Tag Completion

Last but certainly not least, one of my favorite improved features in Dreamweaver 8 is the tag completion functionality. I know: it’s not very sexy. But this incarnation of tag completion is absolutely great in my opinion. The last Dreamweaver version’s tag completion was atrocious — to say the least! I had to disable it completely. As soon as you closed the opening tag “>”, the closing tag would appear, which was very annoying when working with tables or when you’re adding a tag to existing code that the tag will wrap around.

This new approach to tag completion keeps tabs on the tags you open and, as you start the “</”, it will close the appropriate tag for you. I know, it’s a small feature, but it makes coding just a little bit easier. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it’s still pretty smart. Dealing with conditional logic can sometimes trick the tag completion tool, making it want to close a tag that, strictly speaking, doesn’t need closing. Still, it’s better than what was there before, and that’s always good.