Starting next Thursday, I will be joining a podcasting company called Odeo as their QA guy. (More on this later.) Although I am really excited about this change, it is not easy to say goodbye. So, I set some original music to this brief video chronicle of my journey from Redwood Shores, my time with the Web Team, at 606 Townsend, and up until now:

I have learned an incredible amount from the Dreamweaver team in the past 2 1/2 years, and met some lifelong friends. I am really proud of Studio 8, and it has been an honor to work with everyone, including all you customers!

Let's keep in touch,

-Dom

Wait - how to I work this thing?
Where are all my templates?

Oh well, the action's all over at dom.net right now:

- Building
- Reading and Doing
- Leave Your Laptop Behind
- Video Gallery

Stay tuned, though.

This space will be jumping soon!

Steps:
1. Open any QuickTime file, or check out the new Star Wars music video.
2. As it plays, hover over the timeline, and activate your mouse's scroll-wheel.
3. What? You don't have a scroll-wheel mouse? Which mouse-button are you using for Exposé?

When you scroll your mouse, the movie steps forward, and back. PERFECT for skipping around a video, looking for clues.

The trick is to get your cache directory set to the proper permissions (755).

Now check out learning.dom.net and mob.dom.net.

Thanks for the hint, Eric!

I Heart Apple.

Last year, they provided a pretty stable version of Tiger. I wonder what it'll be this year? What's next?! New hardware? Mobile? I'm cool with whatever.

My goal this year is to come out with a solid Widget or two to share with you all. If you're going this year, look me up!

Creating a link blog was never so easy. Everything has an RSS feed, of course.

People are creating little web apps around it and whatnot.

It's hot. It is like so five minutes from now.

If you're a Mac user, there is also this simple hack for a Gmail notifier.

Catch the drift!

Business as usual.
Move along.

Besides the fact that they are really cool people in real life, DreamHost provides unparalleled features and service for the price. Example: they just TRIPLED my disk space and bandwidth. Same price.

PHP, MySQL, one-click blog installation, secure server, WebDAV, counters, Jabber, merchant services, and lots more (plus: humor). They also offer a referral program that has helped me pay for my Web hosting by taking a cut of your fees. So, please use this link to sign up.

It'd be a whole lot cooler if you did.

In Dreamweaver:

• Behaviors apply to elements such as links or images
• Window > Behaviors - Show Pop-up menu
• Always use the alt attribute in dialogs
• About the target attribute
• Template updating process:
  1. Create new template or save page as template
  2. Modify template, save
  3. Yes to update template instances
  4. Save any open template instance
  5. Preview template instance
• Think of template as your digital type-stamp. You'll still need to update/save/put your stamped copy

Regarding maintenance:

• Resizing images - use Fireworks, or skip the whole process and use ImageMagick on the server
• See Gallery.menalto.com

Regarding Flash:

• Flash decompiler for Mac

Regarding Design:

• Page-reload flash issue - be careful, some users may expect it

Homework:

Create and publish a site design with two or more JavaScript Behaviors in it using Dreamweaver. Email URL to the class list.

Next Week: How to Crash Dreamweaver!

In Dreamweaver:

• 10 Steps to Create a Site
  1. Start by drawing a page
  2. Begin Storyboarding (again, on paper)
  3. Decide on a layout that portrays that storyboard
  4. Freeze static elements of the design
  5. Break the design into reusable modules
  6. Assign "editable regions" or areas that will change from page instance to page instance
  7. Either create a Template in DW or use includes for the reusable elements
  8. Create the rest of the page instances
  9. Test publish to staging server
  10. Final publish to live site
• Back up your site by creating a duplicate site and putting to another local folder
• Check 'Put dependent files' to just back up a few files and their associated images, etc
• Insert > Media > Image Viewer
• Insert > Media > Flash Text
• Insert > Media > Flash Button
• The Flash Video Kit
  • Example 1: Surfing
  • Example 2: Snowboarding
• Anatomy of a Bug
  • Subject
  • Platform
  • Description
  • Steps
  • Actual Results
  • Expected Results

In Code:

• The Power of phpinfo()

Homework:

Follow the steps above to create a new site from scratch. Before you begin, take a look at some free Flash to incorporate into your design:

• Google Search for "Free Flash swf"

Final site should have the following characteristics:

• Original and different from your previous designs
• More than two pages of complete content
• Some kind of Flash embedded in your design
• Published to your domain, URL sent to the class

Next week: Stump the Master!

In Dreamweaver:

• Insert > HTML > Script Objects > Server-Side include
• The Power of the Server-Side include
• The Power of the Application panel (i.e. Build a Blog with Dreamweaver)
• Insert > Application Objects > Recordset
• Multiple Repeat Regions in the Same Page
• Insert > Application Objects > Master Detail Page Set
• PHP include syntax

On the Mac:

• The Importance of Tiger
• Running PHP
• Running MySQL

Regarding Design:

• Designing for Video
• RSS Tool: Newsfire
• PHP is FREE
• Designing for Mobile
• Designing for Ads
• Recycling Designs

Homework:

1. Set up a sub-domain as a PHP testing server
2. Set up your machine to run the latest PHP
3. Set up your machine to run MySQL
4. Draw a design flexible enough to incorporate an unknown amount of data.
5. Access student database via Application panel
6. Create a repeating region from the database, and place it in your design.
7. Prototype using Live Preview button.
8. Save to server, send URL.

Next Week: How to Create Flash With Dreamweaver!

Our answer: Show/Hide layers in Dreamweaver.

The result: No Origin - a voice for resistance. Listen to "The Draft".

In Dreamweaver:

• CSS - postition: absolute
• Really undoing html.css
• Overriding via !important
• Linking vs. embedding CSS
• Name your layers
• Virtual includes
• Application servers and .htaccess

On the Mac:

• xScope

Regarding Design:

• Two modes of design: Prototyping, Deconstructing
• Lipsum.org
• Prototyping technique: design in graphics tool, then try to reproduce in HTML and CSS

Homework:

1. Draw a design on paper, or use another design tool to prototype it first.
2. Layout your design using tables and/or layers
3. Extract all CSS to another file (use File > Export)
4. Carve up your design into reusable elements. Break these elements out into separate files.
5. Re-include these elements into your files using virtual includes:
   <!--#include virtual="/[foldername]/[filename]" -->
6. If possible, put the resulting code to your server.
7. Email your page URLs (and if necessary, the elements) to the group.

Next week: Using Application Servers!