Adobe Extending Dreamweaver CS4 - Manual (Page 220)

214
Chapter 14: Property inspectors
The Property inspector is perhaps the most familiar floating panel in the interface. The Property inspector is
indispensable for defining, reviewing, and changing the name, size, appearance, and other attributes of the selection.
It is also used for launching internal and external editors for the selected element.
The following table lists the files you use to create a Property inspector:
Property inspector files
Dreamweaver has several built-in interfaces for the Property inspector that let you set properties for many standard
HTML tags. Because these built-in inspectors are part of the core Dreamweaver code, you cannot find corresponding
Property inspector files for them in the Configuration folder. However, custom Property inspector files let you
override these built-in interfaces or create new ones to inspect custom tags. Custom Property inspector files reside in
the Configuration/Inspectors folder inside the Dreamweaver application folder.
The Property inspector HTML file must contain a comment (in addition to the doctype comment) immediately
preceding the opening HTML tag. It is shown in the following example:
This comment has the following elements:
• The serverModel element specifies that Dreamweaver must load this Property inspector only when the server
model specified is active.
• The tagNameOrKeyword element is the tag that is inspected or one of the following keywords: *COMMENT* (for
comments), *LOCKED* (for locked regions), or *ASP* (for ASP tags).
• The 1 to 10 element is the priority of the Property inspector file. 1 indicates that this inspector is used only when no
others can inspect the selection. 10 indicates that this inspector takes precedence over all others that can inspect the
selection.
• The exactOrWithin element indicates whether the selection can be within the tag ( within ) or must exactly
contain the tag ( exact ).
• The hline element (optional) indicates that a horizontal gray line must appear between the upper and lower halves
of the inspector in expanded mode.
• The vline element (optional) indicates that a vertical gray line must appear between the tag name field and the rest
of the properties in the inspector.
Path File Description
Configuration/Inspectors/ Propertyinspectorname.htm Defines the user interface (UI) of the Property
inspector.
Configuration/Inspectors/ Propertyinspectorname.js Contains the functions required by the Property
inspector.
Configuration/Inspectors/ Tagimagefile.gif Optional file to display in the Property inspector.