If you have a really large site with thousands of pages and files, then creating the cache can take several minutes, so you might be tempted to disable this feature. Figure demonstrates the process for Windows and Macs. This step is optional, but comes in handy if you insert an image from the desktop or another folder outside your local root folder as described on Adding an Image Placeholder.
This step is also optional. Dreamweaver creates a site cache as described in step 12 on Defining a Site the Fast Way. The New Document window is a little overwhelming. Fortunately, when you just want to create a new HTML file, you can skip most of these options. The New Document window lets you create nearly every Web document type under the sun. Dreamweaver CS4 also includes many prepackaged designs including lots of advanced page layouts using the latest Web design techniques.
If you select one of those designs in the Layout list, then, in the upper-right corner of the window, you see a preview of the layout. From the left-hand list of document categories, choose Blank Page.
Dreamweaver CS4 does ship with some very useful page layouts that you can access from the Blank Page category. Because CSS-based layout can be tricky, Dreamweaver includes all the code you need to create many of the most common types of these page designs.
Select a document type from the DocType menu. XHTML 1. The transitional doc types let you use a few HTML tags and properties that have been phased out of the strict types. But if you usually create dynamic pages like the PHP pages described in Part 6 , then choose a different type of file—PHP, for example. Dreamweaver opens a new, blank Web page ready for you to save and title see Figure The Save As dialog box appears. You need to save the file somewhere inside the local root folder.
You can save it inside any subfolders within the root folder as well. Type a name for the file, and then click Save. Furthermore, Web servers rely on file extensions like.
Dreamweaver for Windows automatically adds the extension to your saved document names. But on the Mac—which lets you save files without extensions—make sure the file ends in the suffix. At the top of the document window, click inside the Title box, and then type a name for the page see Figure Every new document Dreamweaver creates has the unflattering title Untitled Document.
Dreamweaver probably created many of those pages. Although reading a book is a good way to learn the ins and outs of a program, nothing beats sitting in front of your computer and taking a program through its paces. The rest of this chapter, for example, introduces Dreamweaver by taking you step by step through the process of building a Web page.
A new blank Web page. Always remember to title the page by clicking inside the Title box at the top of the document window circled , and then entering a descriptive title. Click the Download Tutorials link to download the files. The tutorial files are stored as ZIP files, a type of file that compresses a lot of different files into one, smaller file.
Windows folks should download the file, and then double-click it to open the archive. Click the Extract All Files option, and then follow the instructions of the Extraction Wizard to unzip the files and place them on your computer. Mac users, just double-click the file to decompress it. The Preferences dialog box opens, listing a dizzying array of categories and options see Figure In the Preferences dialog box, select the Invisible Elements category, and then turn on the fourth checkbox from the top, labeled Line Breaks see Figure , circled.
This setting makes the line break character visible—represented in the document window by a little gold shield—so that you can easily select and remove it. The Preferences dialog box closes. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, Dreamweaver has many different windows that help you build Web pages.
For this tutorial, though, you need only three: the Insert panel, the document window, and the Property inspector. The Designer workspace built into Dreamweaver puts the Property inspector at the bottom of the screen, opens the Insert and Files panels on the right edge, and also displays a group of closed panels containing the CSS styles and AP absolutely positioned elements panels. As you can see, the Insert Panel in its normal configuration takes up a lot of vertical space, giving the other panels a cramped appearance.
The Dreamweaver Welcome screen pictured in the middle of this figure lists recently opened files in the left column. Clicking one of the file names opens that file for editing. The middle column provides a quick way to create a new Web page or define a new site.
In addition, you can access introductory videos and other getting-started materials from this screen. You see the Welcome screen only when no other Web files are open. Without labels, the buttons in the Insert panel form nice compact rows, saving lots of space.
Double-click the CSS styles tab to expand the panel. This panel contains lots of information and tools, so it needs space. Make a panel taller or shorter by dragging the thick line separating two groups of panels. Repeat step 9 to make the Files panel a bit taller. Now the workspace looks great. Type Missing Manual or any name you like , and then click OK.
From the Workspace switcher menu, choose App Developer Plus. From the Workspace switcher menu, choose Missing Manual or whatever name you gave in step Dreamweaver sets up everything the way you want it. You can create multiple layouts for different Web sites or different types of sites. As discussed on Setting Up a Site , whenever you want to use Dreamweaver to create or edit a Web site, your first step is always to show the program where the root folder is—the master folder for all your Web site files.
You do this by defining a site , like so:. You have a basic and an advanced method for defining a site. Type Tutorial 1 in the Site Name field. Dreamweaver also asks for the Web address for your site.
Click Next. The Choose Local Root Folder window opens, so that you can choose a folder on your hard drive that will serve as your local root folder.
Click the Select Choose button to set this folder as the local root folder. Dreamweaver asks how you want to connect to your remote server —the computer that will dish up the finished Web files to your adoring public. After clicking Next, you see a summary of your settings. If you made a mistake, click Back to return to the appropriate step in the process and make changes. Since there are hardly any files in the Chapter01 folder, you may not even notice this happening—it goes by in the blink of an eye.
The New Document window opens see Figure Creating a blank Web page involves a few clicks. The window should look like Figure XHTML actually has two " flavors. At the top left of the document window, click the Design button to tell Dreamweaver to display the page in its visual layout mode.
Always save your pages right away. This habit prevents serious headaches if the power goes out as you finish that beautiful—but unsaved—creation. Save the page in the Chapter01 folder as directions. You could also save the page as directions. Make sure you save this page in the correct folder. In Phase 2 Phase 2: Creating a Web Site , you defined the Chapter01 folder as the root of the site—the folder that holds all the pages and files for the site.
In the Save As dialog box, click the Site Root button—this takes you right to the root folder. This little trick also works when opening or linking to a file.
The page title is also what shows up as the name of your Web page when someone searches the Web using a search engine like Yahoo or Google. The Page Properties dialog box opens see Figure , letting you define the basic attributes of each Web page you create.
Six categories of settings let you control properties like text color, background color, link colors, and page margins. The options in that category add old, out-of-date code to your Web pages. From the pop-up color palette, choose a color a dark color like a royal blue works well. Unless you intervene, all Web page text starts out black in Dreamweaver; now, the text on this page will be the color you selected.
Alternatively, you could type a color, like , into the box beside the palette square. Both the palette and the hexadecimal color-specifying field appear fairly often in Dreamweaver see the box on Phase 4: Adding Images and Text.
The Select Image Source window appears see Figure Use this window to navigate to and select a graphic. Click the Site Root button at the top of the window bottom of the window on Macs. Open the folder named images , select the file named bgPage.
In Dreamweaver, you can also just double-click a file to select it and close the window you used to select that file. For example, you can accomplish both steps—selecting the bgPage. So when you navigate to the images folder in step 13 above, you might see bgPage instead of bgPage.
Since file extensions are an important way people and Web servers can identify the different types of files used on a Web site, you may want to display extensions. In the Left and Top margin boxes, type 0. This step removes the little bit of space Web browsers insert between the contents of your Web page and the top and left sides of the browser window. If you like, you can change this setting to make the browser add more space to the top and left side of the page.
In fact, you can even add a little extra empty space on the right side of a page. The right margin control is especially useful for languages that read from right to left, like Hebrew or Arabic. Note, however, that the bottom margin has no effect on the page display.
These hexadecimal codes specify specific Web page colors see Phase 4: Adding Images and Text for more about this notation. Use the Select Image Source window when inserting graphics onto a Web page. The Site Root button circled gives you a quick way to immediately jump to the local site root—a nifty way to always know where you are when searching for a file. On the Mac, the Site Root button appears at the bottom right of the window. Links come in four varieties: regular, visited, active, and rollover.
A regular link is a plain old link, unvisited, untouched. An active link is one at the very moment you click it. And finally, a rollover link indicates how the link looks when someone mouses over it.
You can choose different colors for each of these link states. For its part, the rollover link gives instant feedback, changing color as soon as a visitor moves the mouse cursor over it. However, with some browsers you can tab from link to link, and press the Enter key to follow the link. In this case, the active color is used to highlight a link to which a visitor just tabbed.
Although Dreamweaver uses the term rollover link, in the world of Cascading Style Sheets, this is called a hover link.
You can set several different properties for links using the Links category of the Page Properties dialog box. You can choose a different font and size for links, as well as specify colors for four different link states. Finally, you can choose whether or when links are underlined.
Most browsers automatically underline links, but you can override this behavior with the help of this dialog box and Cascading Style Sheets see Styling Links.
Click OK to close the window and apply these changes to the page. You return to your document window. Save your work frequently. Either way, the Select Image Source dialog box opens. That innocent-looking gray box in the Property inspector, the Modify Page Properties window, and various boxes throughout Dreamweaver is called the color box. You can use it to choose a color for the selected Web page element in any of three ways. First, you can click one of the colors on the pop-up rainbow palette that appears when you click the color box.
Second, you can use the eyedropper cursor that appears when you click the color box. You can even sample a color from another application from any visible window, Dreamweaver or not : Just move the eyedropper over the color, and then click. This click may take you out of Dreamweaver. Just return to Dreamweaver, and you see that the color you sampled has been applied.
Finally, you can click the Color Picker icon, shown here, to launch the Mac or Windows color-picker dialog box, which lets you choose from millions of possible colors. Without a specific color setting, Web browsers use default colors for the element in question.
For instance, text on a Web page is usually black unless you specify otherwise. Next to the color box in any Dreamweaver dialog box is a blank text field.
If you know your Web colors, then you can type their hex codes into this box, which is sometimes faster and more precise than clicking the rainbow palette.
The Palette Options menu is of limited use. It lets you select a different set of very limited rainbow colors for your palette. The first two choices, for example, contain the outdated Web-safe color palette—a limited collection of colors that display accurately on any computer screen. The Web-safe palette made sense back when graphics cards were expensive and dinosaurs ruled the earth.
Today, however, most monitors can show millions of different colors. In a hex code, a Web color is represented by a six-digit code like this: FE Hexadecimal notation is a system computers use for counting.
The tells the computer that the following sequence is a series of hexadecimal numbers—in this case, three pairs of them. Hex colors are composed of three pairs of numbers, for example FE is really, FE, 34 and Each pair represents a number for red, green, or blue, which together make up a color.
You sometimes see only 3 numbers like this: F00—this is shorthand and is used when both numbers in a pair are the same. For example, FF can be shortened to just F Browse to the images folder in the Chapter01 folder, and then double-click the graphics file called banner. The Image Tag Accessibility window appears. Fresh out of the box and onto your computer, Dreamweaver has several accessibility preferences automatically turned on.
These preferences are aimed at making your Web pages more accessible to people who use alternative devices for viewing Web sites—for example, people with viewing disabilities who require special Web browser software such as a screen reader, which literally reads the contents of a Web page out loud.
In the Alternate Text box, type Chia Vet. Click OK to add the image to the page. The banner picture appears at the top of the page, as shown in Figure The Property inspector changes to reflect the properties of the image. You can also add or edit the alt text in the Property inspector Figure Deselect the image by clicking anywhere in the document window, or by pressing the right arrow key.
When you select an image in the document window, the Property inspector reveals its dimensions. The other image properties are described in Chapter 6. Press Enter to create a new paragraph. Type Directions to Chia Vet Headquarters. The Property inspector now displays text formatting options. The key called Enter on a Windows keyboard is named Return on most Macintosh keyboards.
On the Mac, you can press either Return or Enter. The text you just typed becomes big and bold—the default style for Heading 1.
This Format menu offers a number of different paragraph types. You can do so either by dragging carefully across the entire line or by triple-clicking anywhere inside the line.
There's also a Standard workspace that's a little friendlier and features visual tools for creating layouts, but it's still a code-heavy experience. Its templates provide an easily-understandable starting place, while its built-in code hints and quick docs will help you write new code and actually understand what you're doing. If it's an easy-to-use visual web editor that you're after, though, Adobe Dreamweaver is likely to leave you cold and you'd be better off checking out our list of the best website builders to find a more intuitive solution.
Dreamweaver tends to draw a lot of shade from experienced web designers and developers who probably grew up with it and then grew out of it as they discovered better and more effective tools along the way. If you're working in web design then you doubtless have a go-to suite of tools as well as an eye on new developments, and it's unlikely that Dreamweaver's all-in-one approach is going to win you over, even though it's a much more serious and capable tool these days.
If you don't really know your stuff and don't have the time to learn all the ins and outs of web technology, Dreamweaver's probably a hard pass for you too. There are plenty more approachable packages out there that'll let you get results with a lot less effort than Dreamweaver demands. However if you're reasonably competent with code, already use other Creative Cloud apps and aren't yet committed to a specific web workflow, Dreamweaver's definitely worth checking out these days.
If you have a full CC subscription then it's included with your app portfolio and you won't have to pay a thing for it. Give it a try and see how it shapes up for you. That's a slightly less attractive prospect, but if you're intrigued then it's still not a bad price to pay to try it for a month in order to find out how you get on with it. Ultimately, Dreamweaver's a lot better than it used to be, and Adobe seems set on supporting and improving it.
That may not be enough for seasoned pros, but as a Swiss Army knife for the web it's a pretty attractive prospect right now. Decades ago, web browsers did not have developers tools as they do nowadays.
Most browsers provide users with powerful sets of tools that allow the user to see the effects of the code changes almost instantly. Dreamwork does have these tools, but for access, you need to have the software where results still inaccurate.
The improvements in the web browsers were a final nail in the coffin for Dreamweaver. In recent years adobe has tried its best to revive the software with frequent updates. But is it too late? For beginners, it can be a nightmare, and for experts, it is too simple.
The software is hovering between the two ends, and no one wants to have it. The software provides you with a real-time preview and helps you write meaningful new codes. For me, I prefer my coding app to be fast and accurate. The money spent on the software is not worth it as there are lots of other software to choose from. The interface seemed sluggish to me, and the interface was messy.
When it comes to open-source web development, Aptana leads the way. Aptana Studio has been around since , making it one of the most established and trusted web development software. It has an easy-to-use interface that makes it simple for developers to write code and design websites. You can download Aptana and use it free of cost without worrying about the fee.
It supports integration with Git, so developers can control their source codes. Users can access it on Mac, Windows, and Linux as well. You can reach them online or even through a phone to get answers for your quarries.
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