HTML Extension
When working with Dreamweaver MX or Dreamweaver MX 2004 the file extension of an HTML document by default is .htm. It’s rather annoying to me, because I started out giving my HTML documents an .html extension. It doesn’t matter which extension you use today. If you want to learn how to change the setting in Dreamweaver MX or MX 2004, please follow along, it’s not difficult.
Note that Dreamweaver 8 creates files with an .html extension by default.
Dreamweaver MX or MX 2004
Follow these steps to show the preferences window:
- From the main menu select Edit>Preferences
- The preferences window will show
- On the left hand side look for New Document
- Click once to make the following window show on right side:
In order to change the default extension, we’ll need to navigate to the program path where Dreamweaver is installed. Note that clicking the blue hyperlink will only show Dreamweaver help, which isn’t much help in this case.
Changing the default extension
We’ll change the default extension by navigation to a specific path on our hard drive. Follow these steps:
- From the Desktop, double-click My Computer
- In this window, in the address bar navigate to the following path:
C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver MX 2004\Configuration\DocumentTypes
- If you have Dreamweaver installed on another hard drive, adjust the path accordingly
- In this folder, you should see a New Documents folder
- In this folder, there should be an MMDocumentTypes.xml file
We’ll modify MMDocumentTypes.xml.
Modifying MMDocumentTypes.xml
Instead of double clicking the file, right-click it, and select Edit>Open with Notepad
In the file, look for winfileextension:
<documenttype id="HTML" internaltype="HTML" winfileextension="htm,html,shtml,shtm,stm,tpl,lasso,xhtml" macfileextension="htm,html,shtml,shtm,tpl,lasso,xhtml" file="Default.html" writebyteordermark="false">
Do note this tag will be on one line. Change the order of file extensions so that HTML comes first:
winfileextension="html,htm,shtml,shtm,stm,tpl,lasso,xhtml"
Save the file. From this point forward, all HTML files will have an .html extension.
Note that if Dreamweaver is currently open, you need to close and restart Dreamweaver for changes to be reflected. Also note if you want Macintosh computers to do the same, change the macfileextension so that HTML comes first.
The modification of MMDocumentTypes.xml has no performance affect on Dreamweaver.
If you have questions, contact me.