Assuming you have started Dreamweaver, and have a site defined…
Now we will look at creating a document, and adding text and images.
Creating a new Document
Of course one of the things that you will have to do – is to create a brand new web page.
- Use the Dreamweaver “Start Page”
- CTRL-N
- File>New
Types of New Documents
When you start to create the file, Dreamweaver wants to ask you what type of file you will be creating. Of course there are different types:
- HTML
- Dynamic (PHP, ASP, etc.)
- CSS
- etc.
Default Document
Remember the default document is the document that displays if you list a directory, and not the file. There are a few common, and few less common types – although technically, it can be any file.
- Usually either
- index.htm
- index.html
- May also be
- home.htm
- default.htm
- user defined – not common, but not never.
Page Titles
The page title displays in the tab or application bar of the web. This is helpful for SEO purposes, users to know what is going on, and more. You definitely want to change it as by default it is “Untitled Document”. Do a search for that phrase, and find out how many results return in Google.
You can set the page title in the document toolbar.
The file name is not the same as the page title. The File Name, is what the file is called.
Inserting Images
- Assets Panel (with file grouping)
- names
- dimensions
- more…
Inserting Text
Web pages have what we refer to as flow control. This means you can’t just place your cursor and type, where you want. It will be based upon what the last element was, and it will follow that element.
Dreamweaver lets you know where you can type by changing your cursor is an “I” (i-beam) shape.
There are various types of text you can enter.
- header 1,
- header 2, (etc)
- paragraph,
- lists,
- and more
Changing text settings, like alignment, and the type of text, and more are all done in the property panel at the bottom of the Dreamweaver screen.
Creating Links
Links are how you will move from page to page in a website. They can link locally, to another page (or resource), or externally, to a resource on another website. A resource is anything that you can link to. For example, another HTML page, a PDF document, image, et cetra.
- Select an image or text which is the linking information, then from the property inspector:
- Browse for a File
- Type in the link
- Use the target icon
- Opening in different windows
Inserting Meta Data
Meta Data is data about data, or better explained a way to describe the what it is you are looking about. Meta tags can be used to provide a set of keywords or a description for a page. It can tell you about the character encoding, and much, much more. This is hidden from the end user, but seen by browser software, search engines and more.
To add meta data simply select:
- Insert >
- html >
- Head Tags >
- <meta data type >
Keywords and Description used to be used by search engines, but none of the major engines pay any attention to them at this point.
Dreamweaver Basics was originally found on Access 2 Learn
