How to stop <SPAN>text<BR><BR><BR></SPAN> fromhappening...

I like to use the SHIFT+RETURN method of inputting BR tags. However, anytime I
put the cursor at the end of text and hit SHIFT+RETURN, when I look at the HTML
code view the </SPAN> tag keeps getting pushed out to the end of the BR tags.
See example below: <span class='copy'>My article text <br> <br> <br> <br>
</span> This happen to anyone else?

TheDC,

Things like this happen to anyone who exclusively uses Design view. In
that mode Dreamweaver "sees" that you're still inside the <span> tag, so of
course it will put whatever you type -- even line breaks -- inside that tag.
That same would happen inside a table cell (<td> tag), and doesn't it make
sense that it should?

Dreamweaver's Design view makes things easier than typing everything by
hand, but of course it writes HTML as the engineers of Dreamweaver thought
it should, so you may occasionally want to switch to Code view (or better,
Split view, which gives you the best of both worlds).

Use Design for broad strokes; put your fine strokes in by hand.


David
stiller (at) quip (dot) net

Thanks David, appreciate the reply. In Design view I can see a table's edges
so I know if I am setting the cursor in or outside of a table. But for text, I
can't see if I am in or outside the font or span tag, so it looks like it's
something I have to put up with. Very annoying though.

TheDC,

<font> and <span> tags don't have a visual counterpart. Since they
don't show on the page, you can't see when you're inside either of them. A
table, on the other hand -- if it has borders -- does have a visual
counterpart.

FYI, <font> tags are deprecated, which means they're no long officially
supported by the current HTML spec. Browsers still support them, but they
may not in the future. You may want to look into CSS (Cascading Style
Sheets) for your color, font, etc. needs.


David
stiller ( at ) quip ( dot ) net

There are some locations in your source code that you cannot get to
using the design view alone. When you set an insertion point in the
design view, DW (nearly?) always puts it within an existing tag. For
example, on your page you see:

This text is special

The code looks like:

<span class="special">This text is special</span>


You want to add <br> after the </span> closes. You want to end up with
this code:

<span call="special">This text is special</span><br>

So you place your insertion point in the design window like this:

This text is special|

If you look at the code you will see that the insertion point is here:

<span call="special">This text is special|</span>

The space between tags is a sort of no-man's-land to DW. If you try to
arrow-key your way past the </span> you will end up inside the next tag.
The only way you can add a tag between existing tags is in the code view.

--
James M. Shook
http://www.jshook.com

span class='copy'>My article text <br> <br> <br> <br
/span> This happen to anyone else?

You shouldn't be using BR tags for that purpose. Most of the time, BR tags
aren't the best option. Can you explain what, exactly, you are trying to
accomplish visually?

-Darrel