Because of its ability to separate design from content, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) has become an extremely important technology in web development. A single CSS document can contain information regarding the position of elements on all the pages in a web site as well as style information such as font, sizes and colours. In terms of building websites, CSS definitely represents the future.

The range of computer users who have some involvement in building web pages and web sites is vast and a good many of these users choose Dreamweaver as the software tool that helps them create the web content they need without needing to become an expert on underlying technologies such as CSS. Dreamweaver CS3 includes better support for Cascading Style Sheets than previous versions. However, there is still room for improvement.

Previous versions of Dreamweaver assumed that most users would be using tables to control the layout of their web pages. Dreamweaver CS3 is the first version of the program which encourages users to create CSS-based web page layouts. When the users create a new web page, they are offered a series of CSS layouts, on which they can base the new page, consisting of single, double and three column designs.

Pages created using CSS rely heavily on the use of the HTML DIV element, a multipurpose container of web content. Choosing one of the Dreamweaver CSS presets creates a page containing a series of DIV elements complete with placeholder text and the CSS code necessary to control the position and dimension of the DIVs. The placeholder text and HTML code both contain brief explanations of the techniques used and advice on how to customise these basic pages for your own purposes.

The CSS code for pages created using Dreamweaver’s preset layouts is embedded in the page itself. If a user creates a series of such pages, each one will have its own CSS code making updating very time-consuming. It is far more efficient to have all of the CSS code in one external file and link each page to this one file. At present, Dreamweaver doesn’t really make this clear to new users. However, it does have an excellent feature for moving embedded CSS code into an external file. You simply select all of the CSS definitions you wish to externalise then choose Text – CSS Styles – Move CSS Rules.

Moving CSS code into an external file is not something a beginner would be expected to think of doing and is not something that Dreamweaver recommends to new users. So, in spite of the improvements, some familiarity with CSS is still required to get Dreamweaver to handle CSS efficiently.

It is also disappointing that Dreamweaver still automatically generates CSS styles called “style1″, etc. each time the user applies a font or colour to selected text. Surely it would be easier to simply remove these basic attributes and just let the user either apply a style to the selection or, if no styles exist, create a new one. Perhaps this will be introduced in the next release of this excellent program.

Author is a developer and trainer with TrainingCompany.Com, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver Classes at their central London training centre.

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