Working on Library Items with the Property Inspector

As we mentioned in the previous section, "Editing a Library item," the Property Inspector offers some options for working on Library items. The previous section explained how to edit the Library item using the Open button, but there are two as yet unexplained buttons on the Property Inspector, Detach from original and Recreate.

Detaching a Library item doesn't remove the item from the page. It breaks the connection between the copy of the Library item on the current page and the original source in the site's Library folder. If you later update the original Library item, the current page's code won't be changed by the update.

Sometimes you can have a page that contains the code from a Library item that was removed from the site's Library folder (or never existed there). For example, let's say that you copied a page (that contained a Library item) from one of your sites to a different site. The site that now contains the page will not, of course, have a corresponding Library item in its Library folder. You can use the code in the current document to re-create the Library item in the new local site.

To detach the Library item:

1.	Select a Library item in the document window.
2.	On the Property Inspector, click Detach from original ( Figure 13.21 ). Figure 13.21. The Property Inspector can be used to detach a Library item from the source, or to re-create a Library item that's lost or missing. Dreamweaver displays a dialog asking if you're sure you want to detach the item. Click OK. The link between the item on the page and the original in the Library is broken.

To re-create a missing or deleted Library item:

1.	Open a document containing code for a Library item that is missing from the Library category of the Assets panel.
2.	Highlight the item. The tag selector should display <mm:libitem> .
3.	On the Property Inspector, click Recreate. The item will be re-created using the name it has on this page. The re-created item appears in the Library category of the Assets panel.

Tips

• If you detach a Library item from a page, the highlighting in the document window that indicated that the element was a Library item disappears along with the broken connection to the Library item source.

• Right-clicking (Ctrl-clicking) on a Library item in the document window reveals a pop-up menu with the same options available on the Property Inspector to Open, Detach, or Recreate.