Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS4 Bible

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ne of the challenges of designing a Web site is ensuring that

buttons, copyright notices, and other cross-site features always

remain consistent. Fortunately, Dreamweaver offers a useful fea-

ture called Library items that helps you insert repeating elements, such as

a navigation bar or a company logo, into every Web page you create. With

one command, you can update and maintain Library items efficiently and

productively.

In this chapter, you examine the nature and the importance of repeating ele-

ments and learn how to effectively use the Dreamweaver Library feature for

all your sites. In addition, you see how to use server-side includes—generally

known as SSIs—to integrate code and content at both design time and

runtime.

Dreamweaver Library Items

Library items within Dreamweaver are another means for you, as a

designer, to maintain consistency throughout your site. Imagine that you

have a navigation bar on every page that contains links to all the other

pages on your site. It’s highly likely that you’ll eventually (probably more

than once) need to make changes to the navigation bar. In a traditional Web

development environment, you must modify every single page. This creates

numerous opportunities for making mistakes, missing pages, and adding

code in the wrong place. Moreover, the whole process is tedious—ask any-

one who has had to modify the copyright notice at the bottom ...