The process
of adding HTML codes to documents can be very time consuming,
particularly on large Web sites consisting of dozens, or even
hundreds of pages. Dreamweaver is a powerful Web authoring
tool that takes much of the tedium out of coding Web documents
with HTML "by hand." Dreamweaver provides a WYSIWYG
(What you see is what you get) work environment very similar
to that of word processing, adding the HTML codes "behind
the scenes."
Highlights
A
tour of the features of Dreamweaver 4 is available from
the Macromedia web site at: http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/
WYSISYG
development environment
WYSIWYG
stands for "What You See Is What You Get." In
short, the content you add to your Web pages in Dreamweaver
will appear just as it will once those pages are being viewed
by a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet
Explorer.
Round-trip
HTML
Whether
you import an existing HTML document or edit the HTML of
a Web page from within Dreamweaver (a handy feature in itself!),
Dreamweaver, unlike other Web authoring tools, will not
alter your code.
Site
management
With
Dreamweaver you can conduct site-wide search and replace
functions, spell checking, and link verification. Dreamweaver
also has built-in File Transfer Protocol (FTP) capability,
allowing you to publish your Web pages to your Web server
from within the Dreamweaver environment.
How Web pages
are made
Most
often Web pages are created in a desktop environment using
a text editor or Web authoring tool. The document content
is encoded with HTML. HTML identifies the structural
elements present on a page, such as paragraphs, lists,
heading, and tables. The encoded document is saved as a
plain text (ASCII or DOS-text) file. Generally speaking,
the file name must end in .html or .htm, although there
are exceptions (such as .shtml, .cgi, and .asp). Once ready
to be made available on the Web, the pages are published
(uploaded) to a Web server. The pages must be stored on
a Web server in order to be viewable by others.
Dreamweaver
Work Area
The
Dreamweaver work area is flexible, to accommodate different
working styles and levels of expertise. It has many components,
some of which you will use constantly. The work area has
two main components, the Document Window, and the Palettes.
Document window
The
document window displays the current document as you create
and edit it. It consists of the title bar (at the top) and
the status bar (at the bottom).
There
are two primary palettes that you will work with: the Objects
Palette and the Properties Inspector. If these items are
not open when you launch Dreamweaver, they can be opened
by name from the Window menu.
Objects Palette
Contains
buttons for inserting various types of objects, such as
images, tables, and scripts. By default, the Objects palette
displays the Common objects (those you are most likely to
use). Several other groups of buttons are also available
as shown below. Access the pop-up menu shown by clicking
on the 
.
Describing
each of the buttons on the Objects palette is beyond the
scope of this document. All of the options presented on
the Objects palette are also available from the Menu bar.
Property Inspector
The
Property inspector displays properties for the selected
object or text, and allows you to modify those properties.
The contents of the Property Inspector palette change depending
on what type of item you have selected for modification.
Shown
below are the ways the Property Inspector looks for modifying
text and images. This version of the Property Inspector
is for modifying the properties of text on the
page:
This
Property Inspector allows you to modify the properties of
an image:
