Anytime you find yourself learning a new application it is important to understand the ‘workspace’ – basically where to find tools, palettes, how to change views, how to hide and show items, etc.
Too many times people jump right in without doing some simple investigating and end up randomly selecting items in menus getting random results and basically learning nothing from it. Which lengthens the amount of time before being able to use the application effeciently.
First step is to read the menus. Without clicking on the menus and thinking what each menu probably represents. This will make it so you do not even have to look under menus you have seen in other applications.
You can then concentrate on the menus you do not know and start learning the important stuff!
Now with all of that said, it is important to understand that Dreamweaver is a bit glitchy and it often does weird things. If you are working on a file it is best to not click around randomly on buttons, menus, etc. Dreamweaver is writing code and often can leave code fragments which cause irregularities. In class – DO NOT click on items that are not part of the exercise and PLEASE DO follow the steps exactly the same as the instructor. Otherwise you will get different and often unexpected results.
Here are a few basic tips when working with Dreamweaver:
- Create a new site when working on a website, you can go under the SITE MENU to do this.
- You will want to have the INSERT BAR / PANEL to be placed at the top of your screen. You can access the INSERT BAR under WINDOW MENU.
- You will want the PROPERTIES BAR / PANEL to be placed at the bottom of your screen. Also found under the WINDOW MENU.
- You will want your CSS PANEL to be placed at the top right of your screen.
- Your FILES PANEL to be located at the bottom right of your screen.
- Once you have set up your PANELS the way you want, you can save this ‘workspace’ by going under the WINDOW MENU > WORKSPACE LAYOUT > NEW WORKSPACE
INSERT BAR
The insert bar simply does what it says – it is used to insert items onto the page. Basically place your cursor where you want the new item and then select the item you want to insert in the insert bar.
The INSERT MENU does the same thing, so if you can’t find what you are looking for in the insert bar you can go to the menu. (if you use the insert bar, this means one less menu to learn!)
PROPERTIES BAR
Once an item is placed onto the page you may want to modify the item (same as using EDIT TAG in BBEDit). This bar is unfortunately misnamed as it corresponds with the MODIFY MENU. (also one less menu to learn if you are using the bar instead). The PROPERTIES BAR can be used to change HTML attributes and CSS properties so caution – make sure you are aware of which language you are changing.
CSS PANEL
The CSS Panel is used to add, create, link to, modify all linked and embedded styles.
FILES PANEL
The Files Panel is used to control your files / folders of your web site. It is from here where you can open, rename, delete, and move items. It is important to use the files panel instead of making changes on your desktop as Dreamweaver will attempt to update any links or references as you make changes – saving you a ton of work and headache. Making changes outside of Dreamweaver might cause you to have lots of work and headache.
Creating a File
More information on working with Dreamweaver:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/dreamweaver/cs/using/WScbb6b82af5544594822510a94ae8d65-7fc5a.html