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| Introducing Dreamweaver: |
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While Dreamweaver has a lot of advanced features for those who want to use them, it is also very easy to use. Let's get familiar with the different windows you will be using.
The Document Window:
The Document window is where you will do most of your editing. You can type in this window and it will appear almost exactly the way it will appear in Netscape or Internet Explorer. (Note: There are differences between Netscape and Internet Explorer and web pages don't always look the same in both browsers. If you are doing anything very complicated, you should make sure to look at your web pages in both Netscape and Internet Explorer. Dreamweaver helps you do this easily. It is also a good idea to look at your pages on a Macintosh, Windows-based computer, and Unix.)
For Windows users, the menu for Dreamweaver will appear in the top of the Document window. For Macintosh users, the menu will appear at the top of the desktop. Dreamweaver is almost identical on the Macintosh and Windows. If you learn to use one, you will have no problems using the other!
The Objects Window:
The Objects window displays icons of some of the common items found on web pages. These items include things like Images (
), Horizontal Rules (
), Tables (
), and Dates (
). To insert any of these items, click on the icon in the Objects window.
The Properties Window:
The Properties window contains information about whatever you have highlighted in the Document window. The image above, for example, contains information about a piece of text. You can change the size, font and color of the text from this window. There are also several buttons on the right portion of the window that are probably familiar to you from other word processing programs. These buttons allow you to make the text bold and/or italic, change the alignment of the text and even turn it into a bulleted or numbered list.
The Site Window:
Defining "sites" in Dreamweaver is one of its nicest features. A "site" are all the web pages associated with one project. You generally create a different site for each set of course web pages you are working on and perhaps for your own personal web pages. As you will recall from the introduction, it's generally a good idea to have a set of "working" files that are located on your computer (the local files) and the "official" set of pages that are located on Owlnet or RUF (the remote files). This window makes it easy to see what pages have been moved to the "official" site.
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