A–C
D–H
I–Z
Developer services
Project centers
Community resources
- Flex cookbook (share code)
- Adobe AIR cookbook (share code)
- CSS Advisor (browser bug fixes)
- Exchanges (share components)
- Adobe Labs
- Adobe Open Source
- Forums
- RSS feeds
- Bug base
- User groups
- Adobe Community Experts (ACE)
- Developer events
Integration
Product documentation
Downloads
Samples
Training and books
- Online training
- Classroom training
- Certification
- Adobe Developer Library
- Adobe Press
- Safari Books Online
Newsletters
Blogs
Archives
ADC program
Additional resources
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Examine the design comp
- Create and save a new page
- Insert tables
- Set table properties
- Insert an image placeholder
- Add color to the page
Creating your first website – Part 2: Creating the page layout
Examine the design comp
Typically, you don't begin building a website by opening Dreamweaver and laying out pages. The first steps to creating a website begin on a piece of paper or in a graphics-editing application like Adobe Fireworks or Adobe Photoshop. Graphic designers usually sketch out a piece of comprehensive artwork (also known as a comp) for the website to show it to the client and make sure that the initial ideas for the site meet with their client's approval.
A comp consists of any number of page elements that the client has requested for a website. For example, the client might say, "I want to have a logo at the top of the page, a navigation that links to these other pages, a section for an online store, and a place where I can insert video clips." Based on that discussion, the designer begins planning the layout of the site and creates sketches of sample pages that fulfill the client's requirements.
This tutorial provides you with the completed and approved comp for Café Townsend, a fictional restaurant that is in need of a website. As the web designer, your job is to transform the comp into a working web page (most likely with the help of other graphics designers and Flash developers). Figure 1 shows a comp of the Café Townsend page layout.
Figure 1. A comp of the Café Townsend page layout
You'll notice that the graphic designer has provided you with a web page comp that includes a number of content areas, as well as some graphic ideas. In the following sections, you'll use Dreamweaver to lay out this design.
You can also open the original comp file if you want to see it on the computer screen. You can find the comp, homepage-mockup.jpg, in the images folder of the cafe_townsend folder that you copied to your hard drive in the first part of this article series, Setting up your site and project files. You might even want to print the comp so that you can have it in front of you as you build your page.
