Importing Dreamweaver snippets into the TopStyle 3 Clip Library (and vice-versa)

Author: Marcello Cerruti
Author's Site: il Creaweb
Reference ID: 15627

TopStyle 3 and Dreamweaver

This tutorial assumes that you have basic knowledge of Dreamweaver and TopSyle, that you know what snippets are and how to use them with Dreamweaver MX and/or the Classic Snippets Panel. ("Classic Snippets Panel" is the new MX compaiblity release name of the Snippets Panel extension by Massimo Foti, and will be available very soon.)

Note: TopStyle is a program for Windows users only. Therefore, this tutorial is written specifically for the Windows platform.

The Snippets panel is one of the new Dreamweaver MX features, though Massimo Foti's Snippets Panel (now known as the Classic Snippets Panel) users have already taken advantage of this powerful and advanced feature since Dreamweaver 4 and Dreamweaver UltraDev 4.

Note: The update for the Classic Snippets Panel will be available soon. If you already own the Snippets panel by Massimo Foti for Dreamweaver 4, you will be notified by email when it becomes available.

TopStyle 3 – the last release of the powerful CSS editor – allows users to store their snippets in a new panel named the Clip Library panel. Currently TopStyle 3 is still in beta, and the screenshots refer to beta version, there may be differences in the Clip Libary panel between the beta and final release. This tutorial will be updated to reflect any changes as needed.

As you may already know, TopStyle is a Bradbury Software product. Nick Bradbury has developed not only TopStyle, but also the original HomeSite – now owned by Macromedia and llikely the best textual HTML editor for PC.

Nick Bradbury originated the Snippets feature – initially called Custom Toolbar – since the release of version HomeSite 2.5. Now Nick Bradbury has brought this useful feature into TopStyle, the most popular CSS editor on PC platform.

Furthermore the newly integrated TopStyle HTML/XHTML editor allows you to take full advantage of the snippets stored in Dreamweaver. In fact it is possible to use, not only the CSS snippets, but almost all categories of Dreamweaver snippets. That's what this tutorial is all about!

Dreamweaver MX is shipped with over 200 snippets and you can also find a growing collection of hundreds of snippets at the Snippets Exchange.

Dreamweaver MX snippets have a different file format than the snippets stored in the Classic Snippets panel, whose file format is the same of HomeSite, JRun Studio, ColdFusion Studio snippets. Massimo Foti has released a really useful extension, Snippets Converter, that allows you to convert and import those snippets into the new Dreaweaver MX snippets file format.

In the following pages are step by step instructions about how to import snippets into the TopStyle 3 Clip Library from both the Dreamweaver MX Snippets panel and the Classic Snippets Panel.