Dreamweaver MX 2004 Behavior Overview

Dreamweaver

· Behavior overview

Dreamweaver MX 2004 has become a good design tool for web designers, and have you noticed the behavioral features it provides during use? I'm here today to introduce you to the use of these behaviors.

Dreamweaver MX 2004 provides a rich set of behaviors that add dynamic effects and simple interactivity to a Web Page object. To make it easy for web designers unfamiliar with JavaScript or VBScript to design features that can be implemented through complex JavaScript or VBScript languages. If you are familiar with JavaScript or VBScript, you can write some specific behavior to use.

Behavior is a way to dynamically respond to user actions, change the current page effect, or perform a specific task. Behavior is composed of objects, events, and actions. For example, when a user moves the mouse over an object (called an event), the object is predefined (called: action).

object is the body that produces the behavior. Many of the elements in a Web page can be objects, such as an entire HTML document, a picture inserted, a piece of text, a media file, and so on. The object is also based on the label that appears in pairs, and the object's label is first selected when it is created.

An event is a condition that triggers a dynamic effect. Page events are grouped into different categories. Some related to the mouse, and some related to the keyboard, such as mouse clicks, a key keyboard press. Some events also related to the Web page, such as Web page download finished, Web page switching, and so on. For the same object, different versions of the browser support event types and how much is not the same.

Action is the dynamic effect of the final production. The dynamic effect may be the flip of the picture, the connection change, the sound playback, and so on.

The behavior can be attached to the entire document, and can be attached to any of the connections, images, form elements, or other HTML elements, and the user can specify Togo actions for each event. Actions occur in the order in which they are listed in the Actions list of the behavior panel. Note: The behavior events supported by different monitors are not the same.

The basic behavior built into the Dreamweaver MX 2004 is as shown in the figure:

Dreamweaver MX 2004 Behavior Panel

Use the Behaviors panel to attach the behavior to the page element (more specifically to the label) and modify the parameters of the previously attached behavior.

To open the Behaviors Panel, select Window > Behavior (SHIFT+F3). The behaviors panel is shown in the following illustration:

The behavior that has been attached to the currently selected page element is displayed in the behavior list (the main area of the panel), sorted alphabetically by event. If there are multiple actions for the same event, the actions are performed in the order that they appear on the list. If no behavior is displayed in the behavior list, no behavior is attached to the currently selected page element.

To set the Behaviors Panel options: The Behaviors Panel has the following options:

Display settings events show only those events that are attached to the current document. Events are grouped into client or server-side categories. Events for each category are included in a collapsible list, and you can expand or collapse the list by clicking the Plus/minus button next to the category name. The show settings event is the default view.

Displays all events for the given category in descending alphabetical order.

Add behavior (+): Is a pop-up menu that contains actions that can be attached to the currently selected element. When you select an action from the list, a dialog box appears, where you can specify the parameters for the action. If all actions are dimmed, there is no event that the selected element can generate.

Delete (-): Deletes the selected event from the list of behaviors.

The Up and down arrow buttons move the selected action of a specific event up or down in the list of behaviors. The actions of a given event are executed in a specific order. Select an event or action to change the order of execution.

Event is a pop-up menu, and the events displayed vary depending on the selected object. If the expected event does not appear, check to see if the correct page element or label is selected.