Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 - Manual (Page 75)

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Chapter 4: Creating and managing files
In addition to creating web pages, you can easily organize all of the files and assets that belong to your website. You
can create, manage, and synchronize files, check files in and out, and test how your site will work in different
browsers.
Creating and opening documents
About creating Dreamweaver documents
Dreamweaver offers a flexible environment for working with a variety of web documents. In addition to HTML
documents, you can create and open a variety of text-based documents, including ColdFusion Markup Language
(CFML), ASP, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Source code files, such as Visual Basic, .NET, C#, and
Java, are also supported.
Dreamweaver provides several options for creating a new document. You can create any of the following:
• A new blank document or template
• A document based on one of the predesigned page layouts that comes with Dreamweaver, including over 30 CSS-
based page layouts
• A document based on one of your existing templates
You can also set document preferences. For example, if you typically work with one type of document, you can set it
as the default document type for new pages you create.
You can easily define document properties, such as meta tags, document title, and background colors, and several
other page properties in either Design view or Code view.
Dreamweaver file types
You can work with a variety of file types in Dreamweaver. The primary kind of file you will work with is the HTML
file. HTML files—or Hypertext Markup Language files—contain the tag-based language responsible for displaying
a web page in a browser. You can save HTML files with either the .html or .htm extension. Dreamweaver saves files
using the .html extension by default.
Following are some of the other common file types you might use when working in Dreamweaver:
CSS Cascading Style Sheet files have a .css extension. They are used to format HTML content and control the
positioning of various page elements.
GIF Graphics Interchange Format files have a .gif extension. GIF format is a popular web graphic format for
cartoons, logos, graphics with transparent areas, and animations. GIFs contain a maximum of 256 colors.
JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group files (named after the organization that created the format) have a .jpg
extension, and are usually photographs or high-color images. The JPEG format is best for digital or scanned photo-
graphs, images using textures, images with gradient color transitions, and any images that require more than 256
colors.
XML Extensible Markup Language files have a .xml extension. They contain data in a raw form that can be formatted
using XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language).
September 4, 2007