Placing non-Dreamweaver items into a Dreamweaver Library

[Joan Graham]

Dreamweaver experts, please advise a brand-new Dreamweaver user. (Just
opened Dreamweaver yesterday; have started the Tutorial and read one
article about it, in Online magazine for Sept./Oct. 2000.  Wanting to
get started without getting into a mess.)

I maintain two fairly large web sites that need frequent updates, and
also, I want to re-design a section of each site this winter.
I've used Homesite as an editor, but usually hand code, and I have some
free javascripts and cgi scripts running for the sites, too.
My questions  are:
1) Can I place items of text, created other than in Dreamweaver, into a
Dreamweaver library, and then open a Homesite created web page in
Dreamweaver, and place a Library item into the page?

2) Since I have hundreds of web pages originally created in another
program, without HTML styles, can I use Dreamweaver to make a style,
place the style into the old pages, and expect the styles to work? Also,

will the styles over-ride  the old code, such as <FONT SIZE=2
FACE=ARIAL>, or would I need to clear all the old code from a page
before applying a Dreamweaver style to the page?

3) In these sites I have tons of images. I've heard that
Dreamweaver/Fireworks will compress an image to a fraction of its former

self, while retaining quality. The book Using Dreamweaver doesn't seem
to talk about this, or am I missing something obvious?

Thank you for any hints from people who are successfully using
Dreamweaver.

Sincerely,
Joan Graham
Webmaster, Stark County District Library