Redefining HTML tags with CSS

The most useful application of CSS Styles is Redefining HTML tags. Your document already uses paragraph tags <p>, list items <li>, and headings <h1>, <h2>, etc.

With CSS, you can specify the text formatting for the HTML tags without adding any formatting code to the pages themselves. The web browser software simply looks at the CSS file, grabs the style definitions for your HTML tags, and uses that formatting to display all those items on your page.

To redefine an HTML tag, click the New CSS Style icon and choose the Redefine HTML Tag option from the dialogue box. When you click the radio button next to this option, Dreamweaver will display a pulldown list of available HTML tags. Choose the tag you are redefining from this pulldown list.

After selecting the HTML tag and clicking OK, Dreamweaver will take you to the style definition dialogue box. Here you can specify font type, size, color, spacing, decoration, and hundreds of other options.

Different browsers will treat your redefined HTML tags in slightly different manners. For instance, redefining the font in your paragraph tags <p> will format all your paragraphs with the new style, but if you include tables or lists within your paragraphs, you may also have to redefine the font options for your table cells <td> and list items <li> tags.