Farley Jennifer - Learning Adobe Muse [2012, PDF, ENG]

Preface 1
Chapter 1: Welcome to Muse 7
What is this Muse you speak of? 7
Where to find Muse 8
The Muse workspace 8
The Welcome screen 9
To open a recent site 10
To create a new site 10
Views 12
Saving your site 13
Opening a page in Design view 13
The toolbar 15
Using the tools 16
The Control Panel 16
Panels 17
The document window 20
Undoing actions 24
Getting help and more resources 24
Muse updates 25
Summary 25
Chapter 2: The Muse Workflow 27
Print workflow versus web workflow 27
Pre-Muse planning 29
Browser battles 29
Resolution 30
Download speed 30
The Muse workflow 31
Create a site 32
Why 960 instead of 1024? 33
Plan your site 33
Design your site 34
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Preview your site 36
Publish your site 37
Reviewing and testing a website 37
Adobe Business Catalyst 38
A brief overview of publishing 39
Domain names 40
Acquire server space 40
Uploading your site 41
Summary 41
Chapter 3: Planning Your Site 43
Page layouts 43
Bread and butter layouts 44
What appears on a typical web page? 45
Logo 45
Navigation bar 45
Content 45
Footer 46
Wireframes 47
What to include in a wireframe? 48
Wireframes with Muse 50
Site structure with Plan view 50
Working with thumbnails in the Plan view 53
Working with wireframes 54
Saving the graphic style 57
Using placeholder images 61
Updating placeholder images with final site graphics 63
Adding dummy text and paragraph styles 64
Where are the files generated by Muse? 68
Exercise 69
Summary 70
Chapter 4: Powerful Pages 71
Pages 71
Master pages 73
Working with pages within your site 73
Adding a sibling page 74
Adding a child page 74
Creating a duplicate page 74
Deleting a page 75
Renaming a page 75
Rearranging pages 75
Editing page properties 76
Page sizes 79
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Opening, saving, and closing a page 79
Working with Master pages 80
Creating a new Master page 81
Applying a Master page to a web page 82
Header and footer guides 83
Adding text to a page 84
Creating links 85
Creating a link to a page in our site 85
Creating a link to an external web page 86
Creating a link anchor 87
Creating an e-mail link 88
Changing the color of links 88
Editing and deleting links 90
Creating a navigation bar 91
Tips for navigation links 93
Zooming in, out, and about 93
Zooming in 93
Zooming out 94
Fit page to window 94
Making page to its actual size 94
Summary 94
Chapter 5: The Joy of Rectangles 95
Working with rectangles 96
Setting up a master background rectangle 98
Creating a rectangle on individual pages 100
Deleting a rectangle 101
Adjusting a rectangle 101
Rotating a rectangle 102
Cutting, copying, and pasting rectangles 102
Duplicating a rectangle 103
Adding color – fills and strokes 103
Adding a stroke 103
Changing rectangle fill 105
Setting a gradient fill 107
Adding an image to a rectangle 108
Adding effects to rectangles 109
Adding a drop shadow 110
Adding a bevel effect 111
Adding a glow 113
Change stacking order of rectangles 114
Creating a mixture of round and square corners 115
Creating full width rectangles 116
Summary 116
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Chapter 6: Typography, Muse, and the Web 117
The power of text 118
Anatomy of type 118
Creating text frames 123
Clear, compelling, and correct content 124
Editing text 124
Creating and applying paragraph styles 127
Creating and applying character styles 131
Using the Context menu in the Character and Paragraph Styles panels 132
Headings 132
Content organization and hierarchy 133
Headings and accessibility 133
Headings and SEO 134
Creating headings 134
Change text case 136
Text wrapping 137
Web-safe fonts 139
Metadata – the hidden text on your page 140
Summary 141
Chapter 7: Working with Images 143
Hello web-friendly images 144
Choosing the best file format 144
JPEG 145
GIF 146
PNG 147
Web-safe colors – a thing of the past? 147
Getting images onto your page 149
Placing an image 149
Adding alternative text 150
The image context menu 151
Manipulating images 152
Resizing an image 152
Rotating an image 154
Positioning an image 154
Duplicating an image 155
Cropping an image 155
Adding effects to an image 157
Pasting an image from another program 158
Working with background images 158
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Adding a logo 158
Adding a link to a logo 159
Using a tiled image as a background 160
Using a photographic image as a background image 161
Pinning an image 164
Taking care of site files with the Assets panel 165
Group objects together to work with them as a single object 166
Grouping objects 166
Summary 166
Chapter 8: Customizing with Widgets—Menus and Panels 167
Working with widgets 168
Adding a widget to the page 168
How menu widgets work 169
Adding a menu bar 169
Selecting the widget and its subelements 171
Setting widget options 172
Formatting each menu item 174
Adding states 176
Transferring a style 178
Horizontal menus 179
Vertical menus 179
Accordion panels 180
Adding a panel 180
Editing Accordion widget elements 182
Editing Accordion widget options 183
Tabbed Panels 183
Deleting a panel 185
Summary 185
Chapter 9: More Widgets—Compositions and Slideshows 187
Composition widgets 187
Creating a simple photo gallery using a blank composition 189
Add content to a target area 190
Changing Composition widget options 191
Another way to create triggers and targets with multiple images 193
Slideshow widgets 194
Creating a slideshow presentation 196
Insert arbitrary HTML 199
Adding a Google Map to your page 199
Adding a Twitter (or any other type of) feed to your site 202
Summary 204
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Chapter 10: Muse, Meet the Adobe Creative Suite 205
Adding a Photoshop rollover button 205
States 206
Creating a rollover button with multiple states in Photoshop 207
Placing the Photoshop button 210
Adding a Photoshop image that's not a button 212
Paste an image from another program 215
Embedding rich media content 216
Summary 216
Chapter 11: Previewing and Testing Your Site 217
Previewing pages 217
Completing the site 218
Preview a page in Muse 218
Preview a page in a browser 219
Preview the entire site in a browser 219
Export HTML for browser testing 219
Viewing your home page on an installed browser 221
What to test for? 221
Test your website on multiple browsers and platforms 222
Which browsers and platforms to test? 222
Test page optimization 223
View pages on a variety of displays 224
View pages on different screen resolutions 224
Check for adequate color contrast 224
Test the functionality of all your widgets 225
Test all links, including navigation 225
Test all downloads 225
Test the site's accessibility conformance 225
Proofread all content 225
Usability testing 225
Creating a device-friendly website 226
Summary 227
Chapter 12: Publishing Your Site 229
Adobe ID 229
Publishing a temporary site 230
Remind me what the .muse file is again 230
Editing and updating a site 233
Upgrading and launching 234
Register a domain name 235
Upgrade to a published site 235
Associating the domain name with your Muse site 237
Re-delegating your domain name 238
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
Table of Contents
[ vii ]
Alternative hosting 239
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) 239
FTP clients 240
Summary 240
Index 241