Setting and changing fonts and styles

Use options in the Property inspector or the Text menu to set or change font characteristics for selected text. You can set the font type, style (such as bold or italic), and size.

To set or change font characteristics:

1. Select the text. If no text is selected, the change applies to subsequent text you type.
2. Select from the following options:
   • To change the font, select a font combination from the Property inspector or from the Text > Font submenu.

     Select Default to remove previously applied fonts; Default applies the default font for the selected text (either the browser default font or the font assigned to that tag in the CSS style sheet).

   • To change the font style, click Bold or Italic in the Property inspector, or select a font style (Bold, Italic, Underline, and so on) from the Text > Style submenu.

     NOTE

     When you use the Property inspector to apply bold or italic style, Dreamweaver automatically applies the <strong> or <em> tag, respectively. If you are designing pages for viewers with 3.0 or older version browsers, you should change this preference in the General category of the Preferences dialog box (Edit > Preferences).

   • To change the font size, select a size (1 through 7) from the Property inspector or from the Text > Size submenu.

     HTML font sizes are relative, not specific, point sizes. Users set the point size of the default font for their browsers; this is the font size that they will see when you select Default or 3 in the Property inspector or Text > Size submenu. Sizes 1 and 2 will appear smaller than the default font size; sizes 4 through 7 will appear larger. Also, fonts generally look larger in Windows than on the Macintosh, though Macintosh Internet Explorer 5 uses the same default font size as Windows.

     TIP

     One way to ensure consistency with font size is to use CSS styles with your font size set in pixels. For more information on CSS, see Using Cascading Style Sheets to format text.

   • To increase or decrease the size of selected text, select a relative size (+ or –1 to + 4 or –3) from the Property inspector or from either the Text > Size Change submenu.

     NOTE

     These numbers indicate a relative difference from the basefont size. The default basefont value is 3. Thus, a +4 value results in a font size of 3 + 4, or 7. The maximum sum for your font size values is 7. If you try to set them higher, they appear as 7. Dreamweaver does not display the basefont tag (which goes in the head section), although the font size should appear properly in a browser. To test this, compare text set at 3 and text set at +3.

Related topics

• Modifying font combinations