Dreamweaver in a Nutshell

Defining a Style

Finally, we come to defining a style. By now, hopefully you understand the context in which you define and apply CSS styles. In the New Style dialog box (see Figure 10-5), click the OK button after choosing the type of CSS style to create and deciding where to store it. This step opens the Style Definition dialog box. Figure 10-7 shows one of the eight panes of this dialog box. Its title becomes “Style definition for stylename" if you edit a style that is stored internally; it becomes “Style definition for stylename in stylesheet.css" if you edit a style stored in an external stylesheet.

The Style Definition Dialog Box

Let’s see how to set the attributes for a new style that you are defining. To define a new style, use Text → CSS Styles → New Style (or the New Style button in the CSS Styles panel) to open the New Style dialog box. Once you’ve made your selections in that dialog box (see Figure 10-5), click the OK button to reach the Style Definition dialog box discussed here. Double-clicking an existing style also brings you directly here (allowing you to edit an existing style’s attributes).

The Style Definition dialog box contains 8 categories through which you can customize roughly 60 attributes for a style. You’ll probably use only a small fraction for any single style rule. When you’re done defining the style’s properties, click the OK button to save your style (the choice of where to save it and what to call it was made earlier in the New Style dialog box). ...