Basics for Designers E-seminar

I found the first half or so of this seminar very, very basic and redundant. Which is the point of us viewing it...hammering it into our brains. But I think I have picked up the basics of Dreamweaver very easily because of my knowledge of coding. While viewing this seminar I kind of let my mind wander because I was pondering whether it's better to learn coding first and Dreamweaver second, or Dreamweaver first and coding second. I would venture, based on my experience, that it's probably easier to learn code first. Hear me out. Learning code is not too difficult: you pick up the basic ones (P, A, BR, IMG, TABLE, STRONG, EM, and so forth) and you can make a page. A lot of the parts of codes are used in multiple codes (like border for IMG and TABLE or align for P and TD). That makes learning Dreamweaver a lot easier because you're already familiar with the codes. You can then use Dreamweaver, rather than coding, to create some of the more complicated items on a page (like a large table perhaps). I wonder if anyone who has learned the opposite way has any comments? Does learning Dreamweaver help you learn coding, or do you always use the features of Dreamweaver without altering the code?

All of the layouts that are available when creating a new document are great. What a time saver! I recently redid my online portfolio and had to define the columns by slicing the layout image in Photoshop and using tables in the layout. Which is kind of old-school. (I'm like Michael Fox in that terrible Back to the Future sequel...using my HTML knowledge from 2000 to create a website in 2008. I enjoy pop culture references.) And the tracing image feature? Ge-ni-us! I can't even believe how much time I wasted the other week trying to get the darn table widths right when this feature exists--I'll definitely be putting this knowledge into use very soon!

After viewing this seminar, I'm really excited to learn more of the layout and design features of Dreamweaver. I can't wait to do some real design exercises!