Dreamweaver 8 - Property Inspector

When using Macromedia’s Dreamweaver 8, you’ll want to acquaint yourself with the Property Inspector immediately. The Property Inspector panel is by default located at the bottom of the Dreamweaver window, below the Design and Code view windows. Using this panel, you can modify the properties of the currently selected object.

In the Design view, if you click on the HTML tag or an object, most of its properties will be accessible. This isn’t necessarily the case with page properties in Dreamweaver. The page properties do not appear in the Property Inspector, but can be accessed from an open page by selecting Modify > Page. If you prefer, the Property Inspector has a Page Properties button, which will also open the Page Properties dialogue box when you click on it.

The Page properties control the appearance and layout of a Dreamweaver page. It contains three different categories by default: Appearance, Title/Encoding and Tracing Image.

Using the Appearance category, you can modify elements such as the background image and background color; the text color; the colors of links; visited links and active links; and the document margins, including the left, right, top and bottom margins. You cannot preview margins in Design view. You must preview your margins by selecting the “Preview in Browser” button.

The Title/Encoding category allows you to enter the page title. A page title can also be entered in the Title properties window in Code view. Using the Title/Encoding category, you may also set the document type definition; the encoding used by the page; Unicode options, including UTF-8, and the Unicode signature for UTF-16 and UTF-32 encoding.

The Tracing Image category provides tools to use in the Dreamweaver editor. These effects will not be visible in the finished document. They’re provided simply to help you lay out and visualise a page. Tracing Image allows you to select an image to appear in the background, over which you may lay content, tables, layers and images. The Transparency control allows you to control the transparency of the tracing image, to clarify the items you’re overlaying.

After having examined the Page Properties in the Property Inspector, we turn our attention to the other elements controlled through this panel.

The Title properties panel is very simple and allows you to enter the title of a page. A page title can also be entered in the Title properties window in Code view. Click on the TITLE tag in Code view to activate the Title properties panel.

The Text properties panel controls the appearance of the text in a Dreamweaver page. This panel will activate when you select any non-HTML text found between BODY tags. You can apply the standard HTML formatting controls and text attributes from this panel, including standard HTML headings and paragraph text; CSS styles that the page can access; CSS editing, via the CSS panel; text attributes, like Bold and Italic; text alignment controls - left, right, center, and justify; link creation; font face, size and color; list control for bulleted and numbered data; indentation control; target assignment for defined links; and a link to the Page Properties button.

The Image properties allow you to control the appearance of images in a Dreamweaver page. Once an image is inserted in a page, you can click anywhere in the IMG tag to pull up the Image properties panel. From this panel, you may: label an image for use with JavaScript rollovers; define an image’s dimensions; the image path; the link to the image, if it is stored elsewhere; alternate text for accessible browsers; and edit images for brightness, contrast, cropping, sharpness, resample them and open them in Fireworks for editing and optimization. If you are using an image placeholder, a Create button appears in place of the Edit button. The image properties also allow you to create image maps; add vertical and horizontal padding around images; add a border to your image and align an image using the drop down menu options.

Notes for editors: Claire Blinman is the training manager at Computer Training Solutions in Bristol. For more information visit our website at http://www.computertrainingsolutions.co.uk or call 0800 019 6882

Tags: Dreamweaver, property inspector, training

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