Preparing to Create a Website

• Design considerations
• The planning process
• Organising files and site folder structure
Screen resolution, fonts, browsers

Setting up the Dreamweaver Workspace

• Introduction to the workspace
• Code and Design views
• Managing panels
• Saving a workspace
• Using the Property Inspector

Establishing a site and creating pages

• Defining a site
• Selecting a page layout
• Setting page title
• Changing headings
• Adding text and images
• Formatting
• Previewing the page in browsers

Introduction to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

• The CSS Panel
• Making and editing CSS rules
• Styling text with CSS Tag and Class rules
• Image position with CSS Tag rules
• Page layout with CSS ID and Compound rules
• The CSS box model
• Centering page content

Creating Page Layouts

• Modifying existing CSS page layout
• Background images and colours
• DIVs
• Page width
• Image and text placeholders
• Browser compatibility

Further CSS

• Working with CSS rules
• Creating an interactive menu
• Modifying hyperlink behaviour
• External CSS stylesheets
• The Style Rendering Toolbar
• Stylesheets for other devices

Dreamweaver Templates

• Creating a Template
• Editable Regions
• Making new Template based pages
• Editing the Template
• Creating a Library Item
• Inserting Library Items
• Editing Library Items

Lists and Tables

• Importing text
• Creating and styling Lists
• Creating and styling Tables

Images

• Web image file formats
• Image resolution and size
• Inserting images
• Optimising images from within Dreamweaver
• Cropping images from within Dreamweaver

Navigation

• Hyperlink basics
• Internal and external hyperlinks
• Email links
• Targeting page elements
• Testing hyperlinks in a browser

Forms

• Adding a form
• Inserting text fields
• Inserting checkboxes
• Spry validation elements
• Inserting list menus
• Inserting a submit button
• Specifying the form action

Search Engine Optimisation

• Testing for broken links
• Checking for missing <alt> and missing <title>
• Adding keywords and description metadata
• Overview of the factors that affect search ranking
• Checking the site against current SEO guidelines

Publishing to the Web

• Managing and cloaking files
• Defining a remote site
• Putting the site to the server
• Editing and synchronising

Web Design Resource Links

At the end of this 2 day Dreamweaver course, students will have a solid understanding of Dreamweaver and the web design process. This will enable them to design, create and manage their own web sites.