Increasing Productivity
These tips will help you use Dreamweaver more efficiently, so that you can move faster when creating your websites.
Creating a Template
Templates was covered a couple of weeks ago - please see those notes or ask questions if you have any.
Creating Library Items
Library items are similar, but different, from templates. Instead of being full pages to base a design off of, they can be small sections which may be reused on several pages, but not all of them, so it wouldn't make since to put them into a template. However, if you update the library item, it updates itself in all of the pages where the library item is placed automatically - just like a template.
Library Items work good for items which need to be repeated on several, but not all, pages - such as sub-menu items, copyright notices, etc.
To create a library item:
- select a section of HTML code (you need to make sure you have the opening and closing tag)
- From menu Modify > Library > Add Object to Library
- Click OK
This will create a Library folder, similar to the template folder.
Inserting a Library Item:
- Go to the Assets Panel (this is the tab from the files panel)
- Select the Library Item you want
- Click on the "Insert" button
Server Side Includes
An even easier way to update assests across multiple files - however, different servers support this in different ways, so I will leave that up to you to find out based upon the server you have.