There is a clever word completion mechanism in HTML mode which saves you time while typing. It also helps you to make sure no tags are misspelt.
Note! In Alpha 7.0 the word completion mechanism
requires that the package Elec
Completions is activated in the submenu Packages of the Config
menu.
In Alpha 7.1 and later it requires that Elec
Completions is checked in the dialog Config -> Global -> Menus
and Features...
As explained elsewhere you can use either dialog windows or the status bar to insert new tags, but perhaps you prefer just to type them. Then the word completion functions can help you. Let's say you want to type a TABLE tag. First type
<ta
If you now hit cmd-tab this is expanded to
Then you perhaps want the attribute CELLSPACING. Type the first few letters
and hit cmd-tab again.
Alpha tries to expand this as much as possible. Since there is also an attribute CELLPADDING Alpha expands this to CELL. Now type an 's' and hit cmd-tab again. Alpha then expands the text to
You can now type the value you want for CELLSPACING hit tab and write the next attribute.
You can also use word completion to expand some attribute values.
Tip: When you have expanded a color attribute use 'Reveal color' to change it to its hexvalue.
Also when you type a URL attribute it can be expanded using your URL cache.
Tip: If you find cmd-tab to be an inconvenient key combination you can change it using Config -> Global -> Special Keys...
Word completion can also help you when you're editing CSS.
When you are outside a pair of braces Alpha tries to expand what you've typed to an HTML element. For example, if you type
blo
and hit cmd-tab it is expanded to
BLOCKQUOTE
Continue by inserting a { and begin typing a CSS property
BLOCKQUOTE { vert
Hitting cmd-tab expands this to
BLOCKQUOTE { vertical-align:
Continue by typing a few letters of the value of vertical-align.
BLOCKQUOTE { vertical-align: bas
Hit cmd-tab and this is expanded to
BLOCKQUOTE { vertical-align: baseline
When you're typing a URL it can also be expanded using the URL cache.