Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual

Tag Inspector

The Property inspector is a handy tool. It lets you adjust properties for all sorts of HTML tags, like a table’s width or a paragraph’s font. But even the Property inspector doesn’t tell the whole story: Some HTML tags have additional properties that don’t appear there, such as the <a> tag’s tabindex property, which lets you control the order in which Dreamweaver highlights links as a visitor presses the Tab key.

For these hard-to-reach properties, turn to the Tag inspector (see Figure 11-18). Think of it as the uber-Property inspector. For hard-core HTML fanatics, it’s the best way to set properties for every HTML tag. To display it, press the F9 key (Option-F9 on Mac), or choose Window→Tag Inspector (the same procedure also hides this panel).

When you select a tag on the page (in either Code or Design view), Dreamweaver displays all its properties in the panel. To edit any of them, click in the space to the right of the property name. You can type in a new value or, for certain properties, use a pop-up menu to choose from a list of values. For color properties, use Dreamweaver’s ubiquitous color box to select the shade you want.

Note

If you don’t see a list of HTML properties, you may be in the Behaviors area of this panel. Just click the Attributes button at the top of the panel (see Figure 11-18) to use the Tag Selector. Oddly, the Behaviors button adds Dreamweaver Behaviors (see Chapter 14) and isn’t really used to inspect tags at all.

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