The menus.xml file

The menus.xml file contains a structured list of menu bars, menus, menu commands, separators, shortcut lists, and keyboard shortcuts. XML tags describe these items and you can edit them in a text editor.

 Be careful when changing menus. Dreamweaver ignores any menu or menu command that contains an XML syntax error.

In a multiuser operating system, you can make changes within Dreamweaver that result in changes to menus.xml. For example, changing keyboard shortcuts using the Keyboard Shortcut Editor. In such cases, Dreamweaver creates a menus.xml file in your user Configuration folder. To customize menus.xml in a multiuser operating system, edit the copy of the file in your user Configuration folder. Otherwise, copy the master menus.xml file to your user Configuration folder if Dreamweaver hasn’t yet created a version there. For more information, see Multiuser Configuration folders.

If you open menus.xml in an XML editor, sometimes you see error messages regarding the ampersands (&) in the menus.xml file. It’s best to edit menus.xml in a text editor; do not edit it in Dreamweaver. For basic information about XML, see Dreamweaver Help.

 Always make a backup copy of the current menus.xml file, or any other Dreamweaver configuration file, before you modify it. In case you forget to make a backup, replace menus.xml with a copy of menus.bak in the Configuration folder.

A menu bar (tagged with opening and closing menu bar tags) is a discrete menu or set of menus. For example, there’s a main menu bar, a separate Site panel menu bar (which appears only on Windows, not the Macintosh), and a menu bar for each context menu. Each menu bar contains one or more menus; a menu is contained in a menu tag. Each menu contains one or more menu commands, each described by a menuitem tag and its attributes. A menu can also contain separators (described by separator tags) and submenus.

In addition to the primary keyboard shortcuts associated with menu commands, Dreamweaver provides alternate and context-specific shortcuts. For example, Control+Y (Windows) or Command+Y (Macintosh) is the shortcut for Redo. At the same time, Control+Shift+Z or Command+Shift+Z is an alternate shortcut for Redo. These alternates and context-specific shortcuts that can’t be represented in the tags for menu commands are defined in the shortcut lists in the menus.xml file. Each shortcut list (described by a shortcutlist tag) contains one or more shortcuts, each of which a shortcut tag describes.

The next sections describe the syntax of the tags in the menus.xml file. Optional attributes are marked in the attribute lists with curly brackets ({ }); all attributes not marked with curly brackets are required.

Description

Provides information about a menu bar in the Dreamweaver menu structure.

Attributes

name, {app}, id, {platform}

  • name The name of the menu bar. Although name is a required attribute, you can give it the value "".

  • app The name of the application in which the menu bar is available. Not currently used.

  • id The menu ID for the menu bar. Each menu ID in the menus.xml file should be unique.

  • platform Indicates that the menu bar should appear only on the given platform. Valid values are "win" and "mac".

Contents

This tag must contain one or more menu tags.

Container

None.

Example

The main (Document window) menu bar uses the following menubar tag:

 <menubar name="Main Window" id="DWMainWindow"> 
<!-- menu tags here --> 
</menubar>

Description

Provides information about a menu or submenu to appear in the Dreamweaver menu structure.

Attributes

name, {app}, id, {platform}, {showIf}

  • name The name of the menu as it will appear on the menu bar. To set the menu’s access key (mnemonic) in Windows, use an underscore (_) before the access letter. The underscore is automatically removed on the Macintosh.

  • app The name of the application in which the menu is available. Not currently used.

  • id  The menu ID for the menu. Every ID in the file should be unique.

  • platform Indicates that the menu should appear only on the given platform. Valid values are "win" and "mac".

  • showIf Specifies that the menu should appear only if the given Dreamweaver enabler is the value true. The possible enablers are: _SERVERMODEL_ASP, _SERVERMODEL_ASPNET, _SERVERMODEL_JSP, _SERVERMODEL_CFML (for all versions of Adobe ColdFusion), _SERVERMODEL_CFML_UD4 (for UltraDev version 4 of ColdFusion), _SERVERMODEL_PHP, _FILE_TEMPLATE, _VIEW_CODE, _VIEW_DESIGN, _VIEW_LAYOUT, _VIEW_EXPANDED_TABLES, and _VIEW_STANDARD. You can specify multiple enablers by placing a comma (which means AND) between the enablers. You can specify NOT with "!". For example, if you want the menu to appear only in Code view for an ASP page, specify the attribute as showIf="_VIEW_CODE, _SERVERMODEL_ASP".

Contents

This tag can contain one or more menuitem tags, and one or more separator tags. It can also contain other menu tags (to create submenus) and standard HTML comment tags.

Container

This tag must be contained in a menubar tag.

Example

 <menu name="_File" id="DWMenu_File"> 
    <!-- menuitem, separator, menu, and comment tags here --> 
</menu>

Description

Defines a menu command for a Dreamweaver menu.

Attributes

name, id, {app}, {key}, {platform}, {enabled}, {arguments}, {command}, {file}, {checked}, {dynamic}, {isdomrequired}, {showIf}

  • name The menu command name that appears in the menu. An underscore indicates that the following letter is the command’s access key (mnemonic), for Windows only.

  • id Used by Dreamweaver to identify the item. This ID must be unique throughout the menu structure. If you add new menu commands to menus.xml, ensure uniqueness by using your company name or another unique string as a prefix for each menu command’s ID.

  • app  The name of the application in which the menu command is available. Not currently used.

  • key  The keyboard shortcut for the command, if any. Use the following strings to specify modifier keys:

  • Cmd specifies the Control key (Windows) or Command key (Macintosh).

  • Alt and Opt interchangeably specify the Alt key (Windows) or Option key (Macintosh).

  • Shift specifies the Shift key on both platforms.

  • Ctrl specifies the Control key on both platforms.

  • A Plus (+) sign separates modifier keys if a given shortcut uses more than one modifier. For example, Cmd+Opt+5 in the key attribute means the menu command is executed when the user presses Control+Alt+5 (Windows) or Command+Option+5 (Macintosh).

  • Special keys are specified by name: F1 through F12, PgDn, PgUp, Home, End, Ins, Del, Tab, Esc, BkSp, and Space. Modifier keys can also be applied to special keys.

  • platform Indicates on which platform the item appears. Valid values are "win", meaning Windows, or "mac", meaning Macintosh. If you don’t specify the platform attribute, the menu command appears on both platforms. If you want a menu command to behave differently on different platforms, supply two menu commands with the same name (but different IDs): one with platform="win" and the other with platform="mac".

  • enabled Provides JavaScript code (usually a JavaScript function call) that determines whether the menu command is currently enabled. If the function returns the value false, the menu command is dimmed. The default value is "true", but it’s best to always specify a value for clarity even if the value is "true".

  • arguments Provides arguments for Dreamweaver to pass to the code in the JavaScript file that you specify in the file attribute. Enclose arguments in single quotation marks ('), inside the double quotation marks (") used to delimit an attribute’s value.

  • command Specifies a JavaScript expression that’s executed when the user selects this item from the menu. For complex JavaScript code, use a JavaScript file (specified in the file attribute) instead. You must specify either file or command for each menu command.

  • file  The name of an HTML file containing JavaScript that controls the menu command. Specify a path to the file relative to the Configuration folder. (For example, the Help > Welcome menu command specifies file="Commands/Welcome.htm".) The file attribute overrides the command, enabled, and checked attributes. You must specify either file or command for each menu command. For information on creating a command file using the History panel, see Dreamweaver Help. For information on writing your own JavaScript commands, see Commands.

  • checked A JavaScript expression that indicates whether the menu command has a check mark next to it in the menu; if the expression evaluates as true, the item appears with a check mark.

  • dynamic If present, indicates that a menu command is to be determined dynamically by an HTML file; the file contains JavaScript code to set the text and state of the menu command. If you specify a tag as dynamic, you must also specify a file attribute.

  • isdomrequired Indicates whether to synchronize the Design view and the Code view before executing the code for this menu command. Valid values are "true" (the default) and "false". If you set this attribute to "false", it means that the changes to the file that this menu command makes do not use the Dreamweaver DOM. For information about the DOM, see The Dreamweaver Document Object Model).

  • showIf Specifies that the menuitem should appear only if the given Dreamweaver enabler has value true. The possible enablers are: _SERVERMODEL_ASP, _SERVERMODEL_ASPNET, _SERVERMODEL_JSP, _SERVERMODEL_CFML (for all versions of Adobe ColdFusion), _SERVERMODEL_CFML_UD4 (for UltraDev version 4 of ColdFusion), _SERVERMODEL_PHP, _FILE_TEMPLATE, _VIEW_CODE, _VIEW_DESIGN, _VIEW_LAYOUT, _VIEW_EXPANDED_TABLES, and _VIEW_STANDARD. You can specify multiple enablers by placing a comma (which means AND) between the enablers. You can specify NOT with "!". For example, if you want the menu command to appear in Code view but not for a ColdFusion page, specify the attribute as showIf="_VIEW_CODE, !_SERVERMODEL_CFML".

Contents

None (empty tag).

Container

This tag must be contained in a menu tag.

Example

 <menuitem name="_New" key="Cmd+N" enabled="true" command="dw.createDocument()" id="DWMenu_File_New" />

Description

Indicates that a separator should appear at the corresponding location in the menu.

Attributes

{app}

app  The name of the application in which the separator is shown. Not currently used.

Contents

None (empty tag).

Container

This tag must be contained in a menu tag.

Example

 <separator />

Description

Specifies a shortcut list in the menus.xml file.

Attributes

{app}, id, {platform}

  • app The name of the application in which the shortcut list is available. Not currently used.

  • id The ID for the shortcut list. It should be the same as the menu ID for the menu bar (or context menu) in Dreamweaver that the shortcuts are associated with. Valid values are "DWMainWindow", "DWMainSite", "DWTimelineContext", and "DWHTMLContext".

  • platform Indicates that the shortcut list should appear only on the given platform. Valid values are "win" and "mac".

Contents

This tag can contain one or more shortcut tags. It can also contain one or more comment tags (which use the same syntax as HTML comment tags).

Container

None.

Example

 <shortcutlist id="DWMainWindow"> 
<!-- shortcut and comment tags here --> 
</shortcutlist>

Description

Specifies a keyboard shortcut in the menus.xml file.

Attributes

key, {app}, {platform}, {file}, {arguments}, {command}, id, {name}

  • key The key combination that activates the keyboard shortcut. For syntax details, see <menuitem>.

  • app  The name of the application in which the shortcut is available. Not currently used.

  • platform  Specifies that the shortcut works only on the indicated platform. Valid values are "win" and "mac". If you do not specify this attribute, the shortcut works on both platforms.

  • file The path to a file containing the JavaScript code that Dreamweaver executes when you use the keyboard shortcut. The file attribute overrides the command attribute. You must specify either file or command for each shortcut.

  • arguments Provides arguments for Dreamweaver to pass to the code in the JavaScript file that you specify in the file attribute. Enclose arguments in single quotation marks ('), inside the double quotation marks (") used to delimit an attribute’s value.

  • command The JavaScript code that Dreamweaver executes when you use the keyboard shortcut. Specify either file or command for each shortcut.

  • id A unique identifier for a shortcut.

  • name  A name for the command executed by the keyboard shortcut, in the style of a menu command name. For example, the name attribute for the F12 shortcut is "Preview in Primary Browser".

Contents

None (empty tag).

Container

This tag must be contained in a shortcutlist tag.

Example

 <shortcut key="Cmd+Shift+Z" file="Menus/MM/Edit_Clipboard.htm" 
arguments="’redo’" id="DWShortcuts_Edit_Redo" />

Description

Represents one tool; it contains all the shortcuts for the tool as subtags in the menus.xml file.

Attributes

{name}, id

  • name A localized version of the tool name.

  • id The internal tool identifier that identifies the tool to which the shortcuts apply.

Contents

This tag can contain one or more activate, override, or action tags.

Container

This tag must be contained in a menu tag.

Example

 <tool name="Hand tool" id="com.Macromedia.dreamweaver.tools.hand"> 
    <!-- tool tags here --> 
</tool>

Description

Contains the key combination and JavaScript to execute when the tool is active and the key combination is pressed.

Attributes

{name}, key, command, id

  • name A localized version of the action.

  • key The key combination used to execute the action. For syntax details, see <menuitem>.

  • command The JavaScript statements to execute. This attribute has the same format as the command attribute of <shortcut>.

  • id A unique ID used to reference the action.

Contents

None (empty tag).

Container

This tag must be contained in a tool tag.

Example

 <action name="Set magnification to 50%" key="5" command="dw.activeViewScale = 0.50" id ="DWTools_Zoom_50" />

Description

Contains the key combination to activate the tool.

Attributes

{name}, key, id

  • name A localized version of the action.

  • key The key combination used to activate the tool. For syntax details, see <menuitem>.

  • id A unique ID used to reference the action.

Contents

None (empty tag).

Container

This tag must be contained in a tool tag.

Example

 <activate name="Switch to Hand tool" key="H" id="DWTools_Hand_Active1" />

Description

Contains the key combination to temporarily activate the tool. While in another modal tool, the user can press and hold this key to switch to this tool.

Attributes

{name}, key, id

  • name A localized version of the action.

  • key The key combination used to quickly activate the tool. For syntax details, see <menuitem>.

  • id A unique ID used to reference the action.

Contents

None (empty tag).

Container

This tag must be contained in a tool tag.

Example

 <override name="Quick switch to Hand tool" key="Space" id="DWTools_Hand_Override" />

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