Applying Headings

After paragraphs, headings are the most important structural element on most Web pages. Headings point your site's visitors to essential information on the page, and they separate sections of the page. Think of headings as being similar to headlines in a newspaper.

Text you enter into Dreamweaver begins with no heading; Dreamweaver refers to this text as None in the Property Inspector. As soon as you press Enter (Return), Dreamweaver wraps the text in paragraph tags, and the text becomes paragraph text.

HTML has six sizes of headings, plus paragraph text, as shown in Figure 4.10 . These headings don't have a fixed point size , unlike headings in say, Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign. Instead, they are sized relative to one another and the size of the paragraph text, and the size that the user sees depends on the settings in the user 's Web browser. By default, headings are usually displayed in boldface.

Figure 4.10. Here are examples of the six Heading sizes, plus Paragraph, which is usually used for body text.

You can change the look of headings (their size, font, color , and so forth) using CSS, which will be covered in Chapter 5.

Tip

• You can only have one size of HTML heading in a particular element. You can work around this limitation with CSS styles.

To apply a heading:

1.

Click in the line you want to change. Note that you don't have to select text; because a heading is a block style, it affects the entire paragraph the cursor is in.

2.

Choose Text > Paragraph Format > Heading x , where x is the heading size you want ( Figure 4.11 ). Figure 4.11. Choose the heading size you want from the Paragraph Format submenu. or Press Ctrl-1 for Heading 1, Ctrl-2 for Heading 2, and so on. On the Mac, press Cmd-1 for Heading 1, Cmd-2 for Heading 2, and so on. or Choose a heading from the Format pop-up menu of the Property Inspector ( Figure 4.12 ). Figure 4.12. Another way of choosing the heading size is to use the Format pop-up menu in the Property Inspector. or Click one of the heading buttons in the Text category of the Insert Bar ( Figure 4.13 ). Figure 4.13. The Text category of the Insert Bar gives you buttons with many options, including ways to apply three heading sizes. There are only buttons for Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3, listed as h1, h2 and h3, respectively. The text changes to the heading you selected.

To turn text into paragraph text:

1.	Click in the line you want to change.
2.	Choose Text > Paragraph Format > Paragraph. or Press Ctrl-Shift-P (Cmd-Shift-P). Dreamweaver changes the text into a paragraph.

To remove heading formatting:

1.	Click in the line you want to change.
2.	Choose Text > Paragraph Format > None. or Press Ctrl-0 (Cmd-0). (Those are zeros, not the letter "O".) The Format menu of the Property Inspector changes to None, indicating that the text has no heading or paragraph style assigned to it.