Adobe Dreamweaver And Client-side Content

Adobe Dreamweaver is a general purpose web development tool aimed at inexperienced and experienced users alike. It uses standard web technologies such as HTML CSS and JavaScript. Web content can be introduced into the Dreamweaver at any time without the danger of the program modifying your code. In the same way, pages created in Dreamweaver can be taken out of the Dreamweaver environment and used elsewhere.

The program does not rely on its own unque solutions which will only work in the Dreamweaver environment. Although Dreamweaver is not necessarily the best environment for creating all types of website, it is not an environment which one easily outgrows. It can be used both for creating basic, static content consisting of client side pages as well as more sophisticated dynamic content including server side pages. In other words, it is suitable for developing the content found on the vast majority of websites. So, let’s examine this content in more detail.

Most web sites are hosted on web servers owned by specialist hosting companies. A large website will have a dedicated server or even servers, whereas most typical websites will share space on a server with other sites. Visitors to a website are called clients.

Clients gain access to the content on web servers using a variety of different operating systems and different browsers. They normally find this content either by clicking on links from search engines and other locations or by simply typing a URL into the address bar of their browser.

The content that clients access on websites can be divided into two main categories: client-side and server-side. The term client-side refers to web content which is compatible with the user’s browser, material which the browser software can actually open, display or execute (in the case of scripts).

The cornerstone of client-side content is HTML, or as it’s known in its current incarnation, XHTML; a stricter and more consistent version of the original HTML specification. HTML/XHTML is a simple markup language which is used to describe the content of web pages for the benefit of the client’s browser. Then we have CSS and JavaScript.

CSS pages contain information describing the layout and presentation of web content. JavaScript is a simple scripting language which can be used to add interactivity to web pages. For example, when you are filling out a form on a website and information entered into a field is inappropriate, JavaScript can be used to notify you that the content must be changed.

All modern web browsers are fully capable of understanding HTML, CSS and JavaScript. With the addition of extra software utilities known as plug-ins, other technologies can be added to web pages. Two of the most popular plug-in technologies are Flash and Adobe Acrobat PDF files. All of this content then is totally compatible with the client’s browser; hence the term client-side content.