Datasheet

The Tabbed File Chooser
As your Web sites grow, so will the volume of Web pages that you need to manage. In some instances,
you’ll need to work on more than one Web page at the same time. This is where the tabbed file chooser
comes into play. The tabbed file chooser allows you to open and work with numerous Web pages at once.
As you open or create files, new tabs appear within the tab strip, each representing its own Document win-
dow instance. When you have more than one file open at the same time, browsing between the files is sim-
ply a matter of choosing the particular file, represented by its individual tab.
Closing a tab/page is easy. To close the tab/page, simply choose the small Close icon (represented by the
small x) in the far right of the tab strip, or in the top-right corner of the Document window, also shown
in Figure 1-3.
Show Design, Split, and Code View
One of the nice aspects of Expression Web is that it doesn’t assume anything of its user. It doesn’t care if
you’re a designer who prefers to structure and format Web pages visually. It also doesn’t care if you’re a
developer who prefers to tinker with the code. In fact, it allows you to set what view you want to see for
a particular situation via the Show Design, Split, and Code View set of options.
As you’ll notice, the Show Design View option is shown to the user by default. For this reason, a
blank white page is shown initially when a new page is created. If you prefer to work in a code
environment, however, simply choose the Show Code View option. In this scenario, the develop-
ment area changes, enabling you to manipulate the code that is produced. Furthermore, assuming
you have the ability to build Web pages visually as well as the ability to tinker with the code, you
may decide to choose the Show Split View option. Doing so splits the development area into two
halves. As you can see from Figure 1-5, the top half displays the code, whereas the bottom half
displays the visual environment.
So, why does Expression Web support two modes of development? The answer is simple. Some devel-
opers have the ability to work with HTML directly in code, while others prefer to work with the page
visually. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Even if you prefer to work with the page visually, in the end,
the result is a series of tags that is produced automatically for you by Expression Web within the Code
view. The browser, knowing nothing of the visual design, instead parses the carefully crafted tags
associated with the page and presents to the user what the developer intended.
As an example of how Expression Web writes the code for you, try choosing File ➪ New ➪ HTML to
create a new blank Web page. Immediately choose the Show Split View option. Now select Table ➪
Insert Table. The Insert Table dialog box will appear. Accept the defaults and click OK to close the
dialog box. Observe that a table is added to the page. More importantly, however, notice the code that
is generated within the Code view.
Remember that there’s always more than one way to accomplish any task in Expres-
sion Web. Another way to close a page is to choose File ➪ Close. Or, if you’d like
to close all open tabs/pages at the same time, simply choose Window ➪ Close All
Pages.
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