Using the Quick Tag Editor

If you prefer Design view (as do most people who've bought a WYSIWYG editor, after all) but wish you could type a little bit of HTML now and then without switching back-and-forth between modes, there's an answer: the Quick Tag Editor.

To use the Quick Tag Editor:

1.	With your page in Design view, put the cursor in the place where you wish to add a tag, or select the tag you wish to change, or select the element you wish to wrap a tag around.
2.	Press Ctrl-T (for Mac users, Cmd-T). or Click the Quick Tag Editor button on the Property Inspector.
3.	The Quick Tag Editor appears, in one of its three modes: Insert, Edit, or Wrap. In any of these modes, start typing, and the possible options appear in the code hints menu below. Insert HTML: This mode allows you to place a new tag on the page ( Figure 15.14 ). Figure 15.14. With the Quick Tag Editor, you can easily insert a new tag on the page. Edit tag: This allows you to modify an existing tag, either to change it or to add attributes to it ( Figure 15.15 ). Figure 15.15. The Quick Tag Editor also lets you edit existing tags. Wrap tag: In this mode, you can wrap a new tag around an existing element ( Figure 15.16 ). Figure 15.16. And lastly, you can tell the Quick Tag Editor that you want to wrap a tag around existing page elements.
4.	To accept your changes and leave the Quick Tag Editor, press Enter. To leave the Quick Tag Editor without making any changes, press Escape.

Tips

• Dreamweaver tries to guess which Quick Tag mode you want to be in. If it guesses incorrectly, you can cycle through the three modes by pressing Ctrl-T (Cmd-T) again. Be careful about what's actually chosen when you do that, thoughsometimes, the selected area can expand. For instance, if you've selected the text of a link with the goal of modifying that link, but you've also ( accidentally ) selected something outside the <a> (link) tag, you can find that you're modifying the <p> around the text instead of the link itself.

• If the Quick Tag Editor appears but it's covering an area you want to see, you can move it. Just click and drag in the area that displays the mode name to put it in the location you want.