Laying Out Pages with CSS

In Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, you can use CSS styles to lay out your page. You can either insert div tags manually and apply CSS positioning styles to them, or you can use Dreamweaver layers to create your layout. A layer in Dreamweaver is an HTML page element--specifically, a div tag, or any other tag--that has an absolute position assigned to it.

Whether you use CSS, tables, or frames to lay out your pages, Dreamweaver has rulers and grids for visual guidance in your layout. Dreamweaver also has a tracing image feature, which you can use to re-create a page design that was created in a graphics application.

This chapter contains the following sections:

About layers in Dreamweaver
Inserting a layer
Setting layer preferences and properties
Managing layers
Manipulating layers
Converting layers to tables
Animating layers
Inserting div tags for layout
Working with div tags for layout
Changing the highlight color for div tags
Working with CSS layout visualization
Using rulers, guides, and the grid to lay out pages
Using a tracing image