Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Unleashed- P17: The good news is Dreamweaver provides numerous windows, panels, inspectors, and toolbars for streamlining the way you build websites. The bad news, unfortunately, is that Dreamweaver provides numerous windows, panels, inspectors, and toolbars for streamlining the way you build websites. Why so many windows, panels, and so on, Dreamweaver is unprecedented in the feature set it provides, allowing developers complete control when building websites and applications | background color of a text box simply by clicking a button. In that example the amount of code needed to achieve the goal is minimal. Animations however require much more code because JavaScript must control the placement of the element pixel by pixel. The code can become extremely complex when you are animating curves circles and the like. Fortunately the timeline does all the hard work for us. Not only does it allow you to edit and manage animations using a slick and intuitive interface but regardless of the animation s complexity within the timeline Dreamweaver writes all the code for us. All we have to do is add our elements to the timeline contained within an AP Element manipulate a few timeline elements and we re done. Next let s review the various elements of the timeline and then discuss the process involved with adding AP Elements to the timeline. Elements of the Timeline If you haven t done so already access the Timelines panel by choosing Window Timelines. Pictured with more detail in Figure a timeline in the Timelines panel seems overwhelming at first glance. Figure . The timeline in Dreamweaver provides a central interface for adding changing and managing animations. FPS Autoplay View full size image ahaviors Channel Frame Navigalor Loop Timeline menu Options Menu Frame Numbers HaybtrtK heaO Frames Observe the callouts in Figure and refer to the following bullet points as explanations for each feature Options menu Like all panels in Dreamweaver you can access advanced features for interacting with the timeline as well as animations within the timeline from this menu. Most of the options in this menu can also be accessed directly by choosing Modify Timeline. Timeline menu When working with animations in Dreamweaver you re not limited to one specific animation contained within one timeline. Instead the Timelines panel allows you to work with multiple animations contained within multiple timelines. If you are working with more than one .
