by-expression

Milan or San Francisco - Adobe MAX

cdwise — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 03:13:10 GMT

Even though I have taken the year off from speaking at conferences and events after talking with my partner it looks like I will be able to go to Adobe MAX this year. I've never been to MAX but heard lots of stories about what I was missing. (Seems plenty of folks can't resist putting up video over on youtube either) Not only will there be great activities Adobe will also be showing off all the new stuff in CS 4. (If you tried the Dreamweaver CS 4 and Fireworks CS 4 betas available on Adobe Labs you know about the exciting changes to those programs.) Heck, I've used the betas and still don't know all there is to know about the two programs that concern me most so I want to learn more.

Okay, so now I have to choose which MAX to attend.

My first thought was San Francisco, November 16-19 here I come. After all I live in the US and Adobe headquarters is just down a short drive south of San Francisco in San Jose so naturally that is the first of the three locations I considered. I check airfare and hotel, decided that in San Francisco getting a car would be a waste (BART means you don't really need one to get in from the airport and San Francisco is a walking city) and while I haven't been there all that often it is easy to get around in. So off to the travel sites to look at airfare and hotels.

Then today on a whim I though I'd check those same travel sites just to see how much more it would cost me to go to Milan instead (after all I haven't been to Milan in years since I was at university) image my surprise when I discovered that the costs were almost the same - within $100. Oh dear, I love European travel and here's a great excuse to hop on a flight to Italy. Heck, even the dates, December 1-4, fit my schedule slightly better than the San Francisco MAX.

So what should I do? Go to San Francisco where I will know more people, be assured that all the sessions I would want to attend would be held in a language I understand (my Italian is of the tourist variety - food, hotels, transportation - not design or technical at all) or go to Milan and expand my horizons (after checking that there will be session in English) and enjoying the lovely food and atmosphere if being in Italy while I recover from jet lag a couple of days before MAX begins.

Decisions

What should it be San Francisco or Milan?

Technorati Tags: Adobe MAX

Test Your HTML Knowledge

cdwise — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:11:33 GMT

Molly tweeted about how well she did on the HTML quiz missing only two HTML4 elements. So I decided to try it the other day and ended up with 20 elements I couldn't name.

I waited a couple of days and tried it again to get:

Created by OnePlusYou

So I remembered 10 more two days after looking at the list of my "missed" items. In case you are curious the ones I missed today were:

DFN, FORM, INS, ISINDEX, KBD, OPTION, SAMP, SELECT, TT, VAR

Yeah, I know I should hang my head in shame at missing <form> but I got it right along with option and select the first time. Too busy trying to remember the stuff that I never really used. Missed the first time were:

AREA, BASEFONT, BDO, BIG, DEL, DIF, DIR, INS, ISINDEX, KBD, MAP, MENU, PARAM, SAMP, SMALL, STRIKE, SUB, SUP, TT, VAR

I will admit that there were a few I got more or less because I was typing another element such as: B, I, S and U.

Technorati Tags: HTML quiz

XMALFest

cdwise — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:30:48 GMT

Friday and Saturday I was over in Atlanta for Webmaster Jam and today I'm sitting at the Microsoft office back home in Houston for XAMLFest. Talk about different types of events.

Last week it was all about design and front-end developement. Today it is about creating WPF/Silverlight where almost everyone in the room is a developer - specifically a dotnet developer.

True to form the morning starts off with Visual Studio and code. The second session moved into some of the vision behind WPF. I think the two might should have ben reversed but given the primarily asp.net development background of the majority the order is probably correct.

One thread that was in common in both presentations was that while you can do "programmatically" using dotnet (C# or VB.net) that in most cases it is better to use lookless controls so that the person with graphics skills (aka a designer) can control the display. It was a pleasant change from most of the developer oriented training I have attended from Microsoft where putting presentation elements into the c# or vb.net is a given. Congratulations to Microsoft, they are starting to get it.

Sitting in a Microsoft event and seeing slides on Typography and a discussion of kerning. Scalable interfaces with portrait orientation tablet pc specifically mentioned, discussion of benefits of vector graphics with transforms and effects (brushes). I feeling slightly disoriented since this is so unlike any MS developer event I have ever attended. Amazing and vey welcoming. Gotta pay attention now and quit typing here.

Technorati Tags: blend,xaml,xamlfest,design

Microsoft Article on Migrating to Standards

cdwise — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:54:27 GMT

Yesterday on the Microsoft Expression Web Team Blog something that reads closer to what I consider article or possibly a tutorial on migrating from legacy code to web standards.

I am going to start by saying I do not like blogs as a publishing media for articles and tutorials from software vendors. One reason I prefer tutorials to be in articles on a section of a site is that blog entries wd off andcan be more difficult * discover. Another reason is that typically articles include more screenshots and detailed instructions.To my mind this article starts off fairly well in explaining what a doctype in and why your should use one.

From there I find the rest of the explanations to be on the sparse almost shorthand which is would be difficult to follow for someone who is truly new to web standards, secmantic monk-up and css.

Take a look and let we know if you agree with me or not.

Technorati Tags: expression web

smash_it for Fireworks

cdwise — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:07:43 GMT

Here at Webmaster Jam Chris Heilmann showed this lovely Firefox extension smush-it.com that will optimize images on any web page. It does not change image quality but reduces file size by taking out the information a camera, or graphics editor adds to images for its own use. Kewl, the first new tool I will add from this conference.

Technorati Tags: image optimization,firefox extension

Hurricane Ike

cdwise — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:23:44 GMT

Many of you know I live in the Houston metro area. As of today we ore still without power and internet. We do have generator and sometimes I can get a cellular data connection. Many towers were damaged so that isn't quite as easy to get or normal since voice is getting priority over data on the cellular connections.

My husband has been walking around our neighborhood with a camera so I have used one of the default galleries from Project Seven to quickly parts them up at http://cheryldwise.com/albums/ike1/index.asp if you are interested. Despite the Number of 40 foot plus trees down remarkably few houses were hit but it has taken a toll on own power lines.

We have been been lucky with the weather since Ike has passed with lows around 60 and highs around 80, may to continue until the power is back on throughout the area.

BTW, if you are wondering how I posted this and the galleries sans power my local Starbucks has power and they have opened their internet connection for free use.

Technorati Tags: hurricane ike

Expression Web Survey

cdwise — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:18:27 GMT

Over on the Microsoft Expression Community forum they have posted a link to the survey asking users of Expression Web to prioritize what they would like to see in the next version of Expression Web.

Left off the Survey:

They left off their survey choices several things that I would like to see which are:

The ability to customize the toolbox - there are html elements I would like to add there and it would make it much easier for people to create add-ins if it supported custom controls.
The ability to integrate with source control for those who are working in more than one program. Most of the people who I've talked to would like to see integration with Visual Studio Team Services.
Improve the FTP client, make it faster, compatible with Windows Server 2008, add the ability to set file permissions if you are connected to a Linux server using chmod and htaccess.
The other thing I would like to see is for Expression Web to watch for updates to files outside of Expression Web. If I've opened a page in some other program whether it is Visual Web Developer Express, TopStyle (I still occasionally use it primarily to reorder my stylesheet and format it according to the more flexible options in TopStyle), a graphics program or whatever Expression doesn't recognize the changes or prompt me to reload. That has caused the work done in an external editor to be overwritten on occasion which is rather annoying.

A couple of bugs I'd like to see fixed are:

The inability to FTP to a Windows 2008 server because the FTP client in Expression Web doesn't allow the pipe "|" character in user names, sigh.
The bug that prevents many people (me included) from seeing thumbnails of images they want to insert into their web pages using the browse button on the Insert Picture dialog box. It is rather annoying to have to open an Windows Explorer window to see them, get the file name then insert in Expression Web. Bad workflow there.

What would you like to see that was left off the Microsoft feature list?

The MS Public Forum

Speaking of bugs and improvement needed how about fixing some of the major issues with the Microsoft Expression Web Forum?

I would like to reliably be able to post replies when I click the submit button. 80% or more of the time using the submit button does not submit my posts. Since the latest update (that changed the url to http://social.expression.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ which with the word "social" in the url is blocked by the corporate firewall of two of my students) I have been able to submit only one post by clicking the submit button. What I have to do is (using IE 7 on Vista Ultimate):

Visit the forum.
Login - which can take 30 sec to 2 min. depending on how well the Live sign in servers are working.
Use the dropdown arrow to expand a topic to view its thread.
If I wish to quote part of the question or a post in the thread go to html view to add <div class="quote"> or <blockquote> to use the proper html mark-up since quoting is not available unless you go to thread view, (more clicks and time wasting)
Type in my reply then hit the submit button. Wait a few seconds to see if it will post or to see if there is a slight quiver to my browser window which tells me that the submit has failed.
In the case of the submit button not working (remember that is at least 80% of the time) highlight my post and copy it using a keyboard shortcut so I don't get the alert box asking me to allow IE access to my clipboard. Then use the refresh button on my browser.
Let's see some of your list so we can support each other in what we want to see in the next version (or maybe a service pack since MS isn't really clear why they are asking.)
In most cases this will submit my post but it will also collapse open thread and return me to the top of the page, sigh.
In a minority of cases, say less than 5% when I refresh I get logged out. I will admit that since the update yesterday I have not been logged out when refreshing to submit a post but I have to log in every time through Live since my credentials are not remembered.

I really hate to say it but I think the FrontPage 98 Discussion Board was more user friendly.

Oh, it would also help if you could search just one section of the forum such as just the Expression Web section.

Technorati Tags: expression web,microsoft,survey

Website Dos and Don'ts

cdwise — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:35:56 GMT

Today I was looking at some of my old articles and realized that just because I wrote something a few years ago doesn't mean that it has lost its relevance to today's Internet. A prime example is an article I wrote almost five years ago called website dos and don'ts as part of a presentation I did to the Houston Area League of PC Users (http://www.hal-pc.org).

I'm going to repeat my article below with a few annotations (in purple):

What your site should always have:

A Domain Name: In an ideal world you would have your business name as your domain name.
Unfortunately that isn't always possible since the same name maybe used by more than one business. If you can't get the exact business name try variations that may include you geographic location such as BusinessNameHouston.com or BusinessNameTexas.com.
While having the .net name or one of the soon to be released Top Level Domain names such as BusinessName.net, BusinessName.us (country code) or BusinessName.biz maybe an acceptable alternative most people expect a business to have a .com extension.

A homepage that loads quickly. The main Web page for a business should load in 10-15 seconds or less.The biggest mistake made by new businesses on the net is trying to impress customers with a fancy, super-duper all-action web page that takes 10 minutes to load. Problem is, after the first 30 seconds your potential customer is gone! He or she is off surfing a competitor's page.
Only after you have captured a customer's interest, you can get a little fancier on your internal pages. Customers will wait longer once you have their attention. If your page will take longer than 30-45 seconds to load make sure that enough of the page loads during that time so that the customer can see that it is worth waiting for. Bandwidth can kill you! Just because it loads quickly on your high speed broadband connection don't expect your customer's to have the same quality connection. Remember that many people are using cellular devices such as iPhones, Blackberries and Windows Mobile phones to access the web. Optimize your site for a connection no faster than 40kb or to be safer still 28.8kb.

Contact information: If the customer can't find out who you are, where you are physically located and how to reach you by telephone and email the customer is not likely to have enough confidence in your company to do business with you. If this information is not on every page of your site a link to it should be.

Effective Site Navigation: Your site needs to be well organized and easy to navigate so that your customer or potential customer can find out the information they need to do business with you.
Simple, descriptive links that tell the customer where to find the product information, full description, price and any other information you would like to know before placing an order make doing business with you a pleasure. Customers who can't find what they are looking for within 3-4 clicks will click their way right off your site and over to a competitor.
Keep a link back to your home page on every page of your site. Give serious consideration to keeping the main category links available on each page as well.

Product Pictures: If you are selling products as opposed to services you should provide good clear pictures. Start with a small thumbnail photo and link it to a larger picture that will provide clear detail. Pictures should be optimized to load quickly but still maintain sharp quality. There are many creative but quickly loading photo galleries and other techniques such as lightboxes that give you options not available even 2-3 years ago, use them.

Appropriate Meta Tags: Carefully drawn up keywords and site description so that you attract those visitors looking for products and services your business provides. "Hits" on your website are not the goal. Being found by customers and potential customers is what your site is there for, properly crafted meta tags and page titles help reach that goal. Meta keywords are not as important as they used to be but as long as you don't try to stuff everything under the sun in them they may still be useful, if only to help you focus on what the page is about. Some search engines will display your description text so if you use the description meta make sure it is accurate.

Accessibility & Compatibility: Make your site friendly to those who are not using the "latest and greatest" technology. Also, consider those who use alternative devices to access the Internet whether it is a screen reader for the visually impaired or a net appliance for the "technology challenged".
Check your site for compliance with Section 508 of the American's with Disabilities Act, especially if you do business with the government or want to do business with any branch of the government.
Check your site in different web browsers and at different screen resolutions. While the most common screen resolution at this time is 800x600 screen resolutions can range from 544x372 (WebTV) to 1600x1200. While the vast majority of people are using version 4+ browsers it still pays to take a look at your site in at least Internet Explorer 5/6 and Netscape 4.x/6 to see how your customer maybe seeing your site. Depending on your target audience you may also want to view it in AOL and/or on one of the web appliances such as WebTV or AOLTV.

What a business site should not have:

Use A Free Hosting Service: Having a url like http://tripod.com/~businessname not only give you an unprofessional appearance after all how successful can a company be that can't even afford ~~$15~~ $8 to register a domain name) but the advertising required by the free hosts are designed to take visitors from your site to someone who had paid the free host to send them customers. It could even be a direct competitor of your business.

"Cool Stuff" that serves no direct purpose on your website, such as: Sound: Unless sound is an essential part of your business sound does not belong on a business website. If you have a business reason for using sound, do not have it start automatically on page load. At a minimum give visitors the option to turn the sound off without having to turn off their speakers.

Animation: Excessive animation has several drawbacks. It has a bad effect on page load times. Why not?

It is associated with off site advertising.
It distracts visitors from other usually more important content on the page. There are exceptions which include small carefully selected and targeted animations appropriate to the company's business or part of the website's logo.

*Exception:Used sparingly animations can be an effective tool but used inappropriately they give an unprofessional business image.

Background: Busy or bright colored backgrounds can interfere with getting your message across to your customer. In most business sites the message is in the text. This doesn't mean that you have to stick to black text on a white background. Just make sure that the text is clear, easy to read and that the background does not significantly increase the load time of the page.

Multimedia: While a fancy introduction can be "cool" consider the following before adding animation to your site: Why you are using multimedia?

Does it serve a valid business Is it there "just because you (or your webmaster) knows how to do it?
Is that java wave applet really appropriate to your company's business service or product line?
Remember the golden rule about download times, if the application or multimedia doesn't serve a useful functional purpose think carefully before putting it on your site.

If the application does serve a business function then load it via link that provides a clear description of what will be loaded including what technology is need to view it such as Flash ~~4/5~~ player, Real Media Player, Windows Media Player, QuickTime, etc..

Small Fonts and Wide Pages: The screen does not have the same resolution as paper and small fonts are difficult to read. Remember the different screen resolutions available? What looks fine to your 20 something webmaster on his 19" digital monitor at 1024x768 maybe unreadable on your customer's 3 year old 15" 800x600 monitor especially when the customer has to continually scroll side to side in order to attempt to read the line of text.

So what do you think? Are the guidelines above still relevant?

Technorati Tags: web design

Blogging Tools for Mac?

cdwise — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:17:02 GMT

Like most professional front-end web developers I have both Mac and Windows computers around. Lately I've been taking with several others about Windows Live Writer which I totally adore. I love the way I can use it offline, add images, videos, and a whole bunchof other stuff to my blog. Then tag it, spell check and sent it up to either my WordPress or my Community Server based blog.

Others use it with Windows Live spaces, SharePoint based blogs, Movable Type, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, PBlogs, MetaWeblog API and other blogs that support RSD (Really Simple Discoverability).

While I have Windows installed on my Mac via Parallels, I was wondering if there was a Mac equivalent to Windows Live Writer, preferably like Live Writer a free tool.

So tell me what is the best tool for creating posts when not connected to the net to upload once connected when using a Mac?

Technorati Tags: livewriter,mac,blog tools

Migrating from FrontPage

cdwise — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:36:03 GMT

I am pleased to announce that there is a new class being offered at Start to Web by FrontPage MVPs Pat Geary & Tina Clarke on migrating the website you created in FrontPage to Expression Web.

Tina and Pat have been working with people migrating their websites since the first beta of Expression Web version 1 was released. They have spent the last several months putting together material based on their experience for a class on migrating from FrontPage over to Expression Web.

Cleanup Preparations

Making a Cleanup Toolbar
Making Regular Expressions Queries

Technorati Tags: FrontPage,Expression Web,training

Removal Preparations

Check for redundant graphics
Removing Themes
Remove Shared borders and Nav bots
Detach DWT if you are using them
Replace/Insert doctypes
Replace/Remove other bots
Clean Tables

Pages Preparation

Use Cleanup Toolbar
Run Regular Expression Queries

Revising Pages

Add Semantic Markup
Add Meta Tags
Validate
Attach DWT
Add Include Menu
Use Site Summary

The first class will start August 30, 2008 and you can register for it now at a special introductory rate of $39.50 which is half off the regular price of the class.

Other classes being offered in the August 30, 2008 session at Start to Web include: Introduction to CSS and Introduction to Expression Web. For readers of this blog I have a coupon code worth 10% off any regular full priced class. When you go to pay for your class put in coupon code "CDWfriends" and you will automatically get 10% off.

New Session Start to Web

cdwise — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:58:57 GMT

Today we opened registration for a new session of classes at Start to Web. Classes will start August 30, 2008 and last for 4 weeks. There will be two classes offered this session:

Introduction to Expression Web - updated to include Expression Web 2. This class will last four weeks. To view the full Expression Web syllabus at http://starttoweb.com/classes/ewd.php

Introduction to CSS - this class is web editor independent and designed to teach you the basics of CSS. For more information on this class see: http://starttoweb.com/classes/css101.php

Special Opportunity: be the first to take the new class from FrontPage MVPs Tina Clarke and Pat Geary: Migrating FrontPage Websites to Expression Web. Pat and Tina plan on offering a special sneak peak class in the August session at a reduced rate on to those willing to provide feedback to help them fine tune the class material. Check the Start to Web home page for more information as it becomes available.

Technorati Tags: expression web,training

CassieRae made my day

cdwise — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:36:02 GMT

I've recently had to make a couple of changes to some of the tutorials we offer here on by-expression.com because of bandwidth overage charges and I have to admit that I was wondering if it was worth the time and expense to create and make them available since there hasn't been much feedback on them.

Today I was skimming though the official Microsoft forums for Expression Web and came across a post by CassieRae that made my day. So I just wanted to say thank you back to CassieRae.

Now I'll take a moment to answer CassieRae's question on how applicable my Expression Web book is to the new version of Expression Web released a year after my book.

First, there are three types of new features in Expression Web 2 that were not in the original Expression Web.

Insert media - this lets you insert Flash, Silverlight and Windows Media on your web pages created in Expression Web without having to write code or use swfobject (the most frequently recommended method of inserting Flash that works in IE without triggering the 'click to activate' message.)
Insert picture > Adobe Photoshop - lets you bring in psd images with layers from Photoshop. I will admit that I have not actually tried this new feature because my web images are all created as layered pngs in Fireworks. When I get Photoshop files from clients I bring them into Fireworks to prepare and optimize for the web.
Support for PHP - In the original version of Expression Web there was no support for PHP and what I consider to be a nasty bug actively caused problems with PHP includes and other PHP pages causing Greek characters to appear on the page. Not only has Expression Web version two solved the BOM - PHP issue but it has added support for inserting some of the most commonly used PHP script elements. It also allows you to preview your PHP pages in the Cassini web server that ships with Expression Web simply by installing PHP on your computer without the need to install and configure IIS or Apache. See Introducing PHP Support in Expression Web 2 for more details.

When I have a chance I'll add some content on each of the above topics to the secure portion of the book's website (don't forget to get the updated chapter 3 files if you have the first printing, and the credentials for accessing the secure section are printed in the book.)

The bugs discussed in the book that were resolved are the BOM and FTP userid/password issues. Though there is an issue with Expression Web and FTP with IIS 7 running on Windows Server 2008. When you go to publish via FPT on IIS 7 your user name will have a | in it and Expression Web sees that as an illegal character.

I'll add more info as I get a chance either here or on the book site.

Technorati Tags: expression web

Complete Basic Website Video-Download

cdwise — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:16:41 GMT

Bandwidth for the Creating a Basic Website in Expression Web tutorial is going over my budget. As a result I have made available from another website the full video tutorial as a Windows Media download to supplement the Flash version you can view online.

If you are planning on watching the video from start to finish (1:20) I would appreciate it if you would use the download option available at http://by-expression.com/content/fullbasic.aspx and watch it from your local hard drive. This does not mean you can redistribute it anywhere just that you can keep a copy for your own personal use. If you wish to share it with others, please send them to the preceding url.

Technorati Tags: expression web,tutorial,windows media

HAL-PC Presentation Files

cdwise — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:25:52 GMT

If you are attending my presentation tonight at the HAL-PC Web Design SIG and would like to follow along you can download the source file bladesofglory.zip Included in the zip file are the images uses and two text files of content. One for the main section and one for the sidebar.

A not quite complete version of what we will be doing looks like the image on the right.

What remains to be added is the menu that we will create (assuming time allows).

Expression Web relative vs document links

cdwise — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 17:26:33 GMT

Life with Expression Web would be much simpler if Expression Web supported root relative links properly.

I am seeing where people are using third party generators to create menus for their website. Then they want to put these menus into their Expression Web site.

In order for your menu links to work regardless of what level in your site the requesting page is at you need to use what is called root relative links. That means that when the page is requested it is resolved based on the root level of your website instead of where the the page requesting the link is located. Take a site that has a root, two folders: articles and products with additional folders and pages in each of those folders.

This means if you have a page in the "articles" folder in your site and the link goes to the "products" section Expression web using document relative links would create a link like "../products/page.html".

Translated the path means go up one level from "articles" then over to "products" and send the page.html to the browser.

With a root relative link it would look like "documents/page.html" without the ".." since it is instructing the server to go to the root and send the page.html in the documents folder.

If you had a folder in articles that was named 2008 and had a page named july-20.html and wanted to go to the documents/page.html the document relative path would be "../../documents/page.html" while the root relative path would stay the same as in the earlier example of "/documents/page.html".

The problems with document relative roots if the links are in a server side include page or are embedded in JavaScript that are generated using document relative links with root level of the site as the base is when you are on the "articles/2008/july-20.html" and the path from the page is "products/page.html" the server will be trying to find a the page at "articles/2008/products/page.html" because it is looking for a path that starts from the requesting page.

For links it is easy enough to modify the links created by the their party tool (assuming it doesn't support root relative links natively since many do).

Houston Presentation

cdwise — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:47:28 GMT

For any of you who may be in the Houston area I will be speaking at HAL-PC (Houston Area League of PC Users http://www.hal-pc.org) Next Tuesday, July 22nd at the Web Technologies SIG. While my presentation will focus on Expression Web 2 I intend to provide a preview of Dreamweaver CS 4 as well.

If you are going to attend and would like to follow along with either program you can get a trial version of Expression Web v2 from Microsoft at http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc136529.aspx

You can get the public beta of Adobe Dreamweaver CS 4 at http://labs.adobe.com/ while you are there take a look at the Fireworks CS 4 and Soundbooth betas as wells. Other programs to check out are Adobe Photoshop Express and if you ever wanted a tool that would help you with your website color scheming check out Kruler, http://kuler.adobe.com/.

Hope to see you there.

Technorati Tags: expression web,dreamweaver cs4,presentation

Google & Flash

cdwise — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:52:47 GMT

Some of you may have read the announcement not long ago that Google would now be able to index Flash files. Some said that meant HTML sites were dead and Flash would become "de rigour". Something I disagreed with for a wide variety of reasons not the least of which was a strong "wait and see" attitude towards how well Google would be able to implement indexing of Flash content.

Seems that I might have been right to be skeptical that Google would get everything in Flash, at least if you read what they have to say over on Sitepoint. http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/07/16/google%e2%80%99s-flash-indexing-disaster/

While it may not be quite the disaster they are painting it certainly does seem that Google was a mite premature in their implementation and documentation.

Technorati Tags: flash,google

Adding Metas to Individual Pages in Expression Web v2

cdwise — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:23:14 GMT

Lately I have seen several people having trouble adding meta elements for keyword and description on individual pages attached to a Dynamic Web Template in Expression Web version 2.

Once complaint I heard is that Expression Web puts the meta elements in a locked region of the DWT so I decided to try it for myself.

I began my test by creating a new site from the empty one page web template. The result was no problem in adding metas or editing the title using the page properties dialog on the attached page, all without once using code view.

My Steps:

I then added a couple of paragraphs and saved it as a DWT.
Then I wrapped one paragraph in an editable content region.
Next I used File > News Create from Dynamic Web Template.
In the editable region of the page created I right clicked and added a page description of " testing dwt".
Checked the head section and my page description was in the doctype editable region of the page.

Note: I did not add a description in the DWT.

Adding the meta elements to the DWT will put the meta tag outside the editable region. Rightly or wrongly Expression Web assumes that when you add the meta to the DWT you want the meta elements the same throughout the site. If you do not put it in the DWT then you can add them individuals on a page by page basis using the Page Properties dialog.

FWIW, since each page should have its own keywords and description related only to the content of that specific page so you have to go page by page anyway. A "site wide" default is useless for SEO optimization. As you have probably heard many times content is king and for more important than keywords.

Technorati Tags: expression web,dwt,tutorial

Keywords are usually ignored by search engines for the most put because of inappropriate keyword stuffing. Descriptions are of some limited use since that text may be displayed by search engines under certain circumstances.

Code name "Stiletto"

cdwise — Tue, 27 May 2008 04:44:24 GMT

Did the title of this blog post get your attention?

Just what is Stiletto?

It is the code name for Dreamweaver CS4 and if you are one of those folks brave enough to download and install beta software you can try it out for yourself by downloading it from http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/dreamweavercs4/

Personally, I am downloading it as I type but being a veteran beta software user there are a few things I do to so that I do not end up wishing I had not been so adventurous. First, on my Windows computers I set up a Virtual PC for testing. Fortunately Microsoft will make that easy for you since Virtual PC is free and the Internet Explorer team gives away free testing images for IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8. Yes, they are time bombed but hey we are talking about using it with beta software so it really does not matter. In fact, think about it you are killing two birds with one stone. You can test your websites in whatever version of IE you do not have while at the same time protecting your system form possible beta software bugs. (Mind you I am not saying that you will experience system instability or other problems using the beta of Dreamweaver CS 4 on your primary computer but play it safe just in case.)

Then install Dreamweaver Stiletto in the VPC and play away. As for me I want to see the new interface, related files and code navigator bits that are new in CS 4. I also want to see what is missing re ASP.NET.

Ah, I mentioned what I will be doing on my Windows computers for testing out Stiletto but I do have a Mac sitting here. Now I must admit that I don't really care that much if I trash OS X while beta testing because there is nothing critical on that machine but it is a pain in the you know what to reinstall and set things back up. Fortunately, I'm running 10.5 and I'll make an image of my system as it is and tuck it away on an external drive before I install any beta software on it. I'll also spend a little bit of time trying to get Time Machine to work properly since despite the fact the external drive I use to back-up my Mac has 3x the space available of the entire hard drive in my MacBook it keeps telling me I have insufficient space for Time Machine to work properly, sigh.

Oh well, guess I know some of what I will be doing tomorrow, how about you?

Technorati Tags: dreamweaver cs4,dreamweaver beta

TechEd Developers 2008

cdwise — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:06:05 GMT

I will be at TechEd again this year. Like last year I will he working in -the MVP booth. For a change I am going to actually try and use some of the sorrel networking tools so here is my TechEd connect card.

Technorati Tags: teched08

New Expression Web Tutorial Series released

cdwise — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:25:22 GMT

While I have had bits and pieces of the Expression Web Basic tutorial series up on the site (under Media) they are now officially linked on the by-expression.com site's tutorial page. It took me some time to figure out the best compression ratio to file size and the right number of key frames to make sure you can see the parts that I am working on without too much jumping around.

If you prefer there is also an iPod version you can download of each of the tutorials. Whichever you chose if you plan on working along with the tutorial you should download the zip file that contains all the assets used in the site and the completed project.

Like the sample sites and page layouts we provide on by-expression you may use the basic layouts and DWTs but I would request that you switch out the images for your own graphics since they probably won't fit your site anyway. ;-)

If you do use one of our sample templates I'd like to see what you did with it so drop us a note.

Technorati Tags: expression web tutorial

Expression Design

cdwise — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:32:32 GMT

Okay I normally limit my posting to Expression Web, general web design-development or Dreamweaver but thought I'd mention some graphic topics for a change.

First, the Expression Design team has started putty tutorials -video blogs in then blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/xdesignsupport/default.aspx

Next, I see people asking how attach text to a path. Since Fireworks is the image program I use most I found this tutorial worthwhile http://www.tommylogic.com/tutorial-blog/web-design-tutorials/39-web-related/66-fireworks-text-shape-tutorial

Finally, something I find myself needing to to is remove backgrounds from images. This is the best tutorial I know of for using Fireworks to remove the background http://www.tommylogic.com/tutorial-blog/web-design-tutorials/39-web-related/66-fireworks-text-shape-tutorial

Technorati Tags: expression design tutorial,fireworks tutorial

Moving my Blog

by-expressions — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:49:24 GMT

Now that we have moved all the content from by-expression.com into the new community server 2008 based site I will be moving my blog in there as well. Sadly since there is not a good migration tool right now I will not be moving the archive over yet but all new posts will be at [...]...(read more)

Webmaster Jam 2008?

cdwise — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:11:09 GMT

What is it moving the Webmaster Jam Session conference to Atlanta?

Ever since the first Webmaster Jam in Dallas two years ago this has been one of my favorite conferences. Top notch speakers, a reasonable price, altogether a great conference. The only downside was the conference hotel which sucked. The conference facilities were good but the hotel itself was NOT. At the end of the conference last year there was some discussion of moving the conference to Houston or at least to a different hotel so I was anticipating (happily) a change of venue.

To my surprise when I received word today that registration was opening for WebMaster Jam 2008 the conference was moved to ATLANTA. Crap, I really liked having a good small conference that was in Texas.

In addition, last year there was a "Platinum Pass" available with extra small session content. Every platinum pass holder I talked to last year would get a platinum pass again. Not only does that option not appear to be available this year the website itself is sketchy on details. Compare the information available about the 2008 conference http://2008.webjamsession.com/ with the 2007 conference http://2007.webjamsession.com. Heck, there isn't even hotel information on the website.

Over the last few years I have attended quite a few conferences ranging from small intimate ones like Webmaster Jam Session and Remix Boston, the way up to the huge conferences like MIX, SXSW and TechEd (I am hoping to make it to AdobeMAX this year) and Webmaster Jam Session has been up at the top of my list of "best" conference to attend.

Sadly, I am not sure that I will be able to make it this year with the move to Atlanta and the lack of information on the site.

Technorati Tags: webmasterjamsession,webconference

Today's Quest

elrobo — Mon, 05 May 2008 05:47:00 GMT

Can you hear me now? Oh, ok I guess it works.

MS Publisher to create web sites? FrontPage users in a quandry whether to move to Expression Web or...what?

Seems to be a hole in the market, or are there alternatives. I think yes, but I am not finished testing software yet. TBC.

...this post was really just a test for me to see how this Blog thing works. Sorry.