Dreamweaver Next: CSS Media queries

A while ago I commented on a possible future Dreamweaver feature that allows moving content from Illustrator into Dreamweaver via copy and paste. There's also an updated video: Canvas for Designers.

Adobe's putting out showing off some potential Dreamweaver features at a new blog: Design and Web. One post shows how we may be doing as part of a workflow that assists with development for multiple screen sizes:
Multiscreen authoring with CSS3

I'm excited to get my hands on this feature as mobile is getting ever bigger. Adobe and Macromedia before that have been crowing over the coming of mobile, and the tools seem to be finally trying to sing the same tune.

Copy and Paste: The future of Adobe application interaction?

So I wasn't able to make it to MAX 2009 due to another project I was working on ( which I'll try to be better at posting and talk about more that later), so I've been hitting all of the Adobe related blogs and aggregators for any tidbit of information I can get my hands on. I was perusing JD's twitter feed and I saw a mention of "Smart Paste" in Dreamweaver that intrigued me. He links to the Smart Pastevideo posted on YouTube.

The idea is interesting, intercept the pasting of content and insert some other content that can then manipulate the pasted content. In the video, they show a vector graphic of a chart copied from Illustrator and pasted into Dreamweaver. What gets inserted is a dynamic CANVAS tag that has its content drawn from a FXG file. They then link up the chart to some data and when viewed in a browser, the chart renders the chart with the data from an XML file. They then show a copying of an animation from Flash and pasted into Dreamweaver. Again a CANVAS tag is dynamically manipulated to display the animation.

As someone that makes his living building Dreamweaver extensions, I'm pretty impressed in how they were able to bend Dreamweaver to their will. I know that pasting Fireworks HTML is processed via teh Dreamweaver extensibility layer, so I'll be sure to investigate how something like this can be done within Dreamweaver. As with all Sneak Peaks, there's the devilish caveat that some things may not make it into any coming release, but it serves well to open the eyes to what the possibilities are with Dreamweaver.

Dreamweaver Design Time Style Sheets and Diagnostic CSS

From time to time WebAssist ( my employer) in releases some free web development related training/education material called RoadMaps. Recently I contributed to this effort by writing an article on how to use Design Time Style Sheets for page diagnostic purposes. Essentially, what this means is that you can use CSS to visually determine how well your page is doing from a standards/best practices perspective. This is especially useful when taking over pages created by others.

One example discussed in the article uses CSS to cause all links that have an event attached to them, say onclick, to be rendered with a thick red border. This allows you to quickly identify when you may want to move to an unobtrusive method of applying JavaScript on your page. To read more up on the subject, take a look at Diagnostic CSS Styling (Issue 7).

Let me know if you have any questions about the article.

MAXin' and likely not relaxin'

Registration for Adobe MAX North America has been opened and they have posted a bit of information about the tracks and pre-event labs. From folks that I've talked to it seems as this event is going to be quite big, bigger than previous years, where it was damn big. Check out the latest information about the San Francisco event: http://max.adobe.com/na/

I've not been able to make MAX for a few years now, not even when it was in my backyard so to speak last year when it was in Chicago, but I did enjoy the 2005 event in Anaheim (check out video #5, that's me, boy is it painful watching yourself speak, I hope I don't use that many ums and ahs all the time!). I gave a low level view of getting started with Dreamweaver extensions. It is a large event so it can be tough making sure you're able to attend all the sessions and speak with all of the presenters that you'd like to, but it's quite the experience.

Beta get a bucket

Looks like the Dreamweaver and Fireworks teams are taking a more open approach to validating the work they've done so far with the updates for the CS4 release and have put out to the world beta offerings of Dreamweaver CS4 and Fireworks CS4. I also see that there are some videos on Adobe TV, take a look at the Dreamweaver CS4 feature videos. I've not looked much at the Fireworks offering just yet, but the Dreamweaver feature descriptions look intriguing and what was shown in the videos offers a great look into what has been cooking up in the labs of Adobe.

I'm not overly impressed with the new look of the application, but I knew that they would be going that way given what was done with I think Photoshop and Flash among others in the CS3 releases. I hope that I grow used to the all gray all the time look.

I think that of the features called out in the "New Features" list I'll be most interested in the JavaScript code hinting as I've often turned to JSEclipse an Eclipse plug in for editing JavaScript files when I'm working with some library code with lots of objects that I don't know intimately, or that have a good bit of nested object namespacing such as YUI or Spry . I'll also be playing around with Live View, Related files, and HTML data sets, which I assume Spry uses as it has HTML data sets.

So grab a bucket and go check out the betas!

Starting out on the curve

I've been involved with Dreamweaver since I got a copy of Dreamweaver 1.2 ( for free on a CD that came with a British technology magazine that I don't recall the name of). I think that Dreamweaver 3 was about to come out or that it was just out and the 1.2 freebie was the incentive was to get 3 with an upgrade price. I was immediately struck with how lacking my then svelte Notepad-Netscape 3 driven development seemed so lacking. :-)

From there thinking back a bit, it seems that the learning curve really hasn't flattened out.

After getting Dreamweaver 4 and Fireworks 4 studio I really started looking more at the way that Dreamweaver was truly built to be extended and I rooted around in the configuration folder and learned a ton. I struck up some friendships on the Dreamweaver forums and on the recommendation of Angela Buraglia I volunteered and was accepted to join Team Macromedia for Dreamweaver in early 2002 or so (has it been that long already?). With the Adobe purchase of Macromedia a couple of years ago I became part of the Adobe Community Experts with my primary focus still being Dreamweaver. Along the way I've written a number of articles and tutorials at CommunityMX a great resource site for all things Adobe, contributed a chapter to a book and have been the technical editor for quite a few Macromedia and now Adobe product related books.

I'm working at WebAssist (3 years June 1st this year, time files) where I mainly build extensions for Dreamweaver using the fantastic extensibility layer as well as coding ASP (JavaScript & VBScript), ColdFusion and PHP.

But as with all things, nothing stays the same; so I'm always looking for something to learn to stay on the up good side of the curve (notice a trend here? I'm parenthetical)(he says parenthetically). I've been doing a good bit of playing around and reading up on JavaScript libraries including Adobe's Spry, Script.aculo.us jQuery, and MooTools among many many others and how they can be used to enhance the user experience. When WebAssist had their latest redesign I helped put in some Moo.fx flavored actions. Intriguing also are content replacement/enhancements such a sIFR, swfIR and SoundManager. I've also been thinking a bit about the possibilities that Adobe AIR (and by extension Flex) offers to web developers like me by bringing the technologies I know to the desktop.

I hope to be able to keep on learning new and interesting technologies as well as learn about new ideas and trends, both in the realm of the technology I work with and the greater world at large. So join me and I'll join you in this fantastic learn experience that is life.

Well I guess that's enough linking around, so I'll sign off this initial post.