Best and Quickest way to efficiently learn Dreamweaver 2004?

Hello All!

This looks like a great site! Just a quick question for you all. I am a graphic designer looking to learn Dreamweaver 2004. I have some website exp, but nothing formal. In other words, I want to learn how to do site design with a professional process. IE-Wireframe 1st, then photoshop, then dreamweaver.

How long does it generally take and any advice on literature etc.? I currently have a Visual Quickstart book for Dreamweaver 2004 and it seems pretty good so far. I know CSS and layers are the big thing right now.

Anyayzzz...any advice would be great!!

yeah.

Tom

Dreamweaver is a tool. A useful tool. The first things to learn in gaining a faculty with Dreamweaver are HTML and CSS, a bit more "formally." Well, not formally, but rather, learn specifically what is and isn't part of the HTML 4 Recommendation. http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/ always has useful information, since it contains the HTML 4 specification itself. I do not suggest reading through it linearly or entirely.

After you learn HTML and CSS, and after you acquaint yourself with the concept of separating semantic markup (HTML) and presentational markup (CSS), you might be interested in information about usability of Web design. That, of course, is not a pre-requisite for Dreamweaver, but it is a pre-requisite for doing a job well.

If you understand HTML and CSS, you will understand most of Dreamweaver, and you will be able to use it efficiently. If you don't understand HTML and CSS well, you will often become baffled by the problems you face. Dreamweaver is a What You See is Not Actually What You'll Get (as opposed to WYSIWYG) editor, since browsers are weird.

By the way, there is no such thing as "layers." You are referring to elements, typically DIV elements (but they can be anything), which are absolutely positioned using CSS. Absolute positioning is overrated, in my opinion. It often causes problems when font sizes are slightly changed, and it does not work well when visitors do ordinary things such as resizing their window to a narrow width. If you look into CSS a bit, you will discover the ever more useful float property.

Please do not join the evildoers who set font sizes in px.

Good luck with the learning!

Dreamweaver bible is good, but its very thick! Good for reference rather than reading.

The quickest way to learn to put pages together with dreamweaver(after you learn html and css of course ) is to look at web design magazines. Im finding more and more of these in my newsagents every month. These give you up to date tutorials, all the files you need and step by step instructions. You end up with working site models to pull apart and learn from so you can find your own way of doing things.

Thanks guys,
Appreciate the advice. I think I am going to really tackle this Visual Quickstart Guide book for Dreamweaver 2004. Learn it inside and out. I already know html pretty well, enough to manipulate it anyway. I will keep you all updated on my progress and first website.

Thanks again!

Tom

these are very good videos also
http://www.lynda.com

Skip the chapter on tables. Ask a few questions in here and you'll learn to do without. Remember this: the purpose for tables is to present tabular data. Learn the semantics of html and you'll be good to go.

I think my friend has that visual quickstart book. If it's the same one I'm thinking about, it teaches a few bad practices. I'll post more on it if my friend brings his book to work again.

Thanks Roxy, this is a great site!! Now...should I purchase the cd...hmmm