Dreamweaver CS4 Site Design

Length
3 Days (21 actual hours of training)

Class Fees
1 Student       $945
2 Students    $1590
3 Students    $2085
4+ Students     Call

Note: Maximum class size at our Atlanta classroom is four students. Five or more students must train on-site at their place of business. For more information, please read about our class sizes.

Note on Fees:  Multiple student discounts are for multiple students from one organization.

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Class Times
Classes can be held at any time per the customer's schedule, but unless arranged otherwise, classes run from 9 AM to 5 PM each day, with an hour for lunch.

Description
Our Dreamweaver CS4 Web Site Design course is an entry level class that teaches students the fundamentals needed to create basic web sites. It is the cornerstone to further Dreamweaver studies. As an example of the work you can do after taking this class, "theoretically" you should be able to create a web site such as the Art=Visual site that you now see, minus the Flash header and menu at the top of each page. We say "theoretically," because although you will have all the skills needed, it still takes practice and experience to solve common HTML problems that arise with every web site project.

Students do need to understand that to produce the fancy, highly interactive web sites that they see on the Internet today, they need ADVANCED Photoshop, Flash, Action Script (computer programming language for Flash), and database programming skills. Nothing is actually created in Dreamweaver; it's just the program that is used to lay out all the text, graphics, video, and Flash animations that are created in their respective programs.  For those familiar with InDesign, Dreamweaver is the "InDesign" for web pages. Our Dreamweaver Web Site Design course is the first step towards creating high quality sites.

After completing this course a student will be able to:

• Set up a Dreamweaver project
• Add and format text
• Use Cascading Style Sheets to control text
• Import graphics
• Create text and image links
• Design web sites with DIV tags and CSS
• Create tables
• Save time by creating Library Items
• Save time by creating templates
• Create user fillable data entry forms
• Test your web page
• Publish the web page for Internet use

Class materials
The Dreamweaver CS4 Web Site Design class uses Macromedia's Dreamweaver 8 course book that has been updated by Steve Markos to include the latest features of CS4. This book is used because it is the only book that has exercises that the students must do by themselves, and it functions as a real class workbook, not a typical reference or self-styled learning book. Students can later re-work the entire book, which creates a web site from scratch, for further practice and understanding.

Art=Visual classes have plenty of hands-on practices that allow students to create real world art and compositions.

Course Outline

Lesson 1: The Dreamweaver Interface
• Updating Dreamweaver software
• The Dreamweaver Start page
• General preferences
• The Dreamweaver interface
• Command panel overviews
• Customizing the workspace
• Rulers, Guides, and Grids

Lesson 2: Creating a Dreamweaver Project Site
• Creating a new Dreamweaver project
• Creating new home page and additional HTML pages
• HTML page technical tips
• Metatags
• Saving a page
• Previewing an HTML page in a web browser
• Page Properties panel

Lesson 3: Adding and Formatting Text
• Four ways to add text to your web pages
• Importing MS Word and Excel documents
• Overview of text formatting options
• Adding special typography items
• Setting font defaults for a web page

Lesson 4: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Purpose of CSS
• CSS Styles Panel
• Tag, Class, and Advanced CSS rules
• CSS Rule Definitions overview
• Creating, editing, applying, and removing style rules
• Embedded Style Sheets and External Style Sheets
• Creating and attaching External style sheets
• Media type for style sheets
• Adding embedded styles to an external style sheet
• CSS Hierarchy
• Using Dreamweaver CSS templates

Lesson 5: Working with Graphics
• Acceptable image file formats
• JPEG vs. GIF
• Assets Panel
• Adding images to a page
• Importance of Alt Text
• Modifying image properties
• Editing images directly in Dreamweaver
• Setting up a default Image Editor
• Basics of optimizing images in Photoshop or Image Ready
• Aligning images with text
• Adding Flash content to a page
• Image maps

Lesson 6: Creating Navigation
• Creating internal text links
• Testing links
• Creating internal links with images
• Creating a link from scratch
• Changing link colors
• Creating links to external web pages and targets
• Using the Assets Panel to assist in creating links
• Creating anchor links
• Creating email links
• Creating a "Jump" menu
• Updating links in the Files Panel when moving or renaming files

Lesson 7: Designing Web Pages with DIV tags and CSS
• The purpose of Web page design with DIV tags and CSS
• Web page width considerations
• Creating DIV tags
• CSS and DIV tags
• Inserting text, graphics, and Flash into a DIV tag
• Adding margins, padding, and borders
• Relative and Absolute positioning
• Creating and modifying tables

Lesson 8: Library Items and Templates
• The purpose of Library Items
• The Assets Panel
• Creating a Library Item
• Adding a Library Item to a page
• Editing a Library Item
• Updating Library Items
• Detaching a Library Item from it's origin
• Reasons for using your own templates
• Save an existing document as a template
• Selecting editable and non editable regions
• Using a template to create a new document
• Editing a template
• Updating pages made with a template
• Disassociating a page from its template

Lesson 9: Creating On-Line Forms
• Elements of forms: Form creation and CGI scripts
• The Form Box
• Text Fields
• Radio Buttons and Check Boxes
• Drop-down menus
• Submit and Reset Buttons
• Form item accessibility
• Form Focus
• Setting Form Actions and Methods
• Basics of setting up your CGI script

Lesson 10: Testing and Publishing Your Web Site
• Checking Links
• Changing links site wide
• Site Reports
• Checking for browser compliance
• Locating an HTML file in a large web site
• What is FTP?
• Setting up a web site's server info to allow FTP directly from Dreamweaver
• Connecting to your server
• File view columns
• Uploading and downloading files
• Cloaking
• Synchronize function
• Deleting files from the server