Dreamweaver in a Nutshell

Appendix C. Site Construction Checklist

This appendix consolidates guidelines used for planning, constructing, and deploying your web site using Dreamweaver.

Browser and Platform Support

Deciding which features, browsers, and platforms to support is an iterative process. While trying to cast as wide a net as possible, you might find yourself limited by browser incompatibilities with necessary features. On the other hand, you might design a less ambitious site for greater compatibility or provide alternate versions of the site for different browsers. Take inventory of both the site’s goals and likely user base to make an initial decision on platform and browser support. Test a prototype as early as possible to decide if you must change your initial design decision.

Here are the broad strokes:

• Define your target audience, which dictates the browsers and platforms you’ll support and which plugins you can use (or avoid). Corporate clients tend to use Internet Explorer on Windows and also tend to be resistant to requiring their users to download plugins. On the other hand, some corporate intranets support Netscape exclusively. You should support IE for the Mac and Netscape on both platforms if at all possible, because Dreamweaver makes it easy to do so. Sites targeting schools and Macintosh users should support Macintosh browsers more aggressively. Most clients don’t understand browser compatibility issues so they’ll need your guidance.

• Settle on the browsers you intend to support. For ...