Over the holiday break I had some time to create some new free Dreamweaver templates that are built on the 960 Grid System. The templates use a 12 column grid and a 30 pixel gutter. This is really the first time I had implemented the 960 grid into a template, so I’m still deciding if 30 pixels was too much gutter or if I should back it down to 20 pixels.

The Zoomba series of templates currently includes three free versions and one premium template. The free templates feature not only the 960 grid built into the CSS, but they also use a jQuery Superfish menu system. The Superfish menu is like Suckerfish on ‘roids, and it really is a nice fluid menu.

The premium Zoomba template includes everything the free versions do, but also has more templates, more jQuery built-in including several jQuery UI elements, and is a more complete website solution out of the box.

The Zoomba template is actually a framework for future templates, and each of the three free templates showcase a slightly different header/navigation configuration.

Check out the new Zoomba Dreamweaver templates and keep an eye out for more templates coming soon.

Over the last month, JustDreamweaver.com has been undergoing a complete overhaul. Not just cosmetically, but under the hood as well.

In designing the new site, my goal was to create a much more productive visitor experience with easier to use navigation, much better organization, and faster page loads from streamlined code. I will be the first to admit that the old site was definitely not optimized in any way, and is testament that Google really doesn’t care if your site code is a little sloppy.

The new site was created from scratch using a CSS layout generated with CSS Sculptor. This is one of my favorite extensions for creating a W3C valid CSS page structure. I went with a two-column structure and dropped the cluttered navigation bar on the left side, to make it more visually appealling and also better readability.

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Tags: themedreamer, web design, xml, xsl

I just released my new internet marketing WordPress theme called FlexSqueeze this week. You can take a look at it over at FlexibilityTheme.com .  How does a WordPress affiliate marketing theme relate to Dreamweaver? Because I created it in Dreamweaver, of course!

FlexSqueeze allows internet marketers to easily create squeeze pages in WordPress. With a one-click sales page function, you can take any page on your blog and instantly strip out the navigation and sidebars and all other blog appearance and drive your visitors to your call to action.

FlexSqueze has a new user-interface, so if you’re familiar with my Flexibility or Flexibility 2 themes, you’ll welcome the new tabbed interface. There is a new "Squeeze Page" tab where you can control your sales page background color, header image, link colors, footer color, headline fonts, overall page font size, and much more. All your squeeze page settings are independent from the rest of your blog settings, so if you run a blog on the domain as well, it will not change any of those settings.

I packaged FlexSqueeze with over 250 sales page graphics that can be used on your pages, and I also created another product called the Squeeze Page Vector Pack .  I originally created all the bitmap images included with FlexSqueeze in Fireworks, so as an additional product, I bundled up all the vector images and created both PNG and PSD versions of all the graphics.

If you are a WordPress blogger in need of a way to very quickly create squeeze pages or even complete minisites (there’s a video tutorial to show you how to do this), then take a look at FlexSqueeze and also the Squeeze Page Vector Pack. They are both available at FlexibilityTheme.com .

Tags: make money blogging, sales pages in wordpress, squeeze page graphics, squeeze pages, wordpress squeeze page

We just added some new Dreamweaver extensions to our lineup. The extensions include DW Tabbed Menus , DW Drop Down Menus and DW Vertical Menus . These are all also available in the DW Menu Pack , which is simply the three individual extensions bundled at a discount. For a limited time, you can get DW Image Show free with the purchase of the DW Menu Pack.

We’ve never offered a Flash menu system on our site before, and these menus actually combine DHTML and Flash to create attractive, search engine friendly navigation. I know what you’re saying, “but Flash doesn’t spider very well, so how can it be SE friendly?”. When the menus are created from the extension in Dreamweaver, it automatically generates a very spiderable bit of code that allows all your favorite search engines to find all the pages in your site.

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Tags: dhtml, dreamweaver, extension, flash, menu, navigation

If you’re still using table-based layouts for your websites, it’s time to learn how to design using CSS. There’s a brand new (and very affordable) software tutorial called CSS Designer Starter Kit that teaches you step-by-step how to take your Firework or Photoshop design comp to a full-featured CSS website design in Dreamweaver.

Learn the basics of CSS web design like creating multple column layouts, CSS navigation and using the CSS float property to control your layout structure and images. Use foreground and background images in various repeating patterns to reduce the size of your website code.

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Tags: css designer starter kit, css web design, css websites, learn css

SuCasa is a new CSS web design community site launched by WebAssist. SuCasa allows designers to download everything from Dreamweaver templates to CSS menus. Users of WebAssist’s CSS Menu Writer, CSS Sculptor and SiteAssist Professional can look for new templates, menus and sites to integrate into their WebAssist extensions.

“SuCasa delivers a ‘one-stop shop’ for web designers to sell and exchange their diverse and professional web designs to each other and to businesses, as well as individuals, looking to enhance their Web presence,” said Michael Lekse, Vice President Sales, WebAssist. “We are thrilled to see the immense growth of this online template community, and look forward to seeing small business owners, developers, and web designers alike benefit from SuCasa.”

For those who are knowledgeable in CSS and HTML and can develop their own templates, or are familiar with the Menu Writer or Sculptor interface, SuCasa allows designers to publish their works for sale on the site. WebAssist takes a small 10% fee for hosting and maintenance of the site, but the rest goes straight into your PayPal account.

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Tags: css, dreamweaver, sucasa, templates, webassist

BlueMesa is posted on our free Dreamweaver template page and can be previewed or downloaded.  It is another table-free CSS layout with two CSS navigation locations. The template can be easily customized with the included Fireworks PNG file, and we also included a Photoshop PSD export as well. I recommend using Fireworks if you have it, as the PNG file includes all the slices pre-optimized and ready for export.

BlueMesa is based on the Sublime code, with differences in the header navigation and the overall graphic scheme.  As with Sublime, the code is nice and clean, and there are the usual pre-styled tags and sidebar content boxes.

View or download BlueMesa

Tags: css, dreamweaver template, website template, xhtml

Flexibility Theme is our newest WordPress theme, and it’s really much more than a theme. Flexibility is essentially millions, no… BILLIONS of themes wrapped up into one theme. There are so many ways to customize the theme, the possibility are limitless.

Create a narrow simplistic blog design or a wide multi-column design simply by changing the width options. Create unlimited variations of backgrounds and effects with full control over image repeating and support for semi-transparent PNG graphics. Download add-on graphics from FlexibilityTheme.com and completely change the look of your blog in a matter of minutes. The only limitation of Flexibility is your imagination. It allows you to completely alter your blog without having to know HTML, PHP or CSS.

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Tags: flexibility theme, wordpress

Sublime is a new free Dreamweaver template released today. The website template is built as a Dreamweaver .dwt file, but also contains a standard HTML file that can be used with any web editor. It contains both horizontal and vertical CSS navigation and a nice feature area that can be used on your site homepage or even throughout your site whenever you want to draw attention to a particular product or service.

As with all our free web templates, the zip file contains the original Fireworks file. The file is pre-sliced and optimized so changing the color scheme of the template is very simple.

Preview or download Sublime

Tags: css template, dreamweaver template, web template

Dreamweaver CS4 released October 15th!

Yup, it’s here!  Dreamweaver CS4 was released today by Adobe. You can upgrade from Dreamweaver MX, 2004, 8 or CS3 for $199 or buy the full version for $399.

Dreamweaver CS4 has many new features and improvements including a new user interface similar to the other CS4 products.  It’s available by itself or as part of Adobe’s Web Standard, Web Premium, Design Premium or Master Collection of CS4 products. So what are you waiting for? Check it out over at Adobe!

View new features of Adobe Dreamweaver CS4

Tags: adobe, creative suite cs4, dreamweaver cs4