How property inspector files work – Adobe Extending Dreamweaver CS4 User Manual
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EXTENDING DREAMWEAVER CS4
Property inspectors
•
The
serverModel
element (optional) indicates the server model of the Property inspector. The server model of the
Property inspector must be the same as the Property inspector of the document. If not, Dreamweaver does not use
the Property inspector to display the properties of the current selection. For example, consider, the server model of
a document is Adobe ColdFusion. But, the server model of the Property inspector is ASP. Then, Dreamweaver does
not use that Property inspector for selections in the document.
The following comment is appropriate for an inspector that is designed to inspect the
happy
tag:
In some cases, specifying that your extension uses only Dreamweaver extension rendering and not the previous
rendering engine is a must. You can do it by inserting the following line immediately before the tag comment, as shown
in the following example:
The body section of a Property inspector file contains an HTML form. Instead of displaying the form contents in a
dialog box, Dreamweaver uses the form to define the input areas and layout of the Property inspector.
The head section of a Property inspector file contains JavaScript functions or a reference to the JavaScript file or files.
How Property inspector files work
At start-up, Dreamweaver reads the first line of each HTM and HTML file in the Configuration/Inspectors folder,
searching for the comment string that defines the type, priority, and selection type of a Property inspector. Files that
do not have this comment as their first line are ignored.
When the user makes a selection in Dreamweaver or moves the insertion point to a different location, the following
events occur:
1
Dreamweaver searches for any inspectors that have a
within
selection type.
2
If there are any
within
inspectors, Dreamweaver searches up the document tree from the currently selected tag to
check whether there are inspectors for any tags that surround the selection. If there are no
within
inspectors,
Dreamweaver searches for any inspectors that have a selection type of
exact
.
3
For the first tag that has one or more inspectors, Dreamweaver calls each inspector’s
canInspectSelection()
function. If this function returns the value
false
, Dreamweaver no longer considers the inspector a candidate for
inspecting the selection.
4
If more than one potential inspector remains after calling the
canInspectSelection()
function, Dreamweaver
sorts the remaining inspectors by priority.
5
If more than one potential inspector shares the same priority, Dreamweaver selects an inspector alphabetically by name.
6
The selected inspector appears in the Property inspector floating panel. If the Property inspector file defines the
displayHelp()
function, a small question mark (?) icon appears in the upper-right corner of the inspector.
7
Dreamweaver calls the
inspectSelection()
function to gather information about the current selection and
populate the inspector’s fields.
8
Event handlers attached to the fields in the Property inspector interface execute as the user encounters them. (For
example, you might have an
onBlur
event that calls the
setAttribute()
function to set an attribute to the value
that the user enters.)