for yourself—but I’ll give ‘er a try. Do you ever have to submit a group of files to management or to a client? Something that you’d traditionally put into binders, with cover pages, and that sorta thing? Well, PDF Packages are the same sorta idea, but it’s all electronic, of course. So to give it a whirl, go to File > Combine Files; then click the Add Files button and add in all the files that you want as a part of your package. When you’re good, click on Next down in the bottom right. In the next screen, choose Assemble Files Into A PDF Package; then click Create, and Acrobat’ll create a package for you. Now, the important thing to know is that the files are not combined into one single file—they’re still all separate files, just organized into a package. See your files over in the left-hand pane? And you can have a cover sheet for your package, too. Click on Cover Sheet above the file list to have a looky. Pretty cool. Hope you like it!

Secret #13: Lost It? Find It With Search!

Where the heck did that file go?! Well, the frustration subsides with Acrobat’s powerful Search command. You know about using the Find command to search within a file, right? Well, how about searching across mulitple documents? In fact, you could search all PDFs that sit on your hard drive, on a network drive, or in a specific folder. And there’s a bit more power under this fella’s hood, too. See down at the bottom where it reads Use Advanced Search Options? Give ‘er a click, my friend, and suddenly you’ll be presented with a few additional options. Best part is, when you do your search, Acrobat presents the results in the Search window, so you can scan through them before committing to opening them—you can even read the content of the PDFs that come back as results without opening ‘em! So there ya go, there’s some supa-sweet stuff with Search!

Secret #14: Crank Up The Interactivity With Audio And Video!

Oh yeah, baby! Audio and video in a PDF? No problem, it’s the easiest thing in the world! Of course though, as with web design, Flash development, and so on, you’ve gotta have a decent audio file, or some edited and compressed video ready to go before you drop it into Acrobat. Kinda goes without saying, but some people don’t know this. Kay, we’ll do audio first. Whatcha do is open up your Advanced Editing toolbar (View > Toolbars > Advanced Editing); then click on the Sound tool (it looks like a speaker). Next, click and drag a box around some content on your PDF that you want to have activate the sound. The dialog box that appears will allow you to browse for an audio file, as well as choose whether or not to embed the content into the PDF. Alright, now for video. This works pretty much the same as audio. On the Advanced Editing toolbar, click on the Movie tool; then click and drag a box where you want your video to play back. Once again in the dialog box, browse for your movie, choose if you want to embed it into your file, and set its poster options. Just think of all the possibilities!

Secret #15: Checkin’ Inks, Overprints, And More With Output Preview!

Alright print designers, these next two secrets are for you, so pay attention! First up, Acrobat’s Output Preview command. Whether you’re sending PDFs out to print, or you’re on the receiving end, getting PDF files for use on press, you’ll wanna make use of this handy and powerful feature. This guy reminds me of a souped up version of Photoshop’s Channels, but for an entire PDF. Head to Advanced > Print Production > Output Preview to have a looky. First off, if Separations is selected in the Preview box, you’ll see the color plates used by the PDF listed. Awesome! Turn ‘em on or shut ‘em off, and you’ll see what’s what in the document. It gets better. Towards the bottom, you’ve got your Total Area Coverage, which is awesome for those magazine and newspaper ads. Cool huh? Did ya know this command was even in Acrobat? Okay, we’ll finish this with a bang. My personal favorite is when you choose Color Warnings from the Preview box. There, you can set Acrobat to tell you want parts of the document are overprinting, and which are using rich black. Totally killer, and no more messin’ around trying to figure out why the damn file won’t separate! Now go nuts and start experimenting!

Secret #16: Preflight Those PDF’s For Pre-Press Perfection!

Alright print designers, you still with me? Did you recover after the Output Preview secret? This next one is Acrobat’s crown jewel when it comes to print production—Preflight! You may have heard about this command, as it’s been makin’ a lot of noise in the industry, so without further adu, choose Advanced > Preflight. In the dialog that appears, you’ll be given a huge list of what are called Preflight Profiles. Expand the categories and take a look see. There’s tons of stuff in there to keep you busy. Some personal favs, all found under PDF Analysis: List Bitmaps Below 300ppi, List Images Not CMYK, and List Transparent Objects. That last one should be called List All #@%! Transparent Objects, but I digress. Now, pick the Preflight Profile you want; then click Execute at the bottom. Be sure to laugh ruthlessly as you do, cuz the Preflight dialog is gonna spit back everything that’s right—and most importantly, wrong—with the PDF. So you’ll be able to say to your client, “Bro, it’s the photo of the headless chicken on page 4. It’s not CMYK!” Have lots of fun with this guy, he’ll reduce the stress levels for sure!

Cool stuff, huh? Don’t forget, we still have a third installment in the 25 Acrobat Secrets series…check it out here!

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Secret #1: Settin’ ‘Er Up With Layers!

Didja know Acrobat has Layers? Yeah, Layers! When you’re creating a PDF outta InDesign or Illustrator, for example, you can specify to preserve your file’s layers, which then appear in Acrobat’s Layers panel (View > Navigation Panels > Layers). At first, it might seem like you can’t do a whole lot to layers in a PDF file, but you can do quite a bit with a dash of creativity. For example, you can create a hyperlink (see Secret #3) that controls the visibility of these layers, thus controlling the visible content in your file. Imagine a link that says “Click here to see the Spanish version.” While it’s all built into a single PDF file, you could have different “versions” of a file available. This is just one simple example. Use a bit of imagination, and put Acrobat layers to work!

Secret #2: Super-Sweet Navigation With Bookmarks!

You know about Bookmarks in Acrobat, right? You don’t? Oh man, this is arguably one of the best navigation devices you can add to PDF files. Bookmarks are sorta like a clickable list of hyperlinks that take a user to different locations throughout a PDF—imagine a clickable Table Of Contents, or a list of different sections within your file, for example. To getcha started, choose View > Navigation Panels > Bookmarks. Use the settings underneath the panel’s Options menu (top-right corner) to create new bookmarks, delete ‘em, and to otherwise mess around. Definitely consider adding bookmarks to your PDFs to make them easier for users to make their way around! In fact, check out this cool video I did, which’ll show ya how to use bookmarks!

Secret #3: Add Major Interactivity With Hyperlinks!

You might know about creating hyperlinks if you’re into web development, but didja know you can add ‘em to PDFs as well? It’s real easy, too. In fact, you can make any part of a PDF file clickable, and have all sortsa cool things happen, like open web sites, play an audio file, control a form, and even more. Try this: Choose View > Toolbars > Advanced Editing (one of the coolest toolbars in Acrobat, by the way); then on the Advanced Editing toolbar, click on the Link tool (the one that looks like two wee chain links); then click and drag a box around the text or image that you’d like to make clickable. In the dialog that appears, you can control the appearance of your hyperlink, as well as the link’s action. Have fun!

Secret #4: Portability And Design Integrity, It’s PDF-Based Forms!

Next up, PDF-based forms. Yup, rather than wrestling with web-based forms, or (gakk!) the near-unusable Word forms (hold up, I’m…gonna… heave…), you can create forms in Acrobat. It’s totally huge, and not enough people know about this. Now the big question: Why would you want to create forms in Acrobat? I’ll tell ya. For all the reasons why you’re already using PDFs: cross-platform, file-size, portability, preservation of document layout and integrity…and the list goes on. So whatcha waitin’ for? Get up to speed with PDF-based forms with Acrobat’s Forms toolbar. Choosing View > Toolbars > Forms will getcha started.

Secret #5: Work Half Days From Now On, Acrobat Has Batch Processing!

Holy hell, Batch Processing?! Yup, and it’s the meat ‘n potatoes in Acrobat! What’s Batch Processing, you ask? Well, Photoshop calls ‘em Actions, in Microsoft-land they call ‘em macros. Well in Acrobat, we call it Batch Processing, and it works a little something like this: Ya got a folder of 50-zillion PDFs, and the boss wants ‘em all watermarked and secured before the end of the day. Well, grab your jacket and head out for an early lunch, cuz you’re already done—you set up your own batch, smarty-pants. Here’s how it goes: Head to Advanced > Document Processing > Batch Processing. The dialog that appears is gonna letcha run one of the pre-created batch sequences, like Fast Web View or Set Security To No Changes, or you can create your own by clicking the New Sequence button. Happy batching; just don’t let the boss see you when you’re on your way out!

Secret #6: Make ‘Er Just Right With Initial View

“Son-of-a-motherless-goat-herder, every time I open this freakin’ PDF, it opens all zoomed in, and that’s not how I want it to open for the client when I send it over!” Soothing breath, grasshopper. Acrobat has a wee stress-reducing command called Initial View, which lets you control how your PDF opens for your users. Check it: Go to File > Properties; then click on the Initial View tab. Hells yeah! You can control the magnification, what navigation tab opens automatically, and even what page the PDF opens on. How cool is that? Give ‘er a try by setting an option or two; save your file; then reopen it. To your surprise, it’ll open exactly as you’d specified. Sweet, that’ll make the vein in your forehead go away!

Secret #7: Even More Interactivity With Page Actions!

On the interactive side of things, you can get into what are traditionally called Page Actions in Acrobat. The idea would be to have some kind of an event, like a sound play or a message appear when the user navigates to a specific page in your PDF. Give ‘er a try by heading to View > Navigation Panels > Pages; then in the Pages panel that appears, right-click (Windows) or Ctrl+click (Mac) on the page that you’d like to attach the action to, and choose Page Properties. In the dialog box that appears, click the Actions tab, and go nuts! Now where ya gonna use this? Again, get that creative thinking going, there are tons of applications for adding this sort of interactivity to PDFs! To test your action, navigate away from the page, then head back to it. Easy!

Secret #8: Say Yer Prayers PowerPoint, Acrobat’s Got A Full Screen Mode!

If I have to attend one more freakin’ PowerPoint presentation, the presenter’s gonna get a choke-slam! It’s the whiz-bang slidey bullet points, the spinny headings, and the oh-so-barfy special effects that I just can’t take anymore. Gahh…Kay so enough with PowerPoint. Create your full screen presentations in Acrobat instead. Why? No more slidey bullet points, woo-hoo! So whatcha do is build your slides in the app you’re most comfortable in. InDesign, Photoshop, where ever. Years back I kicked major ass with one I did up in Quark. Make sure you follow all the standard full screen advice, like avoiding 6pt type, dropping 8,000 graphics on a single slide, and using a page size more like 8.5×5 (or something like that). Next, take your file and convert it to PDF. Once you’ve got it open in Acrobat, choose View > Full Screen Mode. Whoa, how awesome is that? And nobody knows Acrobat can do this! Customize things a bit further by going into Acrobat’s preferences (Edit > Preferences in Windows; Acrobat > Preferences on the Mac); then into the Full Screen category. You can create self-running shows, shows that loop, and all kindsa cool stuff. And notice, no barfy-effects options. Means no one’s gonna get a choke-slam!

So, are ya diggin’? Then here’s Part 2 of 25 Supa-Killah Acrobat Secrets!

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Hey, you lookin’ ta save some time—save some time in Dreamweaver? Cool, you’re in the right spot! So check this out: Here’s a list of 10 super-slick tricks to save time while managing your websites in the titan of web design, Dreamweaver. Now this list assumes that you’ve got a good foothold in Dreamweaver, and that you’ve gone through the site definition process as well (that’s Site > New Site), cuz many of these features simply won’t work without a defined site. Kay, enough blabbin’! Grab a snack, lean in close, and let’s take a look!

Time-Saver #1: The Ass Haulin’ Starts With Assets!

Assets are one of the coolest parts of the Dreamweaver interface. Within a defined site, open up the Assets panel (Window > Assets), and you’ll see a column of icons down the left-hand side of the panel, which categorize all the materials you have at your disposal in your site, including images, video files, flash content, and even things like colors and external links. Pop open a category; then take a look at whatcha have. For example, go into the Images category, and you’ll see a list of file names in the bottom half of the panel, and a thumbnail view of the image in the top half. This means you’ll never lose another image again. Sweet!

Time-Saver #2: Mach-10 File Transfer With Dreamweaver’s Files Panel!

Forget about using third-party FTP clients—didja know Dreamweaver’s Files panel has everything you need built right in? Just click the Expand To Show Local And Remote Sites button in the panel’s top-right corner, and the panel maximizes to show your remote site on the left, and your local site on the right. Then what? Drag ‘n drop, baby! Or even better—and this is my favorite part—select a file in one view; then at the top of the panel, click either Put (in the case where you’re uploading a file to the remote site) or Get (to pull a file down to your local site). The reason why this is my favorite part is cuz if the file resides within a sub-folder or two, Dreamweaver will actually build the folder structure for you on the other side, so all your links and paths remain intact. How cool is that?!

Time-Saver #3: Light-Speed Link Management With Change Links Sitewide

Ya goofed on a link throughout your site, huh? No need to throw in the towel just yet. Dreamweaver’s Change Links Sitewide command will getcha outta your jam. To give it a try, just choose Site > Change Link Sitewide. In the dialog box that appears, use the two fields to correct your link—although the language used in the dialog box might twist your brain for a sec. In the Change All Links To field, type in the old link—that is, the link that you want to change; then in the Into Links To field, type in the new link that you’d like to use to replace the old links. Make sense? Kay then, let ‘er rip! Just one word of caution: Before doing any sitewide command, including Change Links Sitewide, it’s a real good idea to take five seconds and back up your site, just in case you royally goof.

Time-Saver #4: Rapid-Fire Find And Replace!

Dreamweaver’s nuclear-powered Find And Replace is the freakin’ bomb. You’ve used Find And Replace in other programs, right? But have you ever used one that’s on mega-steroids? Check out this juicer by choosing Edit > Find And Replace (in a rush? Hit Ctrl+F in Windows, or Cmd+F on the Mac). At first glance, it doesn’t look like anything special, right? Well, pop open the Find In menu and have a gander at all the different places you can search. Current Document, Open Documents, Entire Current Local Site, and so on. Next, whadda ya wanna search for? Pop open the Search menu and make a choice. This is where things get real heavy. Source Code, Text, Specific Tag, or my fav, Text (Advanced). Go nuts, have fun, and be careful!

Time-Saver #5: Cookin’ With Cloaking!

As you’re working on updating your site, you can save a lot of time by enabling cloaking. If a file or folder in your site is cloaked, it will be ignored by certain site functions, such as Put (uploading) and Get (downloading). For example, if you have folders of PDF and MP3 files already uploaded to your live site, there’s no sense in uploading them again when you update other parts of your site. Instead, just cloak ‘em and Dreamweaver will ignore them. Cloaking’s turned on by default for your defined sites, so if you didn’t turn it off, you should be good to go. To cloak a file or folder, select ‘em; then from the Files panel option menu (top-right corner, bub!), choose Site > Cloaking > Cloak. There ya go! There’s just somethin’ cool about the word cloak. “Captain! There’s a folder of PDFs de-cloaking off our port bow!” Anyway, have fun!

Time-Saver #6: Soupin’ It Up With Site Synchronization!

So many files, so many folders…how can ya keep track of it all? Easy. Get Dreamweaver to do it for you, so you can watch TV instead! Here’s the goods: Dreamweaver has this awesome command (I use it all the time) called Synchronize. What it’ll do is take a look at the remote version of your site and the local version of your site, compare the two; then tell ya the difference. In other words, it’ll tell ya what’s updated, what needs to be uploaded, and what’s out of date. It’s pretty sweet stuff, and it makes keeping your site up to date a freakin’ breeze. Give it a whirl by choosing Site > Synchronize Sitewide. In the dialog box that appears, choose what you want to synchronize, and the direction you want to synchronize in; then hit Preview. Easy as that!

Time-Saver #7: Last Minute Link Checkin’!

One of the last things that should be done before a site goes live is checking that all the hyperlinks and paths to other content is all functioning. Of course, back in the day, this used to be done manually. Thank god Dreamweaver has a built in command that’ll do this for us (yay, no more wasting weekends checking links one by one!). So here goes. Choose Site > Check Links Sitewide. Dreamweaver’s Results panel appears, open to the Link Checker tab. Within, Dreamweaver lists (to your horror!) any broken links. Better you find out about ‘em now though, right? Now here’s the cool part: Lets say there’s a busted link on your index page. You could click on index.html in the left-hand column, but why? Just single-click on the link path in the right column, and you can fix it right there—without even opening the file! How awesome is that? So, just make your way down the list, make your fixes, and Bob’s your uncle. Or maybe he’s my uncle. Anyway, you get the idea!

Time-Saver #8: Faster! Faster! It’s Site Reports!

Dreamweaver comes packed with a set of site reports just waitin’ to be run against your site. You can use reports to troubleshoot your site, test content, or make sure certain tasks have been completed. Give ‘er a go by choosing Site > Reports. In the Reports dialog box that appears, choose what you’d like to run your reports against; then from the list at the bottom, choose what reports you’d like to run, like Recently Modified, Accessibility, or for the SEO-conscious designer, Missing Alt Text. Yup, she’s a sweet ride—so whatcha waitin’ for? Get reportin’!

Time-Saver #9: Warp-Factor Nine, It’s Design Notes!

Whether you’re working as a part of a design team or all by your lonesome, Design Notes provide a great way to keep track of those bits of information that usually wind up scribbled on scraps of paper, bits of toilet paper, or scrawled in the palm of your hand. A document’s status, a project’s deadline, edits, communication between team members—Design notes are a great way to keep things straight. Drop a note into a file by choosing File > Design Notes; type a message into the Note field, and hit OK. That’s all there is to it. Set it to open every time the file’s opened, and the Design Notes dialog will appear, letting the user know what’s up. Sweet!

Time-Saver #10: Auxiliary Power: Check In/Check Out!

Team members pissin’ ya off? Is it their B.O., or the fact that they keep over-writing your work? Sounds like it’s time ta implement Dreamweaver’s Check In/Check Out feature. This guy’ll ensure that team members don’t overwrite each other’s work as they build and update a web site, and they’ll be able to see who’s working on a particular file, so they know who to strangle while they’re waiting for a it to become available. To use Dreamweaver’s Check In/Check Out feature, all team members must have the Check In and Check Out setting activated for the site they’re working on, and Design Notes turned on. This is all done in the Remote Info tab of the Site Definition dialog box. As for that B.O. issue with your team members, I’d recommend gentle suggestions; and if that doesn’t work, Febreeze. A lot of it.

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