Datasheet

What’s New in Dreamweaver CS4

site visitors choose one. With the Spry Validation Password widget, you can specify the required

strength of a password that the user might enter—with a set number of numbers, uppercase or low-

ercase letters, and more—and display an error if your criteria is not met. Use the Spry Validation

Confim widget to verify a previous input for password, email, or any other type of text field.

While the line of Spry widgets directly available from within Dreamweaver continues to grow,

Dreamweaver CS4 introduces an entire universe of widgets from other frameworks with its Web

widgets functionality. A host of other JavaScript frameworks are available online, many of which

have extensive support, such as YUI, jQuery, and Moo Tools. Dreamweaver CS4 now recognizes

these widgets when they are installed through the Adobe Extension Manager CS4. Initial widgets

available from the Adobe Exchange include calendars (see Figure 1-7), sliders, slideshows, and much

more. To further Web widget development, Adobe has released a Dreamweaver extension that pack-

ages XML and JavaScript files into the proper Extension Manager format, which is available from

Adobe Labs:

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Dreamweaver_Widget_Packager.

FIGURE 1-6

Style your Spry Tooltip with CSS and then preview it in Dreamweaver’s Live view.

To support these Web widgets on the code-level, Dreamweaver CS4 has seriously beefed up its

JavaScript support. Now, imported frameworks like jQuery or Prototype can benefit immediately

from code hinting and syntax coloring. This improvement really speeds up manual coding and helps

developers better understand the syntax of external JavaScript libraries. The enhanced JavaScript

support extends to DOM (Document Object Model) functions and even custom functions, whether

embedded in the page or linked from an external file.

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