Cascading style sheets (CSS) is a far more complex technology than HTML and using CSS to control the layout of your pages requires experience. Fortunately, Dreamweaver offers a wide variety of CSS layouts which you can use to create both individual pages and also templates which can then be used to generate multiple pages.

To gain access to Dreamweaver's preset CSS layouts, simply choose New from the File menu. The New Document window gives access to all the different types of web page that Dreamweaver is capable of creating. These page types are arranged in categories and CSS layouts are available both in the Blank Page and Blank Template categories.

If the option "None" is chosen in the Layout column, no CSS file will be created; Dreamweaver will simply create a blank HTML or XHTML page. Clicking on the name of each of the layouts displays a preview on the right. This gives you an idea of what the layout will look like. There are single column, two column and three column layouts available. These layouts use terms that you may find confusing such as elastic, fixed liquid and hybrid. We will come back to these terms in another tutorial. At the moment, we are just concerned with creating an HTML page which is driven by a CSS file.

Having chosen a preset CSS layout, before you click on the "Create" button, you need to specify the way in which your CSS file will be linked to the HTML document. Next to the option labelled "Layout CSS", you will find a drop-down menu with three options: choosing "Add to Head" will place all of the CSS rules inside the HTML document in the head section; if you opt for "Add to New File", Dreamweaver will create a new external CSS file containing all the necessary rules; "Link to Existing File" will cause Dreamweaver to place the necessary CSS rules in an existing CSS file you designate. This final option is useful if you're adding the page to an existing site which already has a CSS file which you want to keep using.

As a general rule of thumb, it is usually preferable to place the CSS in an external file since this offers you greater flexibility in reusing the CSS rules contained in the file. If you don't have an existing CSS file, you should choose "Create New File" and then click the Create button. Dreamweaver will prompt you to select a location for the CSS file and will suggest a name, such as " twoColElsLtHdr.css". Feel free to enter a more meaningful name. When you click on the Save button, Dreamweaver will generate both the HTML and CSS pages.