Dreamweaver’s General preferences allow you to control the program’s overall behavior. It’s here where you can control the display of the Start Page, set how Dreamweaver responds when you re-arrange files in your site, determine whether your pages make use of CSS, and a whole range of other options. Head into the General preferences by choosing Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Dreamweaver > Preferences (Mac), and let’s take a look.

Open Documents In Tabs (Mac only): All open documents are organized into a single window, with tabs for each.

Show Start Page: This will allow you to control whether Dreamweaver opens it’s Start Page after launching. If the Start Page is enabled, it’ll also display if you don’t have any files open.

Reopen Documents On Startup: This option will automatically open any files that you had open when you last quit Dreamweaver. Handy if you want to quickly get back to work. Annoying if you’re planning on working on something else.

Update Links When Moving Files: If you’ve tried moving files and folders around in your site through the Files panel, Dreamweaver gives you a prompt asking if you’d like to update links and references. Here, you can permanently set the option so Dreamweaver doesn’t tug on your elbow every time you move stuff around.

Allow Multiple Consecutive Spaces: One thing that many people find frustrating when they first begin typing in Dreamweaver is that they can only type one space. This is actually a good typography habit, but for whatever reason, maybe you want the ability to enter several spaces. With this option turned on, Dreamweaver inserts <&nbsp> into your page’s background code every time you hit the space bar. <&nbsp> is code for a non-breaking space, forcing web browsers to display more than one space.

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