Quick Reference of Dreamweaver CS5 File Menu Commands

Here’s a quick reference to every command in the Dreamweaver CS5 File menu—and the answer to the occasional “What does that mean?” mystery.

The commands in the File menu include basic file functions like saving and quitting, and control the open Dreamweaver document.

New. Opens the New Document window, which lets you select a new, blank Dreamweaver document from among many types, from basic HTML pages to dynamic pages like ASP or PHP files. This window also lets you access templates you’ve created for your site.
Open. Opens the standard Open File dialog box so you can choose an existing Dreamweaver document to open. You can set the Show pop-up menu to show only specific types of documents—only HTML pages or style sheets, for example.
Browse in Bridge. Bridge is Adobe’s file manager program. It’s like Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. Bridge lets you browse, find, and open documents. But since Dreamweaver sports the very useful Files panel (page xx), you already have a way to manage your site files. In addition, Bridge is part of Adobe’s graphics heritage, so it works best with image files—in other words, Photoshop and Illustrator files, not Dreamweaver documents.
Open Recent. Displays a submenu that lists the 10 most recently opened documents. Selecting a document from the list opens it. The last option in this menu, “Reopen Documents on Startup”, is kind of cool. If you quit Dreamweaver with documents still open (and have this option checked), Dreamweaver automatically reopens those documents the next time you start the program.
Open in Frame. Opens an existing HTML page within one frame of a frameset. To make this command available, you must have a frameset open and have clicked inside one of its frames to select the frame—you can’t open an HTML page just by loading a Frameset document. The Select HTML file dialog box opens and lets you navigate to select the file to insert into the frame. You can also choose to make the file’s URL relative to the document or the root folder. (Frames are an old technology, however. Professional designers no longer use them.)
Close. Closes the currently open Dreamweaver document. If you have unsaved changes, Dreamweaver gives you the opportunity to save them.Close All. Closes all the currently open documents. If you have unsaved changes in any of them,Dreamweaver gives you the opportunity to save them.
Share My Screen. This option works with Adobe’s ConnectNow Web conferencing service. You can share your Dreamweaver screen with students, colleagues, or your aunt who’s learning how to create websites. The service lets you provide real-time demonstrations of Dreamweaver in action. It’s free for up to two people. Learn more about ConnectNow at www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow.
Save (Save Frameset/Save Frame). Saves any changes you made to your document. Dreamweaver dims the Save command if you haven’t made any changes to the document since the last time you saved it.
Save As (Save Frameset As/Save Frame As). This command works slightly differently than in other programs. Like most other programs, it saves a copy of the current document under a new name, but it also leaves the original document and reverts that file to its last saved state. In other words, only the Save As copy has the most recent changes you made to the original file…weird.
Save All. Saves changes to all your open documents, including files like external CSS and Javascript files listed in the Related Files bar. This is a great command to make sure you save all your changes to every document you edited since opening Dreamweaver.
Save All Related Files. Saves changes to the document you’re currently editing, as well as files that the current document uses, such as external CSS and Javascript files and server-side programs such as PHP includes. This is a good way to make sure you save every edit that affects the current file, whether you made the change in a CSS file, the HTML source code, or an external Javascript file.
Save as Template. Saves the current document as a Dreamweaver template with the suffix .dwt. The “Save as Template” dialog box appears so you can specify the template’s file name, and indicate which site it belongs to. Dreamweaver automatically saves all template documents in a Templates folder in the selected site’s folder.
Revert. Undoes any changes you made to a document since the last time you saved it. Edit→Undo is often a better choice; it takes a few more steps to undo all the changes you’ve made, but it can actually undo changes past your last save. So if you’re one of those gotta-save-it-every-5-seconds types, the Undo command is for you.
Page Setup. Lets you set up printer settings (like the size paper you want to print on) for the Print Code command listed next.
Print Code. Prints the code (that is, what you see in Code view) of the current document.
Import. Lets you import data from other sources into your Dreamweaver document. For example, you can import XML data into a template or tabular data from a CSV (comma separated value) file into an HTML file. Windows users can also choose to import text from a Microsoft Word document or tabular data from an Excel Spreadsheet.
Export. Extracts tabular data or template data as XML from your Dreamweaver document, for use in other applications.
Convert. Converts older HTML pages into a variety of more modern formats, like HTML 4.01 Strict and two forms of XHTML. Unfortunately, it’s kind of hit-or-miss: this feature can’t always update older files to modern standards.
Preview in Browser. Opens the current document in your web browser. By selecting Edit Browser List, you can add new browsers to, or delete browsers from, your browser list, or specify a preferred browser. This command also includes an option to preview your page in a program called Device Central, an Adobe program meant to let web designers preview a web page in mobile devices. It works well if you’re working on a Flash movie, but it’s not so good for regular web pages. Dreamweaver CS5 also lets you preview in “Adobe BrowserLab”—this option lets you take screenshots of the current page in different browsers using an online Adobe service.
Check Page. Checks the current page for a variety of problems, such as broken links, code that’s incompatible with various browsers, and spelling. You can also access the link checker and browser compatibility tools from the Results panel so you can check an entire site’s worth of files—choose Window→Results, and then click an appropriate tab, like Link Checker to check links.Validate. Lets you check XML files to make sure they conform to XML standards and document type definitions. In other words, it checks to make sure your XML is correct. (Versions prior to Dreamweaver CS5 included an HTML validator—it wasn’t as accurate as the official W3C validator so Adobe removed it from Dreamweaver CS5.
Compare with Remote/Compare with Testing. Lets you use a third-party code-comparison tool to see how a local copy of a page differs from either the remote copy (on your web server) or a copy on your testing server. This identifies all code differences between two copies of the same page.
Design Notes. Opens the Design Notes window (Chapter 18), where you can add additional information about an open document, set its status, and choose to have the Design Note appear whenever you open the document.

Note: To use Design Notes, you must make sure that you select the Maintain Design Notes option in the Site Definition window’s “Design notes” section.
Exit/Quit. Exits Dreamweaver. If any of your open Dreamweaver documents have unsaved changes, the program prompts you to save them before quitting. (Mac users will find this option under the Dreamweaver menu.)

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