Beginner Dreamweaver Tips
Jump down this page to: Essential Preferences | Basic Formatting | Renaming and Moving Webpages
Essential Preferences
Before using Dreamweaver at Amherst, please set these important preferences:
Go to Edit/Preferences.
General: Check Use CSS instead of HTML tags
Code Format: Select LF (Unix) Line Break Type.
Code Rewriting: Select Do not encode special characters under "URL encoding"
Basic Formatting
Break to the next line, but not to a new paragraph: Unlike a word processor, Dreamweaver inserts 'two paragraph spaces' (two lines) when you press the Enter key. That's because Dreamweaver is writing HTML as you type, and HTML works a little differently. Pressing Enter creates a paragraph <P> tag, which leaves a blank line after the preceding paragraph. To break to the next line without creating an extra line space, press Shift+Enter, which creates a break <BR> tag.
This line has been broken with a
<P> tag by pressing Enter in Dreamweaver.
This line has been broken with a <BR>
tag by pressing Shift+Enter in Dreamweaver.
Make a headline: Rather than bolding text or making it larger, simply define the text as "Heading 1" or "Heading 2" (there are 6 headings in total). To do this, select the text then go to your Properties panel and, under "Format: Paragraph," choose a heading instead of "Paragraph."
Make text wrap around an image: Place the image just before the text (whether you want the image to sit on the left or right of the page). Select the image. In the Properties panel, select either Align Left or Align Right.
Break out of a list: Pressing Enter when in a list gives you a new bullet instead of a plain paragraph. With your cursor at the unwanted bullet, go to the Properties panel and unclick the bulleted list button. (Unclick the numbered list button for numbered lists.)
Add space around items in a table. Select the whole table (the easiest way is to click on the <table> tag in the bottom of the Dreamweaver window). With the table selected, go to the Properties panel and increase the cell padding and cell spacing until the table looks the way you want it. Remember to use tables for tabular data only, not merely for controlling layout. For instance, our library's hours are tabular data.
Renaming and Moving Webpages
When you change the names of your pages or move them to different folders, you break links! If you decide that you must rename or move a page or a folder, please read the following.
Make Sure the New Name is Web-Safe
In your page and folder names, use only lower-case letters, numbers, the underscore (_), and the dash (-). No spaces. Read more in "Top Ten Tips for Making Web Pages at Amherst."
Rename or Move the Page in Dreamweaver
To make sure you don't break links within your own Website, do your renaming or moving in Dreamweaver's "Files" window. First, make a backup copy of your local site. Then use Dreamweaver's Files window to rename or move the page or folder. Dreamweaver will ask you whether you want to update any links. Click OK to allow Dreamweaver to update your links. Dreamweaver will list all the pages it's updating. Make sure you upload all the updated pages to the remote site.
Link from the old page to the new
If your page has been bookmarked and/or linked to by external sites, you might want to provide a link from the old location to the new. Create a new, blank page, save it under the old name, and put nothing on it except a link to the new location.