developing a site layout like Apple's Website

You can mimic the Apple website. Use the colors and the icons. Mind the copyright legal stuff.

But all the dynamics you see is JavaScript. The sliding menus on the Support page for instance. Check the source.

http://www.apple.com/support/

There are JavaScripts out there that provide the code to do the same.

You have to add such code, and the HTML that goes with it, in the HTML Snippet.

Note that iWeb just provides a placeholder for that code. It does not care about whether it works or not. That's your responsibility.

There are no sliding menus on the support page mentioned earlier. Those are accordion drop down menus. js is used.

A sliding menu can be found Here at the top of this page. (wi-fi,accessories,Macs,Applications,servers)

Both accordion and sliding menus are not something that can just be inserted into an html snippet and work it's more complicated than that. First off you need to add the js reference to the head section of your html file, something an iWeb html snippet is incapable of doing. Furthermore you have to upload referenced js file to your host. Also the js file that functions for these menus conflicts with js file generated when you insert an html snippet into iWeb, so using an html snippet will not work anyway! These are just some examples explaining to you that you may be getting in over your head with this one! It's involved and complicated and certain knowledge is required for functionality. Something not meant for iWeb.

If you get it to work in iWeb kudos to you!

10smom wrote:
Also what about the scrolling pictures in the apple store at the top?

This provides something similar:

http://www.aquafadas.com/bannerzest/index.html

And the instructions for incorporating it into iWeb are here:

http://aquafadas.eu/wiki/BannerZest:iWeb

An alternative to Dreamweaver is the Mac-only RapidWeaver:

http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/

...which has some nice third-party plugins, particularly the Accordian one here:

http://www.yourhead.com/

Another Mac-only web-design program is Sandvox, the +Pro Edition+ allowing easy HTML editing:

http://www.karelia.com/pro_edition/

10smom wrote:
"...which of the two would be easier for me to integrate into or would i just need to start from scratch??"

Essentially you would need to start from scratch, but you could copy & paste text and drag & drop images from your current iWeb site to either RapidWeaver or Sandvox.

I haven't used either, but RapidWeaver's 345 add-ons may give it the edge. For example, click on this:




...and then on Features and Settings there.

All you have to do is click on Web Widgets and then HTML snippet and either copy and paste your HTML code or enter it by hand and then click apply and it will be applied.

I created an iWeb page and added an Accordion menu and AJAX.

http://web.mac.com/wyodor/Ajax/

It's a quick and dirty job but it works. Even the explanation should be easy to follow.