Customizing The Interpretation Of Third-Party Tags - MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER MX 2004-EXTENDING DREAMWEAVER Manual

To add new file types to the menu in the File > Open dialog box:
Make a backup copy of the Extensions.txt file in the Configuration folder.
1
Open Extensions.txt in Dreamweaver or a text editor.
2
Add a new line for each new file type. In capital letters, enter the filename extensions that the
3
new file type can have, separated by commas; then add a colon and a brief descriptive phrase to
show in the pop-up menu for file types that appears in the File > Open dialog box. For example,
for JPEG files, enter the following:
JPG,JPEG,JFIF:JPEG Image Files
Save the file.
4
Restart Dreamweaver.
5
To see the changes, select File > Open, and click the pop-up menu of file types.

Customizing the interpretation of third-party tags

Server-side technologies such as ASP, ColdFusion, JSP, and PHP use special non-HTML code in
HTML files; servers create and serve HTML content based on that code. When Dreamweaver
encounters non-HTML tags, it compares them with information in its third-party tag files, which
define how Dreamweaver reads and displays non-HTML tags.
For example, ASP files contain—in addition to regular HTML—ASP code for the server to
interpret. ASP code looks almost like an HTML tag, but is marked by a pair of delimiters: it
begins with and ends with
<%
contains a file named Tags.xml, which describes the format of various third-party tags, including
ASP code, and defines how Dreamweaver displays that code. Because of the way ASP code is
specified in Tags.xml, Dreamweaver doesn't try to interpret anything between the delimiters;
instead, in the Document window's Design view, it simply displays an icon indicating ASP code.
Your own tag database files can define how Dreamweaver reads and displays your tags. Create a
new tag database file for each set of tags, to tell Dreamweaver how to display the tags.
Note: This section explains how to define the way Dreamweaver displays a custom tag, but doesn't
describe how to provide a way to edit the content or properties of a custom tag. For information on
how to create a Property inspector to inspect and change the properties of a custom tag, see
Chapter 12, "Property Inspectors," on page
Each tag database file defines the name, type, content model, rendering scheme, and icon for one
or more custom tags. You can create any number of tag database files, but all of them must reside
in the Configuration/ThirdPartyTags folder to be read and processed by Dreamweaver. Tag
database files have the .xml file extension.
Tip: If you are working on several unrelated sites at once (for example, as a freelance developer), you
can put all the tag specifications for a particular site in one file. Then simply include that tag database
file with the custom icons and Property inspectors that you hand over to the people who will maintain
the site.
You define a tag specification with an XML tag called
describes the specification for a tag named
<tagspec tag_name="happy" tag_type="nonempty" render_contents="false"
content_model="marker_model" icon="happy.gif" icon_width="18"
icon_height="18"></tagspec>
34 Chapter 2: Extending Dreamweaver
. The Dreamweaver Configuration/ThirdPartyTags folder
%>
217.
:
happy
. For example, the following code
tagspec