The Welcome Screen

from: Adobe Dreamweaver CS5: Learn by Video

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About this lesson

Learn everything you need to know about the handy Welcome Screen, which is a good starting point for every Dreamweaver session.

From: Adobe Dreamweaver CS5: Learn by Video

This in-depth course, published in partnership with Peachpit Press, combines over 12 hours of video instruction with a 120-page full-color guide to teach you the fundamentals of Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 as well as the basic principles of web design. You’ll master the program’s interface and learn how to use essential commands and tools to design websites that combine type and images with rich media. Interactive quizzes throughout the course reinforce what you’ve learned and help you prepare for the “Web Communication Using Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 ” exam at the Adobe Certified Associate level.

$59.99

12 hrs

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This section provides a crash course in HTML. Even if you are already familiar with it, you might find it worthwhile to review your knowledge.

HTML Refresher
- Understanding what a URL is composed of is key to understanding HTML, Dreamweaver and your site structure.
  
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- The purpose of Dreamweaver is to write HTML code. Learn what HTML is, take a look at a few HTML tags, and learn how different browsers read HTML tags slightly differently.
  
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- Dreamweaver creates HTML for you. This section introduces you to some basic HTML tags to give you a better idea of what Dreamweaver is doing behind the scenes.
  
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This set of videos is all about Dreamweaver's core functionality and user interface.

Dreamweaver Introduction
- What is a WYSIWYG HTML editor anyway? This video not only provides the answer to this question, but also tells you about Dreamweaver's powerful Design, Code and Split views.
  
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- Learn everything you need to know about the handy Welcome Screen, which is a good starting point for every Dreamweaver session.
  
  The Welcome Screen
  
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- Dreamweaver's interface is full of powerful tools and features, yet well organized and easy to use. In this video, you'll learn about important UI elements, such as the Document window, and various panels such as the important Files and Properties panels.
  
  The Dreamweaver Interface
  
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- Working with Dreamweaver means working the way you want to. Learn more about the software's workspaces and how to arrange and save your own workspace.
  
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- Dreamweaver makes it easy to customize the workspace to suit your needs. In this video we set up the workspace area for this course.
  
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- You can set up a few additional preferences to make working in the Dreamweaver interface a bit easier. This video walks you through a few preferences for this course.
  
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- The Insert bar is a very important part of the Dreamweaver interface. Learn more about customizing this bar within Dreamweaver to speed up your workflow.
  
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Learn how to use a pre-built web page layout from Dreamweaver to create HTML files and CSS styles easily.

Getting a Quick Start
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- In this lesson, we use a starter layout page from Dreamweaver and begin to build a homepage for our website from that starter page.
  
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- In this lesson, you'll learn how to set up the header area of the homepage for one of the starter layouts in Dreamweaver and modify styles within that page.
  
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- Navigation makes or breaks a website. Learn how to add a navigation bar to your web layout and apply CSS to make it look the way you want.
  
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- Learn how to add links that feature CSS formatting to match them to the look and feel of your site.
  
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- The Dreamweaver starter layouts are organized to make modifying the pages easier. In this video, we will add a border to the entire page to give our homepage a more complete look.
  
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To realize your creative vision, you need to have a good plan. Learn the nuts and bolts of planning so your project runs as smoothly as possible.

Planning Your Website
- Project management covers many aspects. This set of videos will help you get your project off to a good start—and a successful completion.
  
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  - This lesson deals with the design document, which defines your website's purpose and target audiences. It will also help you determine what technology to use to implement your plan.
    
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  - The project plan is the heart of every website project, specifying all project requirements and details. Watch this video to learn more!
    
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  - Learn more about the many options Adobe offers to simplify communication at each stage of a project.
    
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- This set of videos covers the key aspects of site development to make sure you don't miss anything important.
  
  Site Development
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    - You want to make sure your website can be used by people with disabilities, so let's take a look at the WCAG guidelines 1.0 and 2.0 for accessibility.
      
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    - Learn how to maintain design and navigation consistency on your website and how this affects the usability of the site.
      
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    - What is meant by separating content from design? Content is based on HTML or databases, and design is mainly CSS. This video also explains absolute vs. relative positioning.
      
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- When it's over, it's never really over! Before you launch your site, you need to test it thoroughly. Dreamweaver offers tools that make testing reliable and easy.
  
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Learn why defining a site in Dreamweaver is essential and which steps you need to take to get it done.

Defining a Site in Dreamweaver
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Everything starts with a page. Here's what you need to know about creating, naming and saving web pages in Dreamweaver.

Creating a New Web Page
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This set of videos will give you an insight into the tools and options Dreamweaver offers for adding and formatting text.

Adding Text Content
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Formatting Text with CSS
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- Creating styles is one thing, managing them another. Learn where you can safely store the styles for your site.
  
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- Learn how to create a .css file and how to link your web pages to it.
  
  Creating and Linking to a .CSS File
  
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- Learn how to create styles for the HTML tags in your web pages.
  
  Creating a Style for an HTML Tag
  
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- Class styles are the only type of CSS style that can be applied to any text in a document, regardless of which tags control the text. Watch this video to learn how to create them and apply them to your text.
  
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- Watch this video to learn how to edit a style in an external .css file, unlocking the power of CSS.
  
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- Learn how to add your own font listings to the Dreamweaver default font list within the interface to make them available throughout all of your web sites.
  
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- This video introduces a special feature in Dreamweaver. If you use Modify > Page Properties to change settings, the software will create embedded styles.
  
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- Learn how to work with CSS to create various versions of your web pages to display for printers and other types of devices such as handhelds. The Style Rendering Toolbar offers a simple way to preview the various media types within Dreamweaver.
  
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- The Code Navigator displays a list of code sources related to a particular selection on your page. Once you get used to using this feature, you won't be able to live without it!
  
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A website would be nothing but a sea of type if you weren't able to add imagery and animations. Using Dreamweaver, you can turn your website into an engaging experience.

Images and Rich Media
- There are many file formats available for online use. Here's how to pick the right one for your purpose.
  
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- Learn the many options Dreamweaver offers for inserting images into a web page. Equally important, watch why you should always add alternate text.
  
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- This video explains why understanding the path from your HTML page to your image file is important. See how Dreamweaver can assist you with creating these paths.
  
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- Dreamweaver's Assets panel is an essential tool for placing images. Here's how to use it and how to add and manage favorites.
  
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- Even though Dreamweaver is a web editor, it supports a number of image-editing features. For example, you can crop, optimize, and sharpen images. For more complex tasks, you can turn to a professional graphics application. Watch how!
  
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- You're probably familiar with the Smart Object feature from Photoshop. Let this video show you that you can also work with Smart Objects in Dreamweaver to establish a live connection to a PSD file.
  
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- The web would be much less entertaining without Flash. Watch this video to learn what Dreamweaver has to offer to make your website a rich media experience.
  
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- Watch this video to learn how the Favorites panel can help you organize your site by bookmarking images you use most frequently.
  
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This batch of videos provides expert knowledge about links and everything you need to know about Dreamweaver to create and edit them, how to define image maps, how to create rollovers, and how to insert a Fireworks navigation bar.

Creating Links
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- Watch this video to learn how to link a web page to a resource on the Internet.
  
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- Watch this video to learn how to link a web page to a Microsoft Excel or Word file.
  
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- Watch this video to learn how to create an e-mail link, which creates a new e-mail message with the recipient�s address already filled in.
  
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- Watch this video to learn how to create a clickable hotspot on an image and link that hotspot to another resource.
  
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- Dreamweaver lets you create and edit rollovers—images which change when the pointer moves across them. Watch how easy it is to create them by letting Dreamweaver do the work for you!
  
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This set of videos will explain all of the important details about CSS and the best way to use CSS to enhance your web layout.

Page Layout with CSS
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- The box model serves as a visual design aid. This video provides details on this helpful feature.
  
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- This video shows you what other options you have when creating div tags.
  
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- CSS styles are also ideal for customizing links. This video tells you how to make the links on your site visually attractive and consistent.
  
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- Dreamweaver CS5 offers new CSS inspection tools to make editing and troubleshooting CSS properties a simple process. Learn how to use these new tools to simplify the CSS process directly within Dreamweaver.
  
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- Dreamweaver offers easy ways to work with CSS selectors and provides tools to assist you in working with CSSs. Learn more about the selector types and how to use the Dreamweaver CSS tools for troubleshooting.
  
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Tables are an important way to display data within a web page. Learn how to build a table from scratch, edit table properties using CSS, merge and split cells, modify rows and columns, and let Dreamweaver create table structure for content from a spreadsheet or any delimited text file.

Tables
- To start using tables on your website, you need to create one. This lesson shows you how easy it is in Dreamweaver.
  
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- HTML offers a wide variety of options to modify a table. Watch this lesson to learn more!
  
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- Learn how to take advantage of CSS to match text in a table to the rest of your website.
  
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- Learn how Dreamweaver can easily create the perfect table structure for content from a spreadsheet or any delimited text file.
  
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- This video shows you how to merge and split cells to make your table look the way you want.
  
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- Dreamweaver allows you to work on rows and columns. Here's how!
  
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Forms are a great way to collect data from users of your website. Learn how to create a form and add form elements, such as text fields, text areas, radio buttons, checkboxes, list menus and a submit button. Also learn how to make sure that user input is transmitted correctly.

Forms
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- Lists, menus, radio buttons and checkboxes are common HTML form elements. This video explains how to use them.
  
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- In this lesson, you'll learn the steps you need to take to ensure that user input gets back to you.
  
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- How do you make sure users enter the data you need? Use form validation! This lesson explains what form validation is and how you can add it to your form.
  
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- Watch this video to learn how to add validation to your forms so you receive the user input that you need.
  
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- Spry is an exciting way to implement Ajax on your website. Watch why Dreamweaver's Spry features make it easy to add form validation with user-friendly messages.
  
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Dreamweaver offers two great tools to facilitate and speed up site maintenance: templates and libraries. This set of videos shows you how to use them.

Reusable Content
- This video contains all you need to know about templates and library items in Dreamweaver.
  
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- Learn how to use the Library, which is a special Dreamweaver file containing a collection of assets that you can place in your web pages.
  
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- Once you have created a library item, see how easy it is to modify that library item on all of the pages that use it. Here we put the power of Dreamweaver to work to keep all pages up to date.
  
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- A template is a special type of document that you use to design a "fixed" page layout. Here's how you convert an HTML page to a template.
  
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- Once you start using a Dreamweaver template for your website files, learn how to create additional pages based on that template file.
  
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  03:59
- When working with templates, you can define regions as "editable" to control which page elements template users are allowed to edit. This lesson shows you how.
  
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  05:12
- Once a template has been added to your site, learn how to apply that template to an existing page.
  
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  07:43
- Learn how to detach a page from a template in order to use an existing template to create additional templates.
  
  Detaching from a Template Page
  
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Before you push your website live, you need to test it thoroughly to make sure everything works the way you want. Dreamweaver provides a number of testing tools to help you create a reliable web experience.

Testing
- Dreamweaver has a built-in spell-checker that helps you eliminate mistakes on your pages before you publish them. See how!
  
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- Nothing is more frustrating for a visitor of a website to click on a link and get an error message. Watch this lesson to learn how to search your site for broken links and fix them.
  
  Checking for Broken Links
  
  08:04
- Learn how to preview your site in a web browser and how to add a browser to Dreamweaver�s browser list.
  
  Previewing Pages in the Browser
  
  03:45
- There are a number of web browsers, and each one has its own way of rendering web pages. In this video, you'll learn how Dreamweaver can help you identify and fix issues concerning browser compatibility.
  
  Checking Browser Compatibility
  
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- The sample website needs to be optimized because the nav bar is rendered differently in Internet Explorer and Firefox. This video shows you how to get it right.
  
  Browser Issues
  
  06:53
- It's important to run your own tests, but it's just as important to allow users to test your site. Here's how you can gather valuable feedback.
  
  Gathering User Feedback
  
  03:39
- It is important for your page to load quickly in the browser for the user. Learn how to keep track of the page load time and page file size within the Dreamweaver interface.
  
  Page Load Time
  
  06:01
- Dreamweaver has a built-in program that allows you to extend the features of the program. Learn how to download and install an extension to create a sitemap that allows screen readers to navigate your site in a more efficient way for accessibility.
  
  Dreamweaver Extensions
  
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Learn how to publish your site to a web server and prevent overwriting one another's edits when working in a team. And check out the video on a great new Adobe service called InContext Editing, which allows non-technical users to conveniently edit web pages.

Publishing & Maintenance
- The Files panel is key to managing files in Dreamweaver. Here you will learn how easily you can move, rename and delete project files.
  
  Managing Files
  
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- Set up your web server information so you can upload and download files for your website directly from within Dreamweaver so they can be viewed in a browser directly from your web server.
  
  Entering Web Server Information
  
  07:35
- Learn how to expand the Files Panel so you can view your web files and your local files on the web server at the same time.
  
  Expanding the Files Panel
  
  07:12
- InContext Editing is a feature that allows non-technical users to edit web pages directly through their browsers. Learn more about this service offered by Adobe.
  
  InContext Editing
  
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- Learn about Subversion integration features within Dreamweaver. These features allow you to add version control directly within Dreamweaver for team environments.
  
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You've come a long way, but there's even more! This training package has a few bonus videos you shouldn't miss!

Bonus Videos
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- Here you will learn about Spry tabbed panels and how to work with Spry tabs.
  
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- This video will show you how to take an image-based Fireworks nav bar and move it into text links.
  
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