Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS5 Bible

Chapter 10. Working with Divs and AP Elements

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding how divs and AP elements work in Dreamweaver

• Inserting <div> tags

• Dreamweaver Technique: Applying a CSS Layout

• Modifying AP elements: Resizing, moving, and altering properties

• Dreamweaver Technique: Inserting an AP Element

• Creating interactive AP elements with Dreamweaver behaviors

For many years, page designers have taken for granted the capability to place text and graphics anywhere on a printed page — even enabling graphics, type, and other elements to bleed off a page. This flexibility in design has eluded Web designers until recently. Lack of absolute control over layout has been a high price to pay for the universality of HTML, which makes any Web page viewable by any system, regardless of the computer or the screen resolution.

Now, however, the integration of absolutely positioned elements (AP elements) within the Cascading Style Sheets specification has brought both relative and absolute positioning to the Web. Page designers with a yen for more control welcome the precision offered with Cascading Style Sheets-Positioning (CSS-P). CSS-P styles are typically applied to <div> tags, which are used to separate a page into different areas or divisions.

Dreamweaver's implementation of <div> tags and AP elements turns the promise of CSS-P into an intuitive, designer-friendly, layout-compatible reality. AP elements offer more than pixel-perfect positioning. You can stack one AP element on another, hide some AP elements ...