When using Adobe Contribute, using the Return key creates the look of a line-break, (or soft-return as it is also known) with the text appearing on the line immediately below your current paragraph. If you would rather have a space between paragraphs, this needs to be set up by you or the site administrator.
‘Contribute’ Archives
Adding Keywords and Descriptions in Contribute
One of the things that will help your website in the Search Engine listings is keywords. Although they play a less important role in promoting your site these days, they should not be over-looked.
Creating a new connection in Contribute
A lot of people use Adobe Contribute to edit their websites. It is a very easy program to use, combining the look and feel of a web browser and word processor all in one.
It can be used to edit the content on your website and to add new pages, but before you get busy editing you need to establish or set up a connection to your site. There are two ways of doing this:
- Using a connection key sent by your web designer or site administrator. This is double-clicked to launch Contribute and a password is entered to complete the connection set up.
- Manually, using the new connection wizard in Contribute.
Here is a video showing how to manually set up a new connection from scratch:
Edit Links in Contribute
Here’s a quick and easy tip on how to edit existing links in Adobe Contribute.
First, navigate to your page and enter page edit mode. (Click the Edit button on the top left.) Next, find the link text on the page.
Going Back to a Previous Version of a Web Page in Contribute
Sometimes, you just can’t help making a mistake and publishing content to a web page that you didn’t mean to! Either it has spelling mistakes in it or the styling changes don’t look right… whatever!
Contribute has a way of helping you out here, through a feature called Rollbacks. When this is enabled you can restore the page to a previous version, which has been saved in a backup folder.
Setting Up as an Administrator In Contribute
Working with Adobe Contribute is the preferred method of editing websites for many people. With it’s easy browser-turns-word processor interface, using it requires a small and gentle learning curve.
For web designers who offer or suggest this way of updating page content to their clients, it is advisable to set administration rights. In fact, if more than one person is going to be editing content, it is a good idea for one person to take on the administrator’s role so they can issue connection keys giving different levels of control to users.
Creating Links to Specific Places on a Page in Contribute
Most links that you will create to other pages will go directly to the page themself, starting and loading the content at the top, so you see the whole thing. Sometimes though, you might want your link to take visitors to a specific place on a page, say a sub-heading halfway down and this is simple to do in Contribute.
This type of link is called an Anchor and they are used for adding specific destinations to your links.
Working with earlier versions of Contibute
If you are the Admin of a website that gets edited by other people, you need to be sure they can use their version of Contribute on your site. There is a compatibility mode that you need to ensure has been selected to prevent issues.
Go to the My Connections panel, on a Mac this is under the Contribute menu. On a PC it’s under the Edit menu. Select your site and click the Administer… button.
This will bring up a new panel:
Compatibility in Contribute
Select Compatibility on the left and from there make sure the Transition Mode radio button is selected. Save your changes and now you can all work together!
Paste text with formatting in Dreamweaver on OSX
There is a feature on Dreamweaver called Paste special… This is meant to let you paste text between a word processor (such as Word) and Dreamweaver, whilst keeping all the formatting such as bold, italics etc.
Currently, this does not work on OSX.
Adobe do not have a solution but have suggested a couple of long-winded workarounds:
- save the file as HTML from textedit, open the html file in DW then copy and paste.
- copy and paste the text from TextEdit into MS word, then copy and paste special into DW.
Hopefully, it will be fixed in a CS4 upgrade rather than Adobe waiting until they release CS5. I say “hopefully”…
Adobe InContext
I have just started playing with Adobe InContext editing. This is a new technology that allows websites to be edited through a browser window, without the need to install additional software.
What impact it will have on Contribute, I’m not sure, but as both technologies are from Adobe, I doubt they will make their own commercial software redundant…
