Dreamweaver CS3 For Dummies

Janine Warner

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118051252
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Conception
• Subtopic: Conception Web

Packed with the latest Dreamweaver tips and techniques

Get up to speed fast and start creating dynamite Web sites!

Do you want to create a sophisticated Web site that's easy to develop and maintain? Whether you're a beginner or an experienced Web developer, this friendly guide shows you how to utilize Dreamweaver's newest enhancements to build and manage state-of-the-art, professional Web sites quickly and easily.

• Set up your site and create new pages
• Work with text, graphics, and links
• Define and apply styles using CSS
• Add audio, video, and Flash®files to your site
• Use Dreamweaver's database features

Part I

Creating Great Web Sites

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In this part . . .

In Part I, you find an introduction to Web design and an overview of the many ways you can create a Web site in Dreamweaver. Chapter 1 compares different layout techniques and provides an introduction to the toolbars, menus, and panels that make up Dreamweaver’s interface.

In Chapter 2, you dive right into setting up a Web site, creating a Web page and adding text, images, and links. In Chapter 3, you find an introduction to Web graphics and tips for using Photoshop to optimize images in GIF, PNG, and JPEG formats. And Chapter 4 covers testing and publishing features, so you can make sure that everything works before you put your site online.

Chapter 1

The Many Ways to Design a Web Page

In This Chapter

Comparing Web design options

Understanding browser differences

Developing a Web site

Customizing your workspace

Web design is an art and a science. I think that’s what makes it so hard. Most of us don’t have the artistic talent to create great Web designs, the science and math skills to develop all the technical elements, and the understanding of interface design and usability that make a Web site easy to use and intuitive to navigate. But you need all those skills to create a great Web site. That’s why most of the best Web sites were created by a team of people with many different specialties.

In the early days, Web design was relatively easy — and vanilla boring. You could combine images and text, but that was about it; no complex layouts, no fancy fonts, and certainly no multimedia or animation.

Over the years, Web design has evolved into an increasingly complex field and Dreamweaver has evolved with it, adding new features that go way beyond the basics of combining a few words and images.

When I first started learning to creating Web sites in the mid 1990s, it was easy to learn and easy to teach others how to do it. More than 10 years and a dozen books later, it’s a lot more complex, and I’ve come to realize that one of the first things you have to understand about Web design is that there isn’t just one way to create a Web site anymore.

Today, you can find out how to design simple Web sites with HTML in a matter of hours or you can spend years developing the advanced programming skills it takes to create complex Web sites like the ones you see at Amazon.com or MSNBC.

For everything in between, Dreamweaver is the clear choice among professional Web designers as well as among a growing number of people who want to build sites for their hobbies, clubs, families, and small businesses.

But before we dive into the details about how you create a Web page in Dreamweaver, I think it’s helpful to start by introducing the many ways you can create a Web site. The more you understand about the various approaches to Web design, the better you can appreciate your options.

Comparing Web Designs

Throughout this book, you find chapters covering a variety of aspects of Web design, from the basics of creating a page and adding images and links to more complex concepts such as creating rollover effects and pop-up windows with Dreamweaver’s behaviors, which use JavaScript to create advanced interactive features.

You also find a few chapters that explore different page layout techniques. You can create Web designs using HTML tables, frames, or Cascading Style Sheets. You can even use these different technologies in combination. The next few sections are designed to help you understand the differences in these approaches before you decide which one is best for your Web site.

Appreciating the advantages of CSS

Today, the W3C, which sets standards for the Internet, recommends CSS for nearly every aspect of Web design. That’s because the best CSS designs are accessible, flexible, and adaptable. Also, the fact that they follow standards has become increasingly important over the years.

If everyone who designed Web sites and everyone who created the browsers that displayed them followed the same standards, we’d have a much better Internet today. Unfortunately, over the years Web technology has evolved but Web browsers haven’t always displayed the features of Web sites in the same way. As a result, the same Web page can look quite different from one browser to another, especially in older browsers. (You find more about browser differences and testing your designs in Chapter 4.)

Today, there is a growing movement among some of the best designers in the world to get everyone to follow the same standards, create Web sites with CSS, and make sure they are accessible to everyone.

When Web designers talk about accessibility, they mean creating a site that can be accessed by anyone who might ever visit your pages — and that includes people with limited vision who use special browsers (often called screen r...