Adobe Spry for Dreamweaver
Adobe's Ajax framework is called Spry. The latest version of Dreamwever has a Spry toolbar that provides visual tools for creating the most common Spry components. More advanced Ajax components require you to do a little coding by hand. The Spry framework includes detailed code examples that you can study to learn how to do this.
The Adobe Spry Demos provide examples of the kinds of applications you can create with Adobe Spry components. Some of these components can be created with the Spry toolbar in Dreamweaver, while others must be coded by hand. Components on the Adobe Spry toolbar include the XML dataset, repeat list, forms validation, menu bar, tabbed panels, accordion, and collapsible panel. More advanced components that you need to code by hand include sliding panels, dissolves, slide shows, and collapsible panel groups.
On the School of Education home page, for example, we were able to use the Dreamweaver Spry toolbar to create the tabbed panels, but we needed to code by hand the slide show and the collapsible panel groups that the sidebar navigation comprises. We expect future versions of Dreamweaver to support more of Spry as Adobe continues to work on this exciting Ajax framework.
Downloading the Spry Framework
To begin using Spry, you must first download and unzip the Adobe Spry framework. When you unzip the framework, all of the Spry resources will be put into a folder named AdobeSpry followed by the version number. I suggest you unzip this folder to your desktop so it will be indexed by your desktop search engine. Thus, you can use your computer's search tool when you want to find examples of specific features or commands that are used in the code samples and demonstrations in the Adobe Spry framework. You can freely download the framework from:
Updating Dreamweaver
In this course, most students use Dreamweaver. If you want to use the Spry toolbar that is built into Dreamweaver CS3, you need to run the Spry Updater for Dreamweaver CS3. If you have an earlier version of Dreamweaver that does not include the Spry toolbar, you can still use the Spry framework by pasting into your HTML the Spry code from the Ajax components you decide to use. The Sry Updater for Dreamweaver CS3 is freely downloadable from:
