Tips and Tricks in Dreamweaver 4

Window resizing

Dreamweaver 4 automatically prevents new Document windows from overlapping your panels and the Property inspector. When you create a new Document window, if its full size would overlap a panel or inspector, Dreamweaver makes the window smaller to avoid overlap.

But sometimes you may want all of your Document windows to be exactly the same size, regardless of your panel layout. There are three ways to set your windows to the same size: use the Window Size pop-up menu in the status bar; hide the panels while creating a new window; or temporarily allow new windows to overlap panels.

To set Document windows to a standard size:

1	If the size you want is already in the Window Size pop-up menu, skip to step 8.
2	Click in the Design view of the Document window.
3	Choose Edit Sizes from the Window Size pop-up menu (at the bottom of the Document window). (If the pop-up menu doesn't appear when you click it, the insertion point is probably in the Code view; click in the Design view and try again.)
	The Preferences dialog appears, with the Status Bar category selected.
4	Click the blank space below the last value in the Width column.
5	Enter Width and Height values for your standard size. To set only the Width or only the Height, simply leave one field empty.
6	Click in the Description field and enter descriptive text about the size you added.
7	Click OK to save the change and return to the Document window.
8	Immediately after creating a new Document window, choose your standard size from the Window Size pop-up menu.
	The window changes size to make the Design view the size that you specified. (If you're showing both Design view and Code view, the resulting window will be larger than you specified, because the Window Size dimensions apply only to Design view.)

To hide the panels while you create a new window:

1	Press F4 or choose Window > Hide Panels to hide the panels.
2	Create a new Document window.
3	When you've created all the new windows you need, press F4 again (or choose Window > Show Panels) to make the panels appear.

To temporarily allow overlap with panels:

1	Drag a Document window until it overlaps with at least one panel to the right and at least one panel below it.
2	Create new Document windows.
	As long as at least one Document window overlaps panels, new windows are also allowed to overlap panels. If none of your windows overlaps a panel, new windows are created smaller to avoid overlapping panels.

Creating a layout table underneath text

In Layout view, if you're having trouble creating a layout table underneath the final text in the window, stretch your window downward so there's more space under the final text. Layout tables can't be drawn within half an inch or so below the bottom of the text.

Drawing multiple layout cells
In Layout view, by default, the Draw Layout Cell tool becomes inactive after you draw a layout cell. If you want to draw one layout cell after another without having to select Draw Layout Cell each time, hold down the Control key (Windows) or the Command key (Macintosh) as you draw each layout cell.

Debugger shortcuts
If you make a change to the code while debugging, you don't need to close the debugger. Just choose File > Debug in Browser (Alt+F12 in Windows, or Option+F12 on the Macintosh) and Dreamweaver will restart the debugging session using the changed code.

Refreshing the asset palette
To refresh the Assets panel's Site list, click the Refresh Site List button in the Assets panel. However, refreshing the Site list doesn't reflect any changes to the site that you may have made outside of Dreamweaver. To rebuild the site cache and the Site list to show changes made outside of Dreamweaver, Control-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) the Refresh Site List button.

Adding keyframes to a timeline
To quickly add a keyframe to a timeline, Control-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) the timeline.

Troubleshooting layer animations
Two tips for troubleshooting layer animations:

	If you change the height of a layer when a keyframe is selected, you may accidentally animate the height of the layer.
	Certain layer animations may have display problems in Internet Explorer 5 on the Macintosh. If you encounter such a problem, resize the layer so that it's taller than its contents.