Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual

Chapter 19. Customizing Dreamweaver

Whether you’re a hard-core HTML jockey who prefers to be knee-deep in Code view, or a visually oriented, drag-and-drop type who never strays from the document window, Dreamweaver lets you work your way.

By now, you’re probably already using the Favorites tab on the Insert bar to store your most frequently used objects in one place, as discussed on Section 4.4.2. But don’t stop there. Dreamweaver also gives you the power to add, change, and share keyboard shortcuts—a simple way to tailor the program to your needs. If that’s not enough of an efficiency boost, you can add features that even Macromedia’s engineers never imagined, from new Flash button designs to additional behaviors. Dreamweaver’s design allows amateur and professional programmers alike to write new features and functions using HTML, JavaScript, and XML (Extensible Markup Language). There are hundreds of these extras, called extensions, for you to explore. Best of all, you can try many of them for free.

Keyboard Shortcuts

As you use Dreamweaver, you’ll hit the same keyboard shortcuts and travel to the same palettes and menus time and again. Perhaps your site uses a lot of graphics and Flash movies, and you’re constantly using the keyboard shortcuts to insert them. But you may find that, after the 1,000th time, Ctrl+Alt+F (

-Option-F) hurts your pinkie and uses too many keys to be efficient. ...