Specifications

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CHAPTER 12
Floating Panels
You can create any kind of floating panel or inspector without the size and layout limitations of
Property inspectors.
Although a custom Property inspector should be your first choice for setting the properties of the
current selection, custom floating panels offer more room and flexibility for displaying
information about the entire document or multiple selections.
Custom Floating Panel files are HTML files that reside in the Configuration/Floaters folder
inside the Dreamweaver application folder. The
BODY of a Floating Panel file contains an HTML
form; event handlers that are attached to form elements can call JavaScript code that performs
arbitrary edits to the current document.
Dreamweaver has several built-in floating panels that are accessible from the Window menu.
(These built-in panels are part of the core Dreamweaver code and do not have corresponding
Floating Panel files for them in the Configuration/Floaters folder.)
You can create custom panels and add them to the Window menu. For more information on
adding items to the menu system, see “Customizing Dreamweaver,” in the Dreamweaver MX
Support Center.
How floating panel files work
Custom floating panels can be moved, resized, and tabbed together the same way that the floating
panels that are built into Dreamweaver. Custom floating panels differ from built-in floating
panels in the following ways:
• It is not possible to display an icon in the tab of a custom floating panel; the tab always shows
the contents of the floating panel’s
TITLE tag.
• Custom floating panels display in the default gray. Setting the BGCOLOR attribute in the BODY
tag has no effect.
• All custom floating panels either appear always on top of the Document window or float
behind it when inactive, depending on the setting for All Other Floaters in the Floating
panels preferences.
Floating panel files also differ somewhat from other extensions. Unlike other extension files,
Dreamweaver does not load floating panel files into memory at startup unless the floating panels
were visible when Dreamweaver last shut down. If the floating panels were not visible when
Dreamweaver last shut down, the files that define them are loaded only when referenced from one
of the following functions: “dreamweaver.getFloaterVisibility()” on page 644,
“dreamweaver.setFloaterVisibility()” on page 647, or “dreamweaver.toggleFloater()” on page 650.