I have started with HTML then tried my hands on Dreamweaver, just by reading help topics and by referring some dreamweaver tutorials you can get it. Really not that hard to learn. For me w3schools is the best BEST source for learning web basics.
If you learn how to hand code first using dreamweaver wont be so difficult. You will just be using it for the nice interface and feature rich text editor.
If you are willing to devote time and get professional in the field, then Adobe provides a very good video tutorial. Here it is: hxxp://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/video_tutorials.html However, if you want to learn it quickly for a not-so-professional purpose, you should contact someone who already knows at least a bit about it, and ask him for help. You can even contact me in case you need help. I can help you via Skype or Gtalk, if i am free.
Use Dreamweaver help and also trial and error. You should be learning HTML and CSS while you learn Dreamweaver, it will help a lot. There's really no way to master web development in Dreamweaver without understanding and being able to modify the underlying code.
You learn with time thats how I did it I found books to be all over the place and hard to understand some times.
If you know HTML/CSS well enough, coding by hand is easier than using a visual editor. I don't recommend coding by hand for ease-of-use but for the quality benefit it has over software generated code.
Indy, the reason people say that is while at first your page may look okay, you will try to change something later and check it in a few other browsers and you'll be like, wtf happened to my page??? It doesn't look the way I want it to! Then you'll go online and try to find info on what went wrong and maybe even end up here and those who try to help you will see this huge steaming pile of code and think to themselves, well of course this that and the other is wrong with the page-- it's written in (WYSIWYG programme)! Some people try to only use the code version of Dreamweaver-- but unless you got it free, you just spent $400 on a Notepad editor : ) Dreamweaver is geared towards people who build things visually, esp graphic artists who decide one day to make a page. The code itself is usually (tho not always) bloated, non-semantic, and sometimes downright invalid. But because most browsers (against recommendations) try to render even poorly-coded pages, something usually shows up and for many people, it looks good enough. I've got to say, though, the worst pages I've seen were Wordpress templates. But I guess that just comes with templates. When you're writing the code, first you have the HTML with all the text your page will have. Looking at it when that's done will jst be a bunch of text on a page. When you add CSS, you start seeing the difference-- that is, while you are writing the code, you have a browser (or three) open too and you're using them to look at a local file (the html and css on your computer). So you can see what you're doing too!
Dreamweaver HELP is one extensive document. You get lost reading it but persistence pays for sure. Now I use it for making basic layouts.
thank you all for your comments but now i am using nvu becuase i find it easier... but im stuck with it :'( Problem : www.roulette.co.nr <<< i have this game and im trying to put it on nvu but it wont let me if you get it
mostly trial and error but there are some features which aren't very obvious which are huge timesavers! Examples: .DWT templates, SSI, and external CSS