Operation Manual

303

USING DREAMWEAVER

Working with page code

Last updated 3/28/2012

Collapsing code

About collapsing code

You can collapse and expand code fragments so that you can view different sections of your document without having

to use the scroll bar. For example, to see all of the CSS rules in the

head tag that apply to a div tag farther down the

page, you can collapse everything between the

head tag and the div tag so that you can see both sections of code at

once. Although you can select code fragments by making selections in Design view or Code view, you can collapse code

only in Code view.

Note: Files created from Dreamweaver templates display all code as fully expanded, even if the template file (.dwt)

contains collapsed code fragments.

More Help topics

“Paste and move collapsed code fragments” on page 304

“Insert code with the Coding toolbar” on page 291

“Clean up code” on page 305

Collapse and expand code fragments

When you select code, a set of collapse buttons is displayed next to the selection (Minus symbols in Windows; vertical

triangles on the Macintosh). Click the buttons to collapse and expand the selection. When the code is collapsed, the

collapse buttons change to an expand button (a Plus button in Windows; a horizontal triangle on the Macintosh).

Sometimes, the exact fragment of code that you selected is not collapsed. Dreamweaver uses “smart collapse” to

collapse the most common and visually pleasing selection. For example, if you selected an indented tag and then

selected the indented spaces before the tag as well, Dreamweaver would not collapse the indented spaces, because most

users would expect their indentations to be preserved. To disable smart collapse and force Dreamweaver to collapse

exactly what you selected, hold down the Control key before collapsing your code.

Also, a warning icon on collapsed code fragments is displayed if a fragment contains errors or code that is unsupported

by certain browsers.

You can also collapse the code by Alt-clicking (Windows) or Option-clicking (Macintosh) one of the collapse buttons,

or by clicking the Collapse Selection button in the Coding toolbar.

1 Select some code.

2 Select Edit > Code Collapse, and select any of options.