tools category
cssedit
Just found this cool app through Mac Tricks And Tips: Top 100 Essential Mac Applications it's cssedit, it's really superior in editing CSS, giving you the pleasure of watching the results at real time, you can click on any of the objects of the page and inspect which CSS rules are ruling it and start editing it through the code or by playing with the visual controls at the side, I think it's browser is running on safari engine, I hope it only have the ability to show you the real time results on more than one browser side by side at the same time.
Give it a try you will not regret it, the application costs $29.95 but you can try it for free, you will not be able to save files with more than 2500 characters, sorry windows users this app is for macs only.
February 6, 2008, 9:12 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor
No excuse now for not using clean, valid & compatible CSS layouts, after Eric Meyer's CSS Sculptor you could really do it as easy as choosing from 30 ready made layouts and control there margins, paddings, colors, backgounds etc... generating a clean, valid & compatible CSS layout really as if Eric code it himself, Every body is blogging about it.
In case if you don't know, Eric Meyer considered to be the top of the industry of CSS, He wrote alot of books including "Eric Meyer on CSS" and "More Eric Meyer on CSS" and alot more.
Any way I don't think I will use Meyer's Sculptor, I enjoy hand coding every bit of CSS on my DreamWeaver code view.
August 27, 2007, 1:57 PM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Firebug
Firebug an add-on to FireFox is a perfect tool for web developers/designers it shows any browsed page HTML, CSS, DOM etc... and you can modify and see the results instantly, deactivate or modify the CSS code and see instantly what will the page looks like.
Any way you got to try it if you are using FireFox if you are not you have to, if you insists you may use Firebug Lite.
December 9, 2006, 7:52 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
IE7 progress in applying CSS2.1
Beside IE7 support to transparent PNG and RSS, IE7 has gone very near to CSS2.1 specs, they still miss some points but it's way better than before, the IE team has announced the list of CSS changes on there blog post titled Details on our CSS changes for IE7, it's essential for every web designer who care about web standards to read.
I'm really glad that the end is near for IE6 especially after Microsoft putted IE7 as a high priority update on windows Automatic Update.
August 24, 2006, 3:08 PM Comments 1 TrackBack 0
Can standards compliancy be automated ?
I mean can any body use an application like the new Microsoft Expression Web Designer, to get a web standards compliant page without touching the code ?
I highly doubt that, Why? because HTML is all about giving meanings to content by wrapping some of it's components mainly text by tags like <p> for paragraphs, <a> for links, <h1> for heading etc... and this meaning part is lost from machines I mean how will a machine distinguish between tabular data to put it in a table or a list or will it be more meaningful as a definition list.
Even the W3C Validator don't know wether a site is really compliant or not, you could see a valid (X)HTML page while it's main layout is formed by tables.
Any way HTML and CSS are not designed for advanced users or coders but for authors, it's easy enough only text wrapped with tags to add a meaning, CSS is easy too simply defining selectors then adding some values to it's properties, so I still prefer and recommend for designers and authors to code manually, I use Dreamweaver but I use the code view only as it make it easier by suggesting a list of tags when you type < and auto close it when you just type </ and because it colorize the code differing between tags, attributes & values etc...
What drops this post idea in my mind is a discussion between me and Rida about authoring tools and if any of them could ever be really standards-based, my opinion was what you just read standards compliancy will never be automated but he has a different respectful vision, he think in the near future computers will be able to determine meanings that might sound weird now but he gave an example of voice recognition, few years back no body could imagine that computers will ever be able to hear and understand a human voice, well I say when we have the technology that Rida is speaking about, maybe I could reconsider.
May 19, 2006, 7:13 AM Comments 1 TrackBack 0
Microsoft goood Expression
Microsoft new standards-based authoring tool Expression Web Designer preview is released, ofcourse it's for windows only so I didn't get the opportunity to try it yet.
As announced it should create valid XHTML & CSS pages, I hope so. It also has an accessibility validator against Section 508 and WCAG.
Well it's great hearing that Microsoft is moving closer to standards beside IE7 ofcourse, but actually it looks a little weird to me that they are speaking about standards on a page that is full of tables has no title and has 49 errors that Douglas Bowman tried to solve but no luck.
Any way I still prefer to write my own code manually.
May 16, 2006, 3:42 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
IE7 Beta Preview 2
On 20 March at the MIX06 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced IE7 Beta Preview 2 and finally after a lot of efforts it is way more standards friendly than IE6 , but still not like FireFox or Safari.
Other than better support to CSS IE7 Beta Preview 2 now supports RSS & transparent PNG images.
Actually I didn't test my web sites on it yet as I'm on a mac and it didn't work on my VPC version.
March 22, 2006, 6:42 PM Comments 1 TrackBack 0
Web OS
On November 26, 2005 I posted a post named Browsers replacing desktops here is part of it
I heard long time ago from some technologist that browsers are going to replace computer desktops and I keep thinking when will that happened. Now after this new state of mind called Web 2.0 I think it is happening now and happening very quickly.
I wrote about netvibes, meebo and some web apps that bring us closer to the time were browsers totally replaces desktops.
Now we are even closer as there is two serious tries of developing a full web based operating system were you can access all your data and apps all through one interface just like your Windows or Mac OS interface, ofcourse they are both still beta but I think they are a strong core of a real web based OS
First there is Goowy from it's interface you can check email, write email, manage your calendar and much more.
Second there is eyeOS an open source free OS you could access it through the web or it could be installed on a server of a company or a school for example, I see eyeOS better than Goowy as eyeOS provide an API so that any developer can develop new apps for the platform and because it depends more on the windows style that you can open more than one window in the same time and you can minimize windows, but the bad thing about it that every time you click a link the whole page has to refresh, its true that they succeeded to make a light weight page but it was still going to be great to use AJAX to call and hide windows.
imagine opening any computer in the world to find your same interface, apps, data how powerful will it be as more people are switching to broadband doing the daily actions on a Web OS will be more logical but for heavy apps like photoshop, dreamweaver etc.. I think we will still need a desktop based OS for them.
I bet Google will buy one of those projects soon.
March 12, 2006, 7:03 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
New free Opera
Opera new Ad free version 8.5 is released, after trying it on my mac for 15 minutes I noticed some nifty new features.
- More support to web standards.
- Support RSS feed.
- New zoom option that zoom the whole body of a web site even if it's width is set by pixels.
- Choose style menu were you could switch between alternative styles.
- Turn off images or view only cached images options.
- Small screen which let you see what a website look on small screens like PDA's and mobiles screens. This option is great.
- Full screen browsing, really great option.
That's some of the main features I noticed till now I'm really exited go download it now.
September 20, 2005, 3:31 PM Comments 0
STUDIO 8 is out
STUDIO 8 is out, including Dreamweaver 8, Flash professional 8, Fireworks 8.
Dreamweaver 8 has great new features like zoom, guides and code collapse.
CSS support is improved too by CSS layout visualization, Style rendering toolbar and unified CSS panel.
Of course I didn't try it till now because it is not available yet but it sounds good. Any way I use Dreamweaver just as notepad I only use it because it helps in remembering the syntax code and in organizing it by some colors.
August 9, 2005, 3:20 PM Comments 0
Adobe and Macromedia, Media future
Maybe it is old news but it's effect on media industry will be huge in the next few years.
On April 18 2005 two of the media industry leaders have joined up, Adobe announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.
Along the years there was always a competition between the two companies products like Adobe Illustrator vs. Macromedia FreeHand & Adobe GoLive vs. Macromedia Dreamweaver I think Adobe has won the competition in graphics applications but Macromedia has won it in web applications.
Experts opinions about this move and it's effect on the media future varies. Some of them predicting that due to the end of the competition between the two companies this move effect on the media future will be bad for the next few years, And others including me predicting that this move has a very good effect on the future of media and that the unity of the biggest two media industry leaders will result in a new generation of products combining passion, creativity, and technology.
Instead of Adobe Creative suite 2 and Macromedia Studios MX 2004 it might be united in one product I don't know maybe it is called Adobe Creative suite MX 2005.
Resources:
June 28, 2005, 6:00 AM Comments 1