While many people still develop web sites using tables to control the layout and design, more and more sites are moving to the use of layers and CSS style sheets to create their web pages and web sites. While I myself think that the CSS to control the look, positioning and layout of layers is far too complex and when you add in the browser quirks that one often has to deal with to get layers and CSS to work correctly in modern browsers I tend to still design using tables it is far easier and like layers they too can be controlled with CSS styles. However, thanks to the growing number of Dreamweaver extensions that make it very easy to use layers on your sites it is becoming much easier to have layer based popups, menus and more with all of the CSS coding, layout and positioning control all done for you, even the special coding to deal with the browser quirks are done for you. Best of all these layer extensions work great with both layer and table based web sites and pages. One such extension is the Advanced Layer Popup extension by George Petrov which is available at DMXZone.

This simple to use extension makes creating layer based pop ups quick and easy. What can you use layer based pop ups for? Well, you can use it to pop up product or screen shots, flash media, ads, slide shows and so much more. By using Advanced Layer Popup it is so easy to have stuff pop up when the user clicks a link, moves the mouse over a link and you’re not limited to text links either you can use graphics as well.

The interface for Advanced Layer Popup is clean and easy to understand. There are three tabs the General tab Screen Shot, the Slideshow tab Screen Shot and the About tab. The about tab is self explanatory. The General tab is where you set the URL of the web page or image, etc. that you want to display in the popup layer, you can set the title, style, popup name and how many seconds the popup stays open before it auto-closes (you don’t have to use this if you don’t want to). You can also set the dimensions, background color, where on the screen the popup pops up, transition effects for incoming and outgoing as well as easing time, fade and more.

The slideshow tab allows you to load in a selection of images either one at a time or a directory at a time that will be displayed in a slide show and then allows you to get controls like the effect (transition), effect time, slide time and more. It also allows you to add and remove slides as well as reorder them so you can control what order they are displayed.

Advanced Layer Popup is a very handy Dreamweaver Extension to have. It makes creating nice looking, functional and friendly popups easy. With the ability to place anything you like on one of these layer popups and even have it automatically close after a certain number of seconds, plus the ability to create a slideshow on one right in the extension makes this one of my most favorite Dreamweaver extensions. I however, do have two semi-compaints. First I wish the extension came with a larger selection of styles. Right now there are only five to choose from, while these five are nice looking are larger selection would have been nice. Second the transition selection is weak, there are eight to choose from all of them slide effects just with different sliding directions. I do however suspect that this lack of selection is caused more by broswer limitations than anything else. Right now IE is the only browser that has a good selection of transitions built in.

• Automatically open any content in a Layer Popup

• Resize Layer Popup to fit the image/flash exactly

• Automatically generating the embedded code needed to play the movie or flash swf

• Position the Layer Popup with the image on every corner of the screen

• Make slideshows quick and easy!

• Slideshow with transitions

• Preview the slide show images directly in the extension window!

• Automatic size discovery of all Images and Flash movies!

• Always On Top - display the popup on top and disable what is below

• Auto Close after specified time

• Custom and rich designs

• Incoming and outgoing effects together with fade in/out

• Fully cross browser compatible.

• Interface for ease of use in Dreamweaver