
file in the Library folder in the Files panel and press the Delete key. When you delete a library item from the library items list, only the library item markup in the file that uses the item is removed. The tie between the library item within the page and the actual file in the library items list are said to be broken. If you do accidentally delete a library item, you can easily re-create it by right-clicking the orphaned library item and choosing the Recreate option from the context menu After you've chosen the Recreate option, refresh the site list in the Files panel (by clicking the Refresh Site List buttonthe first icon in the button bar in the bottom-right corner of the Assets panel) to see the LBI file reappear. If you decide that you do in fact want to remove references to library items from each of your HTML pages, you can right-click the library item in the page and choose the Detach from Original option from the context menu. Dreamweaver removes the reference to the library item. After you've deleted the reference to the library item from each web page (the actual itemsuch as the navigation bar or footeris still on the page until you physically delete it. You can now safely delete the library item from the Files panel or the Assets panel without worrying about creating an orphaned library item in the web page. Working with Server-Side Includes Similar to library items, server-side includes (SSIs) allow you to create pieces of functionality that can be shared between various web pages and be edited and updated centrally. In some ways, you can consider server-side includes the predecessor to library items because server-side includes have been with us long before the inception of Dreameaver's library items. The major differences between the two, however, are that library items have a familiar editing interface (they can be directly modified, managed, and updated in Dreamweaver's development environment at design time) whereas the server handles the updating of server-side includes at runtime (when the files are actually processed by the server for viewing by the user). Furthermore, server-side includes can also include server variables such as the current date and time, the date on which the file was last saved, and even the size of a file as compared to a second file. NOTE Not all servers support server-side includes because SSIs can pose a potential security risk. Check with your web hosting company before deciding to use server-side includes in your websites. At its foundation, server-side includes are used to include the contents of files within the scope of a second file, much like the way library items work. Typically, the code used to insert a server-side include resembles the following: <! #inlcude file="footer.htm" > As you can see from the code, the standard HTML opening and closing comment tag is used to wrap the server-side include directive. In this case, the directive is #include and contains the attribute file which specifies the document-relative file path to include in the web page. To include a file relative to the