Can Dreamweaver be used to design a oscommerce store ?

[nizmo]

Hi all,

 

Im new to oscommerce as well as dreamweaver.

 

I plan to use oscommerce to a future business, but other things hold it back from starting, so in the mean time I would like to design the store website.

 

As everyone probably knows the oscommerce standard out of the box template is not very pleasing, so I was wondering if its possible to edit the template in dreamweaver, possibly changing around things, fonts, colours, and also putting in different images, logos .etc.

 

 

I have also downloaded a free oscommerce template, can the template be opened in dreamweaver for editing ? if so, how would I go about doing this ?

 

 

Any help would be great

 

 

Thanks in advance

 

Nizmo

[jasonabc]

You can use Dreamweaver to edit the code but Dreamweaver is 1) expensive and 2) primarily a WYSIWYG editor so doesn't lean itself terribly towards OSC development. To do any decent work with OSC you are better off with a really good code editor like Homesite. It's the industry-standard code editor, is less than a hundred bucks and is superb tool for OSC store development.

[jasonabc]

As an addition to this - Homesite+ (a scaled down version of Homesite 5.5) is bundled with Dreamweaver 8 anyway (they are both made by Adobe).

[iofast]

Dreamweaver absolutely can be used to develop with osCommerce. Simply use the Code mode while editing. I would recommend however finding a less expensive alternative. I have heard good things about TopStyle and Rapid PHP Editor. I use PSPad most of the time as it is freeware and have it on virtually all of my computers and it is quite good to boot.

[Brooke]

i LOVE dreamweaver for editing oscommerce, but only in code view, obviously. dreamweaver is my favorite editor, and i dont use it as a WYSIWYG editor at all. wait, i take that back...the NEWEST dreamweaver is my favorite editor, earlier versions...not so much. if you have it, use it.

[nizmo]

cheers for the replys, I have already got dreamweaver, got it cheap.

 

I wouldnt no coding, so its no use ? ? as i cant using the designer area only the coder ?

 

also could any of you guys tell me how to go about opening a downloaded template ?

[sonictrip.net]

I know what you all mean about using Dreamweaver in code view for an OsC site but there are templates out there that actually load into Dreamweaver and the index.php page looks like a normal html file with the proper layout. You can only usually see the top part of the site and the menu table and then there's php includes all over the place for where u want your cart info, currency info, menu info etc. to appear but its a bit easier to design for instead of designing in a separate file and copying bits of tables here there and everywhere (although u still end up having to do that on most other pages)

 

Is it because the OsC files are all php with html inside that it is so hard to design around the pages? Like, if they were all html pages with php inside, would that make it easier to design with a much more WYSIWYG like layout?

 

Does STS make this kind of scenario possible?

 

Is there a way to setup OsC properly in Dreamweaver with the dynamic site stuff so that all the pages are linked properly when editing in Dreamweaver? So that say, when u load index.php, it automatically picks up the files included in index.php like header.php etc. and lays them out properly on the page?

 

Cheers.

[muttsnuts]

I only ever use Dreamweaver 8 for editing - obviously wysiwyg for visual elements and code view for code.