I need WHAT? to see your site?

Yesterday, we had a couple of vivid examples of flashy exciting websites becoming totally inaccessible to users in ways the designer probably had not imagined.

First, the nye site http://nyelabs.com/ required plugins and recent versions of Flash player that the school network had not installed. Bummer. It's a cute site, and it might be fun to investigate all the features that it incorporates...if only we could actually SEE it!

Second, the BOOK site http://www.lookatbook.com/ used some obscure links (available only to the terminally curious) to get to the "about us" pages (and obscure backlinks), as well as a popup for their "shop," which would certainly not be visible to those who have blocked popups.

All in all, our analyzing websites session was instructive, and (I hope) fun to see a tiny bit of what is out there on the web, in the interest of learning how to make better websites.

Questions, we have questions!~

1. It is perfectly all right to put a spry menu inside an APdiv. You will find that divs are incredibly useful structurally and to isolate individual elements of your page.
2. Not only is an APdiv the same thing as what we used to call a "layer," it is principally just a div with that added attraction of being more defined: width, height, position. It remains fully editable.
3. Placing images inside divs and APdivs is also fine.
4. You may easily place flash buttons and text if you have created them in Flash. Dreamweaver no longer (in CS4) gives you an easy way to originate them.
5. To change a rollover color on a spry menu, you will change the a:hover state in the spry css file that is coordinated with your spry menu.
6. Rollover images may be applied to an existing image on the page by using the swap image behavior.
7. To offer a space for a client to preview/review a website without "going live," the easiest way is for you to have a "sandbox" area on the server that you yourself use. For instance, in my www.gravenimagedesign.net server space, I have a folder called PHA, where my entire PHA working site lives. It is accessed by both my client and by me at www.gravenimagedesign.net/PHA.
   Although I have made that sub-site accessible through my own website, it need not be publicized on your home website. But if the client is given the URL, the site is available to be reviewed 'live,' even if it is not live on their server at their domain name.
      You are correct; you would not want to email them html files, or the whole constellation of files in your site. By putting them on the web, you are ensuring that they function correctly, and as they will when they are finally uploaded to your client's server space.