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Displaying Styles in Design View

By Randy Edmunds on June 25, 2009 8:58 AM | 1 Comment

In Dreamweaver CS3, a feature was introduced to allow CSS style rendering to be turned OFF in Design View:

  View > Style Rendering > Display Styles

This allows you to quickly view the semantic structure of a page. It's also helpful when marking up or editing content inside elements that are not accessible in Design View for whatever reason.

Originally, this setting persisted until changed. But, many users turned off this setting without knowing what it was, and later would go crazy trying to figure out why their styles weren't rendering. So starting in CS4, this setting is always reset to ON when DW is restarted (which is a natural action to take when things don't make sense).

You can change it to default to OFF as follows:

1. Place the following code in a file called myStartup.htm :

<html>
<head>
<script language="JavaScript">
  dw.cssStylePalette.setDisplayStyles(false);
</script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

2. Place a copy of this file in the Configuration/Startup folder so that it gets executed every time you start DW.

Notice that I gave it a generic name in case you want to add any other commands to be executed at every startup.

CS4 Code Printing Improvements

By Randy Edmunds on June 10, 2009 11:42 AM | 3 Comments

Starting with Dreamweaver CS4, code now prints with Syntax Coloring.

The exception to this is that background colors are not printed. Code printing recognizes the "Syntax Coloring" Code View setting in the:

  View > Code View Options

menu for turning off coloring.

The "Line Numbers" setting is also recognized when printing.

Making Feature Requests

By Randy Edmunds on April 22, 2009 9:03 AM | No Comments

Are you interested in requesting a new feature for Dreamweaver, or any other Adobe product?

First of all, read this excellent article by Garrett Dimon (that I found on John Nack's blog) about suggestions for making feature requests. As someone who regularly reads Feature Requests, this article hit the mark on every point.

Then use the Adobe Feature Request Form to submit your request to the appropriate Adobe product team.

Thank you in advance for keeping the great feedback coming!

Dreamweaver on Adobe TV

By Randy Edmunds on March 25, 2009 9:06 AM | 5 Comments

Adobe TV has many videos for learning about Dreamweaver. Start with the following link:

http://tv.adobe.com/#pd+Dreamweaver

Use the settings on the right to narrow down the list for your interests according to Release (CS3, CS4, Other), Skill Level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced), and Topics (Tutorials, Demos, Tips and Tricks, and Inspiration).

Also, use the dropdown list at the top to sort the videos By Date, Alphabetically, Highest Rated, or Most Popular to help sift through the list.

Extending Dreamweaver: Getting Started

By Randy Edmunds on February 25, 2009 9:52 AM | 6 Comments

Dreamweaver was designed to be highly extensible. After deciding that you'd like to add or streamline some functionality in Dreamweaver, how do you get started?

The extension may have already been written by someone else, so first, check the Adobe Exchange. Also, search the internet because there are many third party extensions that are not uploaded to the Adobe Exchange.

The easiest way to create your first extension is to open the History Panel (Window > History), select 1 or more steps, right-click and select "Save as Command…". This creates a Command in the User Configuration folder Commands sub-folder which on WinXP is usually something like:

C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS4\en_US\Configuration\Commands

Note that the "Application Data" folder is hidden by default, so you may need to enable displaying of hidden folders in the Folder Options of the File Explorer.

Next, look around in the Application Configuration folder for code samples. On WinXP, it's usually here:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS4\en_US\Configuration

Some tools provide an interface for users to extend it, but don't actually use it themselves. Dreamweaver uses it's own extensibility layer extensively (warning: pun attempt), so you'll find an example of almost all thousand or so JS API calls.

DW extensibility UIs are written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so you already know how to do it. They are rendered with our proprietary rendering engine, so not all HTML/CSS/DOM is supported, and the rendering maybe different from current browsers, so you have to play around with it a bit.

Some aspects of the extensibility UI rendering is controlled by the DOCTYPE. Our proprietary rendering engine (note to wikipedia: it's not Opera) has evolved over the years, so be sure to target the desired DW version number in your DOCTYPE. So, to create a Property Inspector to target Dreamweaver Version 8 and above, use:

<!DOCTYPE HTML SYSTEM "-//Macromedia//DWExtension layout-engine 8.0//pi">

Note that starting with version 10, the DOCTYPE was changed to use "Adobe":

<!DOCTYPE HTML SYSTEM "-//Adobe//DWExtension layout-engine 10.0//dialog">

There are online Extending and API docs here:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Dreamweaver/10.0_Extending/index.html
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Dreamweaver/10.0_API_Ref/index.html

Finally, be sure to upload your extension to the Exchange if you'd like to share it with others.

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