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Select and view elements in the Document window

Last updated on Jan. 24, 2023

Select and view elements in Dreamweaver, show or hide marker icons for invisible elements, and set invisible elements preferences.

To select an element in the Design view of the Document window, click the element. If an element is invisible, you must make it visible before you can select it.

Some HTML code do not have a visible representation in a browser. For example, comment tags don’t appear in browsers. However, it can be useful while you’re creating a page to be able to select, edit, move, and delete invisible elements.

Dreamweaver enables you to specify whether to display icons marking the location of invisible elements in the Design view of the Document window. To indicate which element markers appear, you can set options in Invisible Elements preferences. For example, you can specify that named anchors be visible, but not line breaks.

You can create certain invisible elements (such as comments and named anchors) and modify these elements using Preferences > Invisible Elements dialog box.

Select elements

To select a visible element in the Document window, click the element or drag across the element.
To select an invisible element, from the Design View, select View > Design View Options > Visual Aids > Invisible Elements (if that menu item isn’t already selected) and then click the element’s marker in the Document window.

Some objects appear on the page in a place other than where their code is inserted. For example, in Design view an absolutely-positioned element (AP element) can be anywhere on the page, but in Code view the code defining the AP element is in a fixed location. When invisible elements are showing, Dreamweaver displays markers in the Document window to show the location of the code for such elements. Selecting a marker selects the entire element; for example, selecting the marker for an AP element selects the entire AP element.
To select a complete tag (including its contents, if any), click a tag in the tag selector at the lower left of the Document window. (The tag selector appears in both Design view and Code view.) The tag selector always shows the tags that contain the current selection or insertion point. The leftmost tag is the outermost tag containing the current selection or insertion point. The next tag is contained in that outermost tag, and so on; the rightmost tag is the innermost one that contains the current selection or insertion point.

View HTML Code

To view the HTML code associated with the selected text or object, do one of the following:
- In the Document toolbar, click Code.
- Select View > Code.
- Select View > Split > Code-Live or Code-Design or Code-Code option.
- Select Window > Code Inspector.
  
  When you select something in either code editor (Code view or the Code inspector), it’s generally also selected in the Document window. You may need to synchronize the two views before the selection appears.

Show or hide marker icons for invisible elements

Select View > Design View Options > Visual Aids > Invisible Elements.

Note:

Showing invisible elements may slightly change the layout of a page, moving other elements by a few pixels, so for precision layout, hide the invisible elements.

Set invisible elements preferences

Use Invisible Elements preferences to specify which kinds of elements will be visible when you select View > Visual Aids > Invisible Elements.

Select Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Dreamweaver > Preferences (Macintosh), then click Invisible Elements.
Select which elements should be made visible and click OK.

Note:

A check mark next to the name of the element in the dialog box means the element is visible when View > Visual Aids > Invisible Elements is selected.

Named Anchors

Displays an icon that marks the location of each named anchor (a name = "") in the document.

Scripts

Displays an icon that marks the location of JavaScript or VBScript code in the body of the document. Select the icon to edit the script in the Property inspector or to link to an external script file.

Comments

Displays an icon that marks the location of HTML comments. Select the icon to see the comment in the Property inspector.

Line Breaks

Displays an icon that marks the location of each line break (BR). This option is deselected by default.

Client-Side Image Maps

Displays an icon marking the location of each client-side image map in the document.

Embedded Styles

Displays an icon showing the location of CSS styles embedded in the body section of the document. If CSS styles are placed in the head section of a document, they do not appear in the Document window.

Hidden Form Fields

Displays an icon that marks the location of form fields that have the type attribute set to "hidden".

Form Delimiter

Displays a border around a form so you can see where to insert form elements. The border shows the extent of the form tag, so any form elements inside that border are properly enclosed in form tags.

Anchor Points For AP elements

Displays an icon that marks the location of code defining an AP element. The AP element itself can be anywhere on the page. (AP elements are not invisible elements; only the code defining the AP element is invisible.) Select the icon to select the AP element; you can then see the contents of the AP element even if the AP element is marked as hidden.

Anchor Points For Aligned Elements

Displays an icon showing the location of HTML code for elements that accept the align attribute. These include images, tables, ActiveX objects, plug‑ins, and applets. In some cases, the code for the element may be separated from the visible object.

Visual Server Markup Tags

Displays the location of server markup tags (such as Active Server Pages tags and ColdFusion tags) whose content cannot be displayed in the Document window. These tags typically generate HTML tags when processed by a server. For example, a <CFGRAPH> tag generates an HTML table when processed by a ColdFusion server. Dreamweaver reperesents the tag with a ColdFusion invisible element since Dreamweaver cannot determine the final, dynamic output of the page.

Nonvisual Server Markup Tags

Displays the location of server markup tags (such as Active Server Pages tags and ColdFusion tags) whose content cannot be displayed in the Document window. These tags are typically set-up, processing, or logic tags (for example, <CFSET>, <CFWDDX>, and <CFXML>) that do not generate HTML tags.

CSS Display: None

Displays an icon showing the location of content that’s hidden by the display:none property in the linked or embedded stylesheet.

Show Dynamic Text As

Displays any dynamic text on your page in the format of {Recordset:Field} by default. If the length of these values is long enough to distort your page’s formatting, you can change the display to {} instead.

Server-Side Includes

Displays the actual contents of each server-side include file.

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