[Dreamweaver CC] >> Dreamweaver's default settings are fine for most people but it's useful to know how to change them.
There are a lot of options, so I'll concentrate on just the most useful ones.
You open the Preferences panel on Windows through the Edit menu.
And on a Mac, it's on the Dreamweaver menu.
Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+U on Windows or Command+U on a Mac.
This category list on the left shows which parts of the program's default settings you can change.
Code coloring, which is currently selected, lets you customize syntax highlighting in Code view.
I've covered that separately.
So let's take a look at the General category, this one here at the top.
If you want to disable the welcome screen, you do so here by deselecting this checkbox.
And the second option here, "Reopen documents on start up" can be quite useful if you want Dreamweaver to open the same files that were still open when you last closed the program.
Then, down here, "Use strong and em in place of b and i."
HTML5 has changed the meaning of the strong and em tags, they now mean strong emphasis.
Whereas b and i are more sort of stylistic, things that need to be in bold text and things that need to be italicized.
I do select this one but if you prefer to use strong and em for bold and italic, then just select this one here.
Then the last one that's of interest in the General category is the Spelling dictionary.
By default it's English (United States), but if you open this dropdown menu, you'll see that Dreamweaver is very international indeed.
As well as United States, you've got United States Medical, you got English (United Kingdom), English (Canada), and then many other languages.
There's a huge choice in there.
I'm just going to leave it on the default English (United States).
The next one I want to look at is the fourth one down, Code Format.
The main settings of interest here are to choose whether to indent with spaces or tabs.
By default, it's Spaces but you can choose Tabs if you like, and you can also set the Tab size and choose the option to insert tabs as spaces.
Next, we'll take a look at CSS Styles.
This lets you choose whether to use shorthand syntax for various CSS properties.
Font, I usually leave deselected but I like Margin and padding to be shorthand as with Border Radius, and Border and border width.
List style, I usually leave that deselected, and Transition, I like to select.
Then, "When editing CSS rules," you can Use shorthand "If the original used shorthand" or "According to the settings above."
"Open CSS files when modified" means that you have to save the CSS files if you make any changes to your styles.
If you deselect this checkbox, Dreamweaver automatically saves the changes without prompting you.
The last set of options here are for CSS vendor specific prefixes.
These prefix styles are added only for gradients.
By default Webkit is selected, Firefox and Opera are deselected.
You probably don't need those nowadays, but Webkit, you certainly do need it because a lot of Android devices still use the old Webkit syntax for gradients.
The Fonts category can be very useful if you're finding difficulty reading Code view.
Here is Code view, the default font is Source Code Pro and the size, by default is 11 points.
You can open that menu and choose a larger size or a smaller size to suit your own eyesight.
The last category I'm going to look at is this one, New Document.
You can choose to change the Default extension for HTML files.
By default, it's .
HTML, but if you prefer using .
HTM, this is where you change it.
You also change the Default Document Type here.
The default in Dreamweaver is HTML5 and I recommend that you leave it at that.
The Default encoding in Dreamweaver is now Unicode (UTF-8).
This is the standard encoding used by all web pages and it supports nearly every writing system in the world, including English, Western and Eastern European languages, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Urdu, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, you name it, it's probably supported.
You should change this value only if you know that your target audience requires a particular encoding to view pages on outdated browsers.
When you're happy with all of the changes that you've made, you must first click the Apply button down at the bottom of the Preferences panel, then click Close.
If you click Close without clicking Apply, none of the changes that you've made will be saved.
So click Apply and then Close.
So now you know how to make changes to the default Dreamweaver configuration by opening the Preferences panel.
It's on the Edit menu on Windows and the Dreamweaver menu on a Mac.
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