I have a site that I have been hand-coding since 1994. Some years back, I got Dreamweaver, created a some templates, then converted all my pages over to the templates. I love the ability to make a change to the template and then have Dreamweaver automatically update all pages using that template.

Right now I have about three or four different templates I've created in Dreamweaver, and a lot of pages--possibly a hundred or so.

I have never used HTML Editor, but I own it. and recently I have been wanting to make my pages more medium-aware. Mind you, though, this is completely a labor of love, something I do in my spare time, so I don't want have a lot of time to spend on it. I am interested in using HTML Editor and a responsive template.

Is it possible to bring my HTML pages into HTML Editor and automatically convert them into a new template, or will I have to copy and paste the content from every single file one at a time into a new template? Thanks!

Your going to need to pretty much rebuild everything. The new split screen feature in the html editor makes design work pretty painless. If you you have a duel monitor setup then your really going to shine.

You won't have to rebuild the site, but Dreamweaver's template system does not work in the HTML Editor so you'll have to edit each page separately by hand (copy and paste if you have similar items on each page). Keep in mind that it doesn't have the split screen you are used to in Dreamweaver where you can edit it on the visual page, only the Live page part of Dreamweaver is there. There is no such a critter as templates in the normal HTML world, that's a Dreamweaver feature (and possibly some of the other high end editors have something similar). But your HTML will work no matter what it is, just load up the pages in the HTML Editor and you should have full ability to edit them, just that none of the template stuff will be commented out (Or you may need to "uncomment" the template sections to edit them).

http://www.robidesigns.com/images/duelingmonitors.jpg

We need to watch our spelling here...

Thanks Simon. That made my day.

hahaha way cute Simon

Thank you, everyone, for the information--and thanks, Simon, for the dueling monitors image. Though I have only one monitor, so no dueling or dual monitors.

The main reason I was looking at HTML Editor was because of the responsive themes. I want to revamp my Web site so it is responsive to all media. I know there is a way to create a style sheet so that the one style sheet has definitions for different media, but I was hoping for a ready-made solution. And I was assuming that the responsive themes could only be used with HTML Editor. But perhaps I was asking the wrong questions.

Although I own it, I don't use HTML Editor and so I don't know what is specific to using it versus another application. If I buy a responsive theme, will it only work with HTML Editor? Or can I use a responsive theme with Dreamweaver? Or, if I buy a responsive theme and convert to using HTML Editor, what happens when I want to change the theme? Will I have to re-code every page again?

Again, thanks for all your help!

As long as the themes you buy are HTML themes and not VSD or any other visual type software themes you'll be fine using them with either HTML editor or Dreamweaver. Those programs both do basically the same thing with Dreamweaver just being the more bells and whistles one is all. They work the same with the files as they both edit HTML. You won't have to redo anything if you decide to go either way.

The only time you'll usually find an issue with themes is if you buy themes for specific programs that are visual editor programs (talking only about site editors here not other programs like Form Builder or anything other than site editors). Visual editors usually have a different way of setting up a website so themes used for them are usually different from an HTML theme.

Having said that though, you can edit any website pages in HTML Editor or Dreamweaver once a theme is applied even in a visual editor, just that the visual editor code won't look the same Hope that helps.