December 2, 2008 PLEASE FORWARD
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Tips, Tricks, News and Reviews for Web Coders
by Kevin Yank (techtimes@sitepoint.com)
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INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Welcome to another edition of the SitePoint Tech Times. In this
edition: the 2008 SPF Community Awards, the SitePoint Podcast,
and Dreamweaver CS4.
It's once again time for the SitePoint Forum Community Awards.
The SPF Community Awards represent recognition of the
significant contributions of forum members in a variety of
categories. Voting for the 2008 awards is now open, and you
could win yourself one of four SitePoint kits just for
submitting your vote [1].
The SitePoint Podcast is now up and running. You can listen to
it on sitepoint.com [2] or subscribe via RSS [3], or iTunes [4].
As this is early days for the podcast, the guys would really
appreciate some feedback.
Is Dreamweaver CS4 the right tool for you? In this edition,
Kevin puts the new Dreamweaver through its paces and discovers
that it depends if you're a designer or a developer.
[1] <http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=586399>
[2] <http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/category/podcast/>
[3] <http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/category/podcast/feed/>
[4] <http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=296180681>
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IN THIS ISSUE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- Introduction
- Dreamweaver CS4: A Powerful Tool for an Imperfect World
- New Technical Articles
- Techy Forum Threads
- More Techy Blog Entries
DREAMWEAVER CS4: A POWERFUL TOOL FOR AN IMPERFECT WORLD - - - - -
by Kevin Yank
With the just-released Dreamweaver CS4, Adobe has conceded that
web design has moved on. No longer are designers content to
limit themselves to what can be built with WYSIWYG tools;
instead, Dreamweaver CS4 shifts focus to providing powerful
tools for code-savvy front-end designers like you and me! With
the WebKit rendering engine at its core, Dreamweaver CS4
embraces best practice in every aspect of client-side design. If
only it went as far on the server side.
Up to and including Dreamweaver CS3, the program was clearly
conceived to protect web designers from all the scary code that
goes into building a site. It let you generate HTML markup using
toolbar buttons and property inspectors instead of tags and
attributes. It let you style that markup using wizards and
panels instead of CSS rules and properties. The Code View was
there if you needed it, but the program did its best to make
sure you didn't.
In recent years, this had become a losing battle as more and
more designers needed to take control of their code. It
didn't just matter what the finished product looked like;
designers had started to care about what the code looked like
too. Dreamweaver's helpful attempts to hide code behind
simple tools became a hindrance more than a help.
Clearly, Adobe has been paying attention. Although the WYSIWYG
Design View is still there, as are the panels and wizards,
Dreamweaver CS4 adds support for a whole new way of
working -- one that is largely code-oriented.
Open an HTML (or PHP, ColdFusion, JSP, ASP, ASP.NET) file in
Dreamweaver CS4, and the new Related Files bar instantly
displays every other code file in your site that is used to
display that page in a browser (or assemble it on the server).
Switch on the Live Preview, and instead of the dumb WYSIWYG view
of your page, you'll see the fully-rendered page with all
server-side and JavaScript-powered features intact.
Powered by the open source WebKit engine at the heart of
browsers like Safari and Google Chrome, the Live Preview is not
merely a preview, but a code navigation tool: double-click any
element on the page, and the code panel will jump to the HTML
code responsible for generating it. If that code is contained in
another file, that file is automatically selected in the Related
Files bar so that you can edit it without leaving the main file
(or its Live Preview) behind!
It gets better: Alt-click (cmd+option-click on the Mac) any
element in the Live Preview, and up pops the Code Navigator with
a breakdown of the CSS rules that contribute to the
element's appearance! Click any of these to jump straight
to the relevant line of code, where you can make adjustments and
watch the Live Preview update instantly.
Read on for my thoughts on why Dreamweaver CS4 may or may not be
for you...
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HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES
With its emphasis on hardcore front-end coding, Dreamweaver CS4
deserves the attention of an entire generation of web designers
who thought they had outgrown it. For the first time in many
years, Dreamweaver is once again a tool for developers on the
leading edge -- not those left behind.
That isn't to say Dreamweaver CS4 is perfect. As it
embraces and empowers the current generation of front-end
coders, leading-edge server side developers are left in the
dust. Near as I can tell, this is due to a fundamental
assumption in the application: that the URL structure of your
site corresponds to its file structure.
In a simpler time, every distinct page design on your site was
represented by an HTML file -- or a server-side script file
that generated HTML. If you wanted to view that page in a
browser, you typed the file's name in the URL. If you
wanted to edit the page, you opened the file in Dreamweaver.
I don't know about you, but I haven't built a site
that way in a few years. These days, sites are built using
powerful server-side frameworks, which dynamically translate
URLs into actions to be taken, data to be queried, or -- in
some cases -- HTML view templates to be displayed. In such
systems, the names of the files responsible for generating HTML
pages usually have little in common with the URLs used to
request them. For example, the URL path /article/12/page/3 might
map to a template file named /templates/article.tpl.
Out of the box, Dreamweaver cannot deal with this kind of
codebase. If you open (say) a PHP script that actually handles
browser requests, Dreamweaver's Related Files bar will not
be able to find any of the HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code that
make up the pages of your site. If you open up an HTML template,
Dreamweaver's Live View will not be able to figure out the
right URL to request to get a page that uses that template.
WATCH THAT FIRST STEP...
Dreamweaver has always been a tool for an imperfect world. In
previous versions, it aimed to support developers stuck in the
old way of doing things who shied away from the code that went
into the sites they built.
With CS4, Dreamweaver has taken one step out of the ocean and
onto the dry land of modern web development. It recognizes that
today's leading developers care about code, and want tools
that help them write it, not hide it from them. If you have the
luxury of working on static sites, preparing initial mockups for
later integration with server-side code, or if you too have only
taken the first step into modern web development, Dreamweaver
CS4 could be the perfect tool for you. Sadly, I'll have to
wait for Adobe to plant both feet firmly in the now.
It's a shame, really. Dreamweaver CS4's front-end
coding tools are so powerful that I wish every web developer
could use them! I can honestly say that it has been nearly ten
years since I would have considered using Dreamweaver myself,
but I really want to use Dreamweaver CS4.
Perhaps this gap is something that could be bridged with a slick
Dreamweaver extension. Call it the Live URL Mapper. With it,
developers could configure the URLs that Live Preview used to
request HTML template files, and the static resources (image,
CSS and JavaScript files) they referenced. Whether this is
possible depends on how extensible Dreamweaver CS4's Live
Preview mechanism is under to hood.
If not, developers using today's cutting edge server-side
frameworks will have to wait for Dreamweaver CS5. With such a
strong set of client-side tools, it only makes sense for Adobe
to turn its focus to the world of modern server-side frameworks.
If Adobe does anywhere near as good a job there as it has
supporting modern front-end development, it will turn a lot of
heads -- including mine.
Plan on trying Dreamweaver CS4? Leave a comment on the blog post
to let me know!
JavaScript & CSS Blog: Stylish Scripting
by Kevin Yank
Dreamweaver CS4: A Powerful Tool for an Imperfect World
<http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/?p=3240>
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See you next week!
Andrew Tetlaw
techtimes@sitepoint.com
SitePoint Technical Editor
NEW TECHNICAL ARTICLES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Section 508: Uncle Sam's Guide To Web Accessibility
by Rob Ballou
If you've ever worked on a US federal government web site,
you've probably encountered Section 508 law for web
accessibility. In this article, Rob wades through the jargon to
deliver the tips you need to ensure the sites you build are
compliant.
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1690
TECHY FORUM THREADS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2008 SPF Community Awards
<http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=586399>
Youtube Changed the video resolution
<http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=585358>
Agile Development & design and code reviews
<http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=584935>
MORE TECHY BLOG ENTRIES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
News & Trends Blog: INDUSTRY NEWS FOR WEB PROFESSIONALS
Poll: Flash or Silverlight? (4 comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/12/02/poll-flash-or-silverlight/
Bad News for Microsoft: Windows, IE Net Usage Dip Lower (7
comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/12/02/bad-news-for-microsoft-windows-ie-net-usage-dip-lower/
Google's Operating System Arrives - But Not From Google (5
comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/12/02/googles-operating-system-arrives-but-not-from-google/
Famous Rails Screencast Gets an Update (4 comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/11/30/famous-rails-screencast-gets-an-update/
15 Awesome Gifts for the Geek in Your Life (14 comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/11/28/15-awesome-gifts-for-the-geek-in-your-life/
Podcast Blog: THE SITEPOINT PODCAST
SitePoint Podcast #3: A Richer Web? (3 comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/11/29/sitepoint-podcast-3-a-richer-web/
Web Tech Blog: TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
Win SitePoint Books At Web-blast '08 (2 comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/11/28/win-sitepoint-books-at-web-blast-08/
Quick and Easy Graphing with the Google Chart API (7 comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/11/28/quick-and-easy-graphing-with-the-google-chart-api/
W3C Markup Validation Service adds experimental HTML5 support (4
comments)
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/11/25/w3c-markup-validation-service-adds-experimental-html5-support/
Web Design Blog: PIXEL PERFECT
Adding the SitePoint References to Coda
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/11/28/adding-the-sitepoint-references-to-coda/
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