Jun302005Dreamweaver Pet Peeve #1
Dreamweaver is a powerful program. It greatly simplifies the process of building and managing sophisticated Web sites. But now and again, I just wish it would do the kinds of basic things you find in dozens of other publishing programs. For example, smart quotes. You know, those curly looking things that greatly improve the look of quotations and contractions and possessives.
"This is great," he said….
…looks a lot better as…
“This is great,” he said.
And those straight, just-typed-on-computer-keyboard apostrophes—Dave's Blog—look a lot better when converted to real apostrophes—Dave’s Blog.
Microsoft Word does it…so do dozens of other programs…why not Dreamweaver? OK, this probably isn’t on the top of your I wish Dreamweaver had… list, but it’s an improvement I’d like to see and one that would make Dreamweaver that much more of a professional publishing tool.
Do you have a Dreamweaver pet peeve? Leave a comment. And if you want to let Macromedia know what you think should be added to the program drop them a line at wish-dreamweaver@macromedia.com.
Oh yeah, how do you put those professional looking quote marks and apostrophes in a Dreamweaver document? Go to Insert→HTML→Special Characters. On this sub, sub-menu you’ll find both left and right quotes. If you need an apostrophe, choose the Other… option and a window will pop up with a large grid full of interesting characters. And for a more detailed list of “character entities” check out http://www.evolt.org/article/A_Simple_Character_Entity_Chart/17/21234/
