Dreamweaver Tutorials

Before we get started on this next set of Dreamweaver tutorials, I would first like to run over a few points on formatting text, we shall be covering this in great details, but reading this first will help you understand what we are hoping to archive.

Formatting in text Dreamweaver is like using a word processor. Use the Format pop-up menu in the Property inspector to set the default formatting style (Paragraph, Preformatted, Heading for a block of text. To change the font, size, color, and alignment of selected text, use the Text menu or the Property inspector. To apply text formatting such as bold, italic, code, underline, and so on, use the Text > Style submenu or the shortcut keys which we will detail in later Dreamweaver tutorials.

Another kind of formatting ( if you can call it that ), is a CSS style (CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets), and allows you apply text and page formatting, so what are the benefits of this, well let me explain. You can store CSS styles directly in the document head or, in an external style sheet. If you attach an external style sheet to several web pages, all the pages automatically reflect any changes you make to the style sheet. To access CSS styles, use the CSS Styles panel or the CSS mode of the text Property inspector. Dreamweaver MX2004 has much better support for editing CSS from within the interface, or you may wish to use a third part program called Topstyle pro.

CSS styles define the formatting for all text in a particular class or redefine the formatting for a particular HTML tag . CSS styles are supported only by the web browsers Netscape Navigator 4.0 and later versions, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and later versions, since 98% of the web as good support for Style sheets backward compatibility is not a issue. I don't expect you to understand any of the issues of CSS yet, this is going to be covered in later Dreamweaver Tutorials, the purpose of bringing this up is to highlight what we are going to be doing in later training courses.

Adding text
There are a number of ways to add text to a web page in Dreamweaver. You can type text directly in the document window, or you can cut and paste or import text from other web pages or word documents.

To add text to your document:
Type text directly into the Document window.
Copy text from another application, switch to Dreamweaver, position the insertion point in the , and choose Edit > Paste. Dreamweaver doesn’t preserve text formatting applied in the other application, but it does preserve line breaks.

Importing text from other documents
You can import tabular data into your document such as Microsoft Excel files as delimited text files.

If you import a html file that was produced in word you may first wish to clean it up using the format a word document from the command menu.

Importing tabular data:
Choose File > Import > Import Tabular Data.

Browse for the file you want .

Select the delimiter used when the file was saved as delimited text.

Right...let's get started, copy the first-site.htm into your local web folder and open the file up, start by clicking on the first movie in the chapter called Dreamweaver tutorials - formatting1.mov, you can stop the lesson at anytime should you wish to do so.