Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual

Chapter 3. Text Formatting

Getting text onto a Web page (Chapter 2) is a good start, but effective communication requires effective design. Large, bold headlines help readers scan a page’s important topics. Colorful text focuses attention. Bulleted sentences crystallize and summarize ideas. Just as a monotonous, low-key voice puts a crowd to sleep, a vast desert of plain HTML text is sure to turn visitors away from the important message of your site. In fact, text formatting could be the key to making your Widgets Online 2009 Sale-a-thon a resounding success instead of an unnoticed disaster. Figure 3-1 shows two model examples of good—and bad—text formatting.

To help get your point across, Dreamweaver provides the tools you need to format text in compelling and eye-catching ways, but it’s important to understand the difference between the two methods Dreamweaver uses. You can format text using either HTML or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Using HTML, you’re not so much affecting the look of text (though different HTML tags do display differently in a Web browser), but changing its structure. For example the <h1> (heading 1) tag is used to indicate the most important heading on the page, while the <ol> (ordered list) tag is used to list a series of numbered steps. In contrast, you use CSS to add visual appeal to text by changing fonts, applying color, adjusting font size and a lot more.

The fundamental difference between HTML and CSS is so important, Dreamweaver CS4 introduces a new ...