As you work on your web pages in Adobe Dreamweaver, you constantly need to review them in a web browser. To facilitate this process, Dreamweaver allows you to configure as many browsers as you would like to see use for previewing. You can specify one browser as your primary, or preferred, browser; you can then specify a secondary browser and as many additional 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 categories are displayed on the left of the Preferences window. Choose the Preview in Browser category. You may have already configured a browser as your primary browser and possibly another as your secondary. If you wish to change this, simply click on the appropriate checkboxes to specify which is which.

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

To preview a page using one of your configured browsers, click on the preview icon (the globe) located on the Document toolbar which is normally displayed at the top of the document window. From the drop-down menu, choose the browser that you’d like to use. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts: to preview using your primary browser press Shift-F12 on Windows or option-F12 on a Macintosh; to preview in the secondary browser press Control-F12 on Windows or Command-F12 on a Macintosh. Alternatively, simply choose the name of any other browser.

Once you’ve looked at the preview, to return to Dreamweaver, simply close the browser window.

It is also possible that sometimes you’d like to preview pages without saving the changes you’ve made to your document. Dreamweaver makes this easy but, first, let’s have a look at what normally happens when you preview a file that has been modified.

Dreamweaver shows us a dialogue box asking us if we’d like to save the changes. If we click “No”, we are given a preview of the last version that was saved rather than the version that we’re currently working on. If we click “Yes”, Dreamweaver will save our changes before previewing the file. This behaviour 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.