Using an External Editor

No matter how much you love Dreamweaver, there may be times when you want to use a different text editor. There are many possible editors you might use, but the two most common are Macromedia HomeSite (on Windows) and BBEdit from Bare Bones (on the Mac).

To use an external editor:

1.	In Dreamweaver's preferences, go to the File Types / Editors category. You'll see a dialog that looks like either Figure 15.46 (Windows) or Figure 15.47 (Mac). Figure 15.46. With Windows, you can pick any text editor by browsing to it and selecting it. Figure 15.47. You can do the same on the Mac, but it's easier to just choose BBEdit.
2.	If you're on a Mac and you want to use BBEdit as your external editor, click the Enable BBEdit Integration button, and you're done. Otherwise (on either platform), click the Browse button next to the External Code Editor text field, navigate to your application of choice, and click Open . Next , decide when you want to reload modified files, and when you want to save on launch. The choices for both are Always, Never, or Prompt.
3.	Click OK to accept your changes.
4.	To switch to your chosen editor, select Edit > Edit with HomeSite+ from Dreamweaver's menu (Windows) ( Figure 15.48 ) or Edit > Edit with BBEdit (Mac) ( Figure 15.49 ). Figure 15.48. There's a new entry on this menu that lets you edit with your text editor of choice. Figure 15.49. And the Mac menu shows BBEdit now, too. If the application was closed, it will now launch, and the current page will open in the text editor and come to the front ( Figures 15.50 and 15.51 ). Figure 15.50. With both applications open in Windows, you can see both the code and the design. Figure 15.51. And here they are side by side on the Mac.
5.	If you're in your chosen editor, and you want to switch back to Dreamweaver: In HomeSite: Click the Dreamweaver icon in the Editing toolbar ( Figure 15.52 ). Figure 15.52. You can go in the reverse direction by choosing HomeSite's Dreamweaver button. In BBEdit: Choose Markup > Misc > Dreamweaver ( Figure 15.53 ). Figure 15.53. BBEdit has Dreamweaver integration under its Markup menu.

Tip

• The best part of using an external editor is being able to open your Dreamweaver window in Design view while you've got the text visible in the external editor. You can then change the file in either application, and the other changes to match. In some ways, this is more powerful than Dreamweaver's Split view, where any time you make a change to the code, you have to manually refresh Design view. Yes, this does mean that you'll need either a very large monitor or multiple monitors , but take our word for itthere's no such thing as too much screen real estate.

About Roundtrip HTML and Automatic Code Correction

Dreamweaver features what they refer to as Roundtrip HTML , meaning that you can modify your file in Dreamweaver, then in BBEdit, and then in Dreamweaver again without Dreamweaver changing what you've done in BBEdit. Except when it does change what you've donebut you can control this.

The Code Rewriting category of the Preferences ( Figure 15.54 ) allows you to set what you do and do not want fixed. For instance, it can be handy to have Dreamweaver fix any badly nested or unclosed tags. Or maybe you want it to fix some types of files but not others (depending on their extension). That's all customizable here. We recommend turning on "Warn when fixing or removing tags" so that you're told what's being changed and when.

Figure 15.54. Use the Code Rewriting preference to tell Dreamweaver exactly what it can and cannot change.