How Property inspector files work in Dreamweaver

At start-up, Dreamweaver reads the first line of each HTM and HTML file in the Configuration/Inspectors folder, searching for the comment string that defines the type, priority, and selection type of a Property inspector. Files that do not have this comment as their first line are ignored.

When the user makes a selection in Dreamweaver or moves the insertion point to a different location, the following events occur:

  1. Dreamweaver searches for any inspectors that have a within selection type.

  2. If there are any within inspectors, Dreamweaver searches up the document tree from the currently selected tag to check whether there are inspectors for any tags that surround the selection. If there are no within inspectors, Dreamweaver searches for any inspectors that have a selection type of exact.

  3. For the first tag that has one or more inspectors, Dreamweaver calls each inspector’s canInspectSelection() function. If this function returns the value false, Dreamweaver no longer considers the inspector a candidate for inspecting the selection.

  4. If more than one potential inspector remains after calling the canInspectSelection() function, Dreamweaver sorts the remaining inspectors by priority.

  5. If more than one potential inspector shares the same priority, Dreamweaver selects an inspector alphabetically by name.

  6. The selected inspector appears in the Property inspector floating panel. If the Property inspector file defines the displayHelp() function, a small question mark (?) icon appears in the upper-right corner of the inspector.

  7. Dreamweaver calls the inspectSelection() function to gather information about the current selection and populate the inspector’s fields.

  8. Event handlers attached to the fields in the Property inspector interface execute as the user encounters them. (For example, you might have an onBlur event that calls the setAttribute() function to set an attribute to the value that the user enters.)