Customizing Dreamweaver > About customizing Dreamweaver menus

About customizing Dreamweaver menus

Dreamweaver creates all of its menus from the structure defined in an XML file called menus.xml, in the Configuration/Menus subfolder of the Dreamweaver application folder. Editing the menus.xml file changes Dreamweaver's menus the next time you start Dreamweaver. (For basic information about XML, see About XML.)

By editing the menus.xml file, you can add, change, and remove keyboard shortcuts for menu items, though in most cases it's easier to do that using the Keyboard Shortcut Editor. (See Using the Keyboard Shortcut Editor.) You can also rearrange, rename, and remove menu items.

If you open menus.xml in an XML editor, you may see error messages regarding the ampersands (&) in the menus.xml file. It's best to edit menus.xml in an ordinary text editor. (Don't edit it in Dreamweaver.)

Note: Always make a backup copy of the current menus.xml file, or any other Dreamweaver configuration file, before you modify it. It's easy to make mistakes in editing the menu configuration file, and there's no way to revert to a previous set of menus other than replacing the menus.xml file. In case you forget to make a backup, though, the Configuration folder contains a backup of the default menus.xml file, called menus.bak; to revert to the default menu set, replace menus.xml with a copy of menus.bak.