Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual

Dreamweaver Behaviors

Dreamweaver behaviors are prepackaged JavaScript programs that let you add interactivity to your pages, even if you don’t know the first thing about JavaScript. While Dreamweaver’s behaviors were once revolutionary—JavaScript programming without any programming!—Adobe hasn’t updated them in years. Many of the behaviors aren’t very useful these days—you can get some of the same results with CSS, for example, Spry widgets have supplanted other behaviors, and some of the behaviors just don’t work as advertised. That said, a few are still worth discussing.

Behavior Basics

To use a behavior, you need three elements: an HTML tag, an action, and an event:

• First, you select an HTML tag to apply the behavior to.

• Next, pick an action. The action is whatever the behavior is supposed to do—such as open a new browser window or hide an element on the page.

• Finally, you assign an event to the behavior. The event triggers the action, which usually involves a visitor interacting with your site, like clicking a Submit button on a form, moving a mouse over a link, or even simply loading the web page into the browser.

For instance, say that, when a visitor clicks a link, instead of just sending him to another page, you want a new browser window to pop up and load that linked page. In this case, the HTML tag is the link itself—an <a> tag; the action is opening another browser window and loading a web page in it; and the event takes place when your visitor clicks the link—his browser ...