Adobe 38040334 - Dreamweaver CS3 User Manual page 348

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A server-side include is a file that the server incorporates into your document when a browser requests your
document from the server.
When a visitor's browser requests the document that contains the include instruction, your server processes the
include instruction and creates a new document in which the include instruction is replaced by the contents of the
included file. The server then sends this new document to the visitor's browser. When you open a local document
directly in a browser, however, there's no server to process the include instructions in that document, so the browser
opens the document without processing those instructions, and the file that's supposed to be included doesn't appear
in the browser. Thus, it can be difficult, without using Dreamweaver, to look at local files and see them as they'll
appear to visitors after you've put them on the server.
With Dreamweaver you can preview documents just as they'll appear after they're on the server, both in the Design
view and when you use the Preview in Browser feature. To do so, however, you must make sure you are previewing
the file that contains the include as a temporary file. (Select Edit > Preferences, select the Preview in Browser
category, and make sure the Preview using temporary file option is selected.)
Note: If you are using a testing server, such as Apache or Microsoft IIS, to preview your files on your local drive, you do
not need to preview the file as a temporary file because the server does the processing for you.
Placing a server-side include in a document inserts a reference to an external file; it doesn't insert the contents of the
specified file in the current document. The contents of the specified file should only contain the content that you
want to include. That is, the include file should not contain any
tag—formatting HTML tags, such as
<html>
with the tags in the original document, and Dreamweaver won't display the page properly.
You cannot edit the included file directly in a document. To edit the contents of a server-side include, you must
directly edit the file that you're including. Any changes to the external file are automatically reflected in every
document that includes it.
There are two types of server-side includes: Virtual and File. Dreamweaver inserts File type includes by default, but
you can use the Property inspector to select the one that is appropriate for the type of web server you use:
If your server is an Apache web server, select Virtual. In Apache, Virtual works in all cases, while File works only
in some cases.
If your server is a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), select File. (Virtual works with IIS only in certain
circumstances.)
Note: Unfortunately, IIS won't let you include a file in a folder above the current folder in the folder hierarchy, unless
special software has been installed on the server. If you must include a file from a folder higher in the folder hierarchy on
an IIS server, ask your system administrator if the necessary software is installed.
For other kinds of servers, or if you don't know what kind of server you're using, ask your system administrator
which option to use.
Some servers are configured to examine all files to see if they contain server-side includes; other servers are
configured to examine only files with a particular file extension, such as .shtml, .shtm, or .inc. If a server-side include
isn't working for you, ask your system administrator if you need to use a special extension in the name of the file that
uses the include. (For example, if the file is named canoe.html, you may have to rename it to canoe.shtml.) If you
want your files to retain .html or .htm extensions, ask your system administrator to configure the server to examine
all files (not just files with a certain extension) for server-side includes. Parsing a file for server-side includes takes a
little extra time, so pages that the server parses are served a little more slowly than other pages; therefore, some
system administrators won't provide the option of parsing all files.
tags,
head
body
tags,
tags, and so on, are fine). If it does, these tags will conflict
p
div
September 4, 2007
DREAMWEAVER CS3
tags, or
tags (meaing the
html
341
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