Learning Adobe Muse

268 Pages·2012·8.465 MB·English

by  Jennifer Farley

www.it-ebooks.info
Learning Adobe Muse
Create beautiful websites without writing any code
Jennifer Farley
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
www.it-ebooks.info
Learning Adobe Muse
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of
the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold
without warranty, either express or implied. Neither author, nor Packt Publishing,
and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged
to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: September 2012
Production Reference: 1140912
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84969-314-1
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Artie Ng ([email protected])
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
www.it-ebooks.info
Credits
Author Copy Editor
Jennifer Farley Alfida Paiva
Reviewers Project Coordinator
Corey Gutch Leena Purkait
Ben Harrison
Cristian Radu Proofreader
Chris Brown
Acquisition Editor
Wilson D'souza Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Lead Technical Editor
Unnati Shah Graphics
Aditi Gajjar
Technical Editors
Joyslita D'Souza Production Coordinator
Nilesh R. Mohite
Ankita Meshram
Unnati Shah
Cover Work
Zinal Shah
Nilesh R. Mohite
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
www.it-ebooks.info
About the Author
Jennifer Farley has over 12 years experience working in the graphic and
web design industry. In 2002, she became a full time educator, teaching Adobe
Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Design Theory. She runs her own design
business, called Laughing Lion Design but now divides her time equally between
teaching design and freelance illustration work.
Thanks to my husband Jason for his support and love, and for
sometimes staying up very late with me while I wrote this book.

Thanks to my parents for their support and love and for introducing
me to books at a very, very young age.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
www.it-ebooks.info
About the Reviewers
Corey Gutch has worked with various web technologies at Adobe Systems
since 1996, and is an Adobe Certified Expert in Dreamweaver and Illustrator. He
is currently the Interactive Director for creative agency Dumb Eyes, designing
and developing standards-compliant websites, the Lead Instructor for the Web
Design with Creative Suite certificate program at the University of Washington,
and Community Manager for Adobe Muse at Adobe Systems. Along with his
knowledge of Adobe products, he is proficient in authoring HTML, XHTML, CSS,
PHP, and JavaScript, and working with open source frameworks such as Wordpress
and Drupal. He has deep knowledge and insight into real-world web design and
development scenarios with both corporate and boutique clients.
Ben Harrison is also known as Mr. Fuddlebunker of Kelso, WA. He is married to
a wonderful woman, has four kids and works at Swanson Bark & Wood Products.
His current responsibilities are Digital Marketing and Brand Management. He
loves to play with his kids, travel with his wife, volunteer in his community, build
websites in his spare time as Fuddlebunker Design, and when he has a free weekend,
he plays paintball.
Cristian Radu is a technically astute IT professional with strong experience
providing support to corporate clients across diverse industries, recognized for his
ability to coordinate special projects, his excellent analytical and problem solving
skills, and his willingness to rise to any challenges. He started his career working for
small local companies then moved to large corporations.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
www.it-ebooks.info
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to
your book.
Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub
files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print
book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at
[email protected] for more details.
At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up
for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books
and eBooks.
http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com
Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book
library. Here, you can access, read and search across Packt's entire library of books.
Why Subscribe?
• Fully searchable across every book published by Packt
• Copy and paste, print and bookmark content
• On demand and accessible via web browser
Free Access for Packt account holders
If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access
PacktLib today and view nine entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for
immediate access.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
www.it-ebooks.info
Table of Contents
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
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
www.it-ebooks.info
Table of Contents
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
[ ii ]
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
www.it-ebooks.info
Table of Contents
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
[ iii ]
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by on 7th October 2012
www.it-ebooks.info