Im completely new to Dreamweaver but experienced in some other 'cheaper' (lol!) web design software. I can't for the life of me work out how to (for instance) use a pre-made interface design (ie a rectangle bevelled bar) from say Photoshop, and then add buttons, pictures etc over the top of it. Can anyone give me a basic lowdown on what I need to do. I've tried inserting a layer but this doesnt seem too precise. Any advice would be most appreciated. ^_0

'You're not the king of me! I'm the king of me!'

There's a few things you can do:

1 you can breakup the interface image into smaller parts and insert the different parts into a table with tableborder set to 0.

2 you can import the image in a program called fireworks, edit it there and add buttons and export the entire html and images for the interface and load it into Dreamweaver, Fireworks is also by Macromedia, you can try it free for 30 days.

Obviously, the latter will have the best results since you can basically integrate the buttons into the interface making it look as if it's 1 image, with a little thinking and experimenting you can also give the buttons Up, Down and Hover states. You can also have the right button allready pressed on the page it leads to, letting your visitor know where he / she is inside the website, eliminating the need for breadcrums or other location markers in the interface.

If you really want to impress and you've got the time and money and spirit to learn it, you can rebuild your image interface in Flash5 and import that into your Dreamweaver pages. The possibilities are almost endless.

I hope I helped you on your way, instead of confusing you further.

With kind regards,

Dennis van Galen
Webmaster KPN Nederland
Financial and Information Services

Possibly over simplistic but could you insert your image as a background in the cell / table ? - or why not reload the graphic into Photoshop and add the buttons etc as additional objects (layers) and save the image in various 'states' (button down state and a button up state for example) and then use these as was mentioned to create a rollover example ....

<life>Do what thou wilst shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will</life>

just following on from what's been replied, background images for table cells aren't supported in netscape 4 (and below, i think).

you can check this in dreamweaver anyway, use file/check target browsers - quite handy.