Intermediate Dreamweaver CS6

About This Course

Take your Adobe Dreamweaver skills to the next level with more advanced techniques under the tutelage of a proven Web development expert. In this new intermediate-level Dreamweaver course, you'll learn to harness the power of this industry-standard Web design tool.

You'll examine pure CSS layout and discover how to get the most out of Dreamweaver's templates. The course also shows you how to incorporate multimedia elements such as video and manipulate data using XML data and XSL. Throughout the course, you'll get hands-on experience with Dreamweaver as you develop a sample site using your new skills.

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 work like a pro. By the end of this course, you'll have a solid, in-depth understanding of traditional layout and how it translates to the Web so you can make your sites clearer, cleaner, and more accessible.

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 drudge work out of site design. Do you have a common element—like a document footer with copyright information in 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. In this lesson, 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

It's estimated that in 2013, the number of people using handheld devices to view the Web will outnumber those on desktops and laptops. So, the future is now! We've examined ways to make our pages play nice when printed, so how do we get our stuff looking good on these other devices, too? Well, the mechanism is pretty much the same, but we have a few more variables to deal with. Fortunately, Dreamweaver has some very handy tools for making this job easier, and you'll learn about them in this lesson!

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

In this lesson, we'll continue our discussion of styling for devices and finish up the smartphone layout that we started in Lesson 6. You'll learn how to find out device screen widths, and we'll talk more about media queries. You'll also work more with the Multiscreen Preview window to see your work as we go along. We'll finish up by tinkering with some CSS properties that are a bit tricky to find but necessary when styling for smartphone browsers. By the end of the lesson, our site will be optimized for a smartphone!

Friday - Lesson 08

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 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

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 10

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 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

Adobe Dreamweaver CS6, version 12.0 for Windows or Adobe Dreamweaver CS6, version 12.0 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; Windows 7, or Windows 8; Mac OS X v10.5.8 or v10.6; Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox , and Google Chrome Web browsers, 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).

Prerequisites: Introduction to Dreamweaver CS6

Note: If you are purchasing the software from the Adobe Creative Cloud, please speak with the instructor in the Discussion Area before downloading and installing your software.