Wiley Dreamweaver CS3 For Dummies 978-0-470-11490-2 Benutzerhandbuch

In This Chapter

Comparing Web design options

Understanding browser differences

Developing a Web site

Customizing your workspace

W

eb design is an art and a science. I think that’s what makes it so hard.
Most of us don’t have the artistic talent to create great Web designs,

the science and math skills to develop all the technical elements, and the
understanding of interface design and usability that make a Web site easy to
use and intuitive to navigate. But you need all those skills to create a great
Web site. That’s why most of the best Web sites were created by a team of
people with many different specialties.

In the early days, Web design was relatively easy — and vanilla boring. You
could combine images and text, but that was about it; no complex layouts, 
no fancy fonts, and certainly no multimedia or animation.

Over the years, Web design has evolved into an increasingly complex field
and Dreamweaver has evolved with it, adding new features that go way
beyond the basics of combining a few words and images.

When I first started learning to creating Web sites in the mid 1990s, it was
easy to learn and easy to teach others how to do it. More than 10 years and a
dozen books later, it’s a lot more complex, and I’ve come to realize that one of
the first things you have to understand about Web design is that there isn’t
just one way to create a Web site anymore.

Today, you can find out how to design simple Web sites with HTML in a
matter of hours or you can spend years developing the advanced program-
ming skills it takes to create complex Web sites like the ones you see at
Amazon.com or MSNBC.

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