The Start Page

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New to Dreamweaver MX 2004, you have the option of opening Dream- weaver every day to a friendly, helpful Start page (see Figure 4). In addition to quick links to a Dreamweaver tour and tutorial, you have instant access to do the following:

Figure 2.4. The Start Page, a quick interface for accessing common start-up tasks .

• Open recent documents or any file (an alternative to choosing File > Open ).

• Create new documents of various types (an alternative method of using File > New and using the New Document dialog box, without having to bother with the New Document dialog box). Choosing the More Documents option from this category opens the New Document dialog box.

• Create a new site (an alternative to choosing Site > Manage Sites and clicking the New button).

• Create new documents based on different stationery samples (the same samples available in the New Document dialog box).

• Visit the Dreamweaver Exchange to check out new extensions (an alternative to choosing Help > Dreamweaver Exchange).

Clicking the Dreamweaver Tour button takes you to the Macromedia website if you're connected to the Internet. Clicking the Dreamweaver Tutorial button opens the Dreamweaver Help system, as if you had chosen Help > Tutorials. So there's nothing in here that you can't also do elsewhere, but it is nice to have all of these handy first-thing-in-the-morning tasks ready and available from one central interface.

If you don't want to be bothered with the Start page, select the Don't Show Again option. To turn the Start page on and off, open the Preferences > General dialog box (Edit > Preferences) and select or deselect the Show Start Page option (see Figure 2.5). If the Start page is enabled, it will display every time you launch the program and whenever there are no open documents.

Figure 2.5. Enabling or disabling the Start page in Dreamweaver Preferences.

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