temporarily, simply choose Edit, Preferences. In the Preferences dialog, disable the Use CSS Instead of HTML Tags option from the General category (see Figure 3.3). Figure 3.3. Uncheck the Use CSS Instead of HTML Tags option for temporary formatting using traditional HTML tags. [View full size image]   After you've disabled the option, click OK to return to the Document window. NOTE Enabling the Use CSS Instead of HTML Tags option doesn't prevent you from using CSS in your pages. It simply prevents Dreamweaver from forcing style generation every time you format an element in the Document window. We'll re-enable this option when we get to Chapter 7, "Advanced Page Formatting Using Style Sheets."   Modifying the Page Properties Before you begin building a web page, you might want to think about how you want your page to look. Typically, most developers already have a basic idea of how they want the appearance or the color scheme of the web page to look. I'm sure you're thinking about these options, right? Because you are, Dreamweaver provides properties you can set for the page. Options such as page background color, link colors, margin sizes, and encoding are all accessible from the Page Properties button located in the Properties Inspector or by selecting the Modify menu and choosing Page Properties (alternatively, press Ctrl+J). Once selected, the Page Properties dialog appears separated into the following three categories: Appearance: This category contains options for adding a page background, changing the background color, modifying text and link colors, and setting margin widths and heights. Title/Encoding: Choose this category to change the title of your document as well as setting the default encoding type. Tracing Image: A rather unique feature to Dreamweaver, a tracing image is more of a development aid than anything else. Setting a tracing image allows a developer to trace around a central prototype using the layout mode. It's important to mention that options within the Page Properties category will range depending on which formatting mode you're in. Because we disabled the Use CSS Instead of HTML Tags option, we get only three categories to choose from (Appearance, Title/Encoding, and Tracing Image). Had we not disabled the box within the Preferences dialog, we'd have five categories to choose from (the previous three plus categories for Links and Headings). Modifying the Appearance The Appearance category allows you to perform numerous tasks associated with the overall look of the page including setting a background image, changing the background color, text and link color, and margin width and heights. A detailed list of features is outlined below: Background image: Sets a background image for the page. Background: Choosing this little square icon pops up the color palette allowing you to select from one of the 216 web safe colors. Try selecting this option, choose a color, and then click the Apply button. You can see that the Document window's entire background changes to the color you selected. You can change this color back to the default of white by choosing the white square with the red line crossed through. Text: Choose this option to change the default text color of the page. Black is the default. Links: Choose this option to change the default link color with the page. Blue is the default.