One of the nice things about being an author of books about PHP and Dreamweaver is that I get an opportunity to talk directly to the software development team. Devin Fernandez, one of the Dreamweaver product managers, dropped into London today on his way from Adobe MAX to a meeting with the former InterAKT Team (now Adobe Systems Romania) in Bucharest. We met for lunch, and for several hours he gave me an exclusive insight into how he and Adobe see the future of the Web and Dreamweaver in particular. That’s the nice part… However, it goes without saying that he wouldn’t have told me anything if he knew I’d spill the beans in my blog. Still, there are things that I can say without breaking the confidential nature of our discussions. (more…)
October 5th, 2007
At long last, Adobe has created an extension to update the version of Spry in Dreamweaver CS3. You can download the extension by going to the Spry section of Adobe Labs. The extension is free, but to obtain it, you need to log into Labs using your Adobe ID. If you don’t already have an Adobe ID, it’s easy to create an account (also free).
Use the Extension Manager to install the Spry Updater for Dreamweaver CS3. When you first launch Dreamweaver after installation, you’ll be presented with a dialog box explaining how the updater works. It lets you update the Spry library files on existing sites, and gives you the option to replace all files or just those that you want to change. And if anything goes wrong, you can retrieve the old files from a backup folder.
The extension updates the Spry files to version 1.6 (the version that shipped with CS3 was 1.4), and adds code hints for the new features. However it does not add any new features to the Dreamweaver interface. To use the new features in Spry 1.6, you need to hand-code them yourself.
October 2nd, 2007
Adobe has taken the unusual step of revealing the first details of the next version of Dreamweaver less than six months after the release of current version (Dreamweaver CS3). Now, before you get too excited, the Adobe announcement says nothing about new features. Instead, it tells you what’s being taken out.
Among items destined for the chop are the much-maligned Layout Mode and Timelines. These are both sensible decisions. Layout Mode was a well intentioned attempt to make it easy for graphic designers to lay out web pages in the same way as desktop publishing. The problem is that it creates horrendous spaghetti code behind the scenes, and frequently results in cries for help in online forums. If you get your design right the first time, the code is normally stable; but as soon as you start to change things round—and who’s ever come across a graphic designer satisfied with a first attempt at layout?—the page often falls apart like a house of cards. Timelines equally rely on outdated code, and animations are much better left to Flash, so it’s good to see them finally on the way out.
More controversially, support for ASP.NET is being dropped. (more…)
September 7th, 2007
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything in this blog. I’m definitely not one of the world’s most prolific bloggers—not by any stretch of the imagination.
One reason I’ve been so quiet is because of the pressure of writing The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP. It’s the longest book I’ve written (730 pages, not including Introduction and Index), and I needed to get it out as soon as possible after the release of Dreamweaver CS3. The book was finally shipped to the printers at the end of June, so it should be available at online booksellers and in bookshops on or around 23 July. I finished the book in record time—seven months from starting the first chapter to finally packing it off to the printers. In spite of the rapid turnaround, it’s been fully tested in the final version of Dreamweaver CS3. I’m also delighted that Tom Muck, the highly respected developer of Dreamweaver extensions and author of several books, agreed to be my technical editor. Between us, I believe we have created a great book. Please go out and buy it by the cartload. 
Another reason for not blogging much is the fact that, when testing Dreamweaver CS3, I have been under a Non-Disclosure Agreement. It’s hard to blog when the things you really want to write about have to be kept under wraps until the software is released.
July 7th, 2007
There’s not much point in me adding to the huge amount that has already been said in newspapers and on TV and radio about the release of Alan Johnston. I’m just delighted that he was released unharmed after 114 days. Sadly, the situation in the Middle East is going to take a lot longer to resolve.
July 7th, 2007
Alan Johnston was due to have returned to London at the end of March after three years as the only western journalist based inside the Gaza Strip. Only a couple of weeks before his scheduled departure, he was abducted at gunpoint and his whereabouts are still unknown. I know Alan personally. We worked together in the BBC World Service newsroom in London in the early 1990s. The reason I’m posting this is not just because he’s a former colleague, but because Alan’s abduction is a threat to truth.
Journalists need to be able to report what’s happening in the world without constantly being in fear for their lives. Alan lived in Gaza. Other correspondents based in Jerusalem used to visit on a regular basis. Now they rarely go. It’s too dangerous. And the lack of information about what’s going on in one of the most volatile places on earth makes the rest of the world more dangerous, too.
For the latest information about Alan, visit BBC Online.
April 17th, 2007
… or maybe they were just too polite to say.
I’m currently working on the draft of a new book about PHP, and decided to create a form to demonstrate the effect of the various arithmetic operators. I used the same set of examples that I’ve stuck with ever since Foundation Dreamweaver MX 2004. The example for modulo division is $x % $z, where $x is 20 and $z is 4.5. Since modulo gives you the remainder of a division, the result is obviously 2.
Well, at least that’s what I thought. It’s mathematically correct, so nobody ever questioned it. Imagine my surprise, then, when I fed this example into my form and the result came back as 0. Had I stumbled across a PHP bug? (more…)
March 8th, 2007
Let’s me nail my colours to the mast straight away: I use XHTML and have done so for several years. XHTML 1.0 has been a W3C recommendation for seven years (since January 2000). I’m aware of the well-argued objections by Ian Hixie, among others, against sending XHTML as text/html. Opponents of switching to XHTML 1.0 also point out quite rightly that XHTML 2.0 won’t be backwards compatible with previous versions.
So the arguments that break out in online forums from time to time about whether to use XHTML always tend to go over the same ground again and again: XHTML 1.0 isn’t really XHTML because it’s normally delivered using the wrong MIME type (text/html instead of application/xhtml+xml), and anyway everything’s going to change several years down the line when XHTML becomes the standard. My viewpoint has always been this:
- XHTML 1.0 is an official standard
- It’s fully supported by modern browsers (even Netscape 4 has no problems with it)
- Using XHTML 1.0 properly (in other words, making sure that it validates) teaches you the stricter standards that will be necessary when XHTML 2.0 eventually comes along (if it ever does)
- Well-formed XHTML makes it easier to work with CSS and dynamic code, such as PHP
Of course, you could use the same arguments about valid HTML 4.01. (more…)
January 2nd, 2007
PHP Solutions has been out for only just over a month, but I’m thrilled to see that Carolyn Wood, Editor of Digital Web Magazine, has put it at the top of her favourite books of 2006. What I find particularly encouraging about her brief comments is that she’s already using some of my “solutions” in her own sites. All too often I find that I pick up a book on web design or technology, and think: “Hmm, that’s interesting”, but then never really do anything with my new-found knowledge. It’s nice to know that I’ve inspired at least one person to try something out.
December 22nd, 2006
As a result of lobbying here and in a private forum, the Dreamweaver 8.0.2 PHP hotfix is now freely available for download from this technote on the Adobe website. Thanks to Scott Fegette of Adobe and everyone else for their efforts behind the scenes to bring this about. Please note that the hotfix is needed only if you are using Dreamweaver to develop with PHP. It is required to complete chapters 9 through 12 of my book Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8. It fixes the following problems in PHP pages in Dreamweaver 8.0.2:
- CONCAT() stripped out of SQL queries by Dreamweaver
- Failure of XSL Transformation server behavior in PHP 5.1.4 and above
- Backslashes incorrectly inserted when magic quotes are turned off
- Problems with LIKE in SQL queries
December 18th, 2006
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