When working on your web pages in Adobe Dreamweaver, you constantly need to check them in a web browser. To make this process smoother, Dreamweaver allows you to configure several browsers for previewing your pages. You can specify which browser is your primary, or main, browser; you can then elect a secondary browser and as many further browsers as you want.

Naturally, the first step is to make sure that the browser software is installed on your computer. Next, to specify your preferred browser, go to the Edit menu and choose Preferences. (This is the Windows location of Dreamweaver Preferences: on a Macintosh, go to the Dreamweaver menu and choose Preferences.)

The various types of Preferences are displayed on the left of the window. Click on the Preview in Browser section. If you already have a browser configured as your primary browser, and possibly another as your secondary, you may wish to change these. To do so, simply click on the appropriate checkboxes to specify which is primary and which is secondary.

To add an additional browser, just click on the plus sign (+), locate the browser software and double-click to open it. You can repeat this procedure as many times as you like.

To see one of your web pages using one of the configured browsers, choose File – Preview in Browser then choose the name of the required browser from the submenu. You can also use a keyboard shortcut: to preview using your primary browser, it’s Shift-F12 on Windows or option-F12 on a Macintosh; to preview in the secondary browser, it’s Control-F12 on Windows or Command-F12 on a Macintosh.

Once you’ve had a good look at the preview, to return to Dreamweaver, just close the browser window.

There may also be times when you’d like to preview pages but don’t want to save the changes you’ve made to your document. Dreamweaver offers you this possibility but, before we get to that, let’s examine what happens when you preview a file that has been modified.

Dreamweaver displays a dialogue box asking us if we’d like to save the changes. If we click “No”, it gives us a preview of the last version that we saved rather than the version that we’re currently working on and, naturally, if we click “Yes”, Dreamweaver will save our changes before previewing the file. This can sometimes be inconvenient, since you may not be ready to save your changes.

If you’d like to preview files at any time without saving your changes, return to your Browser Preview section of Dreamweaver’s Preferences and activate the option “Preview Using Temporary File”. When this option is switched on, Dreamweaver will always create a temporary file containing the latest version of your document and then shows you a preview of it. When the browser window opens, look at the name of the file being previewed. It will be a temporary file name generated by Dreamweaver and not the name of document you are working on.