Dreamweaver CS5.5: The Missing Manual

Chapter 23. Customizing Dreamweaver

Whether you’re a hard-core HTML jockey who prefers to be knee-deep in Code view, or a visually oriented, drag-and-drop type who never strays from Design view, Dreamweaver lets you work the way you want.

By now, you’re probably already using the Favorites tab on the Insert panel to store your most frequently used objects in one place, as discussed on The Property Inspector. But don’t stop there. Dreamweaver gives you the power to add, change, and share keyboard shortcuts—it’s a simple way to tailor the program to your needs. And if that’s not enough of an efficiency boost, you can add features that even Adobe’s engineers never imagined, from simple productivity add-ons like QuickLink (see Using the Hyperlink Object) to advanced server behaviors that help power a complete e-commerce website. Dreamweaver’s design allows amateur and professional programmers alike to write new features and functions using HTML, JavaScript, and XML (Extensible Markup Language). There are hundreds of these extras, called extensions, for you to explore. Best of all, you can try many of them for free.

Keyboard Shortcuts

As you use Dreamweaver, you’ll hit the same keyboard shortcuts and travel to the same palettes and menus time and again; perhaps your site uses a lot of graphics and Flash movies, for example, and you’re constantly using keyboard shortcuts to insert them. You may find that, after the thousandth time, Ctrl+Alt+F (⌘-Option-F) hurts your pinkie and uses too many ...