About browser-profile formatting

Browser profiles follow a specific format. To avoid parsing errors during target browser checks, follow these rules when editing or creating profiles:

  • The first line is reserved for the name of the profile. It must be followed by a single carriage return. The name on this line appears in the Target Browser Check dialog box and in the target check report. It must be unique.
  • The second line is reserved for the designator PROFILE_TYPE=BROWSER_PROFILE. Adobe Dreamweaver uses this line to determine which documents are browser profiles. Do not change or move this line.
  • Two hyphens (--) at the beginning of a line indicate a comment (that is, the line is ignored during the target check process). A comment must start at the beginning of a line; you can't put two hyphens in the middle of a line.
  • You must use a space in the following places:
    • Before the closing angle bracket (>) on the !ELEMENT line
    • After the opening parentheses in a list of values for an attribute
    • Before a closing parentheses in a list of values
    • Before and after each pipe (|) in a list of values.
  • You must include an exclamation point (!) without a space before each of the following words:

    ELEMENT, ATTLIST, Error, and msg (ELEMENT, !ATTLIST, !Error, !msg ).

  • You can include !Error, !Warning, and !Info within the !ELEMENT or the !ATTLIST area.
  • !msg messages can contain only plain text.
  • HTML comments (!---->) cannot be listed as tags in browser profiles because they interfere with parsing. Adobe Dreamweaver does not report an error for comments because all browsers support them.

The following example shows the syntax for a tag entry:

<!ELEMENT htmlTag NAME="tagName "><!ATTLIST htmlTagunsupportedAttribute1 !Error !msg="The unsupportedAttribute1attribute of the htmlTag tag is not supported.Try usingsupportedAttribute1 for a similar effect."supportedAttribute1supportedAttribute2 (validValue1 |validValue2 |validValue3 )unsupportedAttribute2 !Error !msg="Don't ever use theunsupportedAttribute2 attribute of the htmlTag tag!">

The elements shown in this syntax are defined as follows:

  • htmlTag is the tag as it appears in an HTML document.
  • tagName is an explanatory name for the tag; for example, the name for the HR tag is "Horizontal Rule." The NAME attribute is optional. If specified, tagName is used in error messages; if you do not supply a name, htmlTag is used in error messages.
  • unsupportedAttribute is an attribute that is not supported. Any tags or attributes not specifically mentioned as supported attributes are assumed to be unsupported. Specify unsupported tags or attributes only when you want to create a custom error message.
  • supportedAttribute is an attribute that is supported by htmlTag. Only tags listed without an !Error designation are considered to be supported by the browser.
  • validValue indicates a value that is supported by the attribute.

The following example shows an entry for the APPLET tag that would be accurate for Netscape Navigator 3.0:

<!ELEMENT APPLET Name="Java Applet"><!ATTLIST APPLETAlign (top |middle |bottom |left |right |absmiddle |absbottom |baseline |texttop )AltArchiveClass !Warning !msg="This browser ignores the CLASS attribute for the APPLETtag."CodeCodebaseHeightHSpaceID !Warning !msg="This browser ignores the ID attribute for the APPLET tag.Use NAME instead."NameStyle !Warning !msg="This browser ignores the STYLE attribute for the APPLETtag."VSpaceWidth>