Roundtrip HTML is a unique feature of Dreamweaver that lets you move your documents between Dreamweaver and a text-based HTML editor with little or no impact on the content and structure of the document's HTML source code. Dreamweaver even maintains and renders some HTML that is technically invalid (for example, a FONT
tag wrapped around multiple P
tags) if such code is supported by browsers. The HTML source code that Dreamweaver generates as you edit graphically, however, will always be technically valid.
The following are key features of Roundtrip HTML:
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By default, Dreamweaver rewrites overlapping tags, closes open tags that aren't allowed to remain open, and removes extra closing tags when you switch back to Dreamweaver from the external editor or when you open an existing HTML document. If you don't want Dreamweaver to rewrite any source HTML, choose Edit > Preferences, then select HTML Rewriting to turn off all rewriting. See HTML Rewriting preferences. |
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Dreamweaver displays markers in the document window for invalid HTML that it does not support. The invalid tags are highlighted in yellow, and the text within the tags appears as plain text. When you select the invalid tag, Dreamweaver describes the error and how you can correct it in the Property inspector. If you turn off HTML rewriting, Dreamweaver displays as invalid any HTML that it would have rewritten. |
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Dreamweaver does not change tags that it does not recognize—including XML tags—because it has no criteria by which to judge them valid or invalid. If they overlap other tags, Dreamweaver may consider them invalid and mark them as erroneous. For example, the custom tag in the following would be marked erroneous: <MyNewTag><B>text</MyNewTag></B> . |
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Dreamweaver does not alter Cold Fusion Markup Language (CFML) or Microsoft Active Server Page (ASP) tags, and it displays icons to identify blocks of CFML or ASP code in the Document window whenever possible. See Editing Cold Fusion and Active Server files in Dreamweaver. We recommend that you turn off rewriting of invalid tags before opening ASP or CFML documents in Dreamweaver. See HTML Rewriting preferences. |
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Dreamweaver lets you launch a text-based HTML editor to edit the current document. Dreamweaver is integrated with HomeSite (Windows) and BBEdit (Macintosh). See Using other HTML editors. |