Define a New Site in Dreamweaver

The first step in building your website is Defining Your Site. There are several Categories in the Site Definition window; we will focus our attention on the Local Info and the Remote Info. This is key since we will be building our website on our local computer, then publishing it on a remote webserver.

Creating Links in Dreamweaver

Links or if you prefer, hyperlinks, create connections to many types of files including html pages, movies, PDFs, sound, etc. Other links may include Anchors, Null links, and email links.

Links can be created a number of ways, i.e. the Site window, document window or via the Property inspector.

Inserting Fireworks HTML into a Dreamweaver Webpage

In this tutorial we are going to insert a table that was created in Fireworks (be sure to check out the Fireworks tutorial on Creating a Navigation Bar). Once we have inserted the Fireworks HTML into our Dreamweaver document, we will add the corresponding links using the Point-to-File method we learned about in an earlier tutorial.

Behaviors

In addition to page layout, Dreamweaver has the capacity to add interactivity to a page with the use of 'Behaviors'. This can be anything from controlling a Shockwave movie, to opening a browser window, to displaying a status bar message.

Creating a Behavior

To create a behavior, you must first decide which HTML tag it will be applied to. This decision will depend on the type of behavior you would like to add. Once you have decided on the tag, you must select it. This can be done by placing the cursor within the element on your page, or by selecting from the Tag list at the bottom:

Behavior Events

There are several events that can trigger your Behaviors. There is a complete listing in the Dreamweaver Help section. Here are a few of the more common events:

Status Bar Messages

A status bar message is a custom message that appears on the lower left corner of the browser. This usually happens during an onMouseover event. These are probably the easiest Behaviors to create in Dreamweaver.

Popup Windows

Popup Windows can easily be created with Dreamweaver, the following example shows how to create a popup window.