Adding Text to a Page in Design View

The beauty of working in Design view is that you can forget, for the most part, that you're working in a Web design program and just focus on getting words on the page. And because that view feels a lot like word processing, you can change the text at any time. As writers, we often find that it's hard to get going on a new project, but if we just start typing, words appear miraculously on the page. (Sometimes, they even sound good!) So, enough procrastinating! Let's get started.

Entering text from scratch

If you're starting with a blank page, entering text in Design view is simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Open the page to which you want to add text. (We show you how in Chapter 2.)

   If you're not already in Design view, click the Design button in the lower-left corner of the editing window.

   You should see a blinking cursor, waiting patiently, in the editing window.

2. Start typing, as shown in Figure 3-2.

   
   Figure 3-2: Enter text in the editing window.

3. When you reach the end of your first text chunk-whether it's a word, a single line, or a complete paragraph-press the Enter key.

Every time you reach the end of a word, line, or paragraph and then press the Enter key, Expression Web assumes you want a break between what you just typed and what you will type next. Each of these text blocks, whether they contain one word, one character, or one hundred words, is treated as a separate paragraph. Expression Web automatically puts some white space between your paragraphs (every time you press the Enter key). You find out more about paragraphs and paragraph formatting later in this chapter.

If you want to format a line of text as a heading, see "Handling headings," later in this chapter.

Pasting existing text into a Web page

Maybe you have chunks of text already written that you want to add to your Web pages. You can paste text that's copied to the Windows Clipboard directly into the Expression Web Design view from another document, such as a text-only document file (a file with the extension .txt), a word processing document, or even another Web page.

Warning 

Text you paste into a Web page from another document can bring excess baggage along with it, in the form of formatting codes that can seriously clutter your page's HTML code. Then, after you start formatting the text in Expression Web, you end up with a rat's nest of messy code. In this section, we show you the safest method for getting just the words and nothing else onto the page when you paste text from other sources.

To paste text from another document, follow these steps:

1. In the original document, select the text that you want to paste into your Web page and choose Edit Cut or Edit Copy.

   Or, follow the program's instructions for copying or cutting text.

2. 2. With the Web page into which you want to paste your text open, click in Design view where you want the text to be placed.

3. Choose Edit Paste.

   Or, click the Paste button on the Standard toolbar. (Choose View Toolbars Standard if you don't see it.)

   Expression Web pastes the text in the Web page, and the Paste Options button appears next to the pasted text. (It looks just like the Paste button.)

4. Click the down arrow on the Paste Options button to display the Paste Options menu.

   The contents of this menu change depending on the program from which the text came and how the pasted text is formatted.

5. Click the Paste Text option.

   The Paste Text dialog box appears, giving you several options for controlling paragraphs and line breaks within the text.

6. Click the Normal Paragraphs Without Line Breaks option and click OK.

TECHNICAL STUFF 

If you're pasting a lot of formatted text and you want to preserve some formatting, search for the Microsoft Expression Web Help topic how to paste text (in the "Text" section) for more information about pasting text from other programs. You may be able to save yourself some work by using some of the other selections on the Paste Option menu or the Paste Text dialog box. Be sure to take a look at the text in Code view (or the code portion of Split view) after you make your selections, though, to make sure that no odd code remnants are lurking in the text.