Lesson 1.2: Editing Text: Changing the Colors, Sizes, and Fonts

Dreamweaver Works Like a Word Processor

Dreamweaver works very similarly to a word processor. To modify text, you will be using the properties toolbar, which looks like this:

To Change the Font

To change the font of the text, highlight the text you want to change and click on the Font pulldown menu on the properties toolbar. The default font is Times New Roman, but you can also choose Arial (sans-serif), Times (serif), Courier, Georgia, and Verdana. This webpage, for instance, was created with a sans-serif font.

Default Font
Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Times New Roman, Times, serif
Courier New, Courier, mono
Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif
Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif

Dreamweaver only allows you to choose from these fonts because these are the default fonts that are installed on most people's computers. The order of the font list (for example, Veranda then Arial then Helvetica) means that if the user doesn't have the first font that is listed, it will display the next one in the list and so on. (Note: Some of the examples of the fonts above will look the same if you don't have the first font on the list.) If you were to choose a weird font to display on your webpage that the viewer doesn't have, then the viewer would see the text differently from what you intended.

To Change the Font Size

To change the color of the text, highlight the text you want to change and click on the Font Size pulldown menu on the properties toolbar. The default size is 3. The different sizes are:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

+1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7

-1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7

To Change the Font Color

To change the size of the text, highlight the text you want to change and click and hold on the little arrow on Font Color button-box on the properties toolbar. The default color is black.

To Change Properties of the Text

To change the properties of the text (bold, italic, left justify, center, right justify), highlight the text you want to change and click on the appropriate properties button on the properties toolbar, just as you would in a word processor. The default is normal text (unbolded and unitalicized), left justified.

To Bullet or Number Text or Shift Text

To bullet, number, or shift the text, highlight the text you want to change and click the appropriate button on the properties toolbar. Shifting text is similiar to indenting/tabbing the text.

• bulleted text 1
  
• bulleted text 2

1. numbered text 1
   
2. numbered text 2

text shifted left

text shifted right