Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Configuring Dreamweaver's Preview In Browser Preferences

By Dwight Davidson

As you work on your web pages in Adobe Dreamweaver, you will often need to review them in a web browser. Conveniently, Dreamweaver allows you to configure as many browsers as you would like to see use for previewing. You can specify a first browser as your primary, or preferred, browser; you can then choose a secondary browser and as many additional browsers as you like.

Obviously, the first step is to make sure that the browser software is installed on your computer. Next, to choose your preferred browser, go to the Edit menu and select Preferences. (This is the Windows location of all Adobe Preferences: on Apple Mac, go to the Dreamweaver menu and choose Preferences.)

The various categories are displayed on the left of the Preferences window. Choose the Preview in Browser category. You may have already configured a browser as your primary browser and possibly another as your secondary. If you wish to change this, simply click on the appropriate checkboxes to specify which is which.

To add other browsers, just click on the plus sign (+), navigate to the browser software and double-click to open it. You can repeat this procedure as many times as you need to.

To preview a page using one of your configured browsers, click on the preview icon (the globe) located on the Document toolbar which is normally displayed at the top of the document window. From the drop-down menu, choose the browser that you'd like to use. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts: to preview using your primary browser press Shift-F12 on Windows or option-F12 on a Macintosh; to preview in the secondary browser press Control-F12 on Windows or Command-F12 on a Macintosh. Alternatively, simply choose the name of any other browser.

Having looked at the preview, to return to Dreamweaver, simply close the browser window.

There may be times when you'd like to preview pages without saving the changes you've made to your document. Dreamweaver offers you this possibility but, first, let's examine what normally happens when you preview a file that has been modified.

Dreamweaver throws up a dialogue box asking us if we'd like to save the changes. If you choose "No", it gives us a preview of the last version that you saved rather than the version that you're currently working on, If we choose "Yes", Dreamweaver saves your changes before previewing the file. This can often be inconvenient, since you may not be ready to save your changes.

If you'd like to be able to preview a file at any time without saving your changes, return to your Browser Preview category of Dreamweaver's Preferences and activate the option "Preview Using Temporary File". When this option is activated, Dreamweaver will create a temporary file containing the latest version of your document and then opens it in the browser. When the browser window opens, you will notice that the file name does not correspond to the name of your document it a temporary file name generated by Dreamweaver.

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