Dreamweaver CS5.5: The Missing Manual

Chapter 11. Under the Hood: HTML

Dreamweaver started life primarily as a visual web page editor, but over the years, its code-editing tools have evolved to rival the best text editors, including those that hard-core hand-coders use. Some people bypass Dreamweaver’s Design view entirely and use only its Code view to edit their HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code directly. In fact, you can use Dreamweaver to edit any text-based files, including XML, Java, ActionScript, and just plain text itself.

Dreamweaver’s code editor includes professional features like customizable syntax highlighting, auto indenting, line numbering, and code hints; code collapse, so you can concentrate on just the code you want; and the Code view toolbar, which provides one-click access to frequently used hand-coding commands. Dreamweaver may be the only web-page creation program that even hard-core code junkies ever need. In fact, Adobe aimed many of Dreamweaver CS5.5’s improvements at those who use Code view to edit pages in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the server-side programming language PHP.

Controlling How Dreamweaver Handles HTML

Unlike many other visual HTML editors, Dreamweaver has always graciously accepted HTML written by hand (and even by other programs). In fact, Dreamweaver has always made it easy for you to jump between itself and other text-editing programs like the much-loved but retired HomeSite (for Windows) and BBEdit (for the Mac).

This openness lets you write code the way you want, without ...