Quick Dreamweaver Question

Barks · 1 May 2011 at 23:34

Just moved from FrontPage to Dreamweaver.

I'm trying to reformat the entire website using the CSS Styles as Dreamweaver is completely alien to me. I don't understand why you can't just select text and change the font/align/colour etc.

Anyhow, so I've got my CSS file and it's all working fine but it's still a pain in the backside having to go through the code and removing all the old references. What I've been doing is cutting the text from a page, pasting it unformatted and applying the styles but I'm still having problems with aligning and some text coming out bold. It's infuriating!

Is there a simple command that will strip out EVERYTHING to do with formatting? So far I just replace everything in the code to <p class> as anything else causes trouble.

I'm by no means an expert at this sort of thing (hence why I used Frontpage)

Cheers

DefiantAsh · 1 May 2011 at 23:59

If your pasting unformatted code, either you have some HTML styling or somewhere in your CSS file you have something.

If you know your stuff with HTML/CSS, look at some basic dreamweaver introduction tutorials, get used to the layout etc

.

http://net.tutsplus.com/

invisible · 2 May 2011 at 00:42

3dcandy · 2 May 2011 at 13:03

you can just change stuff by clicking on it, however in 2011 it is regarded as bad practice. Using css means that one change to the css file will alter everything on the site that uses that css. On a multi page site, changing things by hand is so unwieldy it's untrue. Frontpage produces some bad code, however so can dreamweaver. I'd be inclined to point you towards a cms of some sort, like say Wordpress, because it will save you a considerable amount of time as you go on. On maybe something that is hosted so you can just do the changes and the platform will do the rest. If you aren't that good with html and css and other technologies you could be in for a steep learning curve!

oliver2601 · 6 May 2011 at 03:05

If I have this right then this is the solution:

Press CTRL+F to bring up find and replace

Type in the code you want to change

Type in the code you want to change it to

Select which documents you want it to scan

Select Source Code

Profit...

Barks · 6 May 2011 at 09:51

Thanks for the replies. Sorry for the delay in getting back been busy with Uni work.

3dcandy said:
you can just change stuff by clicking on it, however in 2011 it is regarded as bad practice. Using css means that one change to the css file will alter everything on the site that uses that css. On a multi page site, changing things by hand is so unwieldy it's untrue. Frontpage produces some bad code, however so can dreamweaver. I'd be inclined to point you towards a cms of some sort, like say Wordpress, because it will save you a considerable amount of time as you go on. On maybe something that is hosted so you can just do the changes and the platform will do the rest. If you aren't that good with html and css and other technologies you could be in for a steep learning curve!

Does this mean if I alter the font/font size etc anywhere then it will change it across the entire site.

So far I've got 3 classes: Heading, sub heading and body text in my CSS file.

If I changed the font of say, body text, on a particular page will it apply the same change to every single page which is linked to the CSS file (hopefully yes)

gord · 6 May 2011 at 10:01

Yes. That is the idea of CSS, to separate out the formatting from the structure and it allows your styles to cascade across your entire site. Obviously you still have the capability to style specific areas using the wide range of selectors and additional sheets. It's extremely powerful.

3dcandy · 6 May 2011 at 10:40

As Gord said, that's why people use css. As long as you reference the file correctly, one change will change the whole site