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Defining a Site

By now you should have created A Set of folders to store your work. Open the Site Definition dialog by the menu option Sites=>New Site. If you need to change settings for a site already defined, then choos Sites => Manage Sites, select the site you wish to change and choose edit.

 

The Site Definition Dialog will open. Make sure the Advanced tab and Local Info category are selected.

Name the site Dreamweaver Exercises, and use the browse icon to select your folder (site_yourname) as the root folder. Do the same for the default images folder using the images folder you created inside the root folder.

Press OK to close the Site Definition dialog and Done to close the Site Management dialog.

 

Go to the Menu Bar and choose File=>New...

Select category=>Basic Page, then Basic Page=>HTML. Check "Make XHTML compliant" and click OK.

In the title field above the preview window type Home and save the file as index.htm in the root folder of your site.

Go to the Menu Bar and choose File=>New...

Select category=>Basic Page, then Basic Page=>CSS. Save this page as text.css inside the CSS folder in your root folder.

Bring index.htm to focus. In the CSS Styles box click on the left icon at the base of the window

 

 

Click on the browse button and find the css file you just created click on OK to select the file, and OK again to exit the dialog box. Text.css should now
appear in the CSS Styles panel.

 

Previewing in Browser

Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG program, but to get a completely accurate picture of how your page is looking you need to preview it in a browser. Frequently you will want to preview your work in several browsers to ensure that it displays correctly.

Go to the file menu and choose File=>Preview in Browser=>Edit Browser List.

Set Firefox as the primary browser, and IE as the secondary browser. You may need to click on the Edit… button to find the browsers you need. You will now be able to preview you work by pressing F12, or Cmd (Alt) F12 to preview your work in the primary of secondary browser respectively.