MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8-EXTENDING DREAMWEAVER User manual

Extending Dreamweaver

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ColdFusion, Contribute, Database Explorer, Director, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, FlashCast, FlashHelp, Flash Lite,

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Third-Party Information

This guide contains links to third-party websites that are not under the control of Macromedia, and Macromedia is not

responsible for the content on any linked site. If you access a third-party website mentioned in this guide, then you do so at your

own risk. Macromedia provides these links only as a convenience, and the inclusion of the link does not imply that Macromedia

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translated, or converted to any electronic or machine-readable form in whole or in part without written approval from

Macromedia, Inc. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the owner or authorized user of a valid copy of the software with which

this manual was provided may print out one copy of this manual from an electronic version of this manual for the sole

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commercial purposes, such as selling copies of this documentation or providing paid-for support services.

Acknowledgments

Project Management: Charles Nadeau, Robert Berry

Writing: Anne Sandstrom

Editing: Anne Szabla, John Hammett

Production and Editing Management: Patrice OíNeill and Rosana Francescato

Media Design and Production: Adam Barnett, Aaron Begley, Paul Benkman, John Francis, Geeta Karmarkar, Mario Reynoso

Localization Management: Melissa Baerwald

Special thanks to Jay London, Raymond Lim, Alain Dumesny, and the entire Dreamweaver engineering and QA teams.

First Edition: September 2005

Macromedia, Inc.

601 Townsend St.‘

San Francisco, CA 94103

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Installing an extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Creating an extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Additional resources for extension writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

What’s new in Dreamweaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Conventions used in this guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

PART 1: CUSTOMIZING DREAMWEAVER

Chapter 1: Customizing Dreamweaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Ways to customize Dreamweaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Customizing Dreamweaver in a multiuser environment. . . . . . . . . . . . .27

Working with browser profiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Changing FTP mappings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Extensible document types in Dreamweaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Chapter 2: Customizing Code View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Code hints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Code coloring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Code validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Changing default HTML formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

PART 2: OVERVIEW OF EXTENDING DREAMWEAVER

Chapter 3: Extending Dreamweaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Types of Dreamweaver extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Configuration folders and extensions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102

Extension APIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105

Localizing an extension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107

Working with the Extension Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109

4Contents

Chapter 4: User Interfaces for Extensions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Designing an extension user interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Dreamweaver HTML rendering control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112

Using custom UI controls in extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113

Adding Flash content to Dreamweaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Chapter 5: The Dreamweaver Document Object Model . . . . . . 127

Which document DOM? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

The Dreamweaver DOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

PART 3: EXTENSION APIS

Chapter 6: Insert Bar Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

How object files work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

The Insert bar definition file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141

Modifying the Insert bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

A simple insert object example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

The Objects API. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161

Chapter 7: Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

How commands work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Adding commands to the Commands menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

A simple command example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

The Commands API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Chapter 8: Menus and Menu Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

About the menus.xml file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

Changing menus and menu commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191

Menu commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

A simple menu command example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

A dynamic menu example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

The Menu Commands API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Chapter 9: Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

How toolbars work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

A simple toolbar command file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

The toolbar definition file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Toolbar item tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .226

Item tag attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .232

The toolbar command API. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .238

Contents 5

Chapter 10: Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Site reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Stand-alone reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

The Reports API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Chapter 11: Tag Libraries and Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Tag library file format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

The Tag Chooser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

A simple example of creating a new tag editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Tag editor APIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Chapter 12: Property Inspectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

How Property inspector files work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .281

A simple Property inspector example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

The Property inspector API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Chapter 13: Floating Panels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

How floating panel files work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290

A simple floating panel example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .291

The Floating panel API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Chapter 14: Behaviors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

How Behaviors work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

A simple behavior example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

The Behaviors API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .312

Chapter 15: Server Behaviors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

Dreamweaver architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

A simple server behavior example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324

How the Server Behavior API functions are called. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

The Server Behavior API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

Server behavior implementation functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Editing EDML files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

Group EDML file tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340

Participant EDML files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

Server behavior techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

6Contents

Chapter 16: Data Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

How data sources work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

A simple data source example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .382

The Data Sources API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

Chapter 17: Server Formats. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399

How data formatting works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

When the data formatting functions are called . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402

The Server Formats API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

Chapter 18: Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

Component basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .407

Extending the Components panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408

How to customize the Components panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408

Components panel files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409

Components panel API functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

Chapter 19: Server Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423

How customizing server models works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .423

The Server Model API functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

Chapter 20: Data Translators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433

How data translators work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434

Determining what kind of translator to use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .435

Adding a translated attribute to a tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .435

Inspecting translated attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .437

Locking translated tags or blocks of code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .437

Creating Property inspectors for locked content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439

Finding bugs in your translator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442

A simple attribute translator example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

A simple block/tag translator example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .447

The Data Translator API. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452

Chapter 21: C-Level Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

How integrating C functions works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .457

C-level extensibility and the JavaScript interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459

Data types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

The C-level API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461

File Access and Multiuser Configuration API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .470

Calling a C function from JavaScript. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .479

Contents 7

PART 4: APPENDIX

Appendix: The Shared Folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

The Shared folder contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

Using the Shared folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .491

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493

8Contents

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).

10 Introduction

Installing an extension

To become familiar with the process of writing extensions, you might want to explore the

extensions and resources that are available through the Macromedia Exchange website

(www.macromedia.com/exchange). Installing an existing extension introduces you to some of

the tools that you need to work with in your own extensions.

To install an extension, use the following procedure:

1. Download and install the Extension Manager, which is available on the Macromedia

Downloads website (www.macromedia.com/software/downloads).

2. Log on to the Macromedia Exchange website (www.macromedia.com/exchange).

3. From the available extensions, select one that you want to use. Click the Download link to

download the extension package.

4. Save the extension package in the Dreamweaver 8/Downloaded Extensions folder of your

installed Dreamweaver folder.

5. In the Extension Manager, select File > Install Extension. In Dreamweaver, select

Commands > Manage Extensions to start the Extension Manager.

The Extension Manager automatically installs the extension from the Downloaded

Extension folder into Dreamweaver.

Some extensions need Dreamweaver to restart before you can use them. If you are running

Dreamweaver when you install the extension, you might be prompted to quit and restart

the application.

To view basic information on the extension after its installation, go to the Extension Manager

(Commands > Manage Extensions) in Dreamweaver.

Creating an extension

Before you create a Dreamweaver extension, visit the Macromedia Exchange website at

www.macromedia.com/exchange to see if the extension you plan to create already exists. If

you do not find an extension that meets your needs, you then perform the following steps to

create the extension:

■Determine the type of extension you want to create. For more information about the

extension types, see “Types of Dreamweaver extensions” on page 100.

■Review the documentation for the type of extension you plan to create. To become

familiar with creating that type of extension, it’s a good idea to create the simple extension

example in the appropriate chapter.

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