4. Text Editing and Options

Below are some methods on how to enter text and edit it within Dreamweaver.

Entering the Body of Your Page

• To enter the text for the body of your page, simply type in your information in the white working space. This is done just as it would be in a word processor. To justify your information to the left, center, or right, click on the appropriate justification icon in the Properties toolbar. The following image locates the justification icons in the Properties toolbar:

• After you have entered all the information into your page, you can change the font, size, color, etc. For more information on these options please continue reading.

Changing the Font

• To change the font, use the Properties toolbar. Highlight all text on your site that needs to be changed (including the title). Then go to the Properties toolbar. On the toolbar it says Format, and to the right of that are two scroll-down boxes. One says Paragraph and the other says the name of the font used. (Usually this will say Default Font if you have not yet changed it.) Click on the small light blue box with the arrow pointing downward to the right of the second box. The following will appear:

• Select the desired font bundle from the menu. This will change all of the selected text to the specified font.

 

A Note about Font Bundles

If you are using Dreamweaver to develop your website you should know that it stores fonts in "bundles". Here are a few reasons why Dreamweaver does this for you, and why you should NOT attempt to use a special font for your text.

Why not use special fonts?
Let's consider a scenario where you enter your website just the way you want it with a special curly font that looks really cool to you. When you enter information on your website and view it from your computer you see it the way you want it to look. All images are in place and all text is just the way you like it.

Now, consider another user in another state, another country, or even your next door neighbor! This person goes to look at your site on the web and your text is disjointed and in a font such as Times New Roman.

What happened? Well, when you use a special font that's on your computer for your website you are making the assumption that viewers of your site have that font on their system as well. If they don't, the computer makes a random substitution for the font that it is missing. This ruins the aesthetically pleasing look that you intended for your audience. Thus, bundles are a wonderful tool to help eliminate this!

 

Why bundles?

When you use bundled fonts for your text on your computer such as those offered in Dreamweaver, you safeguard yourself from the unfortunate problem described above.

When you look at the bundles that are offered, you see they are in the form of a list. For example, one of the lists says "Verdana, Arial, Helvetica,..." What this means is that when you choose this bundle for the text in your site, all text will be put in VERDANA. Then, if a user does not have Verdana installed on his or her system, then their system will use the next specified font which in this case is Arial. This continues until the user has a font that IS in the list. This helps eliminate the inaccurate viewing of your site for those who do not have specific fonts on their computers.

Changing the Size of Your Text

• To change the size of the text on your site, use the Properties toolbar. Highlight all text on your site that needs to be changed. Then go to the Properties toolbar. On the toolbar it says Size, and to the right of that is a scroll-down box.
• This menu has a set of numbers. These are not normal font sizes such as would be used in a word processor (i.e. 12pt font, 14pt font, etc.) Instead, they are numbers as would be used for HTML (hypertext mark-up language) to change the size of the text. Select the desired number (typically size 2 is the equivalent of a 12-pt in Word).

Changing the Color of your Text

Changing the color of the text on your site is usually something that is desired. We will now show you how it is done. You should note that colors are determined by specific 6-digit numbers in HTML code.

• Highlight the text to which you would like to make the desired color change.
• Down on your properties box, look for the little gray box next to the number of the font size. The following image should help you locate it:

• By clicking on this box with your mouse, a block of colors will appear such as the following:

• Select the desired color. You will notice that once you select a color, a particular number will appear in the box next to the little gray box that we clicked originally. This is as follows:

• If you happen to know the HTML number of the color you would like to use, you can just type it in the box.