Introduction to Dreamweaver CS4
Would you like to learn to use Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 to design, create,
and maintain user-friendly Web sites that are full of professional-quality
Web pages? If so, then this is the class for you! You won't need any prior
Web design skills or knowledge of code. We'll start at the beginning, and
through engaging lessons and hands-on exercises, we'll build a sample site
from the ground up.
In the process, we'll explore the program's interface and how to set up
Dreamweaver for building as many sites as you like with a minimum of effort
and repeated tasks. You'll find out how to insert and format text, work with
image files, and see exactly how hyperlinks work. We'll also take a short
tour of Dreamweaver's Flash tools, work with tabular data, and get a handle
on frames—getting clear on when to use them and when not to.
As we build a site together, you'll master the basics of Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS) and even pick up a little HTML. By the end of the course,
you'll be well-prepared to learn more about HTML or CSS if you want to take
your skills to the next level. So get ready for a great adventure that will
show you just how simple and fun Web design can be!
To download a free trial of Dreamweaver CS4 visit: http://tryit.adobe.com/us/cs4/dreamweaver/ unfortunately the trial is for 30 days which is not long enough to complete the course.
To enroll in this course, click the Enroll Now button below:
Requirements:
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); Windows Vista / XP; Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger; Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).
Syllabus:
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 the lesson is released, but you must
complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.
A new section of each course starts on the second or third Wednesday of each
month. 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.
| Week One |
| Wednesday - Lesson 01 |
| Perhaps Adobe Dreamweaver's greatest strengths
are its powerful tools and its clean, 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 find out how
to preview your work in multiple 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
every site visitor, regardless of their browser, has a positive user
experience. |
| Friday - Lesson 02 |
| Dreamweaver is a site creation and management
tool, not just some 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. |
| Week Two |
| Wednesday - Lesson 03 |
| The two most important aspects of any Web site
are what it says and how it looks. In this lesson on structuring
text, you'll learn how to group blocks of text into elements like
headings, paragraphs, and lists. In certain respects, structuring
text with Dreamweaver is very similar to working in your word
processor. It's important to understand, however, that Dreamweaver
is not a word processor. And perhaps more importantly, word
processing and Web design are totally different worlds. This lesson
also includes an introduction to HTML, HyperText Markup Language. |
| Friday - Lesson 04 |
| HTML defines the structure of a Web page. When
HTML was first created, nobody thought the Web would become what it
is today. HTML was simply meant to be a fast and easy way for folks
to format simple documents (black text on a white page). Web design
wasn't even a thought. Today you'll get a short introduction to
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and gain an understanding of how to
implement CSS using Dreamweaver. We'll explore the basics behind how
CSS works and how to use it to format, or style, your page text. |
| Week Three |
| Wednesday - Lesson 05 |
| 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 that were still true today. In this lesson, you'll
learn how to use Dreamweaver to insert and format images within your
documents. Even though Dreamweaver isn't a true image-editing
application, it does offer some very impressive editing tools, and
we'll explore these features today as well. |
| Friday - Lesson 06 |
| 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. Today we'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 see how to create named anchor links and e-mail
links, and how to use Dreamweaver's impressive link management
tools. |
| Week Four |
| Wednesday - Lesson 07 |
| Find out how to insert and format standard
tables. Tables are used to do display data—columns and rows of
information with headings and borderlines, just like the typical
spreadsheet. In the dark ages of pre-WYSIWYG (What You See Is What
You Get) HTML editors, digging through the long and complex code
required to render a table on screen was mind-bending at best. With
a tool like Dreamweaver, table editing becomes a snap. And in this
lesson, you'll see just how true that statement is. |
| Friday - Lesson 08 |
| Today you'll learn how to build frames-based
layouts. Frames are much-maligned by Web design pundits, but this
frustration has little to do with any actual weakness on the part of
frames. It has more to do with the fact that doing frames correctly
is very much like preparing fine cuisine—if you don't pay attention
to details, the end result will be awful! Luckily, Dreamweaver
allows you to build a frames-based layout visually. Working with
frames demands that you change your traditional view of building
site pages, and in this lesson, I'll show you a new approach. |
| Week Five |
| Wednesday - Lesson 09 |
| Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the core of Web
design. 'In this lesson we'll examine some Web design principles and
explore page layout using CSS. We'll also get acquainted with
Dreamweaver's exceptional CSS tools that do the coding for us. |
| Friday - 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 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 you want so you can repeat formatting procedures throughout
your site. |
| Week Six |
| Wednesday - Lesson 11 |
| In the life cycle of a Web site, the design and
development period is the most fun. Unfortunately, it's also the
shortest. In the long run, you'll spend much more time managing and
maintaining your site. Dreamweaver's creators appreciate this
reality of the Webmaster's work schedule and put as much thought and
effort into Dreamweaver's site management and maintenance tools as
they put into its development tools. In this lesson, you'll see 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, finally, you'll discover how to attach
design notes so fellow workers can communicate across conflicting
work schedules. |
| Friday - 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. 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 have it.
By the time you finish this lesson, no matter what type of Web site
you need to build you'll know exactly how to plan for its success! |
To enroll in this course, click the Enroll Now button below:
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