Lesson 4. Preparing a New Site
Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 is a227 editor that lets you create Web pages and work with images or multimedia assets in a visual and/or code environment. In addition to its page development capabilities, Dreamweaver also provides tools to manage and maintain Web sites.
One of the greatest challenges of authoring content i227where files, graphics, and other assets can quickly grow into the hundreds or thousandsis file management. Even a minor organizational slipup can cause your pages to go awry, with missing images and broken links, and can result in a lot of wasted time hunting around for files and fixing bad code. Dreamweaver comes with a powerful site manager that's designed to help you keep your site organization sound.
Dreamweaver's Site Definition dialog not only configures a site for development, but it also enables Dreamweaver's site management features and even Web publishing features.
Lesson 3, for example, can be imported into a Dreamweaver document with just a click of a button.
In this lesson, you'll set up a site in accordance with the site plan and your authoring preferences. Once the site is set up, you'll create a generic page that you can use as a template in Lesson 5,
Developing a Page Template , for all your subsequent pages. In the process, you'll learn the basics of page production in Dreamweaver 8 and become familiar with its interface and tools. In addition, you'll work with the Extension Manager, downloading, installing, and using a Dreamweaver extension. Extensions are additional features, developed by Macromedia or third-party developers, that you can install to add functionality to Dreamweaver.