eHelpRemember that navigation areas are editable, because that is the easiest way to edit each page so that it doesn't link to itself. This presents problems, however, when you need to change a menu: you have to change every page that contains it, not just the template (you should change the template, too, so that new pages will have the correct menu).
There are alternatives involving XSSI, but they are not for the faint-of-heart. Eventually we will provide a tutorial, but for now, if you are interested, please contact jcclark@csupomona.edu.
You may enter content into the editable regions of a template in either Dreamweaver or Contribute just as you would with any other web page. The templates provide specific styles to meet most needs, so "free-form" style changes are discouraged, especially because Dreamweaver by default saves styles created in the Properties Panel in the individual web pages rather than the global style sheet. Here are some hints and "gotchas":
The page heading is the only Heading 1 (<h1>) on the page. The content area supports Heading 2, Heading 3, and Heading 4 (<h2>, <h3>, and <h4>), the right navigation supports Heading 2 and Heading 3, and the "away" links area supports Heading 2. Use of other headings and headings in other areas will have unpredictable, and often unattractive, results. In the content area, Heading 2 has maroon text and a gray graphic background, and Heading 3 is bold and italic.
Please do not change font attributes to make "fake headings" – just because a paragraph looks like a heading in a graphical browser, that doesn't mean that it will act like one for a screen reader or for Google.
Bulleted lists (<ul>) are used for every navigation area except the "away" links. They don't necessarily look like lists, since the bullets are turned off and in some cases they are even horizontal, but they behave like lists, which is especially important for screen readers. Attempting to add links to these areas outside the lists is either prevented, or if not, will result in less-than-attractive results.
The content area supports ordinary bulleted and numbered lists, and supports list indentation:
Even with a Contribute site set up according to our recommendations, and especially with Dreamweaver, it's possible to make many font changes to regular text. This is ordinarily Not a Good Thing:
If there is a typographic distinction that the templates don't meet, let us know and we'll help you craft something for the global style sheets to meet your need.
Dreamweaver and Contribute both have a "Text Indent" button that appears to indent a block of text. What it does is to create a <blockquote>, which is properly used for block quotations, such as this:
As one of only six polytechnic universities nationwide, Cal Poly Pomona's hallmark is its learn-by-doing philosophy, directly stemming from its polytechnic mission.
The templates have an explicit style for block quotes. If you want to indent a paragraph (and let us know why, because we can't think of a good reason), you can use the style .indentparagraph from the drop-down style menu; it only works in the content area.
Remember the maximum image widths for each template area; wider images may cause the layout to break. And remember not to resize an image in Dreamweaver; it doesn't really make the image smaller, it just scrunches it up. Image editing programs such as Photoshop or Fireworks, and the image resampler Contribute, properly resample the image to make it smaller.
It is possible to copy content from Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, and paste it into either Dreamweaver (in Design view) or Contribute. Both programs remove extraneous formatting, including features that don't translate well into HTML, but they keep the basics, including bold and italic, headings and lists, and tables. The alternative of exporting (or worse, saving) the Office files as HTML and then trying to insert them in the templates will almost always fail.
The bulk of eHelp pages are made by copy-and-paste from Word to Dreamweaver, and if the document creators take some care not to be overly "creative", the transfer is nearly effortless.
