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	<title>Musings of a code slave &#187; CSS</title>
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		<title>My verdict on Dreamweaver CS6</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2012/04/23/my-verdict-on-dreamweaver-cs6/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2012/04/23/my-verdict-on-dreamweaver-cs6/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:05:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AJAX/JavaScript]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dreamweaver]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=327</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Adobe has officially announced details of Creative Suite 6 (CS6) and the Creative Cloud. What&#8217;s particularly significant about this release is that it represents the last chance to skip one or two versions and still benefit from reduced upgrade pricing. &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2012/04/23/my-verdict-on-dreamweaver-cs6/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Adobe has officially announced details of Creative Suite 6 (CS6) and the Creative Cloud. What&#8217;s particularly significant about this release is that it represents the last chance to skip one or two versions and still benefit from reduced upgrade pricing. Owners of <ins datetime="2012-04-24T09:45:50+00:00">CS3,</ins> CS4, CS5, and CS5.5 have until the end of December to upgrade to CS6. After that cut-off point, upgrade pricing will be available only to owners of the immediately preceding version. In other words, to upgrade to CS7 you&#8217;ll need to pay full price if you don&#8217;t own CS6.</p>
<p>Alternatively, you&#8217;ll have to switch to the Creative Cloud subscription service. The Creative Cloud has been very attractively priced, and it holds out the prospect of early updates and some nice bonus extras, such as Typekit fonts, but it has the disadvantage that once you stop paying, you can no longer use the software. I&#8217;ll leave it up to you to weigh up the pros and cons of the Creative Cloud. In this post, I&#8217;m going to concentrate on what&#8217;s new in Dreamweaver CS6 and what I think of it.</p>
<p>If I were to sum up this new version in a single word, I think that &#8220;evolutionary&#8221; is the most appropriate. The main focus is on CSS improvements, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#fontmanage">Web font management</a></li>
<li><a href="#csstrans">CSS transitions</a></li>
<li><a href="#multiclass">Multiple classes</a></li>
<li><a href="#fluidgrid">Fluid Grid Layout</a></li>
<li><a href="#jqmtheme">jQuery Mobile theming</a></li>
</ul>
<p>The other main features are a complete overhaul of <a href="#dwftp">Dreamweaver&#8217;s FTP client</a>, and <a href="#pgbuild">integration with PhoneGap Build</a>.</p>
<h3>Video Training Courses</h3>
<p>I have recorded two video training courses about Dreamweaver CS6. The first one is a New Features Workshop, which contains more than three hours of videos showing how to use all these new features. It should be available from <a href="http://www.video2brain.com/en/">video2brain</a> later this week. The other video course is an in-depth treatment of web design and development with Dreamweaver CS6, aimed mainly at beginners and intermediate users. It will be published jointly by Adobe Press and video2brain sometime later. I&#8217;ll post more details when they&#8217;re available.</p>
<h3 id="fontmanage">Web Font Management</h3>
<p>The new Web Fonts Manager in Dreamweaver CS6 installs web fonts into your personal configuration folder, making them available in all your Dreamweaver sites. Installing a font is very simple. You just launch the Web Fonts Manager from the Modify menu, and click Add Font. In the dialog box that appears, click the folder icon to the right of one of the font fields, and select the font. Dreamweaver detects all formats of the font in the same folder, and automatically fills in all the remaining fields, as shown in the following screen shot.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" title="Adding a web font in Dreamweaver CS6" src="/images/webfont.jpg" alt="Add Web Font dialog box" width="465" height="278" /></p>
<p>Installing a web font makes it available in Dreamweaver&#8217;s code hints and dialog boxes. You can also build custom font stacks that incorporate fonts that you have installed. When you select a web font in the CSS Styles panel or CSS Rule Definition dialog box, Dreamweaver copies the font files to a new folder in your site root, and creates a style sheet with the necessary <code>@font-face rule</code>. Web fonts aren&#8217;t rendered in Design view, but they&#8217;re fully supported in Live view.</p>
<p>My only reservation about the way that Dreamweaver handles web fonts is that it uses a separate style sheet for each <code>@font-face</code> rule. However, it&#8217;s easy enough to cut and paste the rules into the top of your main style sheet.</p>
<h3 id="csstrans">CSS Transitions</h3>
<p>Dreamweaver CS6 makes it easy to create CSS transitions—simple animations that smooth the transition from one state to another, for example if you scale up an image when hovering over it. The quickest and simplest way is to use the new CSS Transitions panel, which creates both the transition properties and the styles for the end state in a single operation. The CSS Rule Definition dialog box supports the creation of more complex transitions, such as those triggered on a nested element. Both methods generate not only the standard properties, but also browser-specific prefixed versions. This is a great time-saver because you need browser-specific prefixes for Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and WebKit-based browsers.</p>
<p>I like this feature a lot, but it seems odd that you need to use the CSS Rule Definition dialog box to create more advanced transitions. In my experience, advanced users rarely touch that dialog box. However, if a style rule already exists, you can just click the Edit Rule icon in the CSS Styles panel without having to go through the hassle of the New CSS Rule dialog box.</p>
<h3 id="multiclass">Multiple Classes</h3>
<p>This is something that Dreamweaver users have been demanding for a long time—the ability to apply multiple classes to an element. Hallelujah, Adobe has finally listened. Just select the element in the Document window, and choose Apply Multiple Classes from the Class menu in the Property inspector to open the Multiclass Selection dialog box. This presents you with a list of all classes in your site, as shown in the following screen shot.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" title="Use this dialog box to apply multiple classes to an element" src="/images/multiclass.jpg" alt="Multiclass Selection dialog box" width="377" height="411" /></p>
<p>Select the check box alongside each class that you want to apply to the element. If you haven&#8217;t already defined the class, you can add it to the space-separated list in the field at the bottom of the dialog box. A long overdue, but nevertheless very welcome improvement.</p>
<h3 id="fluidgrid">Fluid Grid Layout</h3>
<p>This should be the star attraction of Dreamweaver CS6. In some respects, it&#8217;s stunning, but it feels like a work in progress rather than a polished feature. Inspired by Ethan Marcotte&#8217;s <cite>Responsive Web Design</cite>, this feature allows you to specify three fluid grids for mobile, tablet, and desktop layout. Each grid can have 2–24 columns, and you can specify how wide the grid should spread across the screen, as shown in the following screen shot.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" title="This is where you specify the grid size" src="/images/fluidgrid.jpg" alt="New Fluid Grid Layout dialog" width="609" height="264" /></p>
<p>You then add fluid grid layout div elements to build the structure of your page in the mobile layout. Next comes the brilliant part—you can resize the elements and snap them to the grid, and move elements to sit alongside each other. All this is done in Design view or Live view, and Dreamweaver automatically calculates the width of elements and margins to four decimal places. The CSS uses percentage widths and floats, so it produces layouts that adapt to any screen size. It&#8217;s most definitely not a throwback to the bad old days of Dreamweaver&#8217;s Layout mode. The styles are constructed on the basis of &#8220;mobile first&#8221;, and work even in browsers that don&#8217;t understand media queries.</p>
<p>Where the Fluid Grid Layout feature falls down is in Dreamweaver&#8217;s inability to indicate which media query controls a particular style rule. Another problem is that it doesn&#8217;t support nesting elements to create more complex layouts. It&#8217;s to be hoped that these shortcomings will be addressed in an updater. One of the ideas behind the Creative Cloud subscription setup is that new features or improvements to existing ones can be added as soon as they&#8217;re ready without needing to wait for the next major release.</p>
<h3 id="jqmtheme">jQuery Mobile Theming</h3>
<p>The integrated version of jQuery Mobile in Dreamweaver CS6 has been updated to the 1.0 stable version (not 1.1). There&#8217;s also a new jQuery Mobile Swatches panel that&#8217;s designed to make it easy to change the look of individual elements (see screen shot).</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" title="Applying a new theme to a header" src="/images/jqmtheme.jpg" alt="jQuery Mobile Swatches panel" width="504" height="307" /></p>
<h3 id="dwftp">Multichannel FTP</h3>
<p>Let&#8217;s be honest. In the past, Dreamweaver&#8217;s FTP client was a dog. Not any more. It now supports multichannel transfers, and can even download at the same time as uploading. Orange arrows indicate items queued for transfer. When the transfer begins, the arrow turns green. And if you&#8217;re transferring a large item, hovering over the filename displays a tooltip of how much of the file has been transferred. With Dreamweaver CS5.5, it took more than 90 minutes to  upload a WordPress site on my internet connection. Now, it&#8217;s more than ten times faster.</p>
<p>The FTP error messages are also more meaningful. No one is likely to buy Dreamweaver CS6 for its FTP client alone, but this is a major improvement to the program.</p>
<h3 id="pgbuild">PhoneGap Build Integration</h3>
<p>The way that Dreamweaver CS6 supports building native apps for iOS, Android, and other mobile operating systems using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and <a href="http://phonegap.com/">the PhoneGap framework</a> has changed completely. It no longer installs the Android software development kit (SDK) and emulator. Nor can the Mac version hook directly into Xcode and the iOS simulator. Instead, there&#8217;s a new panel that uploads your files to <a href="https://build.phonegap.com/">PhoneGap Build</a>, an online service that automatically packages applications for iOS, Android, webOS, Symbian, and BlackBerry. Using PhoneGap Build is much easier than working with a simulator, because the Dreamweaver panel displays a QR code that lets you load the app directly onto your testing device. However, you need to build the configuration file manually in XML, and there&#8217;s no longer any code hinting in Dreamweaver for PhoneGap plugins. So, although the integration of PhoneGap Build is a definite improvement, it feels as though the engineering team didn&#8217;t have time to polish some important details.</p>
<p>You can now build an app for iOS on either Mac or Windows, but in order to compile it, you need to create a valid signing key and upload it to PhoneGap Build. The signing key must be created on a Mac. You also need to register with Apple as an iOS developer and pay an annual fee.</p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>I like the new features in Dreamweaver CS6, but I have to admit that they don&#8217;t have me jumping up and down with excitement. Maybe that&#8217;s because I felt CS5 and CS5.5 were such strong releases, and I was hoping for a similar performance this time. The Fluid Grid Layout and PhoneGap Build features had the potential to be outstanding, but fell slightly short of the mark. As a result, I&#8217;d give Dreamweaver CS6 only 7 or 8 out of 10. It&#8217;s good, but it could have been so much better.</p>
<p>In fairness to the Adobe engineering team, I understand that a huge amount of work was devoted to solving the long-standing problems with FTP and to converting the Mac version of Dreamweaver to run on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_%28API%29">Cocoa</a>, the native application programming interface (API) for Mac OS X. The conversion to Cocoa should result in a more stable experience on a Mac, combined with the knowledge that Dreamweaver CS6 won&#8217;t suddenly stop working when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_%28API%29">Carbon</a> is deprecated in Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion). However, the conversion work means that less time was available to develop or polish other features.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve long felt that the idea of releasing more than a dozen complex programs according to a rigid timetable was impracticable. Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks effectively sat out of the last upgrade cycle, which gave them 24 months to prepare for CS6. Dreamweaver hasn&#8217;t had that luxury. As a result, the Fluid Grid Layout and PhoneGap Build integration have some rough edges that could probably have been eliminated with more time. The message that I keep hearing from my contacts in Adobe is that moving to the Creative Cloud subscription model means that new features and improvements to individual programs can be released as soon as they&#8217;re ready. The problem is that to benefit from the updates, you need to switch to the subscription model. Anyone buying a perpetual licence will have to wait for the next full version to get the new features.</p>
<p>Getting new features as soon as they&#8217;re ready makes a lot of sense in the light of the speed at which the web is changing. What&#8217;s far from clear is how successful Adobe will be in persuading Creative Suite users to switch to the subscription model. It&#8217;s a big gamble for Adobe.</p>
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		<slash:comments>27</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>PhoneGap update for Dreamweaver CS5.5</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2012/03/28/phonegap-update-for-dreamweaver-cs5-5/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2012/03/28/phonegap-update-for-dreamweaver-cs5-5/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:49:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AJAX/JavaScript]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dreamweaver]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=312</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Adobe has just released an extension for Dreamweaver CS5.5 that radically changes the way you create native apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with the PhoneGap framework. Instead of using a local emulator for Android and iOS, it uploads your &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2012/03/28/phonegap-update-for-dreamweaver-cs5-5/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><del datetime="2012-04-04T15:21:46+00:00">Adobe has just released an extension for Dreamweaver CS5.5 that radically changes the way you create native apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with the <a href="http://phonegap.com/">PhoneGap framework</a>. Instead of using a local emulator for Android and iOS, it uploads your files to <a href="http://build.phonegap.com/">PhoneGap Build</a>, an online service that automatically builds an app file for Android, iOS, webOS, Symbian, and Blackberry.</del></p>
<p><del datetime="2012-04-04T15:21:46+00:00"><del>I haven&#8217;t had time to test the new extension in Dreamweaver CS5.5, but I have used PhoneGap Build on many occasions. It&#8217;s simple to use and seems to be very reliable.</del></del></p>
<p><del datetime="2012-04-04T15:21:46+00:00">You can grab hold of the PhoneGap Build extension for Dreamweaver CS5.5 and read <a href="http://helpx.adobe.com/dreamweaver/using/packaging-web-apps.html">how to use it</a> on the Adobe website. To use the extension, you need to create an account on the  <a href="https://build.phonegap.com/">PhoneGap Build site</a>. A basic account is free, but if you&#8217;re a serious developer, you&#8217;ll need to choose one of the paid-for accounts.</del></p>
<p><del datetime="2012-04-04T15:21:46+00:00">Note that the extension works <em>only</em> with Dreamweaver CS5.5. It won&#8217;t work with earlier versions of Dreamweaver.</del></p>
<p><ins datetime="2012-04-04T15:06:05+00:00">[Update: 4 April 2012] Adobe has withdrawn the extension for &#8220;technical reasons&#8221;. From what I understand, there should be no problem using the extension if you have already installed it. As the Adobe blog says, &#8220;The functionality of the extension, which integrates PhoneGap Build with Dreamweaver, will be available in the upcoming version of Dreamweaver CS6.&#8221; Adobe has started releasing sneak previews of various CS6 features, as well as announcing that <a title="Adobe FAQ on upgrade offer" href="http://store.adobe.com/store/en_us/popup/offer/cs55_cs6_faq.html">anyone buying CS5.5 now will qualify for a free upgrade</a>. So, it can be safely assumed that CS6 is getting very close.</ins></p>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Great training resource for web designers and digital artists</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/12/21/great-training-resource-for-web-designers-and-digital-artists/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/12/21/great-training-resource-for-web-designers-and-digital-artists/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:32:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AJAX/JavaScript]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PHP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=282</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m a great fan of learning from books—that&#8217;s why I written so many. But there are times when a book just won&#8217;t do. Seeing and hearing an expert show you how to do something often has much more impact. Several &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/12/21/great-training-resource-for-web-designers-and-digital-artists/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m a great fan of learning from books—that&#8217;s why I written so many. But there are times when a book just won&#8217;t do. Seeing and hearing an expert show you how to do something often has much more impact. Several months ago, I took the plunge into making <a href="http://foundationphp.com/cs55lbv/index.php">a video course about HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript</a>; and I&#8217;ve just finished recording a PHP course for beginners (it&#8217;s due out in the second half of January 2012). I recorded both courses for <a href="http://video2brain.com/en/">video2brain</a>, which has recently launched <a href="http://www.video2brain.com/en/subscriptions-promo?aid=263">a subscription service</a>.</p>
<p>Never heard of video2brain? It&#8217;s an Austrian company that has been providing video training in German, French, and Spanish for the past decade. It started creating courses in English in 2009, and now has more than 500 hours of English-language instruction on Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and many other aspects of digital media. The videos have been created by some of the top names in their fields, including Rufus Deuchler, Tom Green, Angie Taylor, Todd Kopriva—not to mention me. The company has also created a large number of videos for Peachpit, one of the best known names in computer technology publishing. So, it&#8217;s no fly-by-night company.</p>
<p>As a video2brain author, I&#8217;m able to offer <a href="http://www.video2brain.com/en/subscriptions-promo?aid=263">a substantial discount</a> on the already competitive prices for the new subscription service. There are three levels of subscription:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Standard</strong>—$129 a year or $12.99 a month (normally $149/$14.99). This gives you unlimited access to all English courses streamed online.</li>
<li><strong>Gold</strong>—$179 a year or $17.99 a month (normally $199/$19.99). In addition to the courses, you also get access to all project files and PDF books.</li>
<li><strong>Platinum</strong>—$279 a year (normally $299). In addition to the the project files and PDF books, you can download the courses to view them offline.</li>
</ul>
<p>Students and teachers can purchase the academic version of the standard subscription for $99 a year.</p>
<p>If you subscribe during the introductory period, video2brain says it will lock the subscription price for three years. And as the collection of courses grows, you&#8217;ll get immediate access to all new titles. It&#8217;s planned to add at least four new courses each month. So, if you&#8217;re looking to brush up your digital skills and keep abreast of the latest developments, you can do so for as little as 35 cents a day. Many of the courses have sample videos that you can view free of charge, so you can judge the quality for yourself before committing your hard-earned cash.</p>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>An odd turn-up for the book</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/10/18/an-odd-turn-up-for-the-book/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/10/18/an-odd-turn-up-for-the-book/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:57:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AJAX/JavaScript]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dreamweaver]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=262</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday, I received an invitation to review a new book about Dreamweaver. Nothing terribly remarkable about that. After all, I&#8217;m well known in the Dreamweaver community and I recently published a review of Peter Gasston&#8217;s excellent The Book of CSS3. &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/10/18/an-odd-turn-up-for-the-book/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yesterday, I received an invitation to review a new book about <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/">Dreamweaver</a>. Nothing terribly remarkable about that. After all, I&#8217;m well known in the Dreamweaver community and I recently published a <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/08/23/book-review-the-book-of-css3-by-peter-gasston/">review of Peter Gasston&#8217;s excellent <cite>The Book of CSS3</cite></a>. What took me back was the title of the book I was being asked to review: <cite>Dreamweaver CS5.5 Mobile and Web Development with HTML5, CSS3, and jQuery</cite>. It&#8217;s almost word-for-word the same as the title of the book I published in June: <a href="/dwmobile/"><cite>Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 Studio Techniques: Designing and Developing for Mobile with jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3</cite></a>.</p>
<p>The invitation to review the rival book came from the marketing department of <a href="http://www.packtpub.com/">Packt</a>, the company that published it. I sent a polite reply saying that I didn&#8217;t think it would be appropriate for me to review a book that had an almost identical title to mine. I thought that would be the end of it. However, I received an email from Packt saying they knew I had written a book with an identical title, and that&#8217;s why I would be the perfect person to write an honest review.</p>
<p>At first I wasn&#8217;t sure whether to be flattered or horrified. It&#8217;s nice to think that I have such a great reputation for fairness that I would write a glowing review of a book that&#8217;s in direct competition with mine. Of course, there&#8217;s always the temptation to savage the book in public, but I would never want to do that to a fellow author. I know how much a bad review hurts. Since my book was published three months earlier (and was available even before that as Rough Cuts in the <a href="http://my.safaribooksonline.com/">Safari Online Library</a>), Packt can have no excuse for not knowing the title of its rival book was almost identical. I&#8217;ve no idea if the title was chosen as a deliberate spoiler, but asking me to review Packt&#8217;s book is rather like asking Coca Cola to endorse Pepsi&#8217;s latest offering.</p>
<p>I haven&#8217;t read the Packt book, which is written by David Karlins, an established and respected author. What I have read is David&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-from-the-author/forum/Fx3IZO2UFJY7FCI/Tx28LXNLE6NW2B1/1/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;cdMsgNo=1&amp;asin=1849691584&amp;cdSort=oldest&amp;cdMsgID=Mx24YLZWJI6796Q#Mx24YLZWJI6796Q">&#8220;Thoughts from the author&#8221;</a> on Amazon.com. In it, he says you don&#8217;t need to know HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. In fact, you don&#8217;t even need to know what they are. That immediately tells me that our books take completely different approaches to the same subject. I think it&#8217;s a pity his new publisher has decided to muddy the waters with the confusing titles.</p>
<p>I firmly believe that to build a website, you need to have at least a basic understanding of the underlying technologies. Website development is becoming increasingly complex. Dreamweaver helps speed up development through dialog boxes, prepackaged widgets, and code hints; but if you rely solely on point-and-click or copy-and-paste techniques, you&#8217;ll remain severely limited in what you can achieve. My book is aimed at readers who aren&#8217;t afraid to dig into a bit of code. In fact, you&#8217;ll need to do so if you want to access features such as geolocation and web storage on mobile devices. I guide you through the code, explaining what it does so that you can adapt it to your own needs.</p>
<p>So, if you&#8217;re looking for a book on developing for mobile with Dreawmeaver CS5.5 with jQuery, HTML5, and CSS, make sure you choose the one that&#8217;s right for you. Don&#8217;t be confused by the titles. Oh, and as small bonus, my book is in full colour, even though it&#8217;s the same length and the same cover price ($39.99) as the one published by Packt.</p>
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		<slash:comments>10</slash:comments>
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		<title>Book Review: The Book of CSS3 by Peter Gasston</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/08/23/book-review-the-book-of-css3-by-peter-gasston/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/08/23/book-review-the-book-of-css3-by-peter-gasston/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:16:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=224</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Several months ago, I attended a fascinating talk on CSS3 by Peter Gasston at London Web. As one of the first people to ask a question during the Q&#38;A session at the end of Peter&#8217;s talk, I received a free &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/08/23/book-review-the-book-of-css3-by-peter-gasston/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Several months ago, I attended a fascinating talk on CSS3 by <a title="Follow Peter Gasston on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/#%21/stopsatgreen">Peter Gasston</a> at <a href="http://www.meetup.com/londonweb/">London Web</a>. As one of the first people to ask a question during the <abbr title="question and answer">Q&amp;A</abbr> session at the end of Peter&#8217;s talk, I received a free copy of his <cite>The Book of CSS3: A Developer&#8217;s Guide to the Future of Web Design</cite>. Unfortunately, my own manic schedule meant I had to put the book to the side for a while. But now I&#8217;ve managed to read it from cover to cover, I&#8217;d like to share my thoughts about it.</p>
<p>Let me say it right out: Peter has done a splendid job. The book is extremely well researched, and he obviously knows what he&#8217;s talking about. Having said that, the book&#8217;s subtitle (A Developer&#8217;s Guide to the Future of Web Design) very much sets the tone. If you&#8217;re looking for a quick guide on how to create CSS3 eye candy with rounded corners and drop shadows, this is not the book for you. Although Peter covers the relevant properties (<code>border-radius</code> and <code>box-shadow</code>), he takes a much more serious approach through an in-depth exploration of each new property, together with warnings about anomalies in different browsers. Because CSS3 is still evolving and browser makers are bringing out new versions at a breathtaking pace, you might think that Peter&#8217;s book will rapidly go out of date. Undoubtedly, some parts of it will; but many of the CSS3 modules that Peter covers are unlikely to change. Color is already a <abbr title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</abbr> recommendation. Selectors is a proposed recommendation; and Media Queries, Backgrounds and Borders, and Multi-column Layout are all candidate recommendations.  As a result, <cite>The Book of CSS3</cite> is a reference book that I&#8217;ll be keeping by my side for a considerable time to come.</p>
<p>Even the more experimental areas covered by the book are not really a problem, thanks to the decision by all mainstream browsers to adopt browser-specific prefixes (such as <code>-moz</code> for Firefox and <code>-webkit</code> for Safari and Chrome) until the specifications settle down. Unlike CSS2.1, you won&#8217;t need hacks to deal with quirky implementations in older browsers. Just use the browser-specific prefixes in combination with the standard properties. Older versions use the prefixed properties, and when the specification stabilizes, the most up-to-date version will use the standard ones (as long as you put the standard ones lower down in the cascade). Perhaps one exception is the Flexible Box (flexbox) Layout module. Just as the book was going to press, the W3C decided to completely rename the properties. Peter mentions this at the end of the chapter on flexbox layout, but the changes haven&#8217;t yet made it through to the browsers that support it (Firefox, Safari, and Chrome). However, they will presumably continue to support the old properties with the browser-specific prefixes. But until Internet Explorer supports flexbox (planned for IE 10), using this type of layout is of limited value anyway.</p>
<p>Although flexbox and other proposed layout systems don&#8217;t have much practical value at the moment, I found the chapters devoted to them among the most interesting in the book—mainly because they give me hope for the future. CSS layout has always been a minefield, but if browsers (and the W3C) continue the current rapid pace of development, the job of the web developer should become a lot easier. Or will it? One of the comments in the Q&amp;A session after Peter&#8217;s talk was that CSS was becoming more like a programming language. And it was obvious from the questioner&#8217;s tone that the thought of handling more code was unwelcome. But if you&#8217;re involved in designing websites and want to understand the direction in which CSS is moving, Peter Gasston&#8217;s book is an excellent place to start.</p>
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		<slash:comments>9</slash:comments>
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		<title>My book on Dreamweaver CS5.5 is now available online</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/05/05/my-book-on-dreamweaver-cs5-5-is-now-available-online/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/05/05/my-book-on-dreamweaver-cs5-5-is-now-available-online/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 05 May 2011 16:52:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AJAX/JavaScript]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dreamweaver]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=208</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[My new book, Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 Studio Techniques: Designing and Developing for Mobile with jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3, is now available as Rough Cuts in the Safari Online Library and Creative Edge. In spite of being published as Rough Cuts, &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/05/05/my-book-on-dreamweaver-cs5-5-is-now-available-online/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>My new book, <a href="/dwmobile/"><cite>Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 Studio Techniques: Designing and Developing for Mobile with jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3</cite></a>, is now available as Rough Cuts in the <a href="http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/web-development/mobile/9780132754910">Safari Online Library</a> and <a href="http://www.creativeedge.com/book/web-development/mobile/9780132754910">Creative Edge</a>. In spite of being published as Rough Cuts, it&#8217;s the complete book. The only differerence is that the text and screenshots haven&#8217;t been laid out in the way they will be in the final version, which is expected to be published on 10 June.</p>
<p>If you planning to develop sites for multiple platforms, you&#8217;ll learn about CSS media queries and how to use the new features in <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html">Dreamweaver CS5.5</a>, including setting up a site-wide media queries file. There&#8217;s a chapter on making sites available offline, and the download files contain a Dreamweaver extension that automatically builds a manifest file ready for editing. The chapters on <a href="http://jquerymobile.com/">jQuery Mobile</a> contain extensive analysis of custom data attributes that control the look and functionality of a jQuery Mobile site.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.w3conversions.com/about.html">Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis</a> (<a href="http://twitter.com/stefsull">@stefsull</a>) had a sneak preview of the book. Her verdict: &#8220;David&#8217;s clarity and ability to explain complex subjects clearly makes this a book not to be missed.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Taking Dreamweaver into the lions&#8217; den</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/04/12/taking-dreamweaver-into-the-lions-den/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/04/12/taking-dreamweaver-into-the-lions-den/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Apr 2011 11:02:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AJAX/JavaScript]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dreamweaver]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=200</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last night, the good folks at London Web Standards allowed me to take the floor for a five-minute &#8220;lightning talk&#8221; to demonstrate some of the new features of Dreamweaver CS5.5, which had been officially announced only 14 hours earlier. It &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/04/12/taking-dreamweaver-into-the-lions-den/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last night, the good folks at <a href="http://www.londonwebstandards.org/">London Web Standards</a> allowed me to take the floor for a five-minute &#8220;lightning talk&#8221; to demonstrate some of the new features of <a href="http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/whats-new-dwcs55.html">Dreamweaver CS5.5</a>, which had been officially announced only 14 hours earlier. It was a daunting task, because I know many professional web developers say they wouldn&#8217;t be seen dead using Dreamweaver. Moreover, everyone had come to hear <a href="http://rawkes.com/">Rob Hawkes</a> talk about developing online games with HTML5 and JavaScript, and <a href="http://seb.ly/">Seb Lee-Delisle</a> demonstrate his amazing JavaScript skills. They weren&#8217;t there to hear about a product they probably don&#8217;t use.</p>
<p>Things didn&#8217;t go quite to plan. I had lined up a series of quick demos to show off the way Dreamweaver handles media queries and the creation of rounded corners with the CSS3 border-radius property. Unfortunately, the connection to the projector switched the resolution on my laptop to something crazy like 640 x 480, making it impossible to see the full workspace and preventing me from accessing the document tabs to switch between the demo pages I had prepared. Since I had only a five-minute slot, I decided—perhaps foolishly—to soldier on rather than waste valuable time trying to find a resolution compatible with the projector.</p>
<p>What I did manage to demonstrate was Dreamweaver CS5.5&#8242;s support for web fonts, creating and adjusting CSS3 drop shadows visually, jQuery code hinting, and PhoneGap integration. While demonstrating the support for web fonts, I was able to show how you can work in the underlying code and view the result in Live view without needing to save the document or round-trip to a browser.</p>
<p>I got the feeling that the audience remained sceptical about Dreamweaver, but they listened to what I had to say. And with plenty of questions, my original five minutes extended beyond ten. Matt Lucht has given a good <a href="http://mattlucht.com/blog/2011/4/11/london-web-standards-fun-games.html">summary of what I had to say</a> (together with comments about the main speakers). Matt makes the comment &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure what value it gave over say a browser plugin such as Firebug.&#8221; It&#8217;s a fair point. Dreamweaver is an IDE for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and other web-related languages, all of which are open standards. Therefore, there are plenty of authoring tools around—some free, others commercial.</p>
<p>What I think Dreamweaver has to offer is the way in which it brings the various web technologies together. I use Firebug and similar tools, such as the Web Inspector in Safari. They&#8217;re great, but you need to switch from your IDE and back to use them. Each time you switch is time wasted. Dreamweaver gives me most of the tools I need in a single workspace. Working recently with a jQuery Mobile project, I found Dreamweaver&#8217;s Live Code one of the most useful features. It lets you inspect the dynamically generated code inside the Document window, which is essential for dealing with pages generated through DOM manipulation. Yes, I can get the same information by right-clicking in Safari or Chrome and selecting Inspect Element, but it takes me longer to do so. Live Code also lets me inspect what&#8217;s happening in response to different events by highlighing all changes in a different colour.</p>
<p>Judging by comments from the audience and in conversation afterwards, there seem to be two main barriers to acceptance of Dreamweaver among professional web developers/designers. The main complaint is the price. I can&#8217;t do anything about that, although I have told Adobe on more than one occasion that I think the price differential—between what you pay in dollars in North America and what you pay in pounds or euros in Europe—is totally unjustifiable, particularly for a product that is delivered electronically. Adobe is not alone in charging a premium outside the USA, but it builds up resentment and damages sales. Still, buying software is a business expense. Business must be really bad if you can&#8217;t afford the tools for the job.</p>
<p>That brings me to the other main barrier—many web professionals don&#8217;t think Dreamweaver is the right tool for the job they&#8217;re doing. Maybe they&#8217;re right. Far be it from me to question how another person does his or her job. But several people in the audience admitted that they hadn&#8217;t used Dreamweaver for a long time. I have used it consistently since Dreamweaver 3 (about 11 years). The Dreamweaver of yesteryear is not the program it is today.</p>
<p>In 2001, the <a href="http://www.webstandards.org/">Web Standards Project</a> (WaSP), led at the time by such people as <a href="http://www.zeldman.com/">Jeffrey Zeldman</a>, formed <a href="http://www.webstandards.org/action/dwtf/">a task force to pressure Macromedia</a> (the original creators of Dreamweaver) to improve the standards compliance and accessibility of pages created with Dreamweaver. The initial result was the release of Dreamweaver MX 2004, which produced much cleaner code. It wasn&#8217;t perfect, but it was close. The main problem was Layout Mode, a <abbr title="What You See Is What You Get">WYSIWYG</abbr> tool that produced the most horrendous table-based spaghetti code. Another problem was the use of &#8220;layers&#8221;—absolutely positioned elements with inline styles. With the help of others, I privately lobbied Macromedia and then Adobe to get rid of Layout Mode. Partial success was achieved with the release of Dreamweaver CS3 in 2007, when access to Layout Mode was deliberately hidden. Then, in 2008, Layout Mode was finally killed off in Dreamweaver CS4. Layers also disappeared. You can still create absolutely positioned elements, but they no longer have inline styles.</p>
<p>The WaSP Adobe Task Force was wound up in 2009, but <a href="http://www.w3conversions.com/">Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis</a> still acts as WaSP Industry Evangelist to Adobe. I know from my participation in private Adobe forums that she gives the Dreamweaver engineering team a tough time, pressuring them constantly to improve standards. Dreamweaver certainly hasn&#8217;t stood still. It has full code hinting support for HTML5 and for CSS3 modules that have reached a reasonable degree of stability. Its support for PHP and JavaScript code introspection has greatly improved its usefulness to developers.</p>
<p>As I see it, Dreamweaver&#8217;s main problem is one of perception. It gained a reputation (deservedly so) for producing bad code and for being a WYSIWYG tool. The WYSIWYG image is completely wrong. Most Dreamweaver users that I know work in Split view with the code on the left of the screen, and a visual representation of the page in Design view on the right. If you&#8217;re working in Design view, you can keep an eye on the code that&#8217;s being generated. But it gets better if you switch into Live view, which renders the page using the WebKit browser engine. You can continue working in the code, and your changes are immediately reflected in Live view by pressing F5 or clicking the refresh icon. What&#8217;s more, the Related Files toolbar gives you access to all linked files in Code view. So, I can work in an external JavaScript file while keeping the web page visible on the right of the screen.</p>
<p>If you haven&#8217;t used Dreamweaver for a long time, give it a try when CS5.5 is released in May. There will be a 30-day free trial. As long as you&#8217;re willing to explore its features, I think you might find there&#8217;s a lot to like. If it doesn&#8217;t match your needs, fine. But at least I hope you&#8217;ll get the chance to see that it&#8217;s not Dreamweaver that produces bad code. It&#8217;s bad designers/developers who do.</p>
<p>(Disclosure: I&#8217;m not an Adobe employee, but I am an <a href="http://www.adobe.com/communities/professionals/faq.html">Adobe Community Professional</a>, a sort of unpaid evangelist for Dreamweaver. I write books about Dreamweaver and answer questions in the Dreamweaver Help pages. I also teach Dreamweaver and write books about PHP.)</p>
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		<title>My Next Book: Dreamweaver CS5.5 for Mobile</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/04/11/my-next-book-dreamweaver-cs5-5-for-mobile/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/04/11/my-next-book-dreamweaver-cs5-5-for-mobile/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Apr 2011 04:30:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dreamweaver]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=194</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been burning the midnight oil since the beginning of this year, working on my next book—Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 for Mobile with jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3: Studio Techniques. The book is now complete, and is scheduled to go live on &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/04/11/my-next-book-dreamweaver-cs5-5-for-mobile/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve been burning the midnight oil since the beginning of this year, working on my next book—<cite>Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 for Mobile with jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3: Studio Techniques</cite>. The book is now complete, and is scheduled to go live on Safari Online Library and Creative Edge as soon as Dreamweaver CS5.5 is released (the actual date has not yet been made public). The printed book—published by Adobe Press—should be available in early June.</p>
<p>The book guides you through the main new features in Dreamweaver CS5.5 with the help of three case studies. The first one centers on redesigning a website for display on desktops, tablets, and smartphones using HTML5, CSS3, and media queries. The second takes a cut-down version of the same site, and builds a dedicated mobile version using jQuery Mobile, a sophisticated JavaScript and CSS framework designed to work consistently in all major mobile platforms. The final case study uses Dreamweaver CS5.5&#8242;s PhoneGap integration to develop a simple app that stores information in a database, accesses a mobile phone’s GPS sensor, and displays a map.</p>
<p>More details later.</p>
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		<title>Dreamweaver CS5.5—More Than a Point Release</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/04/11/dreamweaver-cs5-5more-than-a-point-release/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/04/11/dreamweaver-cs5-5more-than-a-point-release/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Apr 2011 04:20:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dreamweaver]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=190</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Finally, I can reveal details of the version of Dreamweaver that I&#8217;ve been experimenting with for the past few months. Officially, it&#8217;s called Dreamweaver CS5.5, which makes it sound as though it has a couple of extra features, but not &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2011/04/11/dreamweaver-cs5-5more-than-a-point-release/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Finally, I can reveal details of the version of Dreamweaver that I&#8217;ve been experimenting with for the past few months. Officially, it&#8217;s called Dreamweaver CS5.5, which makes it sound as though it has a couple of extra features, but not quite enough to justify calling it Dreamweaver CS6. Nothing could be further from the truth.</p>
<p>This is a major upgrade. Here&#8217;s what it contains:</p>
<ul>
<li>Full support for jQuery Mobile, including more than a dozen jQuery Mobile widgets.</li>
<li>PhoneGap integration to create native apps for Android and iOS using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.</li>
<li>Code hinting for jQuery.</li>
<li>New tools for creating CSS3 rounded corners and drop shadows.</li>
<li>Support for web fonts.</li>
<li>Full support for all CSS3 selectors.</li>
<li>The ability to see what pages will look like at different screen resolutions without leaving the Document window.</li>
<li>Support for FTPS.</li>
</ul>
<p>The emphasis in this new version is firmly on  development for multiple screen resolutions and for mobile devices. The New Document dialog box contains starter pages for jQuery Mobile that enable you to build in minutes a simple web application that works consistently in all major mobile platforms. All you need to do is to replace the placeholder text with content of your own. Of course, to create more than just a boilerplate application, you need to do your own coding. But Dreamweaver CS5.5 has full code hinting for both jQuery core and jQuery Mobile, speeding up the development process.</p>
<p>The PhoneGap integration is particularly impressive. At the moment, Dreamweaver supports the development of native apps only for Android and iOS, but there are plans to expand this later to other mobile operating systems. Developing for iOS requires Mac OS X 10.6, but Android is supported on both the Windows and Mac versions of Dreamweaver. If don&#8217;t already have the Android SDK (software development kit) installed, Dreamweaver does it for you with just a single click. Having gone through the pain of the manual installation process on both Windows and Mac, I can honestly say that Dreamweaver&#8217;s automated installation is a real godsend. After developing your web app with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Dreamweaver runs PhoneGap to build the native version and installs it into a simulator.</p>
<p>Smaller, but nonetheless important enhancements that I particularly like are the tools for creating image-less drop shadows and rounded corners with CSS3. Using them in combination with Live view lets you see the effect of your style definition immediately. No constant toing and froing between the style sheet and a browser. Dreamweaver also now has support for rgba() and hsla() colour formats, simplifying the addition of transparent effects to your web pages.</p>
<p>Is there anything not to like? Yes. Bringing out this new version only a year after CS5 and about eight months after the 11.0.3 updater means there are a few rough edges. For example, you need to be careful where your insertion point is when you add a jQuery Mobile widget. Normally, Dreamweaver recognizes if you&#8217;re inside a paragraph or other block element and either moves outside the element or splits it. However, with jQuery Mobile widgets, it just puts the new code wherever you happen to be. It&#8217;s more of a minor irritation than a major failing; but anyone who doesn&#8217;t understand the code that&#8217;s being created will end up with a complete mess.</p>
<p>Dreamweaver&#8217;s implementation of HTML5 also has some way to go. But then, so has HTML5 itself. There&#8217;s full code hinting for HTML5 elements and attributes, but there&#8217;s no easy way to insert HTML5 elements except through hand-coding in Code view.</p>
<p>In spite of the shortcomings, I&#8217;m really enjoying working with Dreamweaver CS5.5, and hate going back to earlier versions. I strongly recommend that you give it a try when it&#8217;s released. I think you&#8217;ll like it.</p>
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		<title>New extension to convert colours to RGBA</title>
		<link>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2010/04/30/new-extension-to-convert-colours-to-rgba/</link>
		<comments>http://foundationphp.com/blog/2010/04/30/new-extension-to-convert-colours-to-rgba/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:05:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David Powers</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dreamweaver]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://foundationphp.com/blog/?p=136</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[CSS3 offers a new way to define colours: RGBA. This extends the RGB (red, green, blue) colour model to include alpha transparency. Unfortunately, RGBA does not accept hexadecimal values for colours. So, I have created a free Dreamweaver extension that &#8230; <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2010/04/30/new-extension-to-convert-colours-to-rgba/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>CSS3 offers a new way to define colours: RGBA. This extends the RGB (red, green, blue) colour model to include alpha transparency. Unfortunately, RGBA does not accept hexadecimal values for colours. So, I have created a free Dreamweaver extension that converts from hexadecimal (or the 17 named colours) to RGBA. It&#8217;s free, and can be downloaded from <a href="/tools/">the Tools page on this site</a>.</p>
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