Instructor Piper Nilsson teaches students how to use Tracing Images in her Dreamweaver I course. After you’ve designed your site in the graphics software of your choice, you’ll be ready to convert it into a an HTML page. Piper says:
Try the tracing images feature. Most often, you'll design your site in Photoshop or Fireworks before creating an HTML page. Or, for inspiration, you may wish to explore how the table structure of an interesting site is created and emulate the same effect.
Go to Modify > Page Properties to open the Page Properties dialog. Select the Tracing Image category and click the Browse button to select your image. Use the slider to reduce its opacity (at full opacity it will be too distracting to work with).
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Setting an image to 50% opacity shows you enough details in the tracing image without distracting you. |
Now you can simply click and draw tables and cells over the tracing image to create the layout, then remove the tracing image when you're done.
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While it's a no-no to totally copy a design, using a tracing image (like this screenshot from The Field Museum) can inspire an interesting and functional table layout. |
In addition to Piper’s method, you can also insert your Tracing Image by using the menu command View > Tracing Image > Load. This opens a dialog that allows you to locate the image you wish to use. |
