Operation Manual
329
USING DREAMWEAVER
Adding JavaScript behaviors
Last updated 3/28/2012
Show All Events Displays an alphabetical list of all events for a given category.
Add Behavior (+) Displays a menu of actions that can be attached to the currently selected element. When you select
an action from this list, a dialog box appears in which you can specify parameters for the action. If all the actions are
dimmed, no events can be generated by the selected element.
Remove Event (–) Removes the selected event and action from the behavior list.
Up and down arrow buttons Move the selected action up or down in the behavior list for a particular event. You can
change the order of actions only for a particular event—for example, you can change the order in which several actions
occur for the
onLoad event, but all the onLoad actions stay together in the behavior list. The arrow buttons are disabled
for actions that can’t be moved up or down in the list.
Events Displays a pop-up menu, visible only when an event is selected, of all the events that can trigger the action (this
menu appears when you click the arrow button next to the selected event name). Different events appear depending
on the object selected. If the events you expect don’t appear, make sure that the correct page element or tag is selected.
(To select a specific tag, use the tag selector at the lower-left corner of the Document window.)
Note: Event names in parentheses are available only for links; selecting one of these event names automatically adds a
null link to the selected page element, and attaches the behavior to that link instead of to the element itself. The null link
is specified as href="javascript:;" in the HTML code.
About events
Each browser provides a set of events that you can associate with the actions listed in the Behavior panel’s Actions (+)
menu. When a visitor to your web page interacts with the page—for example, by clicking an image—the browser
generates events; those events can be used to call JavaScript functions that perform an action. Dreamweaver supplies
many common actions that you can trigger with these events.
For names and descriptions of the events provided by each browser, see the Dreamweaver Support Center at
www.adobe.com/go/dreamweaver_support.
Different events appear in the Events menu depending on the selected object. To find out what events a given browser
supports for a given page element, insert the page element in your document and attach a behavior to it, then look at
the Events menu in the Behaviors panel. (By default, events are drawn from the HTML 4.01 events list, and are
supported by most modern browsers.) Events may be disabled (dimmed) if the relevant objects do not yet exist on the
page or if the selected object cannot receive events. If the expected events don’t appear, make sure the correct object is
selected.
If you’re attaching a behavior to an image, some events (such as onMouseOver) appear in parentheses. These events
are available only for links. When you select one of them, Dreamweaver wraps an
<a> tag around the image to define
a null link. The null link is represented by
javascript:; in the Property inspector’s Link box. You can change the
link value if you want to turn it into a real link to another page, but if you delete the JavaScript link without replacing
it with another link, you will remove the behavior.
To see which tags you can use with a given event in a given browser, search for the event in one of the files in the
Dreamweaver/Configuration/Behaviors/Events folder.
Apply a behavior
You can attach behaviors to the entire document (that is, to the <body> tag) or to links, images, form elements, and
several other HTML elements.
The target browser you select determines which events are supported for a given element.