Course Description

In this class you will have some fun as you discover new techniques to create Dreamweaver is one of the most popular web design packages, suitable for beginners and professional web designers alike. Come find out why it is easy to use in this six week course! You will learn the interface and tools that make Dreamweaver so easy to use. Learn to add text, images, links, lists, and tables to your pages, maintain sites, and to upload and synchronize them from within Dreamweaver. Although this is not a CSS class per se, we will be using CSS extensively in this course and you will benefit from the excellent CSS features in Dreamweaver. This is a 6 week, self-paced, self-study online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details. Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Dreamweaver MX, MX 2004, or 8 regardless of your operating system. Versions of IE 6.0 or greater AND FIrefox 1.5 or greater. WS_FTP SmartFTP Students should have working knowledge of their operating system and must understand directories and paths: Free Windows Class Here Directory Structure Tutorial Here Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files. Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 3 - 5 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Course Prerequisites

Class Level - This is an introductory course to the Dreamweaver software and assumes at least some basic HTML/XHTML knowledge. Knowledge of HTML is very helpful. Even though you can make a webpage with Dreamweaver without writing a single line of code, that doesn't mean you should. Sometimes you may need to troubleshoot something doesn't work, or change it altogether, and being able to read code will be crucial. If you don't have HTML knowledge, enroll in the Build Your Website I first!

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 General Terms Getting Started The Work Area Setting Preferences Defining a Site Coding an HTML Page Lesson 2 Tag Selector Hidden Tags Formatting Text Lists Anchors (Links) Lesson 3 What is CSS CSS Styles Panel Adding a Background Image Lesson 4 Help menu Docking and grouping panels Reference Panel Moving Files Favorites Bar Colors Inserting Images Tables Adding Table Content Table Properties (without using CSS) Adding Color to Text in Table Cells Adding Images to Table Cells Lesson 5 More on Tables Rowspan and Colspan More CSS - Classes and IDs Helpful Tools Lesson 6 Style Sheets - Attaching, Creating, Exporting, Deleting Using Dreamweaver's Built In FTP Formatting Tables the Simple Way Insert Date Redirect Image Maps

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 Part 1 - Introduction Welcome to the first lesson in Dreamweaver MX 2004! While Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG program, meaning that you can design without knowing any code, we will also be learning HTML code in this class. In order for your pages to work correctly, sometimes it will be necessary to hand code some items. We will be using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) exclusively in this class. That means that NO FONT TAGS will be allowed. Font tags are deprecated tags from older versions of HTML. During the course of this class, we will explore various methods of accomplishing the same task. For example, in Dreamweaver you can usually accomplish a task via the menu, the Property Inspector (PI), or by right clicking. You will have to choose the method that is easiest for you. I will not present all methods to you, only the ones that I feel are the best. I'm sure you will discover other methods on your own. Remember to right click. It will give you many options. All menu items will be designated in bold letters separated by a pipe symbol. eg File | Open. If you are interested, you can read up on what's new in Dreamweaver MX 2004 at the Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX 2004 New Features and Benefits (new window) page. For those of you who may be using Dreamweaver 8, you may want to view the page Dreamweaver 8 New Features and Benefits (new window) to see what's new. Preface: I know that many of you want to start making web pages right away. I want you to be able to do this also. But there are a few things about the Dreamweaver interface that we need to discuss. I will not go into great detail at this time. These topics will be discussed as we face them. If you want to know more and just can't wait, you might try looking in the help files. (F1) General Info The internet is a conglomerate of many servers. These servers host web sites. The web site address is commonly referred to as the URL (Universal Resource Locator). These addresses are all unique. You will have one for this class where you will display your homework. It may be on your own web site, some personal space that your ISP provides, or the LVS hosting. Your URL will be unique. It may look something like this: http://www.mydomain.com/lesson1.html http://www.lvsonline.com/users/myname/lesson1.html There are various methods used to put files on the server (your hosting space) for the world to view them. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is one method which uses an FTP program. This is my preferred method. Another method is through a Control Panel where you select a file and upload it to the server. Which method you use will depend on where you host your site. Dreamweaver does have a publishing feature, but it does not always work because of the way a web site is set up on the server, so it is best not to rely on it. General Terms Web Standards The W3C has developed web standards which web developers are encouraged to adhere to. These standards are in place to provide all users a relatively similar experience when viewing a web page. You will learn that different web browsers will not display information in the same manner. This group of people is working hard to get all browsers to render a web page in the same manner. Web standards include items like what the code should look like, whether it is valid, and will it work for people with text reader browsers. You can find more information on the W3C and web standards on their official site. (new window) For this class, suggestions will be made along the way about good coding practices and we will strive to make sure that the pages we design will be viewable in all current browsers. Browser A browser is a portal which can be used to view a web page. Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox are some examples of browsers. All browsers are not the same and do not render web pages identically. As a designer, you must test in more than one browser to make sure all of your users will see your web pages as you intended. This will not be as important in this class as it will be in the more advanced classes. HTML Hypertext markup language is commonly referred to as HTML. It is the coding language that tells a browser how to render a web page. HTML has a number of reserved words that are used in its language. These are called tags. XHTML This is the standard we will use for this class. XHTML is a form of the HTML language but it is more strict in that it requires pages to be well formed in their code. Tags Every tag in HTML starts with a less than < sign and ends in a greater than > sign. Dreamweaver will write these tags for us as we design our pages, but it will be important for you to know what they mean. Most tags have an opening tag and a closing tag. The opening tag tells the browser where to start applying the code and the closing tag tells the browser where to stop applying that code. The closing tag will have a slash at the beginning, which will indicate it is a closing tag. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) CSS is the markup that adds style and color to your page. CSS information is usually kept in a separate file and makes for cleaner code because the style is separated from the content. File naming conventions All files must be saved with lower case letters and no spaces. File extensions can be .htm or .html for HTML documents and .css for a CSS document. For this class we will be using .html. Part 2 - Getting Started Versions 2004 and 8 users: When you first open Dreamweaver you will see the Start page. (The start page is not in the MX version. It was new in MX 2004 and exists in the DW 8 version also.) View the options available to you. This option can be turned off in the Preferences Menu (Edit | Preferences). You can also check the box at the bottom that says Don't show again. Continued. . . Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

At the completion of this course, you will be able to efficiently create an attractive and functional basic web site, using the powerful tools of the Dreamweaver software.

Course Reviews

Yoko Shimada: "This class was well thought to direct for updated web design in this time. Easy to understand instruction and great for a beginner to recognize different features of this great appreciation. I am glad to start learning DWMX2004 at this class, and ready to step up for the next level II." More...