Chapter 14. Behaviors

Behaviors let users make their HTML pages interactive. They offer web designers an easy way to assign actions to page elements by filling in an HTML form.

The term behavior refers to the combination of an event (such as onClick, onLoad, or onSubmit) and an action (such as Check Plugin, Go to URL, Swap Image). The browser determines which HTML elements accept which events. Files that list events that each browser supports are stored in the Configuration/Behaviors/Events folder within the Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 application folder.

Actions are the part of a behavior that you can control; when you write a behavior, you're really writing an Action file. Actions are HTML files. The BODY section of an Action file generally contains an HTML form that accepts parameters for the action (for example, parameters that indicate which layers to display or hide). The HEAD section of an Action file contains JavaScript functions that process form input from the BODY content and control the functions, arguments, and event handlers that are inserted into a user's document.

You should write behavior actions when you want to share functions with users or when you want to insert the same JavaScript function repeatedly, but change the parameters each time.

NOTE

You cannot use behaviors to insert VBScript functions directly; however, you can add a VBScript function indirectly by editing the Document Object Model (DOM) in the applyBehavior() function.

The following table lists the files you use to create behavior actions:

Path	File	Description
Configuration/Behaviors/Actions/	behavior action.htm	The BODY of the file contains an HTML form for the action's parameters. The HEAD of the file contains the JavaScript functions.

NOTE

For information about server behaviors that provide web application functionality, see Chapter 15, "Server Behaviors," on page 321.