Macromedia dreamweaver 8-using dreamweaver User Manual

198

Chapter 7: Laying Out Pages with CSS

Changing the highlight color for div tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .223
Working with CSS layout visualization  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .224
Using rulers, guides, and the grid to lay out pages  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .226
Using a tracing image  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  230

About layers in Dreamweaver

A layer is an HTML page element—specifically, a

div

tag, or any other tag—that has an

absolute position assigned to it. Layers can contain text, images, or any other content that you
can place in the body of an HTML document.

Understanding layers

With Dreamweaver, you can use layers to lay out your page. You can place layers in front of
and behind each other, hide some layers while showing others, and move layers across the
screen. You can place a background image in one layer, then place a second layer, containing
text with a transparent background, in front of that.

Layers provide a great deal of flexibility in placing content. However, site visitors with very old
web browsers might have trouble viewing layers. To ensure that everyone can view your web
page, you can design your page layout using layers, and then convert the layers to tables. For
more information, see

“Converting layers to tables” on page 210

. If your audience is likely to

be using any recent browser, however, you can design layouts entirely with layers, without
converting them to tables.