Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual

Adding Text in Dreamweaver

In many ways, Dreamweaver works like a word processing program. When you create a new document, the blinking cursor appears at the top of the page, ready for you to begin typing. When you finish a paragraph, you press Enter or Return to start a new one. Text, as well as anything else you add to a web page, starts at the top of the page and works its way to the bottom. But you can’t type in some kinds of characters, like a copyright symbol, from the keyboard, and other kinds, like a nonbreaking space, require special keyboard combinations. Here’s how to access those special characters.

Adding Special Characters

Many useful special characters—such as copyright or trademark symbols—don’t appear on your keyboard, making them difficult or impossible to type. Dreamweaver’s Insert bar’s Text tab lets you use a variety of symbols and international characters quickly by clicking an icon.

To open the Text tab:

1. On the Insert panel, choose the Text category.

   If you can’t see the Insert panel, choose Window → Insert to open it, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F2 (⌘-F2).

   The panel shown in Figure 2-1 appears. Many of the options let you add common HTML tags like the <b> (bold) and <strong> (strong) tags, most of which you can apply more easily using the Property inspector or keyboard shortcuts, as discussed in the next chapter. This panel also features less frequently used tags like <abbr> (abbreviation) or <dl> (definition list). You can satisfy your curiosity about these ...