Subtitles of the Movie

In this tutorial I'm going to show you one method of obviating the prevalent web designer problem of showing a client the programs of a design site without having to make it available on the whole server. It seems to be a common perception with some clients that it is justifiable that their site should be made live throughout the design process. As designers, we know this scenario actually doesn't do us or them any favors. One method to negate this perception is to simply produce screen shots in JPEG or TIF format that can then be presented to the client. This works well enough, but an extension that addresses the issue much more elegantly is Webassist's Site Scribe, available from Adobe's Exchange or directly from Webassist's site, www.webassist.com. Site Scribe allows the automated creation of a complete PDF document of a site's structure. Alternatively, you can just choose to select specific pages if you don't want to copy the whole site; perhaps because some pages are still in early development. And this is how it is done. In Dreamweaver, go to Insert, drop down to Webassist, then across to the Site Scribe extension. The Site Scribe Wizard opens to walk you through the process step by step. Here on the first page of the wizard, choose from the three available options. For this example I'll choose the first option, Create from Site to enable the full site to be converted to a PDF document. A full description of the three options is written underneath. Click Next to progress. Here you enter the actual web address of the site you're working on. It's likely you will simply choose to create a PDF document from your hard drive location of the website. You simply need to choose Local Host for this. To illustrate how you can do this with a site on a testing server, I'll type in the full web address. If you want to add additional domains, perhaps the site links to another site, you just enter it here. Then put the website URL here. In our example, it's the same as in the main website field. Click Next. OK, step two if the Link Configuration Wizard opens. Here you enter the type of file extensions you want to include. Site Scribe makes a good job of automatically including the main types, but you can add further ones as you know them to be necessary. Here in this field, choose to copy the whole site or as you can see, select just one page or go multiple-level deep into the site's structure. Notice you can enter how many pages deep you wish to go. Check the Dynamic Links Box if necessary if you want to include database-driven elements. If you do choose this option, note the final field here. Click Finish to proceed. Now a progress box opens so you can see if any errors occurred. As Site Scribe progresses, in the Site Reports Tab at the bottom of the screen, Dreamweaver informs us which pages it has searched and copied successfully. Once Site Scribe has analyzed the site, we are then presented with this wizard requesting our choices of how we want to save the resulting PDF document. Click the Browse Folder here to create the document name and subsequent saved location. Note the tick box underneath the first field. Left ticked, it will automatically open the PDF document when created. If you want to include a cover page, perhaps with a message from your design agency, you can by utilizing this option. Choose how you want the pages to be numbered or choose none. Now choose the screen shot size. All main screen resolution presets are available to choose from. Choose the portrait or landscape orientation option to suit how your web pages look. I'll choose Landscape. Then I'll choose one web page per PDF document page. Click Next. All the pages in your site structure show up here on the left of the wizard. You can reorder them if necessary. I'll leave them as the default. By clicking on any of the addresses here brings up a screen shot of the page on the right of the wizard. Click this box if you want to set up page breaks and click Next. Here you can enter any meta data you may feel is required. Additionally, add any relevant subject information along with keywords and author details. Finally you can password protect your PDF document along with printing and copying restrictions. Click Finish to move back to Site Scribe's Import Tool. As Site Scribe progresses, notice both the blue progress bar and the progress text information. And when finished, because we left the option ticked earlier, the PDF document opens to view. I'll open it as a full page. Site Scribe has done a perfect job of creating a 19-page PDF document of my website. Now I can email the automatically-generated PDF document to a client for approval. To recap, Site Scribe makes light work of creating website PDF documents for client assessments or approval before it is placed live on a server. So as you can see, a great time saver for the busy designer.