I’m sure by now you’ve seen in sales letters, etc. the text that is highlighted (typically yellow). Some html editors simply allow you to click a button to get a background color around text. But Dreamweaver has no such button built in.

So, while participating in a forum discussion regarding this very subject, I set out to find out how to make it easier to add the yellow highlighting on the fly.

Creating a button for Dreamweaver MX2004 was out, so I created a keyboard shortcut - worked for me. Here you go:

First you need to create a “snippet”:

1- Open the Code Inspector window. Click on Snippets.
2- Navigate to Text. Right click on Text. Select “New Snippet”
3- In the Snippet window, name the snippet. Description is optional.
4- Snippet Type - Wrap selection.
5- In the Insert Before box put: {span style=”background-color: #ffff00″} (substitute the { } with <> )
6- In the Insert After box put: {/span} (same substitution)
7- Preview Type - Design.
8- Click OK.

That’s the snippet. Next you can add a keyboard shortcut:

1- Right click on the snippet you just made. Select Edit Keyboard Shortcuts.
2- On the window that comes up, it should be labeled Macromedia Standard. Over to the right of that click on the Duplicate Set button. This is so you don’t mess up the original set of snippets. It will give it the label Macromedia Standard copy.
3- Under Commands, select Snippets from the dropdown.
4- Select Text, then the Snippet you made previously.
5- With your snippet highlighted, press the + next to Shortcut.
6- In the Press Key box, type your keyboard shortcut (in this case I used Ctrl+Alt+H).
7- Click Change. Finally, Click OK.

To check if it works, open a web page in DW. With your mouse, select a word/paragraph, whatever. Use the keyboard combo you set. You should get your highlighted text.

You can use this method for creating virtually any keyboard shortcut you can imagine.

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Michael Ambrosio - Developer and Internet Entreprenuer
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Copyright 2006 Michael Ambrosio http://www.mikeambrosio.com
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MrOverDeliver - http://www.mroverdeliver.com
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