by-expression blog

HAL-PC Presentation Files

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

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

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.

Google & Flash

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.

Adding Metas to Individual Pages in Expression Web v2

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:

1. I then added a couple of paragraphs and saved it as a DWT.
2. Then I wrapped one paragraph in an editable content region.
3. Next I used File > News Create from Dynamic Web Template.
4. In the editable region of the page created I right clicked and added a page description of " testing dwt".
5. 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.

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"

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?

TechEd Developers 2008

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.

New Expression Web Tutorial Series released

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.

Expression Design

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

Moving my Blog

Webmaster Jam 2008?

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.

Expression Studio V2 Released

Microsoft announced today that version 2 of Expression Web was released today. See http://www.microsoft.com/expression/ for more information.

Looks like you won't be able to buy it until June 1st but you can download the 30 day trial now. From what I've seen there aren't any major differences between the beta that has been available for awhile and the release version but I haven't had a chance to test for fixes to bugs that I saw during the beta.

RIP GoLive

Testing Community Server Blogging

 I haven't tried using the Community Server blog feature since I was very happy with the WordPress install on our old site. However, since we are doing a major transition with our site I thought I'd try it out. Until I decide what to do with my blog it I will be primarily updating this blog with an archive of my old blog posts at http://blog.by-expression.net. Hopefully, the tool that will let me migrate all my old posts over here will become available and that url will be nothing but an archive site.

Migration Update