Intermediate Dreamweaver CS5

About This Course

Take your web design skills to new heights as you master advanced Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 techniques! You’ll get hands-on practice in using pure CSS layout and discover how to incorporate multimedia elements such as Flash video and audio. In addition, you’ll explore the use of XML and XSL.

Whether you’re planning a career in web design, designing a website for your business, or developing sites as a hobby, this course will give you the tools you need to look like a pro. In just 12 lessons, you’ll harness the power of this industry-standard Web development tool.

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Robert Fuller.

Robert Fuller is a veteran Web developer, educator, and author. His corporate experience extends from Silicon Alley to Silicon Valley, where he has held almost every post from intern to senior developer. He has logged tens of thousands of classroom hours, teaching online and at the collegiate and corporate levels. Robert has had the good fortune of being published throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. His titles include Dreamweaver Virtual Classroom and HTML Virtual Classroom for McGraw-Hill/Osborne, and The Photoshop Bible (standard and professional editions for both CS2 and CS3) and HTML in 10 Simple Steps or Less for John Wiley & Sons.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

In our first lesson, you'll get familiar with the code Adobe Dreamweaver generates in response to the steps you perform. Intimidated by code? Don't be. By the end of this lesson, you'll have a much better understanding of how HTML, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript work together to build your site content. Previous non-coders will come away with these topics demystified, and code-savvy users will learn how Dreamweaver enhances code editing.

Friday - Lesson 02

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) have been with us since the mid-1990s. Yet, because of the slow state of browser development, it's only in the last few years that CSS has taken its rightful place at the center of modern Web design. CSS governs content presentation, while HTML and XHTML handle document structure. In this lesson, we'll take a closer look at CSS, see how it works hand-in-hand with markup, and examine the tools Dreamweaver gives us to work with CSS in a "what you see is what you get" environment.

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Snippets take some of the drudgework out of site design. Do you have a common element—like a document footer with copyright information it—that you're going to insert in every page of your site? Turn it into a snippet. Next time you need it, just click a button and voilà! Instant page content. In today's lesson, we'll examine Dreamweaver snippets, learn how they function, and discuss how to fit them into your workflow.

Friday - Lesson 04

A Dreamweaver template allows you to fix the layout of pages so that inexperienced folks can't mess them up when they're updating content. You'll learn what Dreamweaver templates do, how to build them, and how to apply them to the pages of our site.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Today you're going to learn all about styling pages for devices other than the browser. We'll look at the different types of devices you can style for—smartphones, assistive technologies, and printers, to name just a few. And we'll examine some of the tools Dreamweaver provides to make styling for devices easier.

Friday - Lesson 06

Accessibility. You've heard the term, but do you really know what it means? Section 508 of the U.S. federal Rehabilitation Act includes rules for making site content accessible for users with disabilities. Many other countries have similar rules. Today we'll discuss how to keep Dreamweaver on the ball, accessibility-wise, so anyone can use your site with ease.

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

Have you been to YouTube to watch videos? Or have you been to Amazon.com to preview music? These types of audio and video files are media objects. In today's lesson, we'll talk about what software you need to play media objects and how Dreamweaver lets you place this type of content within the sites you build.

Friday - Lesson 08

Ever tinkered with JavaScript? It's the scripting language behind form field validation, rollover images, and other types of dynamic interaction. In Dreamweaver, we call JavaScript effects behaviors; in today's lesson, we'll delve into the various Dreamweaver interface features for creating these effects. And the best part is you won't ever have to touch the code!

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

Building on our JavaScript experiences from the last lesson, we're about to jump into the wild and wooly world of frameworks. That's right—more technobabble! It's time to demystify this stuff, look at the next generation of JavaScript features, and learn what the Adobe Spry framework's all about. Today we begin our examination of Dreamweaver's Spry features, focusing on Spry Widgets.

Friday - Lesson 10

When you create a Spry data set, you're making a miniature database. You can store information in something as simple as an HTML table and then have Spry go to work on it. You can pull that information into a site's pages dynamically, as opposed to typing it all into a new page. So batten down the hatches, and get ready to go all Web 2.0 on this thing!

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

You've seen the acronym all over the place. It's time to find out how you can put XML (eXtensible Markup Language) to work. Today you'll examine XML and create a simple database. Then you'll pull data out of that database and format it with eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)—all without a lick of programming!

Friday - Lesson 12

If you want to design anything, you need a firm understanding of the people you're designing for. In today's lesson, we'll step away from Dreamweaver and look at the most important component of the Web—us. You'll discover how we humans read Web content and learn how to structure your content so that it fascinates your fellow domesticated primates.

Requirements

You will need Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 or CS5.5 for Windows, or Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 or CS5.5 for Macintosh; (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); Windows XP with Service Pack 3; Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1; or Windows 7; or Mac OS X v10.5.8 or v10.6.

You will also need Internet access, email, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).

Before taking this course, you should complete Robert Fuller's Introduction to Dreamweaver CS5 online course or possess equivalent experience. You should also have the ability to install programs on your computer and work with files.