Dreamweaver

Set General preferences for Dreamweaver

  1. Select Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Dreamweaver > Preferences (Macintosh).
  2. Set any of the following options:
    Open Documents In Tabs
    Opens all documents in a single window with tabs that let you switch between documents (Macintosh only).

    Show Welcome Screen
    Displays the Dreamweaver Welcome screen when you start Dreamweaver or when you don’t have any documents open.

    Reopen Documents on Startup
    Opens any documents that were open when you closed Dreamweaver. If this option is not selected, Dreamweaver displays the Welcome screen or a blank screen when you start (depending on your Show Welcome Screen setting).

    Warn When Opening Read-Only Files
    Alerts you when you open a read-only (locked) file. Choose to unlock/check out the file, view the file, or cancel.

    Update Links When Moving Files
    Determines what happens when you move, rename, or delete a document within your site. Set this preference to always update links automatically, never update links, or prompt you to perform an update. (See Update links automatically.)

    Show Dialog When Inserting Objects
    Determines whether Dreamweaver prompts you to enter additional information when inserting images, tables, Shockwave movies, and certain other objects by using the Insert bar or the Insert menu. If this option is off, the dialog box does not appear and you must use the Property inspector to specify the source file for images, the number of rows in a table, and so on. For rollover images and Fireworks HTML, a dialog box always appears when you insert the object, regardless of this option setting. (To temporarily override this setting, Control-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) when creating and inserting objects.)

    Enable Double-Byte Inline Input
    Lets you enter double-byte text directly into the Document window if you are using a development environment or language kit that facilitates double-byte text (such as Japanese characters). When this option is deselected, a text input window appears for entering and converting double-byte text; the text appears in the Document window after it is accepted.

    Switch To Plain Paragraph After Heading
    Specifies that pressing Enter (Windows) or Return (Macintosh) at the end of a heading paragraph in Design view creates a new paragraph tagged with a p tag. (A heading paragraph is one that’s tagged with a heading tag such as h1 or h2.) When the option is disabled, pressing Enter or Return at the end of a heading paragraph creates a new paragraph tagged with the same heading tag (allowing you to type multiple headings in a row and then go back and fill in details).

    Allow Multiple Consecutive Spaces
    Specifies that typing two or more spaces in Design view creates nonbreaking spaces that appear in a browser as multiple spaces. (For example, you can type two spaces between sentences, as you would on a typewriter.) This option is designed mostly for people who are used to typing in word processors. When the option is disabled, multiple spaces are treated as a single space (because browsers treat multiple spaces as single spaces).

    Use <strong> and <em> in Place of <b> and <i>
    Specifies that Dreamweaver applies the strong tag whenever you perform an action that would normally apply the b tag, and applies the em tag whenever you perform an action that would normally apply the i tag. Such actions include clicking the Bold or Italic buttons in the text Property inspector in HTML mode and choosing Text > Style > Bold or Text > Style > Italic. To use the b and i tags in your documents, deselect this option.
    Note: The World Wide Web Consortium discourages use of the b and i tags; the strong and em tags provide more semantic information than the b and i tags do.

    Use CSS Instead of HTML Tags
    Specifies that Dreamweaver uses CSS styles instead of HTML tags when you format text with the Property inspector. By default, Dreamweaver formats text by using CSS. Each time a font, size, or color is defined for a text selection, a new document-specific style is created, which is then available from the Property inspector’s Style pop‑up menu. The only exceptions are for bold and italic fonts, for which Dreamweaver uses HTML tags instead of CSS.

    Even if the document links to an external style sheet, new style declarations are written to the head of the document, not in the CSS file.

    This general behavior may differ in the following situations:

    • If the document already formats everything using font tags, Dreamweaver uses font tags and modifies the body tag to use HTML code.

    • If the document’s body tag uses HTML to set the page’s appearance, but the page doesn’t exclusively use font tags, Dreamweaver still uses CSS to format text.

    If you deselect this option, Dreamweaver uses HTML tags such as font tags to format text, and HTML code in the body tag to set the page’s appearance.

    Warn when placing editable regions within <p> or <h1><h6> tags
    Specifies whether a warning message is displayed whenever you save a Dreamweaver template that has an editable region within a paragraph or heading tag. The message tells you that users will not be able to create more paragraphs in the region. It is enabled by default.

    Centering
    Specifies whether elements should be centered using div align="center" or the center tag when you click the Align Center button in the Property inspector.
    Note: Both of these approaches to centering have been officially deprecated as of the HTML 4.01 specification; you should use CSS styles to center text. Both of these approaches are still technically valid as of the XHTML 1.0 Transitional specification, but they’re no longer valid in the XHTML 1.0 Strict specification.

    Maximum Number of History Steps
    Determines the number of steps that the History panel retains and shows. (The default value should be sufficient for most users.) If you exceed the given number of steps in the History panel, the oldest steps are discarded. (For more information, see Task automation.)

    Spelling Dictionary
    lists the available spelling dictionaries. If a dictionary contains multiple dialects or spelling conventions (such as American English and British English), the dialects are listed separately in the Dictionary pop‑up menu.