What is Dreamweaver?

Macromedia Dreamweaver is web page creation tool that allows the user to work to quickly create, build, and manage websites and Internet applications. Dreamweaver is good for both small personal pages or large dynamic departmental sites. Dreamweaver easily integrate with other Macromedia products, such as Flash and Fireworks, allowing for more features on your web pages (e.g. animation, interactivity, etc.) Other advantages of using Dreamweaver include: a nice selection of built-in buttons, templates, and the ability to clean up the HTML in files converted from Word.

The Document Window displays the current document as it is edited.

The Objects Panel contains quick shortcuts to insert objects into the document, and to change the the layout views in the workspace.

Dreamweaver provides many floating panels, such as the HTML Styles Panel and the Code Inspector, which enable the user to work with other Dreamweaver elements.

The Launcher bar contains buttons for opening and closing the most frequently used inspectors and panels.

The Property Inspector is context sensitive: the properties it displays depends on the object selected, e.g., a table, text, image etc. Once selected, this is where the object's properties such as color, font type/size, and alignment can be modified.

A Table Property Inspector

Inserting images to a web site is one of the most common tasks in Macromedia Dreamweaver.

To insert an image, place the insertion point where you want the image to appear in the Document window, and then click the Insert Image button in the Common category of the Objects panel.

In the dialog box that appears, click Browse to choose a file, or type the path for the image file.

Set the image's properties in the Property inspector window.

Defining A New Site

It is not necessary to define a site when using Dreamweaver, but it is recommendend. Defining a site in Dreamweaver will help keep your files organize, as well as creating many shortcuts to tasks such as linking files and connecting to your remote server. To define a new site:

Select Site > New Site
In the Site Definition window, enter a name for your site and choose the location of your site's root folder. This is where the "index.html" file for your site is located as well as all of the HTML and image files used for this site.

How to publish your site?
Select Window >Site Files to open the Site window. At the top of the Site window, choose the desired site from the dropdown menu.

If you 're using FTP to transfer files, you may click Connect to open a connection to the remote server, which allows you to see the files on the remote site before transferring any new or edited files.

Select the desired files to upload and click Put (blue up arrow). The file has to be saved before it is uploaded. To upload dependent files, click Yes; to skip them, click No.