Application Development


Because application development technologies frequently change, this is the area in Dreamweaver that you would expect most of the additions. In Dreamweaver 8, Macromedia did not disappoint, expanding on its already feature-rich application development framework by enhancing support for ColdFusion MX 7, adding code hinting for PHP 5, and most importantly, integrating robust and intuitive functionality for authoring XML data visually.

Visual Authoring with XML Data

One of the most exciting additions to Dreamweaver 8 is its support for visual authoring of XML pages and creating XSL transformations (XLST) quickly and intuitively. Beginning with the New Document dialog, shown in Figure 1.19, Macromedia added drag-and-drop support from the Bindings panel for integrating XML data into web pages, enhanced support for XML and XSLT in Code view, and improved rendering for XSLT and XPath.

Figure 1.19. The Basic Page category in the New Document dialog includes skeleton files for XSLT and XML pages.


XSL transformations begin with the XSLT basic page template. After the XSLT basic page template is selected, Dreamweaver provides the Locate XML Source dialog, which allows you to associate an XSL file with a specific XML file.

When you have associated the XML file with the XSL file, the XML appears intuitively within the Bindings panel, shown in Figure 1.20.

Figure 1.20. The Bindings panel displays all the nodes contained in the XML file.


With the source set in the Bindings panel, adding data to the XSL page is simply a matter of drag and drop. As Figure 1.21 shows, the five nodes (name, address, city, state, zip) are easily dragged onto the XSL page.

Figure 1.21. Nodes from the XML file are dragged and dropped onto the XSL page.


To see the transformation to HTML, the developer can save the XSL file and preview the result in a browser window. As Figure 1.22 shows, the XSL transformation occurs, a temporary HTML file is created, and the data contained within the XML file is displayed, formatted, in the browser.

Figure 1.22. The data contained in the XML file is displayed as HTML in the browser.


But what about the rest of the data contained within the XML file? Surely I have more than one contact right? Similar to functionality exposed with other frameworks, the XML authoring framework in Dreamweaver 8 comes bundled with a set of XSLT objects located in the Insert menu. As you'll see in Appendix C, selecting the Repeat Region object allows a parent node to repeat within the browser similar to Figure 1.23.

Figure 1.23. The Repeat Region object allows a parent node to constantly repeat down the page.


As you can see from this small section, visual authoring of XML data within Dreamweaver 8 is well represented. With functionality including skeleton files in the New Document dialog, integration with the Bindings panel, and a set of objects, it's easy to see why an entire appendix is devoted to the topic in this book.

ColdFusion MX 7 Support

Users familiar with the ColdFusion application framework will be pleasantly surprised by the number of additions and enhancements made to coincide with ColdFusion MX 7. Specifically, these additions and enhancements are outlined here:

  • Updated existing features to coincide with the ColdFusion MX 7 API. These features include updating the tag libraries, code hints, code coloring, and validating.

  • In the Components panel, only your application CFCs now display instead of all the CFCs on the server.

  • The capability of inserting objects and PIs for CFForm items have been added.

  • CFC Recordsets have been added so that CFC Queries can be reused.

  • A user authentication wizard to password protect a directory on your site has been included.

  • The ability to create database connections directly from the Database panel has been added. Traditional methods forced the developer to use the CFIDE server.




Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Unleashed
Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Unleashed
ISBN: 0672327600
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 237
Authors: Zak Ruvalcaba

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