Dreamweaver Assignment 6 – Creating a New Web Page

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6.1 Creating a Web Page:

Here our tutor rehashes the process of creating a new webpage document  (File => New…), and the various options available in the new document dialogue box.  She also reminds us that the document toolbar, if not displayed when a new document is created, can be accessed through the View -> Toolbars => Document menu option.

6.2 Saving a Web Page:

Having created a new page, we now confront the issue of where to save it.  Here we see the significance of the topic defining sites covered in our last lesson.  We note from the files panel that the folder we last defined as our root folder is displayed by default.  This is the folder that will be selected by default in our file browser dialogue box when we save our document.  We are also reminded that when we create a top-level page, common practice dictates that we name the document “index.html”, as web servers are programmed to search for such a page and serve it up by default when no specific page within a domain is requested.  

For example, when one types WhatBorderColliesEat.com into ones web browser, the web server by default serves-up the file WhatBorderColliesEat.com/index.html, unless a specific page is requested, such as WhatBorderColliesEat.com/my_favorite_shoes.html.

We are advised here that when naming html files, good practice dictates that only lower-case letters be used, and spaces or special characters are not allowed.  Note that hyphens and underscore characters are not regarded as special characters, and hence are allowable.  One should consult an html reference resource for a definitive list of valid characters; there might be one or two of those guides floating around on the internet somewhere.  Furthermore, consistency with your chosen extensions is important.  You can use either the .htm or .html designation, but whichever you choose, be sure to stick to it throughout your site pages.

6.3 Assigning a Title to a Web Page:

With our newly created and saved webpage displayed in our application, we note that the aforementioned Document toolbar displays a Title textbox, which by default reads “Untitled Document”  Here we can assign a name to our webpage that will display in the web browser’s title bar or tab (depending on the browser).  This is also the default title of the page that will appear to a user who bookmarks this page.  Furthermore, the page title is often used by web crawlers that index the web for use by search engines. It is therefore important to assign your page a meaningful name.

6.4 Inserting Meta Tags:

Meta tags are snippets of code that appear in the heading area of a pages html code.  Meta tags are global instruction that convey pieces of information to the web browser or web-crawling bot that are applicable to the entire page.  For instance, by default a new page created in Dreamweaver contains the meta tag <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />, which indicates to the browser some specifics on how to render the page.   

Other common meta tags discussed here include Keywords and Description.  These are tags that might be used by search engine web crawlers to index a page. 

Our tutor demonstrates how meta tags can be inserted with ease by utilizing the Meta option under the Head icon on the Common tab of our Insert Bar.  Of course, one can also simply type the meta tag into the head section in the code view window, but using the meta tool relieves one of the responsibility for getting the code syntax just right.