Each browser provides a set of events that you can associate with the actions listed in the Behavior panel’s Actions (+) menu. When a visitor to your web page interacts with the page—for example, by clicking an image—the browser generates events; those events can be used to call JavaScript functions that perform an action. Dreamweaver supplies many common actions that you can trigger with these events.

For names and descriptions of the events provided by each browser, see the Dreamweaver Support Center at www.adobe.com/go/dreamweaver_support.

Different events appear in the Events menu depending on the selected object and on the browsers specified in the Show Events For submenu. To find out what events a given browser supports for a given page element, insert the page element in your document and attach a behavior to it, then look at the Events menu in the Behaviors panel. (By default, events are drawn from the HTML 4.01 events list, and are supported by most modern browsers.) Events may be disabled (dimmed) if the relevant objects do not yet exist on the page or if the selected object cannot receive events. If the expected events don’t appear, make sure the correct object is selected, or change the target browsers in the Show Events For submenu.

If you’re attaching a behavior to an image, some events (such as onMouseOver) appear in parentheses. These events are available only for links. When you select one of them, Dreamweaver wraps an <a> tag around the image to define a null link. The null link is represented by javascript:; in the Property inspector’s Link box. You can change the link value if you want to turn it into a real link to another page, but if you delete the JavaScript link without replacing it with another link, you will remove the behavior.

To see which tags you can use with a given event in a given browser, search for the event in one of the files in the Dreamweaver/Configuration/Behaviors/Events folder.