Dreamweaver’s How to Guide for Beginners
Adding Special Characters to your page.
Sometimes when typing a document in dreamweaver you may need to add special characters like Ã?© and Ã?®. This can be done fairly easy and quickly. To insert a special character, assuming you already have dreamweaver open and the page you want to insert the character on, click on Insert / HTML / Special Character / and then the character that you wish to use. You will see characters like copyright, registered, trademark, and more. If you don’t see the character that you are looking for, click on “other”. This will bring up a dialog box with more special characters. Simply click the one you want and click ok. That’s how you insert a special character into your site.
Adding a Graphic to your page.
Adding a graphic to your site can be done quickly by simply by clicking Insert / Image. A window will pop up for you to locate your graphic, once you have located the graphic that you wish to use, double click it and it will insert it in your page. Be sure your graphic isn’t to big or it will cause your site to load slower. So you may want to downsize an image by using a program like fireworks or photoshop.
Inserting a Horizontal Line in your page.
Horizontal lines are often used to separate stuff like text, paragraphs, etc. To insert a horizontal line in your page click Insert / HTML / Horizontal Rule. That will place a horizontal line on your page.
Creating a Hyperlink on your page.
To create a hyperlink, type the text that you want to be the link. Highlight over the text that you want to make into a hyperlink. In the properties window, type in the url in the link field. If you want to link to a file that is on your hard drive, click the little folder beside the link field and a window will pop up. Locate your file on your hard drive and double click it. Now your text should be linked.
Creating a Mailto Form
To create a mailto form in dreamweaver, you will need to create the form first. To do this click Insert / Form / Text Field. Now you need to set the form properties. To set the properties, click on the form box and type action: mailto:youremailaddress, method: GET, Enctype: Text/Plain, in the properties window. Then you will need to insert a submit button. To insert a submit button click Insert / Form / Button. The action for the button will be “Submit Form”. Now you can save your file and upload it to test it. You can also change the look of your forms using CSS.
Creating Rollover Images on your page.
Rollover images are cool and easy to create. A rollover image is an image that changes when someone place the mouse over it. To create a rollover image, click Insert / Image Objects / Rollover Image. A dialog box will appear with the following fields: Image Name, Original Image, Rollover Image, Alternate Text, and Go To URL. In the Image Name field, type in the name of your image. In the Original Image field, click the browse button to locate your image on your hard drive (this is the image that will be on your site). In the Rollover Image field, click the browse button to locate your image on your hard drive (this will be the image that will appear when the mouse is on it). In the Alternate Text field, type in text describing what the image is. In the URL field, you need to type in the link for your image. Once all that is completed, click ok. Save your file and press F12 to preview it.
Changing the Background on your page.
To work with the background, click Modify / Page Properties or press Ctrl J. A dialog box will appear with many options. Under Category, click on Appearance, on the right you will see the background options. You can use a solid back ground color or you can choose an image for your background. To use an image for your background, click Browse to locate the image on your hard drive, once you have located it, double click it. Then in the dialog box click apply and then OK.
