Switching to Design View

Depending on the settings on the General tab of HTML Designer options in the Options dialog box, HTML documents opened from the integrated development environment open in either the Design or HTML views. Documents opened from Microsoft Word can be edited in HTML view but cannot be edited in Design view.

Certain conditions will stop the HTML Designer from switching to Design view. For example, if a document includes more than one set of <HTML></HTML>, or <TITLE></TITLE>, or <HEAD></HEAD>, or <BODY></BODY> tags, a warning message will appear when you attempt to switch to Design view. Remove the extra page markup tags in HTML view, and you will then be able to switch to Design view.

Note   In some Web browsers, multiple tags can be used to create special effects. However, because such effects are browser-specific, you might prefer to use more recent and portable ways to produce the same effects.

To switch to Design view

  1. Open an HTML page in the HTML Designer.
  2. Click the Design tab at the bottom of the HTML Designer window.

To open all HTML pages in Design view

  1. From the Tools menu, choose Options.
  2. In the Options dialog box, choose HTML Designer and then choose General.
  3. Select the Design View option under the Start HTML pages in area.