Styling Text

Use options in the Property inspector or the Text menu to set or change font characteristics for selected text. You can set the font type, style (such as bold or italic), and size. You can apply text formatting to one letter or to entire site paragraphs and blocks of text.

To set or change font characteristics:

1. Select the text. If no text is selected, the change applies to subsequent text you type.
2. Select from the following options:
   • To change the font, select a font combination from the Property inspector or from the Text > Font submenu.

   Select Default to remove previously applied fonts; Default applies the default font for the selected text (either the browser default font or the font assigned to that tag in the CSS style sheet).

   • To change the font style, click Bold or Italic in the Property inspector, or select a font style (Bold, Italic, Underline, and so on) from the Text > Style submenu.
     
     
   • To change the font size, select a size (1 through 7) from the Property inspector or from the Text > Size submenu.

   HTML font sizes are relative, not specific, point sizes. Users set the point size of the default font for their browsers; this is the font size that they will see when you select Default or 3 in the Property inspector or Text > Size submenu. Sizes 1 and 2 will appear smaller than the default font size; sizes 4 through 7 will appear larger. Also, fonts generally look larger in Windows than on the Macintosh, though Macintosh Internet Explorer 5 uses the same default font size as Windows.

   • To increase or decrease the size of selected text, select a relative size (+ or -1 to + 4 or -3) from the Property inspector or from either the Text > Size Change submenu.

   These numbers indicate a relative difference from the basefont size. The default basefont value is 3. Thus, a +4 value results in a font size of 3 + 4, or 7. The maximum sum for your font size values is 7. If you try to set them higher, they appear as 7. Dreamweaver does not display the basefont tag (which goes in the head section), although the font size should appear properly in a browser. To test this, compare text set at 3 and text set at +3.

To change the color of text:

1. Select the text.
2. Do one of the following:
   • Select a color from the palette by clicking the color picker in the Property inspector.
   • Select Text > Color. The system color picker dialog box appears. Select a color and click OK.
   • Enter the color name or hexadecimal number directly in the Property inspector field.
   • To define the default text color, use the Modify > Page Properties command (see Defining default text colors).

To return text to the default color:

1. In the Property inspector, click the color box to open the palette of web-safe colors.
2. Click the Strike-through button (the white square button with a red line through it, found in the upper-right corner).