Resources

Although we’ve given a foundation for getting Web content online using Dreamweaver, we’ve only scratched the surface of using Dreamweaver to its fullest potential.

What we Left Out

Of the many things we didn’t cover, here is a list of those that you might look into next:

• Styles
  are used as an extension to the built-in notion of “bold” and “italics.” That is, you could define a Style called, perhaps, french that makes everything blue and then apply that Style to everything that is french. If you then later wanted to change everything in french to be green, it would simply be a matter of changing the Style.

  Styles are Dreamweaver’s metaphor for dealing with CSS, so knowledge of CSS selectors and properties would be greatly helpful.

• Templates
  are used to establish a common look across multiple pages. Simply, a Template is simply a regular Dreamweaver page but with the addition of so-called Template Regions. When a Template Region is added to a Page, its contents may be changed by any page that uses that Template. So if you wanted your Site’s menu to be constant across all its pages, you need only create a Template for your Page and create a Template Region for your content.

  Then you re-use your Template many times: each time you can change the content section of the page, but since the menu is not inside of a Template Region, it will not be editable. This has the added advantage that when you update a Template, all the pages that are created using that Template are updated accordingly.

Beyond these Dreamweaver offers many additional features including JavaScript Behaviors, Spry Data Objects, Database Integration, and much more.

Where to Go

To continue learning Dreamweaver, consider the following:

• Dreamweaver’s Built-In Help
  is a better resource than you may expect. The newest versions of Dreamweaver (MX 2004 and later) all come with excellent help sections that are in many cases tutorial-based rather than troubleshooting-base. From this author’s experience, you will be hard-pressed to find a subject that is not very clearly covered and demonstrated using Dreamweaver’s built-in help.

  To access the built-in help features, simply press F1 while in Dreamweaver. This help information is also available online.