Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual

Site Assets

Web pages integrate lots of different elements: PNGs, GIFs, JPEGs, links, colors, JavaScript files, and Flash movies, to name just a few. On a large site with lots of files, it’s a challenge to locate a particular image or remember an exact color.

To simplify the process, Dreamweaver provides the Assets panel. For want of a better generic term, Dreamweaver defines the term asset to mean any element you use on a web page, such as a JPEG, a link, or even an individual color.

Viewing the Assets Panel

Dreamweaver lists your site’s assets on the nine category “pages” of the Assets panel (Figure 15-9). To open the panel, choose Window→Assets.

Figure 15-9. Dreamweaver duplicates most of the Assets panel’s drop-down menu commands in the panel itself, but three options appear only on the drop-down menu. “Recreate Site List” comes in handy if you add or delete files without Dreamweaver’s help using Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder. It rebuilds the site cache and updates the list of assets. “Copy to Site” copies the selected asset to another site. “Locate in Site” switches to the Files panel and selects the file. You can also open the contextual menu by right-clicking (Control-clicking) any asset in the list.

Select an asset by clicking its name; Dreamweaver previews the asset above the Assets list. To preview a movie, click the green arrow that appears in the preview window.

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