Microsoft® Expression® Web For Dummies®

by Linda Hefferman and Asha Dornfest

Microsoft® Expression® Web For Dummies®

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Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2007920017

ISBN: 978-0-470-11509-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Authors

Since 1989, Linda Hefferman has been explaining technical stuff to everyday people who use technology but are not exactly best buddies with their computers.

Her first computer manual taught people how to make pretty graphs and charts from project management data using a software program written for the first version of Microsoft Windows. Since then she has written help systems and user manuals on such diverse products as Web stores, Flash-based educational Web sites, and customer management software for cosmetic salespeople.

This is her first title for the For Dummies series, and she’s thrilled to combine her passion for writing with her technical skills to do what she loves best: help the average Joe and Jane feel comfortable and confident on computers. Visit Linda on the Web at www.lindahefferman.com.

On her first day of college, Asha Dornfest took a bold step: She replaced her broken typewriter with a PC.

Asha didn’t consider herself a geek; her computer was simply a tool to help her write papers and reports. But by her senior year, she came to regard her computer with a sense of kinship.

In 1994, Asha discovered the Internet. Soon after, she and her husband Rael started a Web design business in their dining room and began hawking their electronic wares. Mind you, this venture began during the Web-publishing Stone Age, when many people had never even heard of the World Wide Web. Rael quipped that For Dummies books about Web publishing may one day hit the shelves. Asha scoffed.

Rael obviously had more foresight than Asha did; Asha went on to write several books and articles on the topic, including Microsoft FrontPage For Dummies. She now spends an inordinate amount of time online — she’s the founder and editor of the popular parenting Weblog Parent Hacks (www.parenthacks.com) and still maintains her personal site at www.ashaland.com.

Dedications

To my amazing co-author, Asha Dornfest. We truly are the A Team. And to my parents, Doris and Dave Ohde, who taught me from a young age the importance of a well-crafted sentence.

Authors’ Acknowledgments

We’d like to thank all the people who made Microsoft Expression Web For Dummies run so smoothly. Special thanks to Project Editor Becky Huehls, Acquisitions Editor Steve Hayes, Technical Editor Mike Lerch, and Copy Editor Rebecca Whitney.

The Microsoft Expression Web development team put together an excellent beta program and software product. We are especially grateful to Wayne Smith, for making sure we had the latest information when we needed it, and Devindra Chaini, for timely answers to our nitpicky questions.

Cheryl D. Wise offered much guidance on many of the niggling techie subtle-ties of moving from FrontPage to Expression Web.

To our family and friends . . . thanks for tolerating near neglect and chaos on the road to getting this book done, and still loving us anyway.

The wisdom of many professional Web designers graces our Part of Tens chapters, especially Jim ‘G’ Davidson, Holly Brewer, Emma McCreary, and Kevan Alan Embleton.

And, last but not least, I, Linda Hefferman, owe my sanity to David Bowie, Jason Webley, The Dresden Dolls, Modest Mouse, Jack White, Johann Sebastian Bach, and the folks at KNRK 94.7 FM for keeping my foot tapping while my typing digits were working overtime.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Project Editor: Rebecca Huehls

Sr. Acquisitions Editor: Steve Hayes

Copy Editor: Rebecca Whitney

Technical Editor: Michael Lerch

Editorial Manager: Leah P. Cameron

Media Development Specialists: Angela Denny, Kate Jenkins, Steven Kudirka, Kit Malone

Media Project Supervisor: Laura Moss

Media Development Manager: Laura VanWinkle

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Jennifer Theriot

Layout and Graphics: Claudia Bell, Jonelle Burns, Carl Byers, Joyce Haughey, Barbara Moore, Heather Ryan, Alicia B. South, Erin Zeltner

Proofreaders: Aptara, Melanie Hoffman

Indexer: Aptara

Anniversary Logo Design: Richard Pacifico

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Contents

Title

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Conventions Used in This Book

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I : Getting Started with Expression Web

Chapter 1: Creating a Web Site with Expression Web

Starting Expression Web for the First Time

Touring the Expression Web Screen

Creating and Saving a New Web Site

Creating a New Web Site from a Template

Opening an Existing Web Site in Expression Web

Adding Existing Files to a Web Site

Deleting a Web Site

Closing a Web Site and Closing Expression Web

Chapter 2: Working with Web Pages

Creating and Saving Pages

Opening Web Pages

Closing Web Pages

Taking a Peek at a Page in a Web Browser

Creating and Using Page Templates

Part II : Coaxing Content onto the Page

Chapter 3: Just the Text, Ma’am

Tools for Text

Adding Text to a Page in Design View

Fonts and Font Tools

Creating Stylish Paragraphs

Chapter 4: Getting Around with Hyperlinks

Adding Hyperlinks to Your Site: The What and the Where

Editing Hyperlinks

Making Sure Your Hyperlinks Work

Unlinking Hyperlinks

Using Bookmarks to Get Somewhere within a Page

Nifty Text-Based Navigation Bars

Inserting an Interactive Button

Swapping Images to Make Interactive Buttons

Embedding More than One Hyperlink in a Picture

Chapter 5: Graphically Speaking

Understanding the Quirks of Web Pictures

Adding a Picture to Your Page

Editing a Picture on a Page

Using Thumbnails to Speed Up Your Page

Controlling a Picture’s Position on the Page

Adding a Tiled Background Picture

Chapter 6: Forms for Any Purpose

Looking at How Forms Work

Creating Forms and Form Fields

Specifying What Happens to Form Results

Creating a Confirmation Page

Making Sure Your Form Works

Part III : Great Design Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult

Chapter 7: Using Styles to Gussy Up Your Content

What’s So Great about Styles?

Understanding How Styles Cascade

Introducing Classy Classes and Other Selectors

Recognizing Style Rule Geography

Checking Out Your Style Tools

Performing Common Style-Rule Maneuvers

Chapter 8: Putting Page Elements in Their Place

The Positioning Building Blocks

Divide and Conquer with <div> Tags

The CSS Box Is No Ordinary Box

Document Flow and Positioning

Chapter 9: External Style Sheets and CSS Code

Using External Style Sheets

Working with Style Sheet Code

Running CSS Reports

Understanding Expression Web Template Style Sheets

Chapter 10: Tables for Data (And Layout, If You Must)

Table Layout versus CSS Positioning

Creating Tables of Data

Laying Out Pages with Tables

Chapter 11: Streamlining Sites with Dynamic Web Templates

Introducing Dynamic Web Templates

Creating a Dynamic Web Template

Attaching a Dynamic Web Template to a Web Page

Creating a New Page from a Dynamic Web Template

Updating a Site That Uses Dynamic Web Templates

Part IV : Going Live and Keeping House

Chapter 12: Making Your Worldwide Debut

Determining What “Publishing Your Web Site” Means

Testing, Testing, and More Testing

Checking Your Site against Accessibility Guidelines

Running a Compatibility Report

Going Public

Letting the World Know That You’re Ready for Visitors

Keeping Your Web Site Fresh

Chapter 13: Web Site Management

Taking In the Views

Working with Web Site Files and Folders

Importing and Exporting Personal Web Packages

Chapter 14: Getting Cozy with Code

Understanding Why You Can’t Just Ignore the Code

Introducing the HTML Basics

Checking Out the Cool Code Tools

Controlling How Expression Web-Created Code Looks

Using Comments in HTML

Part V : The Part of Tens

Chapter 15: Ten Cool Gizmos for Your Web Site

Search Locally or Worldwide-Web-ly

Search Only the Sites You Trust

Include a Map on Your Site

Share Your Favorite Places

Share Video

Add Flash

Accept Payments on Your Site

Place Ads by Google

Create Drop-Down Menus

Replace Your Favorite FrontPage Bots

Chapter 16: Ten Essential Resources for Web Designers

Expression Web Help and Online Tutorials

Knowledge Base Builders

Consult the Web Powers That Be

CSS and Web Design Expertise

Third-Party Extensions and Add-Ins

Code Validation

Design-Related Goodies

Treasure Trove of Downloads

Inspiration

Last, but Certainly Not Least. . . .

: Further Reading

Introduction

Web publishing has changed dramatically in the years since the first sites appeared on the Internet cyberfrontier. Like anything else new and experimental, the Web has had its high-tech equivalent of strange fashions, bad hair days, and utter lawlessness. If you’re just getting into Web publishing now, you may feel as though you’ve missed the boat. In fact, you’ve missed a lot of hassle — browser wars, shifty HTML code, and creaky, hard-to-use Web publishing software. Now is as good a time as any to stake your claim on the Web.

What’s more, you’re already a step ahead: You chose Expression Web. The Microsoft development team who birthed this baby adopted a just-say-no-to-nonstandard-Web-site-building approach when designing Expression Web. They’ve incorporated the latest and best in Web building practices and technologies to help you, the Web designer, build Web sites that not only look and work great but also hum with the precision of a German luxury vehicle.

Yet if you’ve never built a Web site, or even if you have but don’t have a clue what Microsoft means by those buzzwords on the Expression Web box — standards-driven, Cascading Style Sheets, and the like — you’re not alone. Microsoft Expression Web For Dummies is here to help.

About This Book

Expression Web is a hefty piece of software capable of building Web sites that range from a few basic pages to immense, data-driven powerhouses. We assume that you fall somewhere in the middle: You want to use Expression Web to build a well-designed, easy-to-navigate Web site, not become an expert on databases. In this book, we focus on the information you need to know: how to fill your site with text and graphics and how to link pages, build forms, and do even more — and have it all look good.

We believe that you’ll find Web site building easier and more enjoyable if you understand and feel comfortable with how your site is put together. So, throughout this book, we introduce you to the code that works behind the scenes. And because we give the code to you in little bits, you may not even notice that you’re getting up to speed on HTML and CSS.

If you’re a complete Web-building newbie, you may want to skim this book to get a sense of what building a Web site entails, and then read the stuff that looks useful. If you need a little help with the code terminology, give the first part of Chapter 14 a read-through. If you’ve already tried your hand at site building, you can use Microsoft Expression Web For Dummies as a reference manual. Skip around and read the parts that interest you.

Foolish Assumptions

This book helps you jump right into using Expression Web. We therefore make a few assumptions about who you are and what you already know how to do:

You’re on good terms with your computer and its associates: the mouse, keyboard, monitor, and modem or network connection. You ask the computer nicely to do things by pressing keys and clicking the mouse, and it usually complies. You’re comfortable with the basic workings of Windows, such as using the Start menu, double-clicking items, getting around the Windows desktop, clicking buttons on toolbars, and choosing commands from menu bars.

You have an Internet connection through your workplace, school, Internet service provider (ISP), or online service, and you’ve spent some time surfing the Web. You may not understand how the Internet works, but you can find your way around and have someone you can call — a techie friend, neighbor, or work colleague — when you have a problem.

You have Expression Web sitting on your desk, and you may have already installed it on your computer.

You’re new to Expression Web, and you’re likely also new to Web publishing. If you’ve tried Web publishing, you’ve never done it with Expression Web. If you have worked with Expression Web, you were perplexed after fiddling with the program, rushed to the bookstore, and are reading this book right now.

How This Book Is Organized

In this book, we include all the information you need to get started creating great-looking Web sites with Expression Web. Expression Web is no small topic, so we divide the subject into easily chewable parts.

Part I: Getting Started with Expression Web introduces you to Expression Web and helps you become comfortable with how the program’s menus, commands, task panes, and workspace look and act. We show you how to set up a new Web site and open an existing one. Chapter 2 covers everything you need to know about individual Web pages.

Part II: Coaxing Content onto the Page covers how to work with the triumvirate of Web page content: text, hyperlinks, and pictures. We also introduce you to creating forms for interacting with your visitors.

Part III: Great Design Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult familiarizes you with the fundamentals of formatting and layout. It dives into using Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) styles to control how your pages look, and how to arrange stuff on your pages by using both CSS and tables. You also find out how to create tables for tabular data and templates to streamline site building and updating.

Part IV: Going Live and Keeping House covers everything you need to know to publish your Web site on the Internet, as well as how to keep your sites and their files tidy and organized. You find out about different reports you can run on your Web site, how to back up and move a Web site, and how to import and export to and from Expression Web. Finally, we ease you into working with the Expression Web code tools, and we present basic HTML concepts that make working in Expression Web easier.

For Part V: The Part of Tens, we compiled some cool gizmos that you can add to your pages. We also asked a bunch of professional Web designers to share their favorite design resources.

For more Part of Tens goodies, go to www.dummies.com, use the search box to navigate to this book's Web page, and then click the Bonus Chapters link. There you'll find bonus Chapters 17 and 18, full of professional Web designers' secrets and techniques for planning a new Web site and updating a horribly outdated one.

Conventions Used in This Book

We use a few text conventions throughout this book:

A notation like “Choose File⇒Open” is a condensed version of “From the File menu, choose the Open command.”

When we say, “Press Ctrl+N,” we mean, “While holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, press the N key.”

E-mail address and Web site addresses appear in this computerese font, as do certain terms and symbols lifted right out of the code, like these: class, id, <h1>. If a Web address is really long, or if we want to show you a chunk of code, it appears on its own line, like this:

This is a line of code.

Expression Web often gives you more than one way to tackle a task. For example, choosing a menu item, clicking a toolbar button, and pressing a keyboard shortcut might all accomplish the same task. In this book, we generally tell you the easiest way to carry out a particular task. If you prefer to use an alternative method, by all means, go ahead.

Icons Used in This Book

Icon-studded paragraphs and sidebars highlight special information.

Here, you find a timesaving Expression Web shortcut. Or, you may receive a design tip that you can use to add oomph to your Web site. Or, perhaps you get a pointer to relevant information on the Web.

This icon points out important details you don’t want to forget.

The information flagged with this icon is for those of you who want to dig a little deeper into the technical aspects of Web publishing.

Your computer doesn’t explode when you see this icon. But it does alert you to a potential Expression Web or Web publishing sticky spot.

Watch for these sections throughout this book to help you understand what’s happening in your page’s code, by which we mean HTML (or its newest incarnation, XHTML) or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or both.

Where to Go from Here

Enough preamble — it’s time to get that Web site started!

Our hope is that this book helps you develop the confidence and skills to create whatever Web site you envision. Onward, ho!

Part I

Getting Started with Expression Web

In this part . . .

Allow us to introduce you to Expression Web. We’ll break the ice during that awkward getting-to-know-each-other period. In Chapter 1, we walk you around the Expression Web workspace and show you how to create your first Web site. In Chapter 2, we familiarize you with the basics of creating Web pages.

Chapter 1

Creating a Web Site with Expression Web

In This Chapter

Starting Expression Web for the first time

Exploring the workspace

Creating and saving a new Web site

Using a template to create a new Web site

Opening, closing, and deleting Web sites

Adding existing files to a Web site

Closing Expression Web

In this chapter, you get started with Expression Web: You get familiar with the workspace and find out how to create and save Web sites. Before you hang your shingle as a Web publisher, though, you should understand what you’re really doing when you create and publish a Web site. No doubt you’ve already seen a Web site. Web sites are the places you visit as you make your way around the World Wide Web. In the same way as a book is made up of individual pages, a Web site is made up of individual files called Web pages. Web pages contain the text, pictures, and other content you see when you visit a Web site.

As you construct a Web site, you create Web pages and then string the pages together by using hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are the highlighted words and pictures inside the page that visitors can click to jump to a different location, page, or Web site. Hyperlinks can also initiate a download or pop open an e-mail window.

After your site is complete, you publish it. In other words, you make the site visible to the rest of the world on the World Wide Web (or, if you’re working on an internal company site, on the company’s intranet). This process isn’t automatic. For a Web site to be live, you must transfer the site’s files from your computer to a Web server, a host computer that runs special Web server software and is connected to the Internet 24 hours per day.

If you’re working on an intranet site, the publishing process is similar, except that only people with a password to access the intranet can view your site. An intranet is an internal company network based on the same type of technology as the Internet, with access restricted to people within that company. Intranet sites generally contain information useful to company insiders, such as policies, collaborative tools, and department announcements.

Many people gain access to a host Web server by signing up for an account with an Internet service provider (or ISP) that makes Web server space available to its users. Others use a Web server maintained by their workplaces or schools. Another option is to sign up with one of the many hosting companies that offer server space for free.

Starting Expression Web for the First Time

The first time you start Expression Web, you need to jump through a few basic setup hoops before you can get down to building your site.

To get started, on the Windows taskbar, choose Start⇒All Programs⇒ Microsoft Expression⇒Microsoft Expression Web. Expression Web opens. What happens next varies. Here are some dialog boxes you may encounter and instructions for how to handle them:

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!