Introduction; Background - MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8-EXTENDING DREAMWEAVER Manual

Introduction

This guide describes the Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 framework and application
programming interface (API) that lets you build extensions to Dreamweaver. It provides
information about how each type of extension works; the API functions that Dreamweaver
calls to implement the various objects, menus, floating panels, server behaviors, and so on,
that make up the features of Dreamweaver; and a simple example of each type of extension.
This guide also explains how to customize Dreamweaver by editing tags in various HTML
and XML files to add menu items or document types, and so on.
To add an object, menu, floating panel, or other feature to Dreamweaver, you must code the
functions that the particular type of extension requires. This guide describes the arguments
that Dreamweaver passes to these functions and also the values that Dreamweaver expects
these functions to return.
For information on the utility and general purpose JavaScript APIs that you can use to
perform various support operations in your Dreamweaver extensions, see the Dreamweaver
API Reference. If you plan to create extensions that work with databases, you might also want
to review the sections in Getting Started with Dreamweaver about making connections to
databases.

Background

Most Dreamweaver extensions are written in HTML and JavaScript. This guide assumes that
you are familiar with Dreamweaver, HTML, XML, and JavaScript programming. If you are
implementing C extensions, the guide assumes that you know how to create and use C
dynamic link libraries (DLLs). If you are writing extensions for building web applications,
you should also be familiar with server-side scripting on at least one platform, such as Active
Server Pages (ASP), ASP.net, PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), Macromedia ColdFusion,
or Java Server Pages (JSP).
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