Tables, Attributes, and Document Types

I had an odd problem in HTML yesterday. In adding a column to a table, I found that I could not set the column widths. Things looked fine in Dreamweaver 8 but in IE 6 and Firefox 2 the specified widths were being ignored. After trying a variety of things in Dreamweaver I brought the code over to Visual Studio 2005, to see if it rendered the table like Dreamweaver or the browsers. It rendered the table like Dreamweaver. I play around with the column widths a bit in VS 2005 and then formatted the code (I like how VS 2005 formats code), then brought it back to Dreamweaver. When I previewed the code again it worked! I scanned it quickly to see what had changed. I saw that it was no longer using the width attribute, VS 2005 had changed it to the style attribute with the width property. After a quick test I confirmed that once I manipulated the table columns in VS 2005, it re-wrote the tags.

The width attribute for the IS valid for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, so it validates (that’s the default document type in Dreamweaver), even though IE and Firefox have intermittent problems dealing with the attribute.

Funny thing about Dreamweaver, the width attribute is NOT valid for XHTML 1.0 Strict nor is it valid for XHTML 1.1, yet if you create a table in a document set to one of those types, Dreamweaver still sticks in the width attribute when you resize the columns. When you run the validator, you are shown the table you inserted is using outdated attributes. VS 2005 will underline outdated attributes and show a tooltip explaining why. I’m surprised Dreamweaver doesn’t do that, but more surprised that it inserts code that won't validate.

Overflow

The overflow property is a neat feature of CSS2 I just started playing with. The default for overflow is "visible", meaning any content inside a div that goes outside the div boundaries is shown. For example, if the text runs long in a div, the text will still be shown in the browser. By setting overflow to "hidden" you can use the parent div tag to mask the contents, so text that runs long is clipped. This approach might feel more natural to a designer coming from the page layout world of Quark and InDesign.

The feature becomes more interesting when you are using more than text in the div. If you have other content, it will act like a mask clipping the content, which is not something you could do with a page layout program's text box. Take a look at the W3 site example here.

Sizing Flash

Sometimes you'll see Flash movies which fill the entire browser window. If you make the window larger or smaller, the Flash movie scales proportionately. Even though I use this feature, I always forget where you set it. For the record, it is set on the HTML tab when you chose File>Publish Settings... Set the Dimensions field to Percent and the Width and Height fields to 100 percent.

Captivate Preloader

I've been working with Captivate 2.0 lately and I must say its best feature over 1.0 is stability. 1.0 crashed frequently and 2.0 seems quite stable. I wish more software companies would realize that stability is the #1 feature.

While working with a simple movie, essentially two slides. I was encountering some odd behavior occurred intermittently. The movie had an image and clickbox on the first slide. The clickbox would initiate the change to the second slide. The second slide had a picture and a large audio file. For some users, clicking the box would result in the SWF going momentarily blank before showing the second slide and then playing the sound. Sometimes it would not play the sound.

I tried a variety of techniques to improve the playback, to no avail. While investigating the problem, I noticed that it seemed like it was caused by the SWF not entirely loading and the user clicking before it did. I noticed that it seemed like the preloader was consistently loading 60% of the movie before displaying the first slide. I must have looked at every preference in Captivate three times. For the project, for the slides, and any place else I could find. Nowhere could I find a setting. Finally, I exported the Captivate to Flash 8 and started looking through the code. I couldn't find a setting there which determined the amount loaded. Finally, I found the .FLA of the DefaultPreloader.swf that Captivate used. In there was the problem. The number 60 was hardcoded into the code! Hard to believe but true. How many computer science teachers and books talk about avoiding such things yet here it was in a commercial project and cost me hours of time tracking down.

My #2 feature for software companies to implement... documentation.

Illustrator CS3 Enhancements

Now that I got the rant out of my system, I've got to say that the Adobe Illustrator Color Guide panel (?) is really cool. It is one of those features that make you slap your head and wonder why someone didn't think of it 10 years ago!

The editing of groups is very Flash-like now also. You can even name groups. Of course, if you duplicate a group, it is still a duplicate. Illustrator has had symbols for years, I think they are even easier to work with now, especially for the Flash artist. Now you can even specify the symbol to be a movieclip or a graphic. The distinction seems to be meaningless in Illustrator, put there for the purposes of allowing you to better prepare the artwork for import into Flash. F8 is even mapped to the New Symbol command.

A small touch that I like is the ability to specify larger anchor points and control handles. You only get to chose from 3 sizes, but that is 2 more than before. I never thought I'd like larger control handles but recently I felt like the current ones were getting smaller. :)

Adobe CS3 Rant

I try to stay positive with my blog, this is really my first big rant. But I had such a bad experience, I had to blog it.

I had been looking forward to the Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3) upgrade for a month (or more). When the Design Premium version finally arrived, I excitedly tried to install it. After going through the entire install routine (between one to two hours), it failed. I tried again, and again it failed at the end. The next night I searched the web for solutions, called Adobe and tried two more times, both failing. The next day I called Adobe again and this time they finally knew what the problem (and solution) was, which is here. So it took five installs which cost me two and a half evenings (not to mention stress).

I've used Adobe products since early 1987. I'm very disappointed with this experience. If you read the tech note I linked to, you'll see that the problem was the Flash 8 Player! How does a problem like this make it through QA? Adobe used to have very good QA. The Macromedia acquisition may be having a bad effect on Adobe.

While I'm ranting... what is the deal with the user interface for the CS3 line of products? While the new features are GREAT, the new UI is cumbersome! Who designed that and thinks it is a good idea? What a waste of screen space. Apparently someone who does not use the products to make a living and has a very large monitor (or two). I've had to spend time creating workspaces that somewhat resemble in function the CS2 and earlier functionality. The Flash CS3 workspace does not bother to remember the location/orientation of the timeline, nor does it remember how much you were zoomed into the stage.

And did someone actually get paid for this branding? It is like a bad (almost generic) version of the Macromedia branding for their products. Colored squares for the program icons. For Illustrator's splash page, it is just an orange box. No more Venus, or even flowers.

One last rant... I'd hoped that they'd improved the Flash to Illustrator conversion. They improved the Illustrator to Flash but it looks like they did NOTHING going the other way, from Flash to Illustrator. As I've posted in the past, I now love doing some types of illustrating in Flash. For creative vector drawing, Flash blows away Illustrator. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't live without Illustrator for most types of graphic illustration. It is a shame Adobe didn't see fit to focus on this aspect of the product line integration.

Well, looking on the bright side, at least these problems are not to the magnitude of the Illustrator 6 to 7 upgrade. Now that was a nightmare! I don't even want to think about it anymore (shudder).

InDesign

I attended an InDesign seminar today. It was put on by NAPP and taught by Taz Tally. It was very well done. I was thinking about the favorite things I learned today and in keeping with my previous post of the little (but important) things, I'll post a couple little things which make a big difference.

• In the Preferences>Type, you can set a preference for text to be linked with Create Links When Placing Text and Spreadsheet Files. For someone who has written programming books, I can tell you this is huge.


• Again in Preferences>Type, the Text Only setting when pasting text.


• Using the Story Editor to view and edit just the text in a text box. It even shows you which text is overflowing. What a nice feature to be able to focus on the text when you need to.


• Under Windows>Output select the Separations Preview. Very cool.


• Under New Paragraph Styles>Drop Caps and Nested Styles check out the Nested Styles.


• The Table>Convert Text to Table... feature. Just select some delimited text and apply it and you have a table.

It was a great seminar at a very reasonable price ($79 for NAPP members). I was surprised at the number of people that showed up (450-500). The workbook was followed pretty closely, so it will be a useful reference/reminder for what was covered.

When I was an instructor at Sun, I suggested more than once that the 5-day classes were too expensive and too much of a time time commitment for a majority of potential students. Given the enormous turnout for this seminar, I think my feelings are justified. Not only was it only one day, but it had no labs. He just delivered the information (no questions during the lecture either). That lecture only could have been a negative but it was very efficient and I think made effective by the high quality of the workbook. I've been review the book and my notes this evening and trying out some of the material demonstrated. I plan to attend the next seminar NAPP puts on in Denver.