Dreamweaver 8, Introduction to

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Lesson 1
Perhaps Dreamweaver's greatest strength is its powerful combination of tools all wrapped up in a clean and simple interface. Our first lesson is all about introducing you to that interface. Not only will you learn the primary interface elements, you'll also learn how to preview your work in any of 20 potential Web browsers?because rigorous testing is the key to a successful Web site. By testing and adapting your site documents across multiple browsers, you'll ensure that each site visitor, regardless of the browser they prefer, has a positive user experience.

Lesson 2
Dreamweaver is a site creation and management tool, not just some over-glorified HTML editor. While you're building a site, Dreamweaver has the ability to track each color you assign, every image and multimedia file you insert, every Web address you reference, as well as every step you take while working on a specific document. Dreamweaver then keeps all this information right at your fingertips to use again and again. In today's lesson, you'll learn the steps you need to take to put these features to work for you.

Lesson 3
The two most important aspects of any Web site are what it says and how it looks. In this lesson on text formatting, you'll learn how to control the look of text in your Web pages. In certain respects, formatting text with Dreamweaver is very similar to formatting text in your word processor. It's important to understand, however, that Dreamweaver is not a word processor. And perhaps more important, word processing and Web design are totally different worlds.

Lesson 4
Believe it or not, the very early Web browsers couldn't display images, and it's doubtful the Web would have become so popular if the same were still true today. In this lesson, you'll learn how to use Dreamweaver to insert and format images within your documents. What's more, even though Dreamweaver isn't a true image-editing application, it does offer some very impressive editing tools, and this lesson will expose you to these features as well.

Lesson 5
There's a reason we call it the Web. The metaphor perfectly describes Hypertext's functionality. One document links to many others, which in turn link to many others that potentially link back to where you started. The functional aspect of hypertext?the hyperlink?is what makes it all possible. In this lesson, you'll examine pathnames (the heart of all hyperlinks), giving you a better understanding of the file structure of your Web site and how links function. You'll learn how to create named anchor links and e-mail links, and how to use Dreamweaver's impressive link management tools.

Lesson 6
Macromedia Flash allows you to create complex animations with very small file sizes, tailor-made for delivery via the Web. But, this is a course about Dreamweaver?how does Flash enter into it? Dreamweaver provides you with Flash objects you can make use of without having the Flash program or knowing how to create native Flash objects. You can insert pre-made Flash buttons, as well as create Flash text that makes use of whatever fonts you have available on your computer. We'll go over all of it in today's lesson.

Lesson 7
In this lesson, you'll find out how to insert, format, and lay out a document using tables. When HTML was first created, tables were expected to do what they have traditionally done?display data. That meant they would consist of columns and rows of information, with headings and borderlines?just like the typical spreadsheet. But, tables are very useful layout elements too. Because tables are well-supported across the major browsers and they provide this dual functionality, they're among the most common elements you'll find in Web pages.

Lesson 8
In today's lesson, you'll learn how to build frames-based Web sites. Frames are much-maligned by Web design pundits, but this frustration has little to do with any actually weakness on the part of frames. It has more to do with the fact that doing frames right is very much like preparing fine cuisine?if you don't pay attention to details, everything will come out awful! Working with frames demands that you change your traditional view of building site pages, and in this lesson, I'll show you how that's done. And, because Dreamweaver allows you to build a frames-based site visually, the learning curve isn't half as steep.

Lesson 9
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the future of Web design. In fact, CSS has been the approved layout and design technology for about a decade. It's just taken us this long to get the browser manufacturers to play along?and still, some are dragging their feet. In today's lesson, we'll explore CSS basics to see just how CSS works, and we'll examine Dreamweaver's exceptional CSS tools for doing the coding for us.

Lesson 10
Today's lesson is all about reusability, and in Dreamweaver, that means the Assets and History panels. You'll learn how to use the Assets panel to quickly access site elements and get them into new pages so you don't have to go hunting through your site for previously used content. When we explore the History panel, you'll learn how to undo anything you wish you hadn't done, as well as redo anything so you can repeat formatting procedures throughout your site.

Lesson 11
In the life cycle of a Web site, the design and development period is the most fun. But it's, unfortunately, the shortest. In the long run, you'll spend much more time managing and maintaining your site. Dreamweaver appreciates this reality of the Webmaster's work schedule and puts as much thought and effort into Dreamweaver's site management and maintenance tools as it puts into the development tools. In this lesson, you'll learn how to use Dreamweaver's site management tools to define your remote site in order to upload and retrieve files from the Web server. You'll also learn about Dreamweaver's Check-In and Check-Out feature, which lets workgroups develop sites together without overwriting content, and you'll discover how to attach design notes so fellow workers can communicate across conflicting work schedules.

Lesson 12
By now you have an introductory knowledge of Dreamweaver, which means you know just enough to be dangerous. We'll spend our last lesson together going over site planning. In this lesson, you'll learn the five basic questions that you'll need to answer before starting any Web site project. We'll discuss where and how to gather your site content (text, graphics, and other media), as well as different strategies for organizing that content once you've got it. By the time you finish this lesson, it won't matter what type of Web site you need to build?you'll know exactly how to plan for success!