Dreamweaver® CS3 Bible

Chapter 22. Working with Live Data

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding the Live Data process

• Designing in Live Data view

• Testing different variable values

• Dreamweaver Technique: Changing Live Data Settings

• Previewing with a testing server

When I first started with print and design layout, I would drive all over the city to finish a job. After receiving the client's go-ahead, I had to pick up my type from a phototypesetter and my images from a stat house. Then, back at my studio, I'd cut and paste—and I mean literally, with scissors and glue—the text and images into place, hoping against hope that I had specified the type and image sizes correctly. If not, it was back in the car for another trip or two around town. Ah, the good old days.

Now designers (especially those who design for the Web) have the luxury of developing their creations right in their own studio. Until Dreamweaver, however, the development of a Web application often undertook a faster, albeit parallel, course to my inner-city travels. After a basic page was designed, complete with server-side code, the document had to be uploaded to a testing server and then viewed in a browser over the Internet. If—make that when—changes were needed, the pages were revamped back in the studio. Because the designer was not able to lay out the page with the actual data in place, modifications were a trial-and-error process that often required many, many trips to the server and back.

Dreamweaver's Live Data view eliminates the tedium and the lengthy ...