Working with the Library Feature in Dreamweaver

Rita Gavelis

Metrowest MA Regional Library System

2006

Introduction

Why use the Library feature?

Dreamweaver is one of the most popular and versatile web authoring programs available today.  One of the reasons for Dreamweaver’s success is its plethora of features and tools, one of which is the Library.

The library is one of the most time saving tools around.  Let’s say you have a navigation bar that appears on every page of your website.  If one of the links on the navigation bar changes, you have to update that link on every single page that uses the navigation bar.  If your web site consists of 25 pages, updating that faulty link can take quite a bit of time.  With the Library, you simply make the change once and the library immediately updates every single page for you.  You can add just about anything to a site’s Library:  images, passages of text, layers, and more.

What can be added to a Library:

What cannot be added to a Library:

Creating library items.

To create a Library item, first open an HTML  file.  

Open the File Palette.

Select the Asset tab

Click on the book icon to open the Library window.

Select a section of the page you wish to add to your library, i.e. a header, footer, or copyright notice that will appear on multiple pages of your website.

Once you have made your selection, you can add the item a number ways:

Don’t forget to name the new Library Item.    Try to give it a name that best describes what it is, i.e. “Header”, “Copyright”, “Navigation”, etc.

Adding Library Items to a page.

Now that you have created items for your Library, you can reuse them.

Open the web file you wish to add the item to.  It can be a new page or one that was previously created.

You can then add the Library item a number of different ways:

After you have added the Library Item,  you can then continue adding other content to that page.  It’s that simple.

Editing Library Items.

There will be times when you create a Library Item and then need to change it, whether it is updating a link, changing an image, or editing text.  To do this, it is important  that you edit the item directly in the Library and not in a particular webpage.  

To edit a Library Item,  do the following:

You can now make any edits you wish.  

When you are done modifying the Library Item, click on File, Save.

You will then see a message asking if you wish to update all the pages that use that item.  

Clicking “Update” will make the change to all the pages using that item.  You can then click “Done”.

Editing a single page.

If you wish to change the Library Item for only one page, you must break the link between the Library and the Item.  To do this, open the web page where you wish to make the change.

Select the item, then click on “Detach from Original” in the Properties Panel.  This will allow you to make the change just to this particular page, without affecting any other pages using this Library Item.

Deleting items from the Library.

If you find that your Library is filled with items you are not using, you can easily remove them by selecting the item, and then clicking on the Delete icon.

Be very careful when deleting an item.  If you have placed the item in pages, but then delete the item from the library, the item remains in those pages.  You must go back to each page and delete the items from the pages.

If you choose to keep those items in the pages and need to edit them, you must follow the instructions for “Editing a single page”.

Renaming Library Items.

If you wish the rename an item in your Library, click on the item in the Assets Panel.  The name will become highlighted.  At that point, you may type in the new name.  

If you have already used the item in a web page, you will see the following message:

Click “Update”.  If you do not, the link between the pages and the Library Item will break.

How the Library works.

Dreamweaver inserts tags into the HTML coding of your web page.

Your Library item content

  The HTML code for your Library items are then stored as text files with the suffix “.lbi”.  These files are stored in a separate folder called “Library”.  Whenever you upload your new WebPages to your web server, you must remember to also upload the Library folder.

Useful Resources

Books from Metrowest’s collection:

Dreamweaver MX 2004:  The missing manual.  David Sawyer McFarland.  (Sebastopol, CA:  Pogue Press / O’Reilly & Associates, 2004).

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004:  training from the source.  Khristine Annwn Page.  (Berkeley, CA:  Macromedia Press, 2004).

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