This is an advanced course for web designers that want to make the transition from using Dreamweaver to create static web sites to dynamic and interactive data driven web sites It is designed for people who have been creating web sites for a while and wanting to create professional web sites.

This advanced course will utilize Dreamweaver tools to create functioning forms that will control your reader's experience on your web site. You will learn how to incorporate Javascript, XML,PHP and MySQL functionality into your web sites. We will expand our Spry skills, learned in previous Dreamweaver classes, to manage and display data. Students will work on a team project to learn professional web design workflow, in addition to their individual assignments.

NOTE: This course will not teach you JavaScript, MySQL, PHP or XML skills, but rather how to use Dreamweaver to utilize these technologies. There are many free and premium extensions, scripts and snippets available for Dreamweaver that will allow you to incorporate basic JavaScript, MySQL, PHP or XML into your web sites, without your having to know those technologies yourself. Learning those skills in Web Programming classes at LVS will allow you to further extend your Dreamweaver capabilities.

In the last twenty years, the Internet has evolved from a treasure cove for geeky intellectuals staring at green text on black screens, requiring code and scripts, typed in by the reader, to navigate. Now Internet users expect easy to read and well formatted data that is easily navigated with a single click. The responsibility for the code and scripts to navigate and display information is now in the realm of the developer, not the reader. Static web pages do not change, once the web designer/developer has created it, unless the code is changed off line and reloaded. Dynamic pages change what or how they display information based on input from the user or changes in the computer environment. Computer environment changes can include the date, time, whether the user has been on that page previously or be dependent on changes of a database. Sometimes changes happen with dynamic pages on the computer viewing the page. These are called client side and operate via client side languages like JavaScript. Other times, the changes to a dynamic page occur away from the client's computer viewing the page on the browser. The dynamic information is compiled on a server and that server sends the information to the webpage. This is called server side scripting and PHP, PERL, ASP and JSP are common server side script languages. A complex dynamic web page may utilize both client side and server side scripting languages. For example if you are looking at a sales table on a corporate web site, the sales numbers are being generated via a database and a server scripting language. That same page may allow you to click the table headings to reorganize the sales data. That feature is usually carried out with a client side scripting language like AJAX.

In prior Dreamweaver courses, we have focused on web design; in this course we will focus our attention to web development. What is the difference? Some would argue that there is no difference but many define it thus: Web design specifically for web pages and web development for the overall logistics of all web-based services.

In Level 1, we created individual web pages. In Level 2, we worked on styling pages into a web site, focusing on the form or consistent appearance and navigation. This time, we are going to focus on the structure of the web site. We are going to develop our web site from the ground up, creating a blue print for a sound and well structured web site. Continuing with the house building analogy, we will use our database to frame and support the web site. Once we have that solid foundation, we can use scripting languages to respond to our readers and customize their user experience on your web site.

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