Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2015 - Manual (Page 587)

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Dynamic sites, pages and web forms
Last updated 6/3/2015
There is often more than one way to make a given page element dynamic. For example, to make an image dynamic you
can use the Bindings panel, the Property inspector, or the Image command in the Insert menu.
By default, an HTML page can display only one record at a time. To display the other records in the recordset, you can
add a link to move through the records one at a time, or you can create a repeating region to display more than one
record on a single page.
About dynamic text
Dynamic text adopts any text formatting applied to the existing text or to the insertion point. For example, if a
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) style affects the selected text, the dynamic content replacing it is also affected by the style.
You can add or change the text format of dynamic content by using any of the Dreamweaver text formatting tools.
You can also apply a data format to dynamic text. For example, if your data consists of dates, you can specify a particular
date format such as 04/17/00 for U.S. visitors, or 17/04/00 for Canadian visitors.
Make text dynamic
You can replace existing text with dynamic text, or you can place dynamic text at a given insertion point on the page.
Add dynamic text
1 In Design view, select text on the page, or click where you want to add dynamic text.
2 In the Bindings panel (Window > Bindings), select a content source from the list. If you select a recordset, specify
the column you want in the recordset.
The content source should contain plain text (ASCII text). Plain text includes HTML. If no content sources appear
in the list, or if the available content sources don’t meet your needs, click the Plus (+) button to define a new content
source.
3 (Optional) Select a data format for the text.
4 Click Insert, or drag the content source onto the page.
A dynamic content placeholder appears. (If you selected text on the page, the placeholder replaces the text
selection.) The placeholder for recordset content uses the syntax {RecordsetName.ColumnName}, where Recordset
is the name of the recordset and ColumnName is the name of the column you chose from the recordset.
Sometimes, the length of the placeholders for dynamic text distorts the page’s layout in the Document window. You
can solve the problem by using empty curly braces as placeholders, as described in the next topic.
Display placeholders for dynamic text
1 Select Edit > Preferences > Invisible Elements (Windows) or Dreamweaver > Preferences > Invisible Elements
(Macintosh).
2 In the Show Dynamic Text As pop-up menu, select { }, and click OK.
Make images dynamic
You can make images on your page dynamic. For example, suppose you design a page to display items for sale at a
charity auction. Each page would include descriptive text and a photo of one item. The page’s general layout would
remain the same for each item, but the photo (and descriptive text) could change.
1 With the page open in Design view (View > Design), place the insertion point where you want the image to appear
on the page.