Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction

this class. I want to just introduce you to Dreamweaver. I know there are a lot of people out there that get the whole creative suite and they probably used photo shop a lot. Maybe you're playing around with some of the other tools, but many people I meet are kind of curious about Dreamweaver, but they haven't quite tried to get, or they opened it up once when they got overwhelmed because it doesn't work like all the other programs they're used to and turned it back off. So I'm gonna introduce you that and hopefully turn you on to the fundamentals of how it works and get you started. And I'll actually show you enough today that you can build a simple site with what you learn, and I'll give you a foundation if you want to go beyond that. Like I said, I'll show you how to do the sights set up process. That's a really important, fundamental step in Dreamweaver. If you've done it before, it will be a quick refresher if you've never done it. It's absolutely crucial toe working in the progra...

m, and I'll show you how to do that for new and existing sites show you how to use Dreamweaver with WordPress on my favorite program for making that easier to do and I'll show you a variety of CSS layouts is one of the things that makes Dreamweaver so challenging is that you're not just learning the interface of a new program. You have to learn at least a little bit of HTML and CSF to be able to do this, and that makes it like you have to learn three things at once so I can teach you everything there is to know about HTML and CSS in this class. I have a class dedicated to that topic. If you want more information on that, there's a two day HTML CSS class in the catalogue and Creative Live. But I will give you some Dreamweaver tips, and I will show you a little bit of CSS and HTML to help you understand how dream of our works and why some of the things you think you should be able to do in this program just don't work the way you want. It's not dream weavers fault. It's really all about how HTML and CSS work in world, and I'll toss in a few advanced tips here and there. You know, a lot of people kind of play creativelive in the background, even if they know a lot about the program. Hopefully, I'll grab you with something you haven't learned before and give you some advanced tips along the way. One of the things we have to start with these days when we're teaching classes on the creative suite is what version are you using? And I want to talk just briefly about some of the confusion about versions and some of the things you should know, depending on what version you're using. So as I mentioned, I've written every one of these books. I've seen the versions of Dreamweaver Change, and they actually go all the way to hear the latest one. Dreamweaver CC got CS six on top here, but somewhere in there there's a C C copy of Dreamweaver. Sisi is the latest version, and that's actually kind of interesting that CS six is there because CS six was the point that Adobe really stopped locking down a program with its version. And by that I mean, if you have Dreamweaver, CS six and you by my Dreamweaver CS six for Dummies book. They should match pretty closely. What you had in that program is what's in that book and not much changed after the program was released. But with Version CC, the Creative Cloud version one of the things Adobe did that's really exciting was to add this ability toe update the programs constantly. But as an instructor and as a student, this adds a challenge for us If you buy my Dreamweaver CC book. It was written with that first release version of Sisi, and since then, some new features have been added. Similarly, if you're watching this class today on Dreamweaver CC, you're going to see what the program looks like today. But if six months from now, a year from now, you watch this course, there may be some new features, even though it's still called Dreamweaver CC. Even if it has a variation on that name, there may be evolving features, and because of that, it's a little more challenging today to find instruction that perfectly matches the program. Now the good news about today is we're teaching the fundamentals. Those are the places that things tend to be the most similar, but the difference between CS six and C C is actually quite dramatic. If you've got a version CS six, the whole CSS panel and many of the other features also are quite different. If you're using any version of Sisi, there should be fewer differences and more minor differences moving forward. But I just have to acknowledge that right away, if you're using a previous version, it may look rather different. So what are the results of my whole when you got we have Let's start with you here in the studio audience. I know some of you have a little experience with HTML and CSS. What have you used before? You know. So I started with front page. Yeah, yeah, that's the one I have on my left. You know, HTML was with basic just word and then front page and then kind of evolved into Dreamweaver a little bit thinking anything. You win chocolate for that. I mean, that was one of the best catches ever, and you saved me great embarrassment for hitting her, and I haven't really officially met her much yet, so, you know, it's kind of a rude way to introduce yourself if you got your names as well. So and I'm I'm Lance Cadena. Well, Lance, thank you for that. And you're not alone. Many people started into the world of Web design with Microsoft Front Page and all due respect to Microsoft that has made some great programs. Most Web designers would agree front page was not their greatest success. So I'm Angie, and, um, I have very little experience, but mainly html. Well, welcome to the world of Web design, Angie. I'm here to prove that anybody can do it. I started out as a journalist, not a geek. So you really can learn this stuff even if you don't have any background. And today I will definitely be kicking it. Basic. Thank you. I hope you can follow along. My name's Joe and I started with free APS on for HTML and way back when so um in it. And I don't remember the one that I used to use. I can't remember it now, but I've used a little bit of Dreamweaver so great when three Weaver has been around for a long time. And I usually discovered Dreamweaver. I started working on the Internet about 1995 96 it was pretty new at that point. The commercial Web really started around 1995 so we were just starting to put some websites up that weren't purely academic or scientific. The Internet goes back far from that. In the early days, there were no tools you had to learn. HTML use note. Paterson Simple text and you wrote it. And I remember just getting to a point where I thought there has got to be a better way and I started searching for tools, and they were starting to be some fledgling tools. I used something called a Web weaver way back in the day. It actually had a spider in its logo because everybody in the early days of the Web used the spider is the way to do that, to symbolize the Web. And even it was just not everything I wanted. So as I was reviewing more and more of these tools and studying these tools when Dreamweaver came out, I just recognized right away. This one was exceptional. This one waas way ahead of the crowd, and fortunately, my agent and I both realized that, and I got to write the Dreamweaver for Dummies book early on and have revised it since. But it definitely stood out from the crowd then and since then has really held its ground quite well in comparison to things like front page. What other tools are out there? Jim, what are their programs of people tossed out? So, Jenny, I started with Go live. Thanks to creativelive. I moved pretty quickly over to dream Weaver. Mr. Defrost used to having you in the audience. We've got BB edits, huh? We've got Geo City's Yeah, lots, lots of page mills, A page maker, which is sort of interesting. Lots of lots of go lives. Front page no pad V. I was, um and yeah, Onda. Few Dreamweaver. So we're pretty much covering the own well, I captured. I captured some of them up here, and you're definitely bringing him through for me. Thank you so much. It's really kind of interesting. A lot of people loved Adobe go live because it was more visually intuitive to use. It didn't have CSS support, which is part of why during were why Adobe abandoned it when it acquired Dreamweaver. So it's not that Adobe didn't like Go live. It's the dream. Weaver had features that would have been prohibitively complicated toe add to go live. And that really was the evolution of the Web. More than anything else, Microsoft Front Page was replaced by a program called Microsoft Expression Web, and then that was also summarily put to sleep. So Microsoft seems to have abandoned this segment of the Web design world. At this point, the front page is gone and has been for quite some time. The program that replaced it also has been discontinued by Microsoft. So, really, if you're looking for a tool that lets you do custom design work that has strong HTML and CSS support, Dreamweaver is by far the strongest tool out there. I will talk a little bit about Muse. Anybody played around with Adobe Muse. So Dobie muses, a more visual tool and so relatively new addition to the creative suite, and I'll just run through If people are interested, a comparison of Dreamweaver and Muse and why you might choose one of the other. But for the most part, if you're interested in having your hands on the code and being able to get into the code, even though you don't have to in Dreamweaver. It's definitely the better tool before I get into it and I will get into the program very quickly. Now I think it's helpful for people to just understand the basics of how it works. Ah, lot of people get confused by the fact that websites live on the Internet, but I'm doing so. I build it on my own computer. And if the if the websites already online and I want to update it, how do I do that? So the basic way that Dreamweaver works is that you build the website itself in the privacy of your own computer. You set up a site on your local hard drive. I'm gonna be working on my local hard drive. You build all the pages here, and then after you've built them, you can actually preview them in a Web browser, so you'll see me preview pages in a Web browser. But I'm still working on my local computer. They don't have to be on the Internet for the browser to be able to interpret the HTML and CSS and actually see what's there. And then, once you've previewed them and gotten in the way you want. You can use the built in tools and Dreamweaver to transfer them up to a server. So Dreamweaver includes something called FTP file transfer protocol. Just really just the ability to move things from your local computer to a server up on the Internet. You're just copying the files up there. And part of why that site set up process is so important is you need the things on your local computer to be set up structurally the same way they'll be set up on that server so that when you publish it later, all your links still work. All your images appear. And then the last thing I always throwing here because so many people forget this part. After you launch your site, you need to go tell everybody about it. Make sure if you're if you're working in Dreamweaver in your building, a website that you don't forget that final really important piece. And that's part of where my latest book, Social Media, designed for dummies in the last class that I did hear it. Creative Live was also about social media design. What I'm finding is a Web designer and those of you who are thinking about this as a profession or as an extension of the other kinds of design services you offer is that people come to me now and not only do they want a website, they also want me to delight in their Facebook page, their YouTube channel and all those other things. And all of this starts to kind of play in together. So thinking about the Internet more holistically and thinking about design that works across all these different sites is really an important approach. I'm going to do one more audience poll Mackel windows. Actually, I have one of each. Um, I've always been a Windows guy, but I like my MCAS Well, so I am hybrid. Um, I two hybrid. I have, um, lots of experience on a Mac and for work use, uh, windows. So it doesn't matter to me either. One is fine, my people. So I like to say I go both ways. I love Macs. I love Windows. I literally travel with two laptops frequently one mac. And when windows and then all the Mac users are like, you could run parallels and have both. Yes, you're absolutely right. But I kind of like having a backup computer. I travel internationally a lot, and outside of the U. S. Windows tends to dominate. So I haven't easier time playing my Windows computer into all those different projectors and not carrying 27 different adapters and finding out there's one I don't have. So I usually travel with both. Then, if something happens to one of them, I have another one. What about you, Jim? Are you a cross platform? Really, I don't want to do back slash colon, anything I see. In my early days I looked at what my brother was doing on his PC and his windows, and I was just I was no thank you computers. And then, you know, in my career, once the Mac came out flourish because it just was an interface for me. But in the chat rooms, it's 50 50 and about 10% is both. But, you know, Mac Windows both Windows Mac Moon, Rivers on a Mac. Abby Lynn says, Howdy, Deborah's on the Mac. Nicole's doing both defrost. Of course, I'm sure he's he's he's got, like, 15 monitor. I've had planned creativelive and yeah, he's a master. Yeah, so it's about 50 50 in here right on. Well, part of why I ask that is because it's always interesting to me. And it used to be when I spoke to creative audiences. Most people use Max because creators tender love Macs and that's really balanced out. So the 50 50 out there is kind of confirming my feeling. I think more of us are using both, and some of the Mac users have actually gone toe windows now. Sorry, all due respect, Max or wonderful. I'm obviously using one now, but increasingly views both. But part of why I say that is when I get into Dreamweaver, I'll be on a Macintosh. But let me just reassure you, if you're on a windows once you're inside these programs, they work essentially the same. So you should have about the same experience on Windows or Mac, and everything I teach today will be applicable to both