Working With Head Elements In Dreamweaver CS4 (Andrew Whiteman)
Feb 5, 2009
A web page has two main areas: the head element and the body element. The body element contains all of the visible content which will be displayed in the browser window. The head element, by contrast, is designed to contain information about the web page; meta information as it is sometimes called. In this article, we will look at the different ways in which Dreamweaver allows users to modify elements within the head of a web page. Let's start with the title.
The title element should contain a broad description of the content of the page. It is extremely important that each page should have a title and that the title be pertinent to the page that contains it. Dreamweaver automatically adds a title element to every new page containing the text "Untitled Document". Perhaps the easiest way of modifying the default title in Dreamweaver is simply to enter a title in the Document Title box of the Document toolbar which is normally displayed at the top of the page. An alternative is the choose Modify - Page Properties and then click on the Title/Encoding category on the left of the screen.
The title is the only element which is syntactically required to be placed within the head element. In addition, a variety of optional meta elements may be placed in the head element to provide further information about the current page. One of these meta element is created automatically by Dreamweaver along with the title: the content-type. This declares the character encoding of the page to the browser and is particularly important if you have a site with an international audience. To specify the character encoding, choose Modify - Page Properties, click on the Title/Encoding category on the left of the screen and then choose one of the options in the Encoding drop-down menu.
The meta description element is also very important since, along with the page title, it is often displayed when your page shows up in the search engine results. The description should consist of one or two sentences summarising the content of the page. To set the description in Dreamweaver, choose Insert - HTML - Head Tags - Description then enter a brief description in the dialogue box which appears.
Let's end by mentioning one final meta element: keywords. The keywords meta element, often misused for spamming in the early days of the web, should contain a list of the important words and phrases to be found on the current page. Only text which actually appears on the page should be listed. To generate the meta keywords element in Dreamweaver, choose Insert - HTML - Head Tags - Keywords.
About the AuthorThe The writer of this article is a training consultant with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver Classes in London and throughout the UK..