Chapter 5: Customizing Code View; Chapter 5: Customizing Code View; Code Hints - MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER MX 2004-EXTENDING DREAMWEAVER Manual

CHAPTER 5
Customizing Code View
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 uses two devices in Code view that help you enter code
quickly and make your code readable and accurate. These two devices are Code Hints and Code
Coloring. In addition, Dreamweaver validates your code for the target browsers that you specify
and allows you to change default HTML formatting.
You can customize Code Hints and Code Coloring by modifying the XML files that implement
them. You can add items to the Code Hints menus by adding entries to the CodeHints.xml file.
You can modify color schemes by modifying the code coloring style file, Colors.xml, or you can
change code coloring schemes or add new ones by modifying one of the code coloring syntax files,
such as CodeColoring.xml. You can also modify the cascading style sheet (CSS) profile file for
your target browser to affect how Dreamweaver validates CSS properties and values. You can also
change Dreamweaver's default HTML formatting through the Preferences dialog box. The
following sections describe how to customize these features.

Code Hints

Code Hints are menus that Dreamweaver opens when you type certain character patterns in the
Code View. Code Hints offer a typing shortcut by providing a list of strings that potentially
complete the string you are typing. If the string you are typing appears in the menu, you can scroll
to it and press Enter or Return to complete your entry. For example, when you type , a pop-up
<
menu shows a list of tag names. Instead of typing the rest of the tag name, you can select the tag
from the menu to include it in your text.
Dreamweaver loads Code Hints menus from the CodeHints.xml file in the Configuration/
CodeHints folder. You can add Code Hints menus to Dreamweaver by defining them in the
CodeHints.xml file. After Dreamweaver loads the contents of CodeHints.xml, you can also add
new Code Hints menus dynamically through JavaScript. For example, JavaScript code populates
the list of session variables in the Bindings panel. You can use the same code to add a Code Hints
menu, so when a user types in Code view, Dreamweaver displays a menu of session
"Session."
variables. For information on using JavaScript to add or modify a Code Hints menu, see Code
Functions in the Dreamweaver API Reference.
Dreamweaver cannot express some types of Code Hints menus through the XML file or the
JavaScript API. Both the CodeHints.xml file and the JavaScript API expose a useful subset of the
Code Hints engine, but some Dreamweaver functionality is not accessible. For example, there is
no JavaScript hook to open a color picker, so Dreamweaver cannot express the Attribute Values
menu using JavaScript. You can only open a menu of text items from which you can insert text.
Note: When you insert text, the insertion pointer is placed after the inserted string.
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