Part I: Creating Great Web Sites in Java

Printer QR Code JIS X 0510 in Java Part I: Creating Great Web Sites

When you change the background, text, or link colors, make sure the colors look good together and that your text is still readable As a general rule, a light background color works best with dark text color and vice versa To change the link color and underline options, follow these steps: 1 Choose Modify Page Properties The Page Properties dialog box appears 2 In the Category list, select the Links (CSS) option The Links (CSS) category is displayed, as shown in Figure 2-11

Figure 2-11: The Links (CSS) category enables you to change link colors, font face, and size, as well as to alter the display of the underlined or linked text

3 Specify the font face and size you want for the links on your page If you don t specify a font, your links appear in the same font and size specified for the text of your document 4 To the right of the Link Font drop-down list, click the B or I if you want all the links on your page to appear bold or italic, respectively If you select one of these options, all your links appear bold or italic unless you specify other formatting in the page 5 Specify a color for any or all link states The color you selected is applied to links on your page based on the link state There are four link states, and all can be displayed in the same or different colors: Link Color: This option controls the color in which a link appears when it is first displayed on a page

Visited Links: This option controls the color of links that a visitor has already clicked (or visited) Rollover Links: A link changes to this color when a user rolls a cursor over the link (also known as hovering) Active Links: A link changes to this color briefly while a user is actively clicking it 6 In the Underline Style drop-down list, specify whether you want your links underlined By default, all links on a Web page appear underlined in a browser, but many designers find the underline distracting and prefer to turn off underlining by selecting Never Underline You can also choose Show Underline Only on Rollover to make the underline appear when a user moves a cursor over a link Hide Underline on Rollover causes the underline to disappear when a user moves a cursor over a link 7 Click the Apply button to see your changes automatically applied to any linked text or other elements on your page 8 Click OK to finish and close the Page Properties dialog box When you change the link options and other settings in the Page Properties dialog box, Dreamweaver automatically creates styles corresponding to these settings and saves them in the CSS Styles panel, as shown in Figure 2-12 I cover Dreamweaver s CSS Styles panel in greater detail in s 5 and 6

Figure 2-12: When you specify formatting options in the Page Properties dialog box, Dreamweaver automatically creates styles that appear in the CSS panel

If you ve heard of Meta tags, you probably associate them with search engines, and you d be right Meta tags are used for a variety of things, but one of the most common uses is to provide special text that doesn t appear on your page but is read by crawlers, bots, and other programs that scour the Web cataloging and ranking Web pages for Yahoo!, Google, and a long list of other search-related sites Some search engines read the Meta tags for keywords and descriptions The first enables site designers to include a list of keywords they would like used to make their Web site a match when someone types the same keywords into a search engine Unfortunately, Meta keywords have been so abused by Web designers attempting to mislead visitors about the true content of their Web pages that most search engines ignore the Meta keyword tag Some search engines continue to recognize Meta keywords, however, and it won t hurt your ranking with any search engines if you use this Meta tag The Meta description tag is more widely used and is definitely worth using This tag is designed to let you include a written description of your Web site and is often used by search engines as the brief description that appears in search results pages If you don t include your own text in a Meta description tag, many search engines use the first several words that appear on your front page or some other collection of text from your page, usually based on formatting or placement on the page Depending on your design, the first few words may not be the best description of your site, and you ll be better served by including your own Meta description Follow these steps to fill in the Meta description tag: 1 Open the page where you want to add a Meta description You can use Meta descriptions on any or all pages on your Web site (Many people using search engines to find your site may end up directly at internal pages if the content matches the search) 2 Choose Insert HTML Head Tags Description, as shown in Figure 2-13 The Description dialog box appears 3 In the Description text box, enter the text you want for your page description Don t add any HTML to the text in this box