What is Dream Weaver?

Dream Weaver is a user-friendly and an easy-to-learn package for creating web-pages. It is one of the most popularly used applications for creating websites within a few hours. This package was first brought out by Macromedia. It supports many web-related technologies like JavaScript, PHP and ColdFusion.

Dream Weaver Workspace Elements:

The element of the dream weaver screen can be classified into:

♦ Toolbars

♦ Panels

TOOLBARS

Title bar and Menu Bar: As in any other application, this contains the name of the program and the various menus.

Document toolbar: This is present on every new document/web page. It consists of :

• Code icon-to view the HTML Code which is auto generated
• Split icon: to view the source code as well as the visual editor.
• Design icon: to switch to the area where we can work with the visual editor
• Title textbox: to enter title for each of the web pages.

Standard toolbar:  Present beneath the document toolbar, this has some of the common icons such as New, Open, Save etc. seen in most of the other application windows

PANELS

Properties Inspector: allows us to view and make any changes to the properties of the webpage or the text in the webpage (like the font or alignment).

Objects panel: This is used to insert elements, such as tables, forms or buttons (categorised as per purpose) into the webpage. This facility avoids us the trouble of having to go the menu each time we want to insert an element into the web page.

Design Panel: This helps to set the CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) styles for the webpage. This panel also allows us to manipulate with the layers, if any, which might have been created.

Code Panel: This shows how the HTML code works and also allows us to create small bits of HTML code.

Application Panel: This panel is basically to connect to a database.

Files Panes: This has the list of all the files-documents, images, multimedia etc.-  which are associated with the current web site.

Tag Inspector Panel: This panel allows us to view and edit the CSS styles and the behaviours of individual elements in the web page

First, create the pages on the local computer (local hard disk) and then upload copies of these pages onto a remote web server. The basic process of setting up a simple website is as follows:

Set up a new site:

• Go to SiteàManage Sites.

• Click on New, Site. Here, Site actually refers to the local storage location for the documents and images that constitute a website.

• Give a meaningful name to the site.  This will be the top-level folder which will contain all the files and images to be used in the website. Click ‘Next’.

• Choose the server technology, if used, like ColdFusion or ASP. Click ‘Next’

• Choose the recommended option Edit local copies on my machine. Choose the location where you want to store all the files that constitute the site. Click ‘Next’

• Specify the method by which you choose to connect to the remote server. Usually, it will be FTP. If the local host itself is the server, you can choose Local/Network. The system asks for the folder on the server that is to store all these files. Choose the same location and then click ‘Next’.  For FTP you need to provide further options and click on ‘Test Connection’ for testing the connection to the server.

• In the next screen, you can opt the ‘check in and check out’ facility if multiple people are working on the same site.

• Click ‘Done’ on the next screen to complete the process of setting up a site.

Set up the home page:

Note: The home page of the website should always be named index.html.

• Go to FileàNewàBasic page (on the left pane of the dialog box)

• Choose HTML (on the right pane of the dialog box) and click on ‘Create’.

• Save the file as index.html.

In order to make the system identify this as the home page:

• Choose ‘Edit’ in the Manage Sites dialog box and click on the Advanced tab.

• Choose the Site Map Layout category, browse for the index.html file, and click on `Done`.

Add new pages to the site:

This is similar to creating the home page. Save the newly-created file/web page with the desired name in the same location.

The content, including tables and images, is put in the Content area of the webpage which is the designated middle portion of the web page.

Create a Simple Menu:

1. Type in the text of the menu items.
2.  Highlight the text.
3. Go to the link text-box present in the Properties Inspector and browse for the required page which needs to be linked to the text. You can also specify if it needs to open in a new window or not.

View the page in the web browser

• In order to view the page in a web browser such as Internet Explorer, press the F12 key. Alternatively, go to Menu, and choose the Preview in Browser option.

Publish the site:

The final step, after creating the web-pages is to upload the web pages to the remote server and publish the site so that it is viewable over the internet. The remote server (or web server) is usually the ISP’s server or can be on your local computer itself.

• Define and establish connection to the remote server, if it is not already done.

• Upload files from local computer to the remote server: The files can be uploaded to the remote server via the Files Panel (WindowàFile).

The site can now be viewed over the internet.