Windowed Page - Flash or Dreamweaver?

[JerryRowe]

I have been wrestling with this all day.

Can someone tell me if it is better to use Dreamweaver or Flash for what I am doing:

I have four "windows" in my page. I want the user to constantly see THIS layout:
__________________________________________________ ________
|................................................. ...........|.............................|
|................................................. ...........|Window 2................|
|Window 1............................................|Load s Flash & HTML from|
|HTML documents......................................|wi ndows 1 & 3............|
|(Loads HTML from windows 1,3,& 4.)............|____________________|
|(HTML contains embedded Flash...............|Window 3........................|
|................................................. ...........|Flash menu - loads stuff..|
|................................................. ...........|into windows 1 & 2......|
|................................................. ...........|____________________|
|................................................. ...........|Window 4....................|
|................................................. ...........|Flash Menu- loads HTML..|
|................................................. ...........|into Window 1................|
|_____________________________________|___________ ___________|

Make sense?

If it is easier for some of the windows to be Flash instead of HTML, let me know.



Only Window 1 and Window 4 need to be able to scroll vertically. I don't want either of them to have horizontal scrollbars, and sometimes neither of them will need a vertical scrollbar.
That's about the only requirement I have - Window 1 just needs to be able to load rich format text (think .rtf), and have flash movies embedded in it sometimes. Windows 3 & 4 need to be flash movies.

Window 1 loads HTML documents, according to what menu buttons are pressed in windows 3 and 4, as well as when links are pressed in 1.
When a new HTML document is loaded into window 1, I also want a "matching" HTML to load in window 2, with all the appropriate links.

Window 2 also loads HTML when links are pressed in window 1 - some of them are footnotes, some are graphics.
I have a collection of .htm files that I want to be loaded into Window 1.




So, what is the easiest way to do this?

And is it easier to modify stuff in Dreamweaver, or Flash?
And which is easier to learn? I haven't picked up Dreamweaver at all, but I have made a couple of things in Flash. I have no knowledge of HTML. I've used MS paint, and MS Word before this. :)


Thanks.
---Jerry

[farafiro]

as what I've got:
make an HTML page with dreamweaver and grab your swfs in it
(ie. use both)

[simontheak]

I'd agree with Faffy ...

You'll need Dreamweaver to create tables (or frames) and then you can just drop in SWF files where you need them

[fgf]

A frameset is the way but try and learn to hand code it properly as dreamweaver is particulary poor at framsets (go live does much better). Dreamweaver seem to always create in sets of 2 and doesn't like you deleteing frames. It will work if you just want it done but...

N.B. you can consistently crash early version of dreamweaver by removing parts of framesets in code view.

They are not hard to do manually and i'm sure you'll find a decent tutorial on google. Once you have the frameset right you can do everything else in dreamweaver no problem.

fgf