Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 and Web Standards

The fourth installment to the Adobe Creative Suite series was launched yesterday with updates to the web and graphic designers favorite software tools. The list of new versions go a long way: Photoshop (with two versions), Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, After Effects, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere and Soundbooth. With a tagline “Shortcut to Brilliant,” Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) aims to build on the addition of former Macromedia products in the previous version.

I looked at the features list of Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, the app that focuses on the building of websites and web pages, and there’s a feature that caught my attention:

CSS Best Practices
Implement CSS best practices without writing code. The new CSS tab in the Properties panel shows the styles for the current selection as well as all the applicable CSS rules. Hover over any property to view a tool tip with no-jargon English explanations of CSS principles. New CSS rules can be created and applied in the Properties panel and stored in the same document or an external style sheet. Dreamweaver CS4 even gives you control over the specificity of your rule: Just click Less Specific or More Specific in the updated New CSS Rule dialog box to target your style precisely.

I haven’t tested the actual software myself, but this looks promising, especially for the budding web designers who need to layout easily and get familiar with Cascading Style Sheets. However, I do hope that it won’t spoil the designers into taking CSS for granted, ie, not caring enough to work with CSS without Dreamweaver or similar tools. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m not too high on the prospects that CSS becomes a mere “feature.”

Source: webstandards.raquedan.com

Building a web page

In this 'hands-on' module we will be building our first web page in no time. We just need to quickly cover a couple of points beforehand to help get our feet on the ground.
The three ways you can build a web page
1. Use a pre-made template: WHAT IS A WEB DESIGN TEMPLATE?

A web site design template is a pre-made website design template which can be customized to reflect your company's branding. Website design templates can be found in various formats like Photoshop and HTML. Many times, these templates are compatible with HTML editors like GoLive, FrontPage, and Dreamweaver.

Web site templates can be very useful; they can be used by experienced web designers to 'jump-start' the creation of a website. They are also a way for people to put out great-looking web sites quickly with little or no knowledge of HTML and web design.
2. Use an HTML editor like FrontPage or Dreamweaver:

HTML editors make building web pages feel like (to a certain extent) creating a document in Microsoft Word ... it's made pretty easy. But the downside is that you lose a certain amount of control of what you're doing and in some cases become dependent on the program.
3. Hand-code your HTML in a text editor like Notepad:

That means you type in the HTML code yourself. This is the approach we are going to use here, because it's the quickest way to learn how to build web pages, and it is arguably the best way because you have the most control over what you're doing.

Ok, now that we know the advantages of hand-coding web pages, let's jump into just the bare minimum of theory, then we will build our first web page!

From Sitepoint