Assets panel overview

Use the Assets panel (Window > Assets) to manage assets in the current site. The Assets panel displays assets for the site associated with the active document in the Document window.

Note: You must define a local site before you can view assets in the Assets panel.

Asset panel with Site list displayed. Category icons are at left, and preview area is above list.

The Assets panel provides two ways to view assets:

Site list: Shows all of the assets in your site, including colors and URLs that are used in any document in your site.
Favorites list: Shows only the assets you’ve explicitly chosen.
To switch between these two views, select either the Site or Favorites radio button above the preview area. (These two views are not available for the Templates and Library categories.)

Note: Most of the Assets panel operations work the same in both lists. There are a few tasks, however, that you can perform only in the Favorites list.

In both lists, assets fall into one of the following categories:

Images: Image files in GIF, JPEG, or PNG formats.
Colors: Colors used in documents and style sheets, including colors of text, backgrounds, and links.
URLs: External links in your current site documents, including FTP, gopher, HTTP, HTTPS, JavaScript, e‑mail (mailto), and local file (file://) links.
Flash: Files in any version of Adobe Flash. The Assets panel displays only SWF files (compressed Flash files), but not FLA (Flash source) files.
Shockwave: Files in any version of Adobe Shockwave.
Movies: QuickTime or MPEG files.
Scripts: JavaScript or VBScript files. Scripts in HTML files (rather than in independent JavaScript or VBScript files) do not appear in the Assets panel.
Templates: Master page layouts used on multiple pages. Modifying a template automatically modifies all pages attached to it.
Library items: Design elements that you use in multiple pages; when you modify a library item, all pages containing that item are updated.
Note: To appear in the Assets panel, a file must fall into one of these categories. Some other types of files are sometimes called assets, but they aren’t shown in the panel.

By default, assets in a category are listed alphabetically by name, but you can sort them by type and several other criteria. You can also preview assets and resize the columns and the preview area.

View an asset in the preview area

Select the asset in the Assets panel.

For example, when you select a movie asset, the preview area shows an icon. To view the movie, click the Play button (the green triangle) in the upper-right corner of the preview area.

Display assets in a category

Click a category icon on the left side of the Assets panel.

Sort assets

Click a column heading.

For example, to sort the list of images by type (so that all the GIF images are together, all the JPEG images are together, and so on), click the Type column heading.

Resize a column

Drag the line separating two column headings.

Resize the preview area

Drag the splitter bar (between the preview area and the list of assets) up or down.

Refresh the Assets panel

It can take a few seconds to create the Site list because Dreamweaver must first read the site cache.

Certain changes don’t appear immediately in the Assets panel. For instance, when you add or remove an asset from your site, the changes don’t appear in the Assets panel until you refresh the Site list by clicking the Refresh Site List button. If you add or remove an asset outside Dreamweaver—using Windows Explorer or the Finder, for example—you must rebuild the site cache to update the Assets panel.

When you remove the only instance of a particular color or URL in your site, or when you save a new file that contains a color or URL that isn’t already used in the site, the changes don’t appear in the Assets panel until you refresh the Site list.

To refresh the Site list manually, click the Refresh Site List button . Dreamweaver creates the site cache or updates it as necessary.
To refresh the Site list and manually rebuild the site cache, right-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) in the Assets list, then select Refresh Site List.

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