This book will show you how to combine the power of Adobe Photoshop 7 and Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, both the premier applications in their fields.

The book's core purpose is to teach the fundamentals of designing for the web using Photoshop and Dreamweaver, through a combination of theory and practical examples. We will start with a brief look at the history of the Internet and some design theory, to lay the groundwork for what follows. We do not aim to bore you with theory! Projects and step-by-step examples will form a large part of this book—so that you can see the theory and good advice put into practice.

The end goal of this book is to enable the reader to create a visually stunning, fully functional and aesthetically pleasing website. The combination of web design theory and clearly worked examples will allow you to go away and experiment for yourself—more aware of the potential complexities involved in building a website and better positioned to do it more efficiently than before. The outcome: a great visual and well-designed site.

Creating an aesthetically pleasing website that is also universally functional is no easy task. Through the initial concept stages and into implementation a web designer must be aware of the fundamentals involved in taking a flat and lifeless graphic and converting it into a dynamic entity. For an uninitiated artist or potential web designer the traps and pitfalls in creating such a site are plentiful. Walking our reader through this in the simplest and most informed manner possible is the goal of this publication.

Respecting the Internet as a flexible medium as rich in personality as those who use it is the message that were trying to get across. But at the same time we want to make the site design and development process accessible by explaining to the reader the fundamentals in clear and concise language and providing relevant screen shots and graphics.