Re: Can't view rest of document in Dreamweaver CS3

When you're viewing a document that uses include files, you can certainly see
the entire resulting document in a web layout program like Dreamweaver. The
problem is that when you are formatting the include file itself as a distinct
file, you cannot see how it will look unless it's a properly formatted HTML
document. For example, without a head element there can be no CSS loaded in the
document.

So, other layout programs like GoLive let you use valid HTML files as include
files. They are each self-contained documents with their own head and body tags
so they can do onload actions and use linked CSS files, etc. Because of this,
you can view them and format them the way you want in your editing program.

DW forces you to do such editing outside of having the benefit of seeing the
HTML at work. Without those head and body elements, there is no way to apply
CSS or other dynamic head-based code, or see basic applications of body
background color and so on. These things all work in the browser, because the
browser parses the entire document and views the nested pairs of html and body
tags properly. But DW can't handle it.

So the only way to work with include files in Adobe's editor is to start with
a valid HTML document, then strip everything out before using it. If you then
have to go back and make modifications, you have to put it all back in if you
want to see how it will look outside of the entire context. That's very
cumbersome when a page like most of the pages in this 1100-page site have four
includes in each one. I'm quite disappointed by this, as I was hoping to move
entirely to DW after this final project transition.

golive allowed you to build include files that made invalid html when the
server assembled them into the final file. It shouldn't have. It let you
make sloppy invalid html.

Actually not. It stripped the unnecessary tags out before the files were
published.

And saying again- an include should NOT be a self contained complete html
document. It should only be an inserted snippet of html or server side
code
that is valid for where it is inserted in the MAIN served document.

Definitely true.

--
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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"Alan" <please_dont_mail_me (AT) example (DOT) com> wrote

So, other layout programs like GoLive let you use valid HTML files as
include
files. They are each self-contained documents with their own head and
body
tags
so they can do onload actions and use linked CSS files, etc. Because of
this,
you can view them and format them the way you want in your editing
program.

golive allowed you to build include files that made invalid html when the
server assembled them into the final file. It shouldn't have. It let you
make sloppy invalid html.

Saying again: it's invalid for a served file to have multiple head and
body
tags.

There are built in ways in dreamweaver to do you want in dreamweaver-
design
time style sheets and such.

And saying again- an include should NOT be a self contained complete html
document. It should only be an inserted snippet of html or server side
code
that is valid for where it is inserted in the MAIN served document.

If you want to keep your current workflow, the GoLive install you have
will
work till you change OS if you don't care about what the output looks
like.
Upgrade or grow your knowledge or cling to an old workflow.


--
Alan
Adobe Community Expert, dreamweaver

http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/