Course Description

The Dreamweaver course series at LVS has been revised to meet the needs of the hobbyist web designer and the aspiring professional web developer. For the aspiring professional, this three part course series will qualify you to take the Adobe certification exam Web Communication using Adobe® Dreamweaver®. Adobe made major changes to Dreamweaver with the advent of CS3, making it much easier for the web designers to create dynamic and interactive web pages. Dreamweaver CS4 made major improvements in terms of managing CSS and making standards compliant web pages. Additional content is provided for the CS4 owners to take the full advantage of the new features. Both versions rev up the power of this web editor with new features like spry widgets and by tightly integrating it with other Adobe programs. The base lessons and assignments of this course focus on the core Dreamweaver program, while bonus lessons and assignments allow those of you with additional CS programs to integrate additional elements into your work. Dreamweaver is one of the most popular web editing programs and you will learn why as we explore its capabilities in site management, editing, design and coordination. Screenshots and instruction is provided for both Mac and PC users Check out the Dreamweaver class blog for more news about this new series, Dreamweaver information and resources, and to see samples of student work. Follow Bean on Twitter! This is a 6 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details. Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Dreamweaver CS3 or CS4 software. Adobe does offer a free 30 day trial of Dreamweaver CS4 but it will expire before the end of the course. Software up to 75% off for students, teachers, and schools at Academic Superstore! Students, parents, faculty! Journeyed.com has your lowest prices on software, hardware and more! Versions of IE 6.0 or greater AND Firefox 2 or greater. All assignments will be checked in two or more browsers. A working knowledge of your computer is essential. LVS offers a free Windows class if needed. Plan to devote approximately 3-5 hours each week to complete their course work. Homework must be reviewed by the instructor in order to earn a certificate. Some weeks there will be bonus assignments to provide additional learning opportunities. These bonus assignments are not required to complete the certificate. Students need a web hosting account. If you don't have one, students have the option of using the free web hosting or a student hosting account made available for LVS students. Details are provided in the classroom. Do NOT use a free web hosting account on commercial servers like Yahoo or Tripod that insert code into your web pages. Students should have working knowledge of their operating system and must understand directories and paths: free Windows course and Directory Structure Tutorials are available. Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files. Free Winzip and Windows Compression Tutorials are available. All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons.

Course Prerequisites

Class Level - This is an introductory course to the Dreamweaver software and assumes at least some basic HTML/XHTML knowledge. Knowledge of HTML and CSS is very helpful. Sometimes you may need to troubleshoot something that doesn't work, or change it altogether, and being able to read and understand code will be crucial. If you don't have basic HTML and CSS knowledge, enroll in Build Your Web Site I - Intro to XHTML & CSS first!

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 Introduction to the Workspace Creating a local site Site Synchronization First page with Dreamweaver File transfer Lesson 2 More on the Workspace: Property Inspector Introduction to CSS with Dreamweaver Introduction to CSS layouts Working with text Links & bookmarks Validating your web page Lesson 3 CSS panel Navigation menus Introduction to spry widgets Lesson 4 Image handling in Dreamweaver Assets Lesson 5 Tables Table Layouts vs CSS layouts: how, when and why Table Styles Lesson 6 Putting it all together Tabbed panel widget

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 Create New This section lists a variety of the different types of files that Dreamweaver can create. In this class, we will address three of them: HTML, CSS, and Dreamweaver Site. HTML files will be used for the actual pages of your web site. CSS files will hold the style information for pages you will create later on in this course. The Dreamweaver Site contains information about the web site you are creating, information that is pertinent to both your personal computer and the web server on which it resides. We will be going over this in detail later on in this lesson. Create From Sample Dreamweaver comes with a large number of sample files. These include layouts, styles, and page sets. Many of these are templates, which we cover in the second course of this series. We will work with some of the sample CSS files later this course. If you are using Dreamweaver CS4, you can access the Create from Sample by clicking the more and folder icon at the bottom of the Create New section. Extend Although Dreamweaver is a very powerful software package, there is always somebody who has an idea to make it do more. Dreamweaver has literally hundreds of 3rd party extensions. These extensions add a variety of features or just streamline the process of things like calendars, slideshows, image galleries, etc. The link here takes you to a web site that lists extensions. In the intermediate course, we will cover the installation and use of extensions. Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

At the end of this course, the student will be able to create styled and interactive web pages that meet basic web standards, using the basic Dreamweaver tools.

Course Reviews

Betsy: [Liked best:] "First the way the lessons were presented. Though it seemed easy at first we were eased into Dreamweaver and step by step it got harder and in only a 6 week time I was able to do so much I had never been able to understand before. The teachers worked as a team. Kate was able to catch lots of details and Bean could give all the technical explanations. I was surprised that no one ever stumped her. She really knows her stuff!" More...