Dreamweaver/HTML newb question...

[Canis]

I'm fucking around with websites and such for the first time, and want to somehow put in drawing objects (Squares, lines, circles, etc) like is available in microsoft word to hilight something, or create a button of sorts. How the hell is this done? Can someone circle HTML text with such an object?

[MKJ]

im sure there are javascripts that do that, but its not possible in straight html/css

you could highlight crap with css though, with clever use of backgrounds and or borders

[sliver]

bold is for highlighting

[Canis]

im sure there are javascripts that do that, but its not possible in straight html/css

you could highlight crap with css though, with clever use of backgrounds and or borders

Ah. Thanks. So what I'd be looking for is some sort of layering scheme to have the HTML formatting underneath, and then have a javascript (or some such) language on a layer above, in order to have the objects I want? or would the easier way to be to do it all in javascript?

[Foo]

Just look around on other sites. Any examples you find can be inspected to see how they did it. That's the beauty of the web.

If you're wanting to do some minor thing like this and can't find anyone else on the web that's done it - there's probably a good reason. Yeah, that's the kind of response that stifles innovation I know, but there really are a lot of guidelines you should stick to when designing websites.

You need to draw attention to a work in a paragraph? bold or italicise it. Really.

On your first attempt at web design, don't concern yourself overly with being unique. This applies to anything really, not just web design. Trying to shoot off and do too much on your first attempts just leads to:
A: Becoming distracted from the overall tasks
B: Producing failures which in future will cause you to feel averse to whatever essentially good idea you were trying to acheive.

Note them down, and return to them when you're more proficient in the discipline at hand.


Sorry if this post turns out condescending - I do a fair amount of introspecting my hobby activities.

[Canis]

No worries, I was figuring as much myself, but was throwing out a little inquiry. I have the content for the site, but wanted to have a bunch of buttons to point to each of the 4-5 pages that will make up the site. I can make the buttons with HTML links or with the default javascript buttons that came with Dreamweaver, but was hoping to have the button highlighted for what page I was currently on. I guess I can stick to my original plan of having the button's text displayed at the top of the page to indicate the same thing. I'll check out more sites, but i guess it will be a matter of getting it working simpler, and then learning javascript or whatever language would best complete this task.

[Foo]

You can do that with CSS, I think. IN CSS you can specify 'background-image' for a piece of text. If you specify a background image for your headline links, and a slightly different image for the 'active' headline link, you'll get a button that highlights when you're on the page.

You'll need to look up:
CSS
CSS a:active (and a:hover probably)
CSS background-image (no-repeat)

[Canis]

Awesome dude, will do! Thanks.

[MKJ]

or you can add the header in a div and add the background image to the div

or like foo said, it works for text as well, e.g.

a:hover {background: url('http://yourimghere.gif') no-repeat };

now your image will show up in any link thats being hovered