Univ of MD, College of Arts and Humaniites: Digital Technology in the Arts and Humanities

University of MD College of Arts and Humanities

Home: Technology: Workshops and Technology Resources: Workshops

WebSite Creation: Dreamweaver Notes
http://www.arhu.umd.edu/technology/workshops/websitecreation/dreamweavernotes.html

Overview
Key Terms
Composer Notes
Course Materials on the Web with WebSpinner Notes
Dreamweaver Notes

What is Dreamweaver?
Dreamweaver is a visual editor for creating and managing Web sites and pages
Learning Dreamweaver
Launch Dreamweaver and Visit the Help Menu. Start with Using Dreamweaver.
Introduction

Dreamweaver interface
(Open billbughomepage.html)

Document Window
Doc Size and download time
Window size and pop-up menu
Tag Selector
Mini Launcher

Property inspector
The Property inspector allows you to examine and edit properties for the currently selected page element. (A page element is an object or text.) You can select page elements in either the Document window or the HTML Source inspector.

Object palette
The Object palette contains buttons for inserting objects such as tables, layers, and images. Object Palette types include: characters, common, forms, frames, head, invisibles

Using the HTML Source inspector
The HTML Source inspector shows the code that browsers use to display the document as a Web page. To show or hide the HTML Source inspector, choose Window > HTML Source.

Site Planning
(See Dreamweaver help, Using Dreamweaver, Sites and Documents, About Site Planning)

A Web site is a set of linked documents with shared attributes, such as related topics, a similar design, or a shared purpose.

The usual way to set up a site is to create a folder on your local disk that contains all the files for your site, and to create and edit documents within that folder. You then periodically copy those files to a Web server that allows other people to view the site.

Defining Sites

Even if you are creating just a page or two it needs to be in a DW defined site

Keep all files relevant to that site in that root directory

When files are moved from one directory (folder) to another within DW links will be updated. When moved around outside of dreamweaver you'll receive broken links.

Hands-on
(Dreamweaver Tutorial)

More on Site Planning

Planning site structure

Break down your site into categories.

Use subfolders where necessary.

Decide where to put items such as images and sound files

Use the same structure for local and remote sites.

Planning site navigation

As you design your site, think about the experience you want your visitors to have. "You are here."

It should always be easy for visitors to figure out where in your site they are, and how to return to your top-level page. Searching and indexes.

It should be easy for visitors to find any information they want.

Feedback.

Template and Library use

Dreamweaver's templates and libraries allow you to reuse page layouts and page elements in various documents.It's more difficult to apply reusable layout and elements to a set of existing pages than it is to build new pages using reusable elements from the start.

Dreamweaver Template format (.dwt) and Library format (.lbi) are internal file-naming conventions only. These files do not mean anything to other HTML editors, nor are they meant to be viewed on the web inside a browser.

Note:
Once a template has been applied to a page, you can no longer edit any information in the <HEAD> tag. This means that you can't add any JavaScript, Styles, Behaviors or anthing else that would be contained within the <HEAD> tag. If you do need to add this type of code to a page that is based on a template, you need to break the Template by choosing Modify > Template > Detach from Template. The downside to this, of course, is that if you made changes to the Template, this unlinked copy would not be able to refer to it.

Templates affect the entire page design- Library items are used for individual page elements.

Use templates. If many of your pages will use the same layout, plan and design a template for that layout. Then you can create new pages based on that template, and if you decide to change the layout for all such pages, you can simply change the template.

Use library items. If you know that a certain image or other content will appear on many pages throughout your site, design that content ahead of time and make it a library item. Then if you change that item later, the new version appears on all pages that use it. For more information on reusing page layouts and elements, see Templates and libraries overview.

Exercise: Chapter 11

Create a Web Photo Album

Create a folder with photo album images in it.

Commands Menu > Create Photo Album

Follow prompts.

Additional Features

Collaborative Web Site Management

Search and replace

What's Next?

Review

Dreamweaver Help Guided Tour and Complete Tutorial

Use Dreamweaver Help, Using Dreamweaver for reference

Get started on your own project!

Back to Top

Contact Information:

Catherine Hays Zabriskie
chays@deans.umd.edu
301-405-2886