Questions about creating boxes for content in Dreamweaver

[Mxg]

Hey guys I am in need of some help as I am fairly new to html and making it work for me, I do have experience editing templates for use but this is my first site I am building from scratch.

I am currently working for myself and I am trying to cut costs by coding for myself.

Now on to my problems,


This is the site layout I have planned
http://yfrog.com/5nbasiclayoutg


The white transparent blocks are for flash content as are the black blocks in the low portion.

The buttons are in between the 2 white transparent blocks.


What I would like to do is in dreamweaver create a series of tables to correspond to the areas that I will be adding content like the areas I will be adding flash content.

But I am unable to line everything up the way I want it to. When I try not seems to line up into the boxes I have outlined in the layout.

I am hoping i can't find some help here, as I have checked many tutorials and I cannot find one that actually shows me what to do.

My other problem is since the save for web size of the layout without the buttons is minuscule I was hoping having to avoid slicing the site into man part to optimize loading. I did however slice the buttons but when I try to make the layout go to the background so I can align the buttons accordingly according to the layout it never works out and the buttons end up going under the image.

Sorry for the long post but I am hoping to get some help.

Thanks.

[hollowunknown]

I think that whole design can be structured with DIVs and not tables.

Are you familiar with DIV's?

Unlike tables, divs are much easier to work with.

It shouldnt be too hard to find some great tutorials on building pages in Divs and CSS

I brushed through this tutorial which seems to explain in detail a possible approach which you can accomplish in your situation by simply reading this.

Link here. (http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Web-Style-Sheets/DIV-Based-Layout-with-CSS/)

G.