Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual

Snippets and Library Tutorial

In this tutorial, you’ll do two things: First, create a useful form pull-down menu snippet, and, second, turn a Chia Vet announcement into a reusable Library item, and then add it to several pages in the site.

Note

You need to download the tutorial files from www.sawmac.com/dwcs5/ to complete this tutorial. See the note on Note.

Once you download the tutorial files and opened Dreamweaver, define a new site as described on Setting Up a Site: Name the site Snippets and Library, and then select the Chapter19 folder (inside the MM_DWCS5 folder). (In a nutshell: choose Site→New Site. In the Site Setup window, type Snippets and Library into the Site Name field, click the folder icon next to the Local Site Folder field, navigate to and select the Chapter19 folder, and then click Choose or Select. Finally, click OK.)

Troubleshooting Moment: Under the Hood of Library Items

Behind the scenes, Dreamweaver stores the HTML for Library items in basic text files. Those files’ names end with the extension .lbi, and they stay in the Library folder inside your local site folder.

When you insert a Library item into a web page, Dreamweaver inserts the item’s HTML, and adds a set of comment tags. These tags refer to the original Library file, and help Dreamweaver remember where the Library item begins and ends. For instance, if you turn the text “Copyright 2011” into a Library item called copyright, and insert it into a web page, Dreamweaver adds the following HTML to the page: ...