User Guide

Working with browser profiles 39
To turn off Dreamweaver encoding options:
1 Select Edit > Preferences, and select the Code Rewriting category.
2 Deselect either or both Special Characters options.
For information on the other Code Rewriting preferences, see Dreamweaver Help
(Help > Using Dreamweaver).
Working with browser profiles
Browser profiles are the files Dreamweaver uses to check your documents when you run a target
browser check (see Dreamweaver Help [Help > Using Dreamweaver]). Each profile contains
information about the HTML tags and attributes that a particular browser supports. A browser
profile can also contain warnings, error messages, and suggestions for tag substitutions.
Browser profiles are stored in the Configuration/BrowserProfiles folder in the Dreamweaver
application folder. You can edit existing profiles or create new ones using Dreamweaver or a text
editor. It is not necessary to quit Dreamweaver before editing or creating browser profiles.
About browser-profile formatting
Browser profiles follow a specific format. To avoid parsing errors during target browser checks,
follow these rules when editing or creating profiles:
• The first line is reserved for the name of the profile. It must be followed by a single carriage
return. The name on this line appears in the Target Browser Check dialog box and in the target
check report. It must be unique.
• The second line is reserved for the designator PROFILE_TYPE=BROWSER_PROFILE.
Dreamweaver uses this line to determine which documents are browser profiles. Do not change
or move this line.
• Two hyphens (--) at the beginning of a line indicate a comment (that is, the line is ignored
during the target check process). A comment must start at the beginning of a line—you can’t
put two hyphens in the middle of a line.
• You must use a space in the following places:
■ Before the closing angle bracket (>) on the !ELEMENT line
■ After the opening parentheses in a list of values for an attribute
■ Before a closing parentheses in a list of values
■ Before and after each pipe (|) in a list of values.
• You must include an exclamation point (!) without a space before each of the following words:
ELEMENT, ATTLIST, Error, and msg (ELEMENT, !ATTLIST, !Error, !msg ).
• You can include !Error, !Warning, and !Info within the !ELEMENT or the !ATTLIST area.
• !msg messages can contain only plain text.
• HTML comments (!---->) cannot be listed as tags in browser profiles because they interfere
with parsing. Dreamweaver does not report an error for comments because all browsers
support them.