Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual

Quick Tag Editor

Code view is great when you really need (or want) to jump into the trenches and fine-tune your HTML. But if you’re visually oriented, you probably spend most of your time in Design view, enjoying the pleasures of its visual authoring environment.

Occasionally, however, you want to dip into the HTML pond, especially when you need to use some HTML that’s unavailable from the Insert panel. You might wish you could type out a quick HTML tag on the spot, right there in Design view, without having to make the mental and visual shift into Code view.

That’s what the Quick Tag Editor is all about. To access the Quick Tag Editor, in Design view press Ctrl+T (⌘-T)—or, if you’re feeling especially mouse-driven, in the Property inspector, click the Quick Tag Editor button. Depending on what you selected in the document window, the Quick Tag Editor opens in one of the following three modes (see Figure 11-17):

• Insert HTML. Inserts a new tag in the page. You get this mode if you haven’t selected anything in your document window.

• Edit tag. Lets you edit the tag for whatever element you selected in the document window (a graphic, for example). You can also edit all of that element’s properties.

• Wrap tag. If you select a swath of text or other objects (like two images), the editor opens in this mode, which lets you easily wrap a new tag around that selection.

Tip

You can cycle through the modes by repeatedly pressing Ctrl+T (⌘-T).

Using the Quick Tag Editor

You can type tag names, properties, ...