Many who know me, know that I do all my web designs with straight code. Many would call me a “coder” although I think that is a bit extreme. I started web designing back with Netscape Navigator had a WYSIWYG editor called Composer. You would drag and drop images into place and the program would write the HTML code. However, Composer was horrible! It always had a lot of ‘bloat’ that it would put into its pages. Bloat is extra script that is inserted to guarantee that your object remained in it’s place. This became a problem when you put it onto your server and looked at it in your browser… All that bloat took time to load!

When I realized what was happening, I decided that I had to learn how to do the code myself. I bought reference books galore to help me learn. I even used Composer to teach me the tags necessary to do what I wanted. I would do the WYSIWYG and then go into the code and rip out everything that was extraneous. What a pain!

A few years later, a colleague of mine turned me on to this product called, “AceHTML.” I used that editor for a very long time, but it has its limitations too. When you open it up, you are in a text editor. It has a tab that you can click on to see what you’ve done. Therefore, you don’t need to open your browser up so often to see your work. Well, for the most part…. You still have to open your document up into all the main browsers to confirm compatibility. I loved that AceHTML would help to check my code. It would alert me to missing tags. Other editors that I tried out, didn’t have this feature.

Over the years though, I felt like I was outgrowing AceHTML. I started writing Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, PHP (limited amounts), and I wanted to begin learning AJAX. AceHTML wasn’t growing with me. I don’t think it has upgraded in 3 or 4 years. It doesn’t check your CSS, PHP, or JavaScript very well at all. In fact, forget about AJAX… that isn’t included either.

Over the last two years I started looking into Adobe’s Dreamweaver (Dw). I test drove it when it was CS2 and found I just didn’t like it! It was a memory hog and it was confusing. So I tossed it. Then when CS3 came out, I test drove it too.. Still not much fun for me. There was still a lot of confusing stuff there. I just didn’t have the time to go through a learning curve and still work. CS3 was very close to what I had hoped for in an editor it could check my code, all of it. However, the time on the test drive just wasn’t long enough for someone busy like me. It still seemed to be a memory hog too… So I tossed that too, falling back on my trusty AceHTML.

At this point, I was feeling very limited with my trusty tool, AceHTML. I just couldn’t stop considering Dreamweaver. I spoke with several people who used it. They had plenty to say about how it simplified their work. Wow! That would be so cool. Maybe it would be like cloning myself.. Hmm.. Anyway, I finally looked to some of my coder purist friends … the diehards. When they finally told me that the broke down and got it, I thought maybe I should reconsider.

Adobe has this irritating thing they do with their products. They put something into their programs that makes it impossible to re-test their products. The only way I found to get around it was to rebuild my machine. (I’m sure there are other ways, but this was very efficient.) This made it difficult to test drive their newest version, CS4 because I wasn’t due for a rebuild. So the only decision I could make was to buy it.

Adobe is one company that, although their products are pricey, they offer a money back guarantee, even if you test drive their products. So, I took them up on it and I bought Dreamweaver CS4.

The day came where Dreamweaver arrived. I installed it on my computer and began to play with it. It felt like Christmas! I spent all day playing with it. I watched their videos on all the new things that you can do with Dreamweaver. So far, I have not been disappointed. Of course, I refuse to look at how much memory it uses. I always leave me email program running, I use Quickbooks (for its timer), and then I use Photoshop at the same time too… Not to mention all those chat programs running in the background… Skype, ooVoo, Yahoo, MSN Messenger, AIM… All heavy hitters in memory. My system has crashed only once since installing Dreamweaver. My husband affectionately calls me his ‘High Bandwidth Broad’ because I run so much while I design pages and I use up all the bandwidth.

I am very impressed by the way Dreamweaver CS4 is working. I was able to keep my workload going even though I have not learned everything…not by a long shot. Although I work with the code, primarily, I have found myself sneaking into the WYSIWYG tool… sliding objects around and then checking to see if there is any bloat… no problem. Of course, if you want to look for things that are irritating, you’re going to find them… but so far, I am impressed! Great job Adobe!

One feature that is totally cool… “Live View!” This allows me to see a web page just like I am looking at it in a browser. All the CSS, JavaScripts, Ajax, work in Live View. They also put another function on there that is called “Live Code.” What this allows me to do is to run Live View and see the code as it changes. So if I see something in the view window that I don’t like, I can pause the view and find that specific code to change it. Pretty cool!

Well, I suppose it is time for me to get back to work.

More later!

Technorati Tags: Web Design, Web Pages

My family is a two Operating System family… I use Windows XP & he uses Linux. With this said, my husband recently built a Linux box for his father and went to set it up for him.

I, in turn, called up Verizon to set up DSL for him. I specifically asked Verizon if they had support for Linux users and they said Yes… So I proceeded.

The DSL modem arrived, with a CD and some papers explaining how to setup. However, as usual, it was all for Windows machines. We contacted Verizon, went through the automated answerer, which gave the options for Windows users, Mac users, or Other OS’s. We were slightly amused that when you get support for Other OS’s, they haven’t a clue what Linux is. Wonder what they mean by Other OS’s?

Anyway, I digress….

It was clear that we had to figure out how to hook up our own modem to the Linux box. I found several things on the Internet to help, but one helped the most… Ben’s Drivel was a tremendous help. Of course we found a few differences… so I am going to list the steps here.

1. Connect your DSL modem and turn it on. For simplicities sake, plug your computer directly into modem.

2. Open Firefox and type in 192.168.1.1 on the location bar.

3. The user name and password are username/password. Be sure to change this to something else once you log in.

4. (Note: At this point, we did not have a username or password. We had call Verizon only to find out that once you use the CD, it will generate the user name and password. I had to RE-EXPLAIN to them the we are hooking up a Linux box… Finally, they put me on hold and then generated a user name and password to use.) So, if you do not have a user name and password, contact Verizon and have them give you one.

5. Wait for the network to be detected, and then click on the green text “connected” in the left-hand pane.

6. Ben’s Drival says “Under broadband connection, click add.” However, we couldn’t find an “add” button or link. Instead, we saw Verizon listed with a Edit link. So, we clicked Edit and added our Verizon user name and password.

7. In Ben’s Drival he also says the following: “Click apply, and then back at the broadband connection screen, disconnect the “Auto registration” connection and then connect the new one you just made. Also, don’t forget to make it default.” Of course for us, we didn’t have any default to mark.. Also, we did not see anything for “Auto Registration.” This could be due to a difference in programs used or the distro of Linux used. We connected using the one we previously edited.

8. Once its connected, open a new browser window and browse to this address: http://192.168.1.1/verizon/redirect.htm …

9. Once the page is loaded, click disable.

10. Make sure this process worked by browsing to any web page.

11. Restart the modem to make sure everything is saved.

Perhaps one day Verizon will simplify this set up for Linux users. Until then, I hope this helps someone, just as Ben’s Drival helped us.

Technorati Tags: DSL Setup

I am knew at installing WordPress. So, you can imagine the frustrations that I came across.

For me, I have a cPanel installation. It really is quite nice to just click a button and have it install automatically… all files and database… Installed! Cool Huh?! Yeah, well… didn’t work so easily. I ended up getting some help with the installation. After getting WordPress installed manually, my dashboard told me that I needed to update to 2.5. Hmm.

I found out that the WordPress that I had been working on can NO LONGER be upgraded with cPanel. Something, apparently got messed up with the integration between cPanel and WordPress. Great!

So, I call my tech support and beg them to help out with updating to the new version. They were glad to help out.

So now, the blog that I have installed (with a little help) won’t upload images… Oh man. Well, I did lots of lookups on the problem. First, I found out that the Permalinks has a script that it wants to add to the .htaccess, but can’t because the .htaccess is set to a 660 permission. So, I tried every combination, 777 worked best. I was able to upload images… but only once or twice. I found that when I logged out and then back in again the permissions changed on the .htaccess and WordPress still wanted permission to write to it and couldn’t.

Then I found some help in the WordPress Forums to add this script to my .htaccess:

<ifmodule mod_security.c>
<files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</files>
</ifmodule>

So now my htaccess looks like this:

<ifmodule mod_security.c>
<files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</files>
</ifmodule>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Well, I used that and it seemed to work for me, but not for my client couldn’t seem to make it work. We both use Firefox and it is the most current version.

Well, today I updated her blog again… I got tired of always changing the permissions to 777. I figure, hey maybe the most current, 2.5.1 will correct this problem. The image uploading seems to work fine for me.. but, sad to say, it doesn’t work for her.

To boot, I still have the permissions problem for the permalinks. I don’t understand why it needs to always add the same script over and over again.

Anyway, regarding the image uploads, I found this website Upload problems? Upgrade Flash that has a lot of different things to check such as what version of FLASH you’re using. So, now my goal is to find out why I can upload and she can’t.

If you have any ideas, let me know. At this point, I am out of ideas.

More later…

Technorati Tags: Blogs, WordPress

Well, I finally took the time to “re-install” my Macromedia FlashPaper 2.0… After all the work I took to uninstall Flash and all it’s bits, I had hoped that I would be able to reinstall my program.

The first thing I did BEFORE this reinstall was to set a new restore point. Sometimes having a restore point on your Window XP can be very helpful. (Sometimes its not.) Anyway, I ran the install and STILL ended up with the same error message.

At this point, I have given up using this product. It is clear to me that Adobe will NOT be upgrading or supporting this product any longer. It is really too bad because I loved this product!

Meanwhile, I have googled (Don’t you just love that word? It sounds nasty… you’ve been googled.) .doc to .swf or .doc to flash, as well as .doc to .pdf and have found that there are other products on the Internet that will do the similarly to FlashPaper. One product I have found is SWF Printer Pro. I am not yet convinced that this will create as nice of a document for the web as FlashPaper… but I am still looking.

More later…

Technorati Tags: Flashpaper