September 24-26, 2001

The First Step

There are a number of things that you need to do before you even think of designing a Web site. In this session, we'll talk about securing a domain name, choosing the appropriate host for the site and planning the overall layout. Skipping over these important subjects can cost you a lot of time and money later.

HTML Basics

No matter what tool you use to create Web pages, the underlying code will be HTML. Many top designers still prefer to design their pages in raw code. No matter which method you use to design the pages, it is very important to understand the underlying code. This session will teach you how to create simple pages using the all powerful Notepad. We realize that you'll probably use another tool to design your pages, we just want you to fully understand what is going on behind the scenes.

Lunch

Cascading Style Sheets

You can do all the formatting for your page manually. But this means that you have to do a lot of work to make changes. Or you can use cascading style sheets. By changing one file, the whole look of your site can be instantly changed. We'll show you how easy it is to create a style file and link it to your pages.

Getting Your Data to the Site

Once you have the site created and working on your machine, you still have to get it to the Web. If your server is in-house, this can be quite simple. But we'll show you how you can do it to any server in the world using an FTP program. We'll show you using one of the most popular programs on the market and you'll even get a copy of its Lite version on the Boot Camp CD.

Server Side Includes

There are a lot of things on a Web site that are very repetitive. Navigation bars are at the top of every page, footers at the bottom of every page and sidebars that you use often. All of these can be stored as separated files and "included" anywhere you need them. Again this will allow you to change one file and see the effect throughout your site.

Web Graphics

While it is possible to have a site without graphics, it isn't very realistic. This session will show you how to create optimized GIF and JPEG files for your site.

Animations and Image Maps

While the majority of your graphics will be plain GIF and JPEG files, you'll also want to have some animated GIFs and Image Maps. This session will show you how to bring your graphics to life. We will mostly show you concepts that work in any of the major packages, but we'll also show the exact steps in Adobe Photoshop and Corel PHOTO-PAINT.

Lunch

Designing a Navigation Bar

The top of page navigation bar is one of the most important things on your page as it directs users through your site. We'll use Macromedia Fireworks to design a navigation bar with rollovers, slices, drop-down menus and much more.

Using Dreamweaver for WYSIWYG Design

While many users are perfectly content to design their Web pages with code, most folks prefer to use a WYSIWYG tool so that they can see what they are creating. We'll continue to work on our pages using Macromedia Dreamweaver. It makes WYSIWYG design quite easy and also gives you the ability to work with the code when needed.

Adding Some Flash to the Site

GIF animations have sufficed for the early days of the Web. But Macromedia Flash takes animation to a whole new level. Now you can create interactive animations complete with sound. We'll show you how to create some basic animations that can benefit any site.

JavaScript for Non-Programmers

HTML code can do many things. For the really cool effects you have to look elsewhere. JavaScript is one of the most popular ways to get those effects. We don't expect any of you to become programmers, so we'll show you some of the most popular scripts and how to add them to your pages.

Lunch

Using Forms to Collect Data

Simple forms are useful for getting information like an e-mail address from your users. More complex forms provide the backbone of any e-commerce application. We'll continue to look at HTML and Web page layout so that you can see how to add forms to your site for collecting important data from your visitors.

Tweaking Pages to Attract Search Engines

No matter how good your site, it won't do you any good if you don't have any visitors. So we'll give you some great examples of things you can do to help boost your rankings on search engines. These are the same techniques that both of your instructors have used to move their sites to the top of the search engines.

CorelDRAW X4
Unleashed

932 page multimedia ebook with 11.5 hours of tutorial movies for getting the most from CorelDRAW X4! Also available is the Premium Bonus Content Edition with Powertips and a Corel PHOTO-PAINT book.