Design View, HTML Designer

Design view is one of two unique views available in the HTML Designer. To select Design View, click the Design tab at the bottom of the HTML Designer window.

Design View provides a graphic environment within which you can design and edit Web documents. This WYSIWYG environment uses the customary drag-and-drop editing conventions to add, format, size, and position text, objects, and tables. When you select an element on a page, the Properties window displays the attributes that apply to the selected element. The Document Outline window enables you to navigate to specific objects within a document

Note Design View displays only the body of a document — the portion between the <BODY></BODY> tags. Although you can edit some properties of the <HEAD>, such as <TITLE>, in the Document Properties window, you must switch to HTML View to edit most properties of the <HEAD>.

How Design View Differs from Viewing in a Web Browser

A document displayed in Design view differs from one displayed in a Web browser in these ways:

The user can drag-and-drop HTML elements in Design view.
Character and paragraph formatting can appear different (each Web browser implements some formatting differently).
Hyperlinks are not functional.
Client scripts do not run.
Marquee elements do not scroll.
Elements that support alternate text (such as images) do not display the alternate text in ToolTips when the pointer passes over them.
Design View displays symbols for some elements, such as HTML comments or scripts, that are not normally visible in a Web browser.

To display the current document in your Web browser, right-click on the document in Design view and select View in Browser from the shortcut menu.

When you choose to show details, the following symbols represent invisible elements on your page.

Symbol	Represents
	HTML comment
	Client-side `<SCRIPT>` block, or server-side script block in .asp page (`<%%>` or `<SCRIPT RUNAT="Server">`)
	`<STYLE>` block
	`<DIV>` tag
	`<SPAN>` tag
	`<P> </P>` (visible only in Linear Layout)
	Unrecognized HTML tag
	`<FORM>` tag

Cut and Paste in Design View

When you cut or copy text to the Clipboard from a Web page displayed in a Web browser or in Design view of the HTML Designer, two versions of the text become available: a Paste version and a Paste as HTML version.

The Paste version replaces reserved characters such as <, >, and quotation marks with HTML entities (escape sequences). For example, if you copy <MARQUEE> to the Clipboard, the Paste version will be <MARQUEE>. The Paste as HTML version will be <MARQUEE>, the exact code you cut or copied.

As you paste, you can choose either version. You can choose Paste from the View menu to display web-escaped HTML markup on your page, or choose Paste as HTML from the Edit menu to create a new HTML tag from cut or copied code. Tags are not generally displayed in Design view. Switch to HTML view to review code added with Paste as HTML.