Chapter 1: formatting
text
Let's start working on our first webpage.
In the document you just created, set your text size to 4, Bold, and centered, then type, "My Website". This can be the title of your page, too, so up at the top of the screen in the field that says "Title:", replace "Untitled Document" with "My Website". Before we go any further, save the file by clicking File | Save As... "index.html "is always the name of the first page you surf to in a particular site.
Hitting Enter after the title line in the body of the webpage will create a new paragraph. Notice which attributes we applied to the first line are also applying to what you are about to type. The font size and weight have reset to the default, but the justification remains at centered. Click the Left align button to make this paragraph behave like body text. Type in anything you want here. You will notice that you can't indent a paragraph by hitting Tab like you can in Word. Oddly enough, electronic documents rarely use indented paragraphs. A line break in between chunks of text is enough to indicate a paragraph switch, so indentation isn't too necessary. Now you want to save your document again. A nice shortcut for saving your changes is ctrl+s, and is universal in almost all Windows programs.
Now you can view your page in a browser. It won't look like much at first, but this is the best way to gauge how your viewers will be able to interact with your content. Locate the file in Windows Explorer and open it. The browser should come up with your file loaded. I generally draw up the basic framework for a webpage, save it, and view it in Internet Explorer before I try to apply any radical visual changes. Dreamweaver is a good visual guide for how the page will behave, but there are a few minor differences you will notice as you become more proficient.