Many people take our Dreamweaver class expecting to learn how to use Dreamweaver to create or edit a website. What they often don't realize is that they also need to learn Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) , too. Fortunately we provide significant information about CSS in our Dreamweaver class in addition to a new class just on CSS that we'll be offering in early 2008.
Why do you need to use CSS when creating a website? Well, one very basic reason, without CSS you would be using the html font tag to format text, what's wrong with that? The font tag is officially "deprecated" by the w3c, the World Wide Web consortium that controls and mandates standards for the web,. (http://www.w3.org/). "Deprecated" means it's on its way out, that some time in the future a browser is going to come out that does not support the font tag. In other words if you create a website today that uses the font tag to format text (choosing a typeface, a color, a size, etc.) it should be fine...for now, but what happens when a new browser appears that doesn't support it? All the text on your site will appear using default attributes not they way you intended it to look.
So using CSS now is recommended to avoid that problem, but that begs the question "Why is the font tag deprecated?" Or, put another way..."Why the big push to use CSS?"
In short, two reasons: one, CSS makes updating and maintaining your site a whole lot easier than using the font tag. Imagine if you need to change the color or typeface of the all the paragraphs in your site, using the font tag you'd have to go to every instance of it and change it, not just on one page but on every page of your site. On any medium to large site, this would be a long and tedious job.
With CSS, chances are that you'll make one quick change to change the color, typeface and size of all your paragraphs throughout your entire site.
The second reason to use CSS is that it there are loads of typographic controls that you have when using CSS that you just don't have when using html. For instance, line spacing (or "leading" as it's called by typographers), it's just not an option in html, but it is in CSS.
Also, CSS allows you to separate the content of your web site from the formatting/presentation of your site, which allows for the same content (the text, graphics,etc) to be layed out completely differently just be switching CSS files. This is a bit more advanced than just using CSS for formatting text, as we've mentioned previously, and I will discuss this issue further in an upcoming post.
For now, just remember using CSS for formatting text on your web site is THE way to go for ease of use, saving time and adding typographic control unavailable in html, but for those with a sentimental streak or html antiquarians remember there is still the forlorn, deprecated font tag still out there and still supported by all major browsers...for now.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
SmartSketch Lives! (Inside of Flash)
A long time ago (1993) , in a place far, far away (San Diego, California) there lived a small company called FutureWave Software. They produced a software program named SmartSketch a vector-based drawing program and at one time the number one drawing program on the Macintosh in Japan.
SmartSketch had all kinds of "friendly" features, very different from the dominant drawing program of the day, Adobe Illustrator.
In 1995 they decided to add animation to vector drawing and released FutureSplash Animator, a program for creating animations on the web. Soon after, Macromedia acquired FutureWave and in a victory for the Society of Short Syllabic Words changed the name to Flash.
Macromedia however didn't release SmartSketch under the Macromedia banner, they had already acquired Freehand, another vector-based drawing program which competed with Illustrator and saw no need to muddy the market further... but don't despair, SmartSketch still lives!
Even though Macromedia, and now Adobe, have tweaked it, the guts of the drawing program in Flash today is still essentially SmartSketch. If you've used the drawing program in Flash you know what I mean: the" intelligence" behind the pencil tool options: "straighten", "smooth" and "ink"; the "knocking out" and joining together of graphics, the "natural drawing" tools, that's all from SmartSketch now playing nicely and in the same family as the program it once tried to rebel against, Illustrator.
People coming to Flash with no Illustrator experience enjoy working with it once they get the hang of it; Illustrator users may complain a bit, but additions to the Flash drawing program, the Pen tool, for instance, make Illustrator user's feel a bit more at home, still it's different enough to be a bit of a pain for hard core Illustrator power users and certainly it's not as powerful.
Illustrator user may want to skip it: these days with better integration between Flash CS3 and Illustrator CS3, there's less need to use the drawing program in Flash, just create in Illustrator and import into Flash.
More on that some other time.
If you're not an Illustrator aficionado yet you may just want to stick with SmartSketch, otherwise known as the drawing program inside of Flash.
SmartSketch had all kinds of "friendly" features, very different from the dominant drawing program of the day, Adobe Illustrator.
In 1995 they decided to add animation to vector drawing and released FutureSplash Animator, a program for creating animations on the web. Soon after, Macromedia acquired FutureWave and in a victory for the Society of Short Syllabic Words changed the name to Flash.
Macromedia however didn't release SmartSketch under the Macromedia banner, they had already acquired Freehand, another vector-based drawing program which competed with Illustrator and saw no need to muddy the market further... but don't despair, SmartSketch still lives!
Even though Macromedia, and now Adobe, have tweaked it, the guts of the drawing program in Flash today is still essentially SmartSketch. If you've used the drawing program in Flash you know what I mean: the" intelligence" behind the pencil tool options: "straighten", "smooth" and "ink"; the "knocking out" and joining together of graphics, the "natural drawing" tools, that's all from SmartSketch now playing nicely and in the same family as the program it once tried to rebel against, Illustrator.
People coming to Flash with no Illustrator experience enjoy working with it once they get the hang of it; Illustrator users may complain a bit, but additions to the Flash drawing program, the Pen tool, for instance, make Illustrator user's feel a bit more at home, still it's different enough to be a bit of a pain for hard core Illustrator power users and certainly it's not as powerful.
Illustrator user may want to skip it: these days with better integration between Flash CS3 and Illustrator CS3, there's less need to use the drawing program in Flash, just create in Illustrator and import into Flash.
More on that some other time.
If you're not an Illustrator aficionado yet you may just want to stick with SmartSketch, otherwise known as the drawing program inside of Flash.
Adobe Max Conference in 2008 -- Max is Not an Acronym
The next Adobe Max Conference in the United States, the annual user love-fest and technology sing-along returns to its roots in lovely San Francisco, November 16th - 19th 2008, just a short hop, skip and jump from our Silicon Valley location. We hope to see you there.
This conference was started by Macromedia and was adopted by Adobe after the acquisition. It had always been a way for Macromedia to connect with their users and had pretty much always been a money maker, so no big leap for Adobe to keep it going.
When it was under Macromedia's umbrella the conference was known at one time as the "developer's conference" now dubbed a "user conference" (six of one, half dozen of the other) and was often held in SF where Macromedia was located. In later years they started producing them all over the country and now they have international versions all over the world.
It's a great place to learn about new technologies, network and, of course, party.
Here's the link to MAX: http://max.adobe.com/
What does Max stand for? Well, it's not an acronym...just one of those names devised by marketers . It's got an "m" --as in Macromedia; it's got and "a" as in Adobe and it's got an "x" --as in sex; it's short and easy to remember, it's fuzzy and warm, and perhaps reminds you of your old uncle in Philadelphia.
Hey, it could be worse, it could be an acronym: "AUC" (Adobe User Conference) with an "auking" bird for a mascot.
Drive safely.
This conference was started by Macromedia and was adopted by Adobe after the acquisition. It had always been a way for Macromedia to connect with their users and had pretty much always been a money maker, so no big leap for Adobe to keep it going.
When it was under Macromedia's umbrella the conference was known at one time as the "developer's conference" now dubbed a "user conference" (six of one, half dozen of the other) and was often held in SF where Macromedia was located. In later years they started producing them all over the country and now they have international versions all over the world.
It's a great place to learn about new technologies, network and, of course, party.
Here's the link to MAX: http://max.adobe.com/
What does Max stand for? Well, it's not an acronym...just one of those names devised by marketers . It's got an "m" --as in Macromedia; it's got and "a" as in Adobe and it's got an "x" --as in sex; it's short and easy to remember, it's fuzzy and warm, and perhaps reminds you of your old uncle in Philadelphia.
Hey, it could be worse, it could be an acronym: "AUC" (Adobe User Conference) with an "auking" bird for a mascot.
Drive safely.
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