MACROMEDIA 38028779 - Macromedia Dreamweaver - Mac, Using Manual, Page: 375 / 582

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CHAPTER 16
Reusing Content with Templates
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and Libraries
The Assets panel (see “Managing and Inserting Assets” on page 221) provides
access to all of the assets in your site. Macromedia Dreamweaver provides two
special “linked” categories of assets: templates and libraries. A page that uses a
linked asset is automatically updated when you change the linked asset.
Dreamweaver templates and libraries can help you create Web pages with a
consistent design. Using templates and libraries also makes it easier to maintain your
Web site, since you can redesign your site and change hundreds of pages in seconds.
A template is a document you can use to create multiple pages that share the same
layout. When you create a template, you can indicate which elements of a page
should remain constant (noneditable, or locked) in documents based on that
template, and which elements can be changed.
For example, if you’re publishing an online magazine, the masthead and overall
layout probably won’t change from one issue to the next, or even from one story in
the magazine to the next, but the title and content of each story will be different.
A designer can create the layout of a story page for the magazine, with placeholder
text where the story’s title and contents will be (and with those regions marked as
editable); the designer can then save that layout as a template. The person putting
together a new issue of the magazine creates a new page based on the template,
and replaces the placeholder text with the actual title and text of the new story.
You can modify a template even after you’ve created documents based on it. When
you modify a template, the locked (noneditable) regions in documents that are
based on the template are updated to match the changes to the template.
Note: If you open a template file, you can edit everything in that file, whether it’s marked as
editable or locked. If you open a document that is based on a template file, you can edit
only the regions that are marked as editable. So the terms
editable and locked refer to
whether a region is editable in a document based on a template, not to whether the region
is editable in the template file itself.