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How to add Bootstrap columns & rows in Dreamweaver
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Overview
Know that I’ll be around to help - if you get lost you can message in the forum and together we’ll get you back on track.
- You'll need a copy of Dreamweaver CC 2015 or above. A free 30 day trial can be download from Adobe here.
- No previous Dreamweaver or web design experience is necessary.
- If you're not sure if this course is right for you. Email me what you’re trying to do and check if you’re on the right track.
- 60 lectures 3 hours of content!
- Forum support from me.
- All the techniques used by professional website designers.
- Ways to preview your designs straight to your mobile device.
- Firm understanding of responsive web design.
- Professional workflows and shortcuts.
- A wealth of other resources and websites to help your new career path.
- YES: This course is for beginners. For people who prefer not to work in code. Aimed at people new to the world of web design. No previous Dreamweaver experience is necessary. People with knowledge of previous versions of Dreamweaver CC 2014 and below will also get great value from this course as the software has changed so much.
- NO: This course is NOT suited to people experienced in using HTML & CSS. If you prefer to work in code only then this course isn’t right for you.
Course duration 5.5 hours + your own study.
Daniel Walter Scott
Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor
I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.
Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.
Downloads & Exercise files
Transcript
So in terms of our Photoshop mockup. And we want to bring in a container that fits inside of here, okay? And allows us to put this content, uh, the title here and this text inside of it. Okay? So let's do that. Let's make sure that we've got our top box selected.
Okay, band hero. Let's go to insert, and let's put this one called container. Now this is one. Have a guess what, which one should it be Before, after Rap or Nest? If you said Nest, you're correct. Okay, so I've got, um, this hero band selected, and I want a nest.
It means I wanna put it inside. Okay. And you'll see I've got a nice little fix width inside of here that is inside my, um, hero band. Great. So now what goes inside this? I could start sticking content in here, but you're not meant to.
Containers just meant to be this wrapper around the outside. It's meant to hold these things, okay? Which is a row and a column. So you need a row and a column. Um, so in our case, we're just gonna need one. Okay?
We're gonna have this, uh, one row and one column. So a column goes inside of a row. Let me have a little demo, actually make that a little bit more clearer. So I'm gonna insert, uh, I'm gonna make sure this container's selected. I'm gonna go, uh, grid, row and column. And it's gonna say again, which one do we wanna do?
I wanna put it inside the container. So I picked the Nest, okay? And I could have three columns. If I clicked, okay, I'd have, oh, select that moment. I'm gonna click Nest. Okay?
I'd have a row, which is the kind of outside, and then inside of that there is three columns. Okay? But I'm gonna go to undo, edit, undo. 'cause all I want is one row, one column. So I'm gonna click that click nest, and I'm just gonna click one. It adds the row 'cause it needs it by itself.
And we will add the column based on what you type in here. Great. So, um, great. I've got one row with a container inside of it. Now I can start putting my text in. Now if you've got to here, we've done something really wrong.
Okay? Um, and it's gonna cause us no problems at the moment, but a lot problems later on. Not a lot of problems, just a lot of time wasted. Uh, later on we were working on our kind of say our tablet view and our mobile view. Um, the reason is, is if I select in here, you can see I've selected the column. There it is there inside the row, which is inside my container, which is inside the fluid band.
Okay? So they're all nested inside each other. But the thing that's happened that um, we need to be careful of is, can you see this column here? It has a class apply called sm, which just means small. Okay? Now small refers to uh, a mobile phone and we're gonna use that later on.
So what it's done is it, it picks small because can you see this little slider here? It's Halfway through. This is what it considers small. This is what it calls extra small and way out here where I can't see because of my screen size are medium and large and I need to be dealing with large for my desktop. So, um, Dreamweaver, by default, if you've got a small screen, you're gonna have problems. Now all it is, if you've built this site, uh, for desktop view and later on you try and go through and try and make it, um, mobile, it means you're gonna have to go through and change everything, do a find and change with from everything that's currently SM to lg, which is its large.
So what we wanna do is we're gonna get it undo. We're okay. So we've got rid of just a container now with no rows and columns. Now to get Dreamweaver to play ball, hey, we need to tell it we're working on the desktop view. Can you see here, I wanna say set to at the moment because of how wide my screen is, but if I say medium, it's gonna kind of jump out. You can see it kind of goes past the screen there.
That's, it's almost it. So I'm gonna click on large devices and it just means when I click and add a row in a column and I say it's gonna be nested and it's gonna be one row, one column, you'll notice that it uses the class by click inside of small. Now, to get round this, what we need to do is we need to trick Dreamweaver into thinking it's a bigger size. Now you'd think you just go down here and pick large devices and it will display that. But when we add it, okay, so if I gotta undo, I click inside here and I say add, even though I've said it to be large, okay, nice and big and I go to add a grid and a row, nest it, and one it still comes up as small. Okay?
So hopefully this is a bug that gets worked out. So test yours. But what I do is I click inside. Um, and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna zoom out. Okay? So I hold control minus or command minus, okay?
And I just make sure that this is somewhere over here. Now, another way to zoom is under view and you can use the long way, um, and uh, magnification. And you can zoom in and out or you can see here's a few shortcuts or you can jump to 50%. So the way is to trick Dreamweaver. What we need to do is we need to zoom out a little bit so that we can see the rest of these media queries. So at the moment, that's our mobile view, okay?
And that's the what's called excess. And there's another one called small. We wanna get all the way out there to the desktop view. Now we're gonna talk about media queries, uh, in more detail later on. But when you're building your desktop view with me now, make sure that you can see the desktop view. So I'm gonna hold, uh, command minus and click it once on a Mac and that will zoom out a little bit.
If you're on a pc, hold CTRL minus and zoom out. And then obviously control um, plus or command plus will zoom in. So minus and plus zooming in and out. So I can now see this desktop view. Great. It just means that when I'm viewing in this area, uh, it's great, I can see my whole site.
But it also means that when I click inside here and I add my row on my grid and I click nest, uh, and I type in one hopefully. Now when I click inside, can you see it's applied that large class. Now you could go through in Cove view and go and change it every time you hit small go and change it. There's no big Problem with that. You could wait to the end of when you're doing your desktop view and go and do a fine change of them all and one big go. It's up to you.
I like to just zoom out and make sure we're putting in this, uh, algae, which is our large one to start with. 'cause we're working on desktop. So I've got one row you can see in there and inside of my column and, and that's where my contents is gonna go. Now I'm just gonna add a bit of text to the inside of this one here. We're gonna do type in its own little video later on. So we're just gonna add some placeholder text.
Now, um, I can click inside here and I can type something, but it's actually quite tough. And what I should be able to do now is go into insert and insert a paragraph, okay? Which is a bit of text that goes inside, but it's not working. It's all grayed out. If this ever happens to you, um, you just gotta make sure that you're on your source code version, okay? Not on your main CSS or any of these other ones.
If you're a source code and I click inside of here, now I can go to insert and go to paragraph again. I think this is a bug with Dreamweaver. Hopefully it gets fixed. Um, but so you know, um, I can click the paragraph. I'm gonna nest it 'cause I want inside that column and it's just added a bit of default text in here. What text am I gonna add?
I'll just add the real placeholder text there, which is let's make this awesome. We're gonna go through and style that properly later on. But let's just leave in here so we know that that's, uh, this bit of uh, box here. Actually let's add all of that text so we can edit it by either double clicking it up here, okay? And uh, you can see I can get it, you know, you're editing text when it goes orange, okay? And everything kind of else fades out in the background or I can edit it down here in Cove View.
I'm gonna edit in live view, okay? We're gonna stick to kind of more of a visual way of doing things. So I'm gonna double click in here and actually that's meant to be caps. Let's make things awesome. Uh, I'm gonna zoom in. So member command plus or control plus.
Now I want to add some text after this. I'm gonna put in the fake text that goes in underneath. Can you see it's just Lauren Opim, uh, mixed up kind of Latin words just to placeholder until I get the copy written. And you'll find it in your exercise files. You can go to text, open it up and there should be a bunch of text you can copy and paste. I'm gonna paste that into Dream Move.
So I'm gonna double click. So it goes orange, hit enter and paste and it's gonna put my text in here. We're not gonna style it for the moment, okay? It's just gonna hold there. We're gonna do some styling later on when we look at fonts. Next thing is let's add the container to this who we are.
And if you look at Photoshop, there is a container around the outside, but there's also two columns, okay? One for my image and one for this text on the right here. So let's add it. Let's click inside our um, the band for who we are. And we're gonna go insert a container. We're gonna put it to be nesting inside of it.
And then we're gonna add our grid and our row. And this one's gonna be nested inside, but I'd like it to be two columns. Okay? So we've got this outer row, but inside of there we see here I've got two columns. You can see um, two columns. And they've done it by dividing these columns.
Remember we talked about our grid earlier on? So there's an underlying 12 column grid. So to split it into half, that is six and six. Well, you'll also Notice that I did not zoom out. So it's done a small six, which is bad. Let's go to undo.
Okay? So edit, undo, edit, undo until it goes away. Sometimes I need to click out, edit, undo. There it's gone. Okay? And I'm gonna zoom out a little bit.
So I'm back to my large view. So remember this edge here I can see the edge of my large desktop. Click my container, insert a grid in a row, sit inside and put two columns. Great. And hopefully now you'll see I've got en large that says six. And this side it says six.
So it's in two halves. Now in terms of the layout, it's slightly different. I want to kind of do a smaller box on this side so it's not 50 50. So I'm just gonna guess that for the moment. I'm gonna say you are about four. You can see when I drag this right hand side here, it actually changes the class name.
Now if you were doing this in full code view, you could go through and just change it from six to four, do the same thing, but I guess dream of perk is that you get to kind of do it in a more tactile, visual, wizzy wig type of way. So there he goes, he's four and you can see this one, it's still six and there's a bit of a hole left over the side there. So what I wanna do is actually I wanna make this, um, I want there to be a bit of a buffer between these two. So maybe a column spacing between these two. Um, to do this, if I do it to this right hand side here, if I drag it in, you'll see that it'll adjust how many columns it spans on the opposite side. This one here doesn't do what you think it might.
You think if I drag this side, it's gonna do the same, but it doesn't watch what happens if I drag it this way. So it's six at the moment. And if I drag this out, you see it says it's still sick, but it's actually added this extra class called offset one for the large document. Okay? So in my large view it's gonna offset this one. Can you see this kind of like hazy line here?
Um, it's a little hard on this smaller view, but you can see there's a little hazy light means there's gonna be this but offset or this buffering on this side. So I want this little um, buffering there and I wanna drag him. So he is filling that gap there. You don't have to fill that gap, but I've got four on the side, I've got a buffer of one and I've got my seven and that will make up my complete grid of 12. Now the next bit, I don't want you to follow along, I'm just, and there's a example. Say you do have just one uh, container fluid around the outside and you wanna start dividing this internal uh, container up into lots of different parts.
Um, so there are columns and rows. Now at the moment we've got one row and you can divide that up into columns. So if we need other rows underneath, you can do it by Um, what you need to do is have the row selected. So if you've got a column selected like this, you need to go back up and click here in your parent row, okay? And you get a nice little option over here that says add new row, okay? Or I could duplicate the one that I've currently got, but if I go to add new row, you'll see it here.
It adds a new row with our two columns in there by default. And I could go through and style this, I could decide, okay, it's going to be, this next row is gonna be a same. Okay? So it's gonna be, it's gonna be four. This one here is gonna have an offset of one and this one here is gonna have seven. Now let's say the last Part of this particular website is four columns.
So what I'm gonna do is click the parent row, I'm gonna say add a new row. And in here I'm gonna say I'm gonna make this one. So if I want four, I need to go three I three. And can you see I've got a big hole over here now. So I've got two columns, but they're only three and three. So I need another two.
So I can say I've got the column selected and I can say duplicate and then I can duplicate it again. And I've got this very thin, okay, which I can start filling with content. But I've got a website with these two, another row with another two. And then this last row with four columns. I'm gonna undo those. I just wanted to show you an example of how you'd go off and start building a site if you only had one fluid container.
But we've got a few different ones. So this is the sky done. Now we're gonna add some content in there, just really basic stuff so that we can just so it fills it out a little bit, let's copy and paste the text that goes into here. So I'm gonna go to my text document and there it is, who we are. Oh, clicked all of this and pasted it in there. So remember, if I click inside of it and this is grayed out, okay, it isn't at the moment, it's probably means you've got your CSS selected.
So make sure we're on source code, which is the H TM L, okay? And let's go to insert paragraph. And inside there I wanna nest it inside. Okay? And I'm gonna select it all. Okay, it goes orange, I'm gonna paste that in there and put a return in after this one.
Click out and I've got some basic text to work with. Now what I wanna do is add it to this image here. Now I've got the trouble of if I wanna zoom in, now watch this. If I zoom in, okay, it snaps and it puts them above each other. 'cause I'm looking at it now at a smaller view, okay, a mobile view. So I'm gonna have to zoom out a little again.
And you've got two options. Now if you're working on a really tiny screen, like I am at the moment doing this tutorial, um, you have to work out at this view or you can close, can you see this little double arrow here? You can close that and then zoom back in and see what you get to. You can see my one's still not big enough to get out to the large view. So I'm gonna always have to zoom out when I'm working in Dreamweaver on this laptop at this resolution. Now I normally work, I love my laptop, but I normally plug it into a bigger monitor so that it helps me work on these larger sizes.
If you're working on a, I don't know, MacBook Air, like an 11 inch, it's gonna be tough work. You might wanna invest in a screen. Doesn't have to be expensive. Screen just has to be white, okay? So I'm gonna pop that back out so that you can follow along with me and I'm just gonna have to be zoomed out a little bit and just look at everything a little bit tiny. But don't worry, we're gonna look at previewing consistently in a second, which means, um, we can do stuff from Dreamweaver and see what it's gonna look like in the browser.
So, um, you can see here I've got my text. I want to add in here that little image. So I've got the image in. We're gonna do images in more detail later on in the tutorial, but let's just do a basic one. So I'm gonna select on it, I'm gonna get an insert. I'm gonna go to image and I'm gonna nest it inside my column that I've got selected.
And I want to go to my images. So I want you to go to your exercise files. Mine on my desktop, Dreamweaver exercise files. I've got images. And you'll see in here I've got one called graphic old books. That's what's gonna go in there.
Let's click open and voila it fits in here. Okay, so we've got our first little image. Now we're gonna do images in more detail, remember later on. But just while we're here, there's two things you need to do. Whenever you put an image in, we're gonna do the alt text, okay? And the alt text is to do with what Google sees.
'cause Google can see your graphic, okay? It can see the file name of it. It can see graphic old book.jp and that's reasonably descriptive, but most people have images called, I don't know, ig, uh, or IMG 4 4 7 2. And that's not gonna help Google. What Google wants to see and what it wants for its users is a description. And this is what here is the old text is for.
So I'm gonna add old text of, uh, old books in the library and what that's used for if I click enter now, um, if I click on the object here and I go to my code view and make sure I'm in source, you'll see that there's my image, okay? There's a linking to this image here and here's my lovely old text, okay? And that is used by Google 'cause Google can't see the image, it's a computer that goes wrong, crawls the code, but doesn't actually see this image like we can. And what it wants to do is a, it wants to know, um, what it is so it can index it and know what your page is about. But what it really wants it for is for people that are visually impaired or blind, okay? That they have software on their computers that read them websites.
So when the website gets read out to somebody, it's not just, here is an image called IMG 1 1 4 7. It's actually describing the image using your alt text. So it's really important to make sure you have this on all images because Google likes it as part of its rankings and you wanna make sure you describe it route. Well the easiest way to do is imagine you were describing it to somebody who can't see it. Alright, let's go back to live view. Um, so al text needs to go on and the one other thing that needs to do when you're dealing with responsive bootstrap sites, you need to select on it.
And I'm gonna zoom in a little bit just so that you can see it on the, um, screen. Um, can you see this little sandwich here? Okay, this little three stripe lines. If I click on that, okay, you need to add this one that says make image responsive. Okay? What it does is without it, see if I zoom out, can you see it doesn't actually fit in this box?
Can you's too wide and he's the right height. This box pushes out, but actually it doesn't fit within our four columns, okay? He's a bit stretched out the side. So what we need to say is click on the image, click on this little stripe line, click make responsive and watch it. Can you see it actually fits in with the column size, which means it's gonna push his boundaries out and it's gonna cause loads of problems when you're trying to style this thing down for mobile or even our desktop there, it didn't fit. Okay?
So make sure, click on this little option here that says make image responsive. And uh, if you Don't have that option or you got an older version of Photoshop and all you really need to do is add the class called, I'm gonna zoom in. It's called image responsive. So say we don't use this option here, let's turn it off. Can you see it's just adding that class. You can manually type it in if you want.
So clone that off, add it by going img responsive does the same job. Okay, either which way you wanna work, zoom out again and now it will stretch and contract for the different sizes later on. So make sure alt text and image responsive. Alright? And that's an introduction to our rows and columns. We haven't styled any of the text, we're gonna do that later on.
But remember, you've always got to have at least a container. Doesn't matter if it's a, a fluid one or just a regular fixed width container. Then you need a row. And then inside that is always a column, even if there's no splits into the columns, you should have this column here. 'cause it's column that we apply that how many thing, uh, how many grids it spans. You can see at the moment it's spanning the whole 12.
And this one here, seven. This one here, four. All right, that's it. Let's go into a production video where we add all the rows and columns to all the other pages.
How do you add Bootstrap rows and columns in Dreamweaver?
Select your container, choose Grid Row and Column in the Insert panel, then select Nest and enter the number of columns you need. Dreamweaver creates the row and its columns together. Before adding content, check that the column classes use the breakpoint you intend, such as lg for this desktop layout.
How to Add Bootstrap Columns and Rows in Dreamweaver
Key Takeaways
Build the correct container, row and column structure.
Avoid accidentally creating desktop layouts with small-device classes.
Resize columns and add offsets using Bootstrap’s 12-column grid.
Add extra rows, placeholder text and images in Live View.
Give images useful alt text and make them responsive.
Full-width bands give a page its big sections. Now we need the boxes inside those sections: somewhere for a title, somewhere for the copy, and perhaps an image alongside it.
Our example has a hero section with a title and introductory text, followed by a “Who We Are” section with an image on the left and text on the right. The backgrounds stretch across the page, but the content sits within an internal container.
The trick is getting that structure right before worrying about fonts and styling. There is also a slightly annoying Dreamweaver behaviour to deal with on smaller screens. Sorting it out now can save a fair bit of tidying up later.
Understand the Bootstrap Layout Structure
For the grid layout we are building, keep this order in mind:
Container: the wrapper around the layout.
Row: a horizontal group of columns inside that container.
Column: the box that holds your text, images and other content.
A fluid container stretches across the available width. A regular container gives us the narrower content area inside it. In our hero section, that means the outer fluid band contains a regular container, which contains a row, which contains a column.
Even a section with just one content box still needs a row and a column. That single column spans all 12 units of the Bootstrap grid. We do not skip the column simply because there is nothing beside it.
Add an Internal Container to the Hero Band
Start with the existing full-width hero band selected. In this example, it is named band-hero.
Open the Insert panel.
Choose Container.
When Dreamweaver asks where to place it, choose Nest.
Nest means “put it inside the selected element”. We want our new container inside the hero band, not before it, after it or wrapped around it.
You should now have a narrower container sitting within the full-width section. Great. That gives us the wrapper, but it is not quite time to start typing into it. First, add the grid structure.
Check the Desktop Breakpoint Before Inserting Columns
This is worth dealing with before you build the rest of the page.
Dreamweaver can choose the column class according to the width of its current design area. On a small laptop screen, that area may fall into the sm, or small, range even though you are working on your desktop design.
The size labels in this setup are xs, sm, md and lg: extra small, small, medium and large. For the desktop layout here, we want Dreamweaver to generate lg column classes.
A small-device class is not inherently wrong. The problem is creating one accidentally when you intended to define the large-screen layout. That can mean extra class changes when you come to adjust the tablet and mobile versions.
Why selecting Large Devices may not be enough
In the Dreamweaver behaviour encountered here, choosing Large Devices from the size menu does not reliably change the class used when inserting a new grid. The design area becomes wider, but newly inserted columns can still receive an sm class.
So test the result rather than assuming the menu selection has done the job.
Zoom out to expose the large-screen layout
The practical workaround is to zoom out until the desktop width fits within the workspace.
Mac: use Command and minus to zoom out, or Command and plus to zoom in.
Windows: use Control and minus to zoom out, or Control and plus to zoom in.
Menu option: use View > Magnification to adjust the zoom level.
Zoom out enough to see the desktop range on the responsive width bar. Then insert your columns and inspect the generated class. We want col-lg-12 for the full-width hero column, rather than col-sm-12.
If you have already inserted the wrong grid, use Edit > Undo, return to the container, adjust the zoom and insert it again. You can also edit the classes in Code View, or use find and replace later. I prefer to get the intended class in place from the start.
Create One Row and One Column for the Hero
With the internal hero container selected and the desktop range visible:
Choose Grid Row and Column in the Insert panel.
Select Nest so the grid goes inside the container.
Enter 1 for the number of columns.
Confirm the insertion.
Select the new column and check its class.
Dreamweaver creates the row automatically and puts the requested column inside it. Entering three would create one row containing three columns, not three separate rows.
Your hero structure should now be a fluid band containing a regular container, then a row, then one column spanning the full 12-unit grid. That last box is where the content goes.
Add Placeholder Text in Live View
For now, the text only needs to help us recognise the section and see how the content fits. Leave the typography alone until the layout is in place.
Select the hero column.
Make sure the Source Code tab is active, rather than a linked CSS file.
Choose Insert > Paragraph.
Select Nest to place the paragraph inside the column.
Replace the default text with your hero title.
The example uses an uppercase title about making things awesome, followed by placeholder body copy. If you are using the exercise files, open the text document in the Text folder and copy the relevant passage.
To edit directly in Live View, double-click the text. The editing area turns orange and the rest of the page fades back. Put the cursor after the title, press Enter and paste the body copy beneath it.
You can edit the same text in Code View, but Live View keeps this stage nice and visual.
If Insert Paragraph is greyed out
Check the active source tab first. If you have a CSS file selected, Dreamweaver may disable the paragraph insertion command even though you have clicked inside the page.
Switch back to Source Code, select the column again and retry Insert > Paragraph.
The mockup gives us a clear target: a smaller image area, a gap and a wider text area.
Build the Two-Column “Who We Are” Section
The next section needs two content boxes: an image on the left and copy on the right. The mockup also has a little breathing room between them, so an equal split is only our starting point.Select the full-width “Who We Are” band.
Insert a Container and choose Nest.
Zoom out if needed so you are working in the large-screen range.
Select the new container.
Insert Grid Row and Column, choose Nest and request 2 columns.
Bootstrap uses a 12-unit grid, so two equal columns each span six units. Check that Dreamweaver has created col-lg-6 on both columns.
If you see col-sm-6 instead, undo the grid insertion and adjust the workspace before trying again. It is easy to forget the zoom step after editing text, so keep checking those classes.
Resize the image column
Our image area should be smaller than half the container. Select the left column and drag its right-hand resize handle inward until it spans 4 grid units.
The right-hand handle changes how many grid units the column spans.
Dreamweaver updates the class as you drag. You could make the same change in Code View by changing col-lg-6 to col-lg-4. The visual control simply gives you a more hands-on way to do it.
At this point, the other column still spans six units, so there is unused space at the right. That is fine while we finish arranging the row.
Add a one-column offset before the text
The handles on opposite sides of a column do different jobs. The right-hand handle changes its width. The left-hand offset control adds space before it.
Select the text column and use its left-hand control to add an offset of 1. In this Bootstrap setup, Dreamweaver adds col-lg-offset-1. The lightly shaded area before the column represents that reserved space.
Then extend the text column to span 7 units. The finished row is:
Image column: 4 units.
Offset before the text: 1 unit.
Text column: 7 units.
Four plus one plus seven gives us 12. The offset counts towards the grid total, even though it is empty space rather than another content column.
You do not have to fill every available unit, but this arrangement fills the row and gives us the gap shown in the mockup.
Add More Rows and Columns When You Need Them
A container can hold several rows. You do not need a new fluid band for every horizontal group of content.
To add a row beneath the current one, select the parent row. If a column is selected, move up through Dreamweaver’s element hierarchy until you reach its row. The row controls include Add New Row, along with an option to duplicate the existing row.
In this example, Add New Row creates another row with two columns by default. You can then adjust their spans and offsets, perhaps repeating the four-unit image, one-unit gap and seven-unit text arrangement.
Create a row of four equal columns
For four equal content boxes, each column needs to span three grid units:
Add a new row.
Resize its existing columns to span 3 units each.
Select a column and use Duplicate to add another.
Duplicate again until there are four columns.
Three plus three plus three plus three fills the 12-unit grid. You can use this approach to build a container with two columns in one row, another two beneath it, and four across the final row.
Those extra rows are only a layout example here. Undo them if you are following the hero and “Who We Are” design, which uses separate full-width bands.
Fill the Text Column and Manage a Small Workspace
Select the right-hand column in “Who We Are”, insert a nested paragraph and paste in the section title and body copy. Add a return after the title so the two are separated. Again, we are putting content in place, not styling it yet.
You may notice something surprising when you zoom back in: the two columns stack above one another.
That happens because the design area is now displaying a narrower layout. The large-screen column rules are no longer producing the same side-by-side arrangement at that width.
On a small screen, you have a few practical options:
Stay zoomed out while working on the desktop grid.
Collapse the side panels with the double-arrow control to gain workspace.
Use a wider external monitor if one is available.
Collapsing the panels may help, but it might still not give you enough width. On the laptop used here, zooming out remains necessary. Keep checking the responsive range, and use browser previews as you continue refining the page.
Insert an Image Inside the Left Column
Now select the four-unit image column.
Choose Insert > Image.
Select Nest.
Browse to the exercise files and open the Images folder.
Choose the old-books graphic and confirm.
The image is now inside the column. Before moving on, there are two things to sort out: alt text and responsive sizing.
Write useful alt text
A filename such as “graphic-old-books.jpg” gives some indication of the subject. A filename such as “IMG4472.jpg” does not tell us much at all. Neither replaces a proper text description.
For this image, a suitable description is “Old books in a library”. Add it in the image’s alt text field.
Alt text helps communicate the image’s meaning to people using screen-reading software. It also provides search engines with descriptive information about the image and its context.
The easiest way to write it is to imagine describing the image to somebody who cannot see it. Keep it useful and clear. In Code View, you can confirm that the description appears in the image element’s alt attribute.
Make the image responsive
Being inside a column does not automatically mean the image will fit it. Without responsive sizing, the image can extend beyond the four-unit area and interfere with the layout.
Select the image.
Open its options using the small three-line control.
Enable Make Image Responsive.
Responsive sizing keeps the image within its column instead of letting it spill across the layout.
In the Bootstrap setup used here, this option adds the img-responsive class. If the option is unavailable, you can add that class manually.
The image can now shrink with the available space instead of keeping a width that overflows its column. So, for this image, remember both jobs: add a meaningful description and enable responsive sizing.
Check the Structure Before Styling
We now have a hero with one full-width content column and a “Who We Are” section with an image, a gap and a wider text column. The text is deliberately unstyled. The important part is that every piece of content has the right box around it.
Each grid has a container, a row and at least one column.
The hero column spans all 12 units.
The second section uses 4 units, a 1-unit offset and 7 units.
The desktop columns use the intended lg classes.
The image has alt text and the img-responsive class.
Get those foundations right, and you are ready to apply the same row-and-column approach to the remaining sections and pages.
Key Terms
Fluid container
A wrapper that stretches across the available page width. Here, it forms the outer background bands.
Regular container
The narrower wrapper used to hold the internal content layout within a full-width band.
Row and column
A row groups columns horizontally. Columns sit inside rows and hold the actual content.
Breakpoint
A responsive size range at which layout rules apply. The labels used here include xs, sm, md and lg.
Offset
Grid space reserved before a column. A one-unit offset creates a gap without adding another content box.
Alt text
A text alternative that communicates an image’s meaning, including to people using screen readers.
img-responsive
The Bootstrap class added by Make Image Responsive in this setup. It allows the image to adapt to the available width.
FAQs
Do I need a column if my section has only one block of text?
Yes. Keep the container, row and column structure even when there is only one content box. That column spans all 12 grid units.
Why does Dreamweaver insert sm classes when I want lg?
Dreamweaver may be using the current design-area width to choose the class. Zoom out until the large-screen range is visible, insert the grid and check the result. In the behaviour encountered here, selecting Large Devices alone was not enough.
Why is Insert Paragraph greyed out?
A linked CSS file may be active instead of the HTML source. Select Source Code, click the intended column and try inserting the paragraph again.
How do I leave a gap between two Bootstrap columns?
Use an offset before the second column. In this example, a four-unit image column, a one-unit offset and a seven-unit text column fill the 12-unit grid.
Why is my image wider than its column?
The image may not have responsive sizing enabled. Select it and choose Make Image Responsive, or manually add the img-responsive class used by this Bootstrap setup.
Written by Daniel Walter Scott — Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor