Accomplishing basic tasks in 

Dreamweaver 8

This section describes how to accomplish basic tasks such as creating, 

opening, and saving files. For more detailed information, see Chapter 3, 

 Creating and Opening Documents  in Using Dreamweaver.

This section contains the following topics:

I

 About Dreamweaver files  on page 42

I

 Creating new files in Dreamweaver  on page 43

I

 Saving files in Dreamweaver  on page 44

I

 Opening files in Dreamweaver  on page 45

About Dreamweaver files 

You can work with a variety of file types in Dreamweaver. The primary 

kind of file you will work with is the HTML file. HTML files or 

Hypertext Markup Language files contain the tag based language 

responsible for displaying a web page in a browser. You can save HTML 

files with either the .html or .htm extension. Dreamweaver saves files using 

the .html extension by default.

Following are some of the other common file types you might use when 

working in Dreamweaver:

CSS

, or Cascading Style Sheet files, have a .css extension. They are used to 

format HTML content and control the positioning of various page 

elements. For more information on working with these types of files, see 

 Understanding Cascading Style Sheets  in Using Dreamweaver.

GIF

, or Graphics Interchange Format files, have a .gif extension. GIF 

format is a popular web graphic format for cartoons, logos, graphics with 

transparent areas, and animations. GIFs contain a maximum of 256 colors.

JPEG

, or Joint Photographic Experts Group files (named after the 

organization that created the format), have a .jpg extension, and are usually 

photographs or high color images. The JPEG format is best for digital or 

scanned photographs, images using textures, images with gradient color 

transitions, and any images that require more than 256 colors.

42

Dreamweaver Basics