Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual

Reference Panel

When it comes to building websites, there’s a lot to know. After all, HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and JavaScript are filled with cryptic terms and subtle nuances. Dreamweaver provides a Reference panel to make your search for knowledge a little bit easier. Unfortunately, the references supplied are so out of date that none but the HTML Reference has any relevance (as long as you’re working with just XHTML 1.0 or HTML 4.01; if you’re working with HTML5, then “Hello, Google”).

To open the Reference panel, choose Help→Reference or press Shift+F1. The Reference panel appears at the bottom of the screen, docked with the Results panel group. The first menu at the top of the panel (Book) lets you choose the reference “book” you want to use. Again, only the HTML reference is any good, and only if you’re sticking with standard HTML 4 tags. Once you select your reference, choose an HTML tag from the Tag menu to the right of the Book menu. A description of the tag appears in the main window. A secondary menu to the right, the Attribute menu, lets you access additional information about a property or tag. For example, if you want to see information about the <a> tag’s tabindex property, choose “a” from the Tag menu and then, from the Attribute menu, click “tabindex.”

For information on other topics, you’re better off turning to the Web and Google. Here are a few good resources:

• For CSS help, SitePoint.com’s free, online reference to CSS is great: http://reference.sitepoint.com/css ...