Dreamweaver
Jeff Williamson
Northern Virginia Community College
www.nvcc.edu/home/nvwillj/html-dreamweaver/
nvwillj@nvcc.edu
Dreamweaver Basics
Just some notes for me to teach from in class...
Overall: DW has a lot of high-end features, but - I think, maybe - it has some features that make it easier for novice users, too.
Try to work with HTML features that you know - the last time I tried this people started putting LAYER tags into their web sites without understanding what a problemmatic specification LAYER is.
1. There are two basic parts to DW: The Site Manager and the Editor.
Setting up your Site Manager properly is important for later features.
Generally, you open pages from the Site Manager. You can also open pages from text links by holding <Ctrl> and clicking. Or you can use File/Open, like a regular program.
2. The editor is a like a lot of graphics applications - it has lots and lots of floating palettes. Use the Window menu item to find them (many are also represented in the lower-right corner by those strange icons). The palettes are
Objects - I wouldn't worry about this one
Properties - This is important - Ctrl-F3
Launcher - I wouldn't worry about this one
Site Files/Site Map - These just go to the Site Manger - just click on its tab in the taskbar.
Library - This will quickly become important - F6
Styles, Behaviors, Timeline - Not important for now. The Javascripts in Behaviors we'll use later.
Layers, Frames, Templates - Not important for our purposes.
HTML - Important - the code view. F10 or Ctrl-Tab
3. The Properties window is probably the most frequently used element, and it changes depending on the type of item you have focused (e.g. if your cursor is on a text or graphic). Some things to note about Properties
The menu is foldable; there are some characteristics that are only viewable when its unfolded. Table elements in particular are hidden in the folder part.
There are several ways to create links
- Type or paste in
- Choose Folder to navigate to your link
- Use that dial-dragger thing
Hotkey is Ctrl-F3 - really, you have to press that one a lot.
4. The Insert menu is probably the most frequently accesed menu item, for putting in graphics, tables, horizontal rules, and whatnot. After an item has been inserted, the Properties inspector covers much of its modification.
5. The Editor has some nice features
menu Modify/Page Properties/Background - your color choices are only from the 216-browser safe color cube.
Text formatting through the Properties inspector is pretty carefree. Especially nice are the (sorta) browser-safe fonts, listed in series as they should be. Use sans-serif faces boldly - no other editor has that.
menu Commands/Set Color Scheme allows you to pick one of a bunch of color combos whomped up by Ms. Color herself, Lynda Weinman
5. Table editing has one confusing part and several nice features
The confusing part: How do you select the whole table? Right-click on the table and choose Table/Select Table
Nice features include
Background colors are browser-safe and grouped by hue and brightness (note that HTML allows four levels of color selection in tables).
Discontinuous table cells can be selected by holding Ctrl while clicking (e.g. if you wanted to color all the red cells in a checkboard, you could select them all)
Cell merges and splits are easy - just select and choose a button on the Property Inspector.
Rows and cells are draggable, and the code changes as safely as it can (e.g. if the table is defined in percentages, the changes register in percentages, too). I will suggest still setting table values with numbers (through the Property Inspector) rather than trying to drag them out visually.