Layers

To design your pages you can go down one of two routes: tables or layers.

Tables are the most compatible with older browsers and are the favoured system
for most professional sites, but can be laborious to set up and slow to edit.

Layers are much easier for designers new to the constraints of the web.
You can layout a page much as you might use QuarkXPress (or one of
its many imitators), clicking and dragging a layer in place of a text/picture box.

As a bonus, Dreamweaver even helps you to animate layers
easily to give movement to your page using Dynamic HTML ('DHTML').

It can be almost impossible to predict how flexible percentage-based tables will
flow, so lock down your tables to pixel dimensions to improve your chance of
precisely positioning layers with other elements.

Converting Layers to Tables
Unfortunately layers do not work with Netscape or Internet Explorer version 3 or earlier.
Dreamweaver offers the flexibility of converting your layers into tables for better
compatibility, or tables into layers so that elements can be switched around more easily
(before converting back into tables again if required).

The main catch is that to convert to tables, your layers cannot overlap - if you know that
you will be converting to tables at some stage, you can save yourself some trouble later
by selecting Modify>Layout Mode>Convert Tables to Layers and clicking on the check
box next to 'Prevent Layer Overlaps'.

The second catch is that the tables
created can get pretty complex.

Often they would be best created
using the Smallest setting rather
than Most Accurate, as you start
with a simpler structure to edit!

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