Dreamweaver & Adobe Pagemill

Question

I have downloaded a trial version of CS3 to see if it can
convert and update my website. This was constructed using old
software - ADOBE PAGEMILL v3 - now discontinued (and not even
mentioned on the Adobe website). I'm still using Pagemill fine on
Mac OS 9.1 but it won't transfer to my new computer which is Mac OS
10.4 (Tiger), hence the need to upgrade. My site is huge and has
thousands of images, so starting again from scratch is not an
option.
Customer Services at Adobe told me I should be able to 'open'
my Pagemill pages in CS3 and 'synchronise' with them on line. Does
anyone have a clue how to begin? Any help is appreciated ...

Answer 1

This has already been answered in the thread, but I'll give
you the
executive summary -
1. They are difficult for inexperienced users to get right -
a) pages will not align properly if one of them throws
scrollbars
b) links will not work when targeted into different frames
without
hand-modification of code
c) new (and inexperienced users) have problems with the idea
of a single
frameset page that only specifies constituent frames
d) new (and inexperienced users) can be confused by the fact
that the
<title> tag on the frameset page is the one that
appears in the browser
e) etc., etc., etc.
2. They are difficult for your visitors
a) depending on how savvy you are, you may have removed
scrollbars to
'fix' #1b, not thinking that you have also removed those
scrollbars for
people with smaller viewports
b) search engines will index *all* pages within your
frameset, meaning
that a navigation frame or a content only page MAY be shown
in a search hit
list - imagine the confusion when the page is loaded without
navigation, for
example
And - they are so amateur. Really.
> Won't I lose the buttons/menu bar?
The way to convert a framed page to a non-framed page is to
copy content
from each frame and consolidate it into a single page, so the
answer to this
question is NO, certainly not. BUT - you have to have the
facility with
HTML to build a page HTML infrastructure that can accommodate
both the
navigation and the content.
Honestly, if you are asking these questions, you will really
be well advised
to take a break and spend a few days here -
http://www.w3schools.com - so
that you can pick up enough HTML understanding to move
forward.
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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"Tim Richards" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
> Just posting my last question again, as it seems to have
been
> 'leapfrogged':
>
> Excuse my ignorance, but can someone explain why FRAMES
are such a bad
> idea?
> Most of the professional websites I've seen have a menu
bar or row of
> buttons
> that stay on screen even when different pages are
visited. In my case I
> have
> buttons across the top of the screen which never change.
Each button is
> part of
> a frameset that includes many pages - at least that's
how I set it up in
> PAGEMILL when I first designed the site about 8 years
ago.
>
> Is there another way of doing this that doesn't involve
frames? I'm asking
> because Murray suggested I start by converting my
frame-based site to a
> non-frame site. Won't I lose the buttons/menu bar?
Excuse me if I've
> mis-understood... If anyone wants to check my code the
URL of my site is:
>
http://www.timrichards.ndo.co.uk
>