This blog was inspired by a question from one my students in a Photoshop training class about how to create this simple, yet elegant frame around an image.

1. Open the image and create a new layer. Go to the Edit menu, select Fill and fill the layer with black. Name the layer White Border.
2. Click the fx button at the bottom of the Layers panel and select Stroke. Set the the Size to 9 pixels, the Position to Inside, and the Opacity to 60%. (These values are based on the size and resolution of the image used. This image is about 3″ x 4″ with a resolution of 72 ppi.)
3. Go to the menu to the left in the Layer Style dialog box, and select Blending Options at the very top of the list. In the Advanced Blending Options section, set the Fill Opacity to 0%. Click OK to close Layer Styles. Note the Fill Opacity field at the top of the Layers panel.
4. Drag the White Border layer to the New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel to duplicate the layer. Rename the new layer color1 border.
5. Double-click the fx button next to color1 border to edit the Layer Styles. 
6. Select Stroke from the menu on the left. Change the Size to 4 pixels and increase the Opacity to 80- 100%. Click the Color Swatch and pick a medium-saturation, neutral tone. Click OK. (For this image, I sampled from the plate. If you hover over the image while in the Color Picker, your cursor will change to the Eyedropper.)
   
7. Duplicate the layer and rename it. Double-click the new layer’s fx button.
8. Select Stroke from the menu. Change the Size to 2 pixels, click the Color Swatch and select your darkest color. In this case I sampled from the chocolate in the image. Medium-dark golden bronze shades work well, too.
   

That’s it. Simple, elegant… Gotta love it!

If you want to learn Dreamweaver, this recorded webinar will get you started!

This 30-minute webinar introduces Adobe Dreamweaver to beginners. We will discuss the capabilities of Dreamweaver, explore the interface, give a quick introduction to the tools, and watch as a very simple HTML page is created. Dreamweaver CS5 is used in the webinar, but much of the information is applicable to other versions.

Dreamweaver Tutorial For Beginners

Recorded Webinar

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoqmghBtB8&h=505&w=640]

Want more? Try our Dreamweaver training.

]]> http://adobe.blogs.webucator.com/2011/10/27/dreamweaver-tutorial-for-beginners-recorded-webinar/feed/ 0 http://adobe.blogs.webucator.com/2011/10/27/dreamweaver-tutorial-for-beginners-recorded-webinar/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AdobeTrainingBlog/~3/iH4_TCM4r30/ http://adobe.blogs.webucator.com/2011/08/19/introduction-to-photoshop-indesign-illustrator-and-acrobat/#comments Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:23:02 +0000 akenien http://adobe.blogs.webucator.com/?p=1127

Our students frequently ask which Adobe class they should take. If you’re interested in learning Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, or Acrobat, watch this video to learn about each program. If you have questions after viewing the video, simply add a comment to this post!

Introduction to Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Acrobat

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uoo5ph0K7X0&h=505&w=640]

Learn more about our Adobe training. Hear about our latest webinars by subscribing to our newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

Dreamweaver is a great tool, but I wish that it would be stricter about following standards. The video below shows how it allows you to insert an invalid table into an HTML5 page using deprecated attributes:

The Black and White Adjustment Layer in Adobe Photoshop CS5 allows you to quickly turn a color to grayscale without destruction of the original, and that’s just the beginning. Watch the Photoshop training tutorial below to learn about this adjustment layer

How to use the Black and White Adjustment Layer

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-S7iXTcx7E&h=505&w=640]

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For artists who need to create three dimensional renderings, the Perspective Grid Tool in Illustrator CS5 has really simplified the process. Here is a brief tutorial, which is also covered in our Adobe training.

How to use the Perspective Grid Tool in Adobe Illustrator CS5

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOrUR0U95G8&h=505&w=640]

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Often list data could also be represented as a table. I am in the middle of writing our new Dreamweaver CS5.5 classes and thought it would be cool if Dreamweaver CS5.5 could do this conversion for you. I didn’t find any such feature, but it can be done pretty easily with XSLT.

Take for example the following list (data is made up):

1. Big Mac
   • McDonald’s
   • 540 calories
   • $3.25
2. Whopper
   • Burger King
   • 770 calories
   • $2.95
3. Wendy’s Single
   • Wendy’s
   • 360 calories
   • $2.45

This could equally be represented as follows:

The HTML representations are shown below:

List

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<ol>
	<li>Big Mac
		<ul>
			<li>
				<a href="http://www.mcdonalds.com">McDonald's</a>
			</li>
			<li>540 calories</li>
			<li>$3.25</li>
		</ul>
	</li>
	<li>Whopper
		<ul>
			<li>
				<a href="http://www.burgerking.com">Burger King</a>
			</li>
			<li>770 calories</li>
			<li>$2.95</li>
		</ul>
	</li>
	<li>Wendy's Single
		<ul>
			<li>
				<a href="http://www.wendys.com">Wendy's</a>
			</li>
			<li>360 calories</li>
			<li>$2.45</li>
		</ul>
	</li>
</ol>

Table

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
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15
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<table>
	<thead>
		<tr>
			<th scope="col">Heading</th>
			<th scope="col">Heading</th>
			<th scope="col">Heading</th>
			<th scope="col">Heading</th>
		</tr>
	</thead>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Big Mac</td>
			<td>
				<a href="http://www.mcdonalds.com">McDonald's</a>
			</td>
			<td>540 calories</td>
			<td>$3.25</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Whopper</td>
			<td>
				<a href="http://www.burgerking.com">Burger King</a>
			</td>
			<td>770 calories</td>
			<td>$2.95</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Wendy's Single</td>
			<td>
				<a href="http://www.wendys.com">Wendy's</a>
			</td>
			<td>360 calories</td>
			<td>$2.45</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

And here’s a simple XSLT for converting the list to the table:

1
2
3
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="node()[(name()='ol' or name()='ul') and descendant::node()[name()='ol' or name()='ul'] and not(ancestor::node()[name()='ol' or name()='ul'])]">
<table>
	<thead>
		<tr>
			<xsl:for-each select="./li">
				<th scope="col">Heading</th>
			</xsl:for-each>
		</tr>
	</thead>
	<tbody>
		<xsl:apply-templates/>
	</tbody>
</table>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="/ol/li|/ul/li" priority="20">
	<tr>
		<td><xsl:apply-templates select="*[name() != 'ul' and name() != 'ol']|text()"/></td>
		<xsl:apply-templates select=".//li"/>
	</tr>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="li" priority="10">
	<td>
		<xsl:apply-templates/>
	</td>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="*[name() != 'ul' and name() != 'ol']" priority="1">
	<xsl:copy-of select="."/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

You can try converting your own nested HTML lists to tables using our List to Table Converter. Enjoy!

Adobe Illustrator’s Width Tool allows you to create unique strokes of with varied widths very easily. You can learn more about this and other tools by checking out our Illustrator training. Take a look at the tutorial below to learn to use the Width Tool.

How to use the Width Tool in Adobe Illustrator

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8MBSRpEeTU&h=505&w=640]

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InDesign provides you with the option to add a transparency effect to an object. This tutorial will introduce you to using the transparency options. This topic is covered in more detail by our Adobe trainers in our InDesign Classes.

Transparency in Adobe InDesign

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19oU4V8eHv0&h=505&w=640]

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Get up-to-speed on CS5 by watching this recorded webinar! It includes a quick overview of the new tools that are unique to the latest edition of InDesign. Along with other tips, this webinar will demonstrate the new capabilities of the Selection Tool, uses of the Page Tool, and easy methods of grid placement.

What’s new in InDesign CS5

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iweRDKiz1MY&h=505&w=640]

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Last week participants in the Digital Publishing Suite Prerelease Program received an email from Adobe announcing that on May 3, 2011 the DPS Prerelease Program will close to new applicants.  This is a precursor to the upcoming release of Creative Suite 5.5, in which most of the new features are focused on digital publishing to tablet devices. InDesign, for example, will now incorporate many of the features introduced in DPS, with a set of Folio Producer Tools.

These new tools include the Overlay Creator, which allows interactive elements, such as audio, video, panoramas, 360ºs, and pan and zooms for publication to iPad and other tablets. Also included will be a brand new Articles Panel, which supposedly will smooth out some of the reading-order unpredictability when exporting InDesign docs to ePUB or HTML. Related to this new panel are new Paragraph and Character Styles options that allow mapping to CSS and standards-compliant HTML tags. A few other new features have reportedy been added, such as PNG support for ePUB (Yea! Transparency!), as well as drag-and-drop anchored objects.

In Adobe’s letter, along with the May 3rd cut-off for new applicants in the prerelease program, they also announced that, as of June 6th, participants who have not purchased DPS will no longer be able to upload files to the Distribution Service, and that on August 3rd, Adobe will stop distribution of the non-purchasing participants’ existing folios.

So if you want to try out DPS while it’s still free, you better hurry. You can apply here.

To learn more about training for InDesign, Digital Publishing, and other Adobe Products, check out our Adobe training.

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Sources:

• Neha Tyagi, Adobe Digital Publishing Team
• Dave Dickson, Adobe Digital Publishing Team
• Bob Levine, The InDesign Guy

The Pen Tool is arguably the foundation of Adobe products. Yet many new users are intimidated by it. The purpose of this blog is to unravel its mysteries.

Function of the Pen Tool

The Pen Tool is used to creates paths. Paths can be open, such as a line, or closed, such as a geometric shape. The paths are defined with Anchor Points, which are created with the Pen Tool. Anchor Points can be:

• Corner Points, which connect two straight segments of a path. To create a corner point, simply click and release the mouse.
• Curve Points, where the arc of the path on both sides of the anchor point is controlled by Bezier Handles. Curve points are created when you click, hold and drag out the Bezier handles before releasing.
• Connector Points, that join straight path segments to curved path segments, or curved segments of different angles. Different methods can be used to create connector points, depending on the path segments. More on that later.

How to Use the Pen Tool

As you create paths, watch the pen cursor. It clues you in as to what you’re about to do. (Note:  If Caps Lock is on, the cursor will appear as a crosshair.)

As you create paths, adding keystrokes can greatly improve your efficiency:

Editing Paths with the Pen Tool

After a path has been created, there are other tools for modifying the path. Primary among these is the Direct Selection Tool.

There are also tools that are grouped with the Pen Tool on the Toolbar, for editing points on a path:

So these are the basics. To learn more about training in Adobe software, check out our Adobe training.

You can remove a background from an image in InDesign using a clipping path. Here is a brief tutorial to show you how to create a clipping path in InDesign. You can learn more about Adobe InDesign by taking our InDesign training.

How to Remove a Picture Background in Adobe InDesign

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoB4WK1UkNQ&h=505&w=640]

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Layer Blending Modes in Photoshop CS5 provide on-the-fly adjustment functionality, as well as open up whole new avenues of creativity for digital images. This video shows a few quick and easy techniques for color correction, and explores the new Subtract and Divide Blending Modes. To learn more, check out our Photoshop classes.

Blending Modes in Photoshop CS5

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The Type On A Path tool in Adobe Illustrator allows you to place text on different kinds of paths. You can add text that flows in a circle, follows a curvy line, climbs an incline, and more! To learn how to use the Type On A Path tool, watch this short video.

How to Use the Type On A Path Tool

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3R_RIdD8Mo&h=505&w=640]

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Knowing how to create a text wrap in Adobe InDesign is a simple yet essential task. In this video tutorial, you will learn the basics of creating a text wrap. You will also learn how to create a text frame that will ignore a text wrap. For a more in-depth overview of text wraps and other tools within InDesign, check out our Adobe training options.

Creating Text Wraps

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAyX2Fef6hU&h=505&w=640]

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One of the coolest features of publishing to iPad with InDesign CS5 and DPS, is how you can optimize the screen’s real estate by using scrollable frames. Scrollable frames can hold text, images, or both, and allow the viewer to swipe through the content. Here’s how they’re created:

1. Select the Type Tool and draw a text frame on the page.  Still using the Type Tool, draw a second frame on the pasteboard. The frame on the page is the container that the viewer will scroll through. The text frame on the pasteboard is the content that will feed into the container.
2. Switch to the Selection Tool and set the width to identical values for both frames. Matching width is especially important to make it work. In the example I created, the frame widths were set to 430 pixels.
3. Set the fill of both text frames to paper (white).
4. Enter your content into the frame on the pasteboard. If you wish to use both text and images, the images should be inserted as Anchored Objects. (I won’t be getting into the subtleties of anchored objects here, but this link will take you to an Adobe TV lesson that explains them pretty well.)
5. To create enough space for all the content, go to Preferences > Guides & Pasteboard and adjust the Vertical Margins in the Pasteboard Options section. In the example, I set the Vertical Margins to 1024 pixels, giving me a total of 2816 pixels of vertical space (1024 + 1024 + 768).
6. With the pasteboard frame selected, switch to the Selection Tool. Go to the Control Panel, and set the X coordinate to 1024 pixels, if using a horizontal layout, or 768 pixels, if using a vertical layout. This is important. The edge of the content frame on the pasteboard, must touch the edge of the page.
   
7. Now open the Layers Panel (Window > Layers) and create a new layer. Name this layer, Scrollable Content. Type this carefully,  as the layer name is case-sensitive.
8. Expand Layer 1 in the Layers Panel by clicking the arrow to the left of the name. The pasteboard content frame should still be selected, so a small square will be displayed in the Layers Panel next to the selected object.  Click, hold and drag the object from Layer 1 to the Scrollable Content layer.
9. Now you will have to give both the content frame on the Scrollable Content layer, and the container frame on Layer 1, the same name. To rename an object, go to the Layers Panel, click on the object, pause, and click again so that the object name is highlighted. In this example, I named both content and container, recipes.
   
10. If you are creating both horizontal and vertical versions, select the Scrollable Content layer in the Layers Panel, open the Layers Panel menu, and select Paste Remembers Layer. This will allow you to copy/paste between versions with the Scrollable Content layer functionality intact.
    

And that’s it! Bundle your file, and test the scrollability on your iPad or the desktop Content Viewer.

To learn more about InDesign and Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, check out InDesign training on our website. You can hear about our latest Digital Publishing blog posts by subscribing to our newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

At Webucator, we have been developing iPad training, and we have released a new course: “Adobe InDesign CS5 with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite for iPad.” In editing this course, I found that it is critical to pay close attention to the file names and folder structures when preparing files for publication to an iPad.

There are very strict folder structures and file naming conventions which must be followed for documents to bundle and upload correctly.

Tips for Adobe Digital Publishing Suite – Files and Folders

All files should be contained within a folio folder. A folio is comprised of one or more articles or ads, called stacks. Each stack appears in its own folder within the folio folder.

Inside the stack folder, the article may have a horizontal or vertical layout, or both. Horizontal layouts are designated by an _h suffix (such as “article_h.indd”) and vertical layouts by an _v suffix (such as “article_v.indd”).

All of the linked images, videos, and any other materials should also be placed in a Links folder within each stack folder.

If the files are not named correctly, or the folder structure is incorrect, the digital content bundler with not be able to bundle the files.

Here is an image which displays correct usage of file names and folder structures within a folio folder. These files were contained within a folder called WebuNews_Folio.

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When you are about to create a website using Dreamweaver CS5, the first step is to Define a Site. By defining a site, you will have access to all of the files and images contained within your site from inside the Files panel.

How to Define a Site in Dreamweaver CS5

1. Put a folder on your desktop that will contain all of your pages, images, etc. for your site. Make sure that you do not use spaces in the name of your folder. For example, My_Pet_Shop is a perfect name for your folder.
2. Open Dreamweaver CS5 and go to Site > New Site.
3. Give the site a name, again, without spaces. For example, Pet_Shop_Site.
4. Click on the folder to the right of Local Site Folder and navigate to the desktop folder you created in Step 1.
5. Click on Servers on the left side. This window allows you to define the remote server where your website will end up being hosted.
6. Click the “+” in the bottom left corner.
7. Put in a server name, without spaces, such as Pet_Shop_Server.
8. Choose FTP from the dropdown menu, Connect Using.
9. Put in the FTP address, for example, www.mypetshop.com.
10. Enter in the Username and Password for the site. Be careful with this step. When you have a site hosted with a company, such as GoDaddy, you will have two usernames and two passwords. One set is for the Administration and the other is for FTP. Make sure you are putting in the Username and Password that was set for FTP.
11. Click Save.
12. Click Save again and the Files panel will show you all of the contents of the folder you created on your desktop. Now to upload files all you have to do is select them within the Files panel and hit the up pointing arrow at the top of the Files panel.

Hope it worked for you!

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iPad is a new medium, and just like my first billboard, POP display and website, I’ve had to adjust my design strategies. Here are a few digital publishing design tips that the journey’s taught me:

Digital Publishing Design Tips

Page Size: The page size for digital publishing for iPad is 1024 x 768 pixels, and the recommended image resolution is 72 ppi. If you take these values and do the math, the display would be roughly 14.25” wide. It obviously isn’t. I mention this only because it lays the groundwork for much of what follows.

Type: When designing for print, I tend to favor tightly kerned headers and clean text blocks. For a standard-size publication, such as a magazine, annual report or brochure, I typically set body copy at 10 to 12 pts. with 25-30% leading. For pharmaceutical work, which tends to be text heavy, I’d go down to 9 or 9.5 pt. type, without the readability suffering. On an iPad, 12-pt. type is so small, it’s next to impossible to read. I found that the minimum type size for body copy shouldn’t be less than 16 pixels, and preferably 18 pixels.

Interactive Links: Viewer interaction on iPad is usually by touch (some viewers may use a stylus) and virtually all links are created as hotspots or buttons. I learned this the hard way. For my first iPad project, I created the hotspots and when I tested them, I found that if I didn’t hit them exactly right, they didn’t work. This wasn’t because of a technical flaw, it was because my fingers were too big! (And I have small hands.) I ended up going back and doubling the height of the hotspots to make interaction easier.

Table of Contents: At this point, generating an interactive ToC is a manual process. When using InDesign to produce a document for PDF distribution, it’s so easy! You use the Table of Contents feature under the Layout menu, link the entries to paragraph styles, check Create PDF Bookmarks, and you’re done. If titles or page numbers change, using the Update Table of Contents feature will automatically reflect those changes in the ToC. You got to love it! It’s not that simple with an iPad publication, because each article is a separate file, and at this point, Adobe DPS does not integrate with the Book panel in InDesign. So, the simplest way I found was to either produce a separate document with all the articles included, or use the Book panel to create a separate InDesign book. I then generated a ToC without PDF bookmarks, copy/pasted the ToC into the iPad doc, and drew hotspots over each entry. For navigation, I used the Go to Destination command in the Button panel menu to link to the appropriate article Stack. To make it even more tedious, when creating an iPad magazine with both horizontal and vertical formats, you have to do it twice, with the verticle ToC linking to vertical articles, and the horizontal ToC linking to horizontal articles.

Interactive Objects: The rule here is “Keep It Simple!” There have been more than few questions on Adobe’s DPS forum from the beta users about putting links or scrollable frames within slideshows or videos. At this point, you can’t do it. If a multi-object state slideshow is used in an article, that’s all it can be. Trying to use a hotspot within a slide simply won’t work.

In closing, keep in mind that this is evolving technology, and I’m sure Adobe is working hard to refine Digital Publishing Suite. Currently, DPS is only for iPad, but with the large number of tablets that hit the market this past holiday season, I’m pretty sure the platform list will grow. I’ve been totally thrilled to be part of the pre-release program. The new media is exciting, but as with anything new, the rules are still being worked out. Some of the web designers out there may remember the early days of the internet. Yee-haw!

To learn about training in Digital Publishing, InDesign, and other Adobe products, please take a look at our InDesign training options and our iPad training options. You can also hear about our latest database blogs, classes, and webinars by signing up for our newsletter.

Apple iTunes recently released “Rewind 2010,” a summary of the hottest iPhone and iPad apps of 2010. While entertainment apps like Angry Birds and Facebook are dominating iPhone results, the iPad list reveals hope for the media industry. Companies with publications that are considering digital publishing options, including publication through Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite, can note these early trends as they make key decisions for 2011.

Here are the top free and paid iPad apps:

Top Free iPad Apps of 2010

1. iBooks
2. Pandora Radio
3. Netflix
4. Google Mobile App
5. Solitare
6. Movies by Flixster
7. IMDB Movies and TV
8. Kindle
9. Google Earth
10. Virtuoso Free 2 HD

Top Paid iPad Apps of 2010

1. Pages
2. GoodReader for iPad
3. Numbers
4. Angry Birds
5. Keynote
6. Glee Karaoke
7. WolframAlpha
8. Pinball HD
9. Friendly Plus for Facebook
10. Starwalk for iPad

Note that the top free apps tend to be media related, while the top paid apps are productivity related, which reflects the continuing problem of getting people to pay for media.

The Cost of Free

Within specific app categories, free newspaper and magazine apps are getting top results. Within the lifestyle category, Epicurious ranks #2, and within the news category, the top ten list includes USA Today, BBC News, NYTimes, The Wall Street Journal, and others.

Unfortunately, the danger is losing paid subscriptions to these free apps. According to a recent study, current newspaper subscribers who also use an iPad may cancel their subscriptions in favor of the iPad apps. Specifically, the study looked at 931 respondents who used an iPad for at least an hour a day and also had a print newspaper subscription. Of those 931 people, more than half, 58.1%, were likely to cancel their print subscription.

Creating a Paid Media App

Publishers planning to launch a digital edition using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite or another product may want to consider the trends of 2010 to strive for success in the future.

Although the paid apps are a harder sell, the publishing industry is seeing some success. Within the lifestyle app category on iTunes, the $4.99 GQ magazine app ranks #5 out of all paid lifestyle apps in 2010.

The study mentioned above also found that iPad users may be willing to pay for a publication on an iPad if certain criteria are met. Those participating in the study said they might pay if:

• The iPad subscription costs less than the print subscription
• The app is easy to use, reliable, and provides access to at least all print content
• The iPad edition contains video and interactive features

One hurdle the industry faces is waiting for print subscribers to switch over. A common complaint on iTunes about the digital editions is that one cannot exchange a print subscription for an iPad subscription.

Although the publishing industry has a steep hill ahead, iPad users do seem willing to use and pay for media apps on the iPad, which is more than can be said for the past. Creating a publication that’s worth paying for will be key.

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To learn about publishing to an iPad, consider our iPad training options.

As part of the prerelease program, I’ve been developing courseware for Webucator: InDesign with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite for iPad. Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) is the set of authoring tools that you need, in addition to InDesign CS5, to make content commercially available on iPad through the iTunes store. The full release date is projected for the second quarter of 2011.

As part of the beta program, the updates are coming fast and furious from Adobe. In the previous version (Drop 6), DPS consisted of four components in addition to InDesign CS5:

1. Digital Publishing Plug-In for InDesign CS5
2. Overlay Creator, an application for adding audio, video, etc., to the document.
3. Content Bundler for packaging the publication into a .issue file for iPad.
4. Content Viewer, an application installed on the iPad for testing your work.

In the new release that came out last week (Drop 8), Adobe made some significant changes, including the addition of a Desktop Content Viewer, so basic testing can be performed without sideloading the issue to an iPad. The destop viewer is still primitive. Many of the interactive features available on iPad do not function so well on the desktop version, so you still need an iPad to do an adequate proof. It is a welcome addition, however, and I’m sure it will be refined over time.

Another major change is the Overlay Creator. In it’s previous incarnation, it was a stand-alone app that worked with InDesign. Now it’s a plug-in, and there is an Overlay Creator panel right in InDesign. Also a nice improvement.

So far, my experience with the software has been pretty positive, and I look forward to publishing my first issue to the iTunes store! I will tell you however, that publishing to iPad is not a push-button affair. Basically, you create each article or ad in a different file, called stacks.If you want to take advantage of the iPad’s gyro/page-rotation functions, you will also need two separate layouts in each stack, for horizontal and vertical viewing.

Terry White, one of Adobe’s premier evangelists, has a pretty good video on streamling the process, which you can view here.

While digital publishing might not be instantaneous, these things seldom are. It sure beats having to learn Objective C! If you are interested in learning the latest Adobe technology, check out Webucator’s Adobe training and iPad training. You can also hear about our latest Adobe blogs, classes, and webinars by signing up for our newsletter.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGmu_6rRVFo&h=505&w=640]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmozwTN3kIg&h=505&w=640]

So, that’s what  stands out to me so far, and I can’t wait to see the future developments! It’s a great trend with exciting new options for print publications.

My InDesign students ask a lot of questions about typography, and rightly so! Well-executed type treatment puts the polish of professionalism on a layout, and can make a good design, great. So, I thought I’d go through some of the basics, and share what I look for in type treatment.

Typography Tips

Using too many different fonts in a document can create visual dysfunction, so try to limit the number to two or three. At least one of the fonts, typically for body copy, should contain multiple styles in the font family, such as Regular, Italic, Semibold, Semibold Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. This will allow emphasis and differentiation within the body of the text, while still maintaining visual harmony. The body text in the sample document below uses Adobe Garamond Pro, which contains all of the styles listed above, and allows for special treatment of items such as scientific names.

This sample calls out problems that need to be resolved:

There are hyphens in the text that could be fixed with soft returns (Shift-Return), but that created an overly severe rag, which is the irregular or uneven vertical margin to the right of the text (shown below).

Instead, I changed the tracking (the spacing between words and phrases) to -10 and used a soft return to eliminate the orphan.

The hanging punctuation in the pull-quote was achieved by using the Indent to Here Special Character, which you can see in the sample below showing the hidden characters. To insert the character, go to Type > Special Characters > Other > Indent to Here, or type Ctrl-\ (PC) / Cmd-\ (Mac).

Finally, the header uses a font that doesn’t map well—some of the letter-pairs are squeezed, while others are too spread out. To even out the kerning (the space between letter pairs), I first applied Optical kerning, and increased the tracking to 10. Then I did a little manual kerning to apply the final touches. Manual kerning is most easily performed with keystrokes. To open up the spacing, hold down Alt-Shift (PC) / Opt-Shift (Mac) and press the right arrow key. To close space, press the left arrow key.

This might seem like a lot of fussing, but when it comes to type, attention to detail raises your work to the next level. To hear about the latest Adobe DPS news, blogs, and training, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to subscribe. To learn more about typography and InDesign, check out Webucator’s InDesign training, and have fun designing with type!

Watch this video to see how a navigational Table of Contents is created in InDesign CS5.

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXpsKo_qRyU&h=505&w=640]

Check out this video to see how easy it is to create an interactive browser slideshow with InDesign CS5.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm0aeMUPZ4U&h=505&w=640]

I’ve been waiting for Adobe to release its digital publishing solutions package for months, but the truth is, there’s no need to wait. Enterprise 7 Content Publishing Platform from WoodWing offers a solution for publishing companies.

Many have come to know WoodWing as an engine behind InDesign, which has brought iPad/iPhone subscription editions for Wired Magazine, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. WoodWing’s digital publishing system integrates with InDesign CS5, as well as InCopy, through a few basic components:

• the Enterprise 7 dbase installed on a server
• a Content Station for asset management and XML export
• InDesign plug-ins
• and a Content Server to install the pub on a branded reader.

WoodWing supplies reader apps for iPhone and iPad, or gives you the app framework for customization. The installed reader app can then be distributed through Apple’s App Store.

The content management system allows design and publishing staff to parallel print and cross-media production through panels that are already very familiar to InDesign users. In a magazine, for instance, dossiers are created for each article in an edition, where images, media, metadata, etc., are catalogued. The designer can then open portrait and landscape templates, and drag-and-drop content, thereby creating the files that enable the gyro functionality of iPad/iPhone. The templates even feature iPad/iPhone frames in the pasteboard. There are also options to provide for eInk devices, such as Kindle. The table of contents is generated from the dossiers, content is indexed, and the pub is gathered for export to XML through the Digital Magazine Application tab in the Content Station. From there, the pub is installed on the branded reader app, and is ready to hit the newsstands.

WoodWing Software is based in the Netherlands. Their products are currently available for purchase and subscription through resellers, which can be found here. While not cost-prohibitive in the right application, it is an expense for which a freelancer would need a justifiable cause. Soon, though, I think you’ll be getting this stuff directly from Adobe.

To hear about the latest Adobe DPS news, blogs, and training, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to subscribe. To learn more about Adobe, InDesign, and digital publishing, check out our InDesign training and stay tuned for more blogs!

The truth is, when it comes to graphics, I cut my teeth in print, so it’s hard for me to not think in terms of page sizes and grids. Even in web design, it’s that initial view when you land on the page that matters, in my mind. But that’s not really how it works with ePub, where it’s all about linear flow. And because the platforms are all so different – from Kindle to iPad to Nook to Sony – ePub is like an unruly juvenile, sort of like html in the bad old days. So, while I’m waiting for Adobe to release the miracle digital-publishing software that brings the format under control in InDesign, I’ve done a bit of research and experimentation to establish some basic guidelines.

Here’s what I came up with:

1. Paragraph and Character Styles rule. They are basically the only control over layout and text formatting in ePub, so use them judiciously, with the exception of Nested Styles, which will be dropped when exporting to ePub. Style sheets from InDesign become part of the xhtml code that is created when exporting to Digital Editions, which can then be further controlled with CSS.
2. Master Page Items are not exported to ePub. So make sure to detach them on document pages before you export. (Ctrl-Shift-click it, on PC; or Cmd-Shift-click it on Mac). Avoid text variables, such as running footers, as they will not export.
3. Remove page numbering. It is impossible to predict the text will land on each page.
4. Create the cover as a separate InDesign document. Then, export it as a JPEG. (More on this further down the list.)
5. Build your document with one text frame per page and all frames within the document linked.
6. Use Open Type fonts, if possible. They will embed more consistently in ePub.
7. Anchor graphics within a text frame in their own paragraph.
   
8. Control positioning of the graphic with Anchored Object Options
   • (Object > Anchored Object > Options).
9. Do not create soft returns in text. Text reflows in ePub to fit the device, so the line breaks will vary.
10. Create images in color. Do this even if you’re only planning on the document being viewed on a grayscale device, such as the Kindle. It’s a good bet that future versions of eReaders will support color.
11. Size images at a width of between 300 and 600 pixels. Other graphics, such as logos, can be smaller, at about 75-100 pixels wide. These general width guidelines will ensure that your document displays well on most eReaders.
12. Even in shorter documents, create an InDesign book of the various sections, such as cover, ToC and chapters. The book file allows you to determine page breaks, forcing chapters to begin on a new page, for example, if each chapter is a separate document within the book file.
13. Create a ToC and ToC styles in InDesign
    • (Layout > Table of Contents…, Layout > Table of contents Styles…) This will allow mapping for a navigable Table of Contents for eReaders that support it.
14. When exporting, check the Formatted option. This will reformat exported images from the document at the size they have been scaled to in InDesign, as well as at the correct resolution of 72 ppi, with all colors converted to RGB. It will also preserve formatting, such as image frame borders, that have been created in InDesign.

A lot of technology is coming down the pike from Adobe, promising to make rich, graphic presentation for ePub, possible right out of InDesign.To hear about the latest Adobe DPS news, blogs, and training, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to subscribe. To learn more about the power of InDesign, check out Webucator’s InDesign training.

There are some great plug-ins for InDesign CS5. Some are free and some are costly. One that is not free, but might be worth the money for those in a heavy production environment, is PDF2ID from Recosoft. PDF2ID reconstructs pages from a PDF file into document pages in InDesign, complete with independent graphic elements. Text frames are created, and paragraphs are formed with styles applied. Although it’s not totally seamless, PDF2ID also attempts to intelligently link frames based on similar type styles.

PDF2ID is available in Standard ($299) and Professional ($399) versions; both versions do everything listed above. The Professional version also includes:

• Options to convert images in PDF files to TIFF-CMYK
• Options to preserve native color space of PDF objects or convert to CMYK or Lab
• Parallel processing functionality to speed up PDF conversions on modern multi-processor/multi-core systems

The translation may not be perfect, and a lot will depend on how the PDF was created in the first place, but for those in the printing industry, this InDesign plug-in, PDF2ID, can be huge timesaver.

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To learn more about InDesign, and real-world production techniques, check out our InDesign training options.

When I have to work on HTML files that I’ve gotten from other sources, I often find it useful to format the code by selecting Apply Source Formatting from the Command menu.

However, there are cases when you don’t want Dreamweaver messing with your spacing. To illustrate, take a look at the code below:

<div>foo
	bar
		bar
		bar
	bar
foo</div>

In the browser, this displays as follows:

However, if you apply source formatting to this using the Apply Source Formatting command, Dreamweaver will change the code as follows:

<div>foo
	bar
	bar
	bar
	bar
	foo</div>

This changes the way the page is displayed in the browser:

Dreamweaver provides a way to customize how source formatting is applied, but unfortunately, it’s only at the tag-level. Nonetheless, it can be useful. Here is how it works in Windows:

1. Select Tag Libraries… from the Edit menu.
2. In the Tag Library Editor, scroll down to the div tag and change the Contents to “Formatted But Not Indented” as shown below:

Now div tag content will not be indented when you use the Apply Source Formatting command.

It would be nice if you could do this based on an attribute value. For example, in our courseware system we have a class called “CodeFormat” that is used for displaying code in the courseware. We would like Dreamweaver to honor (i.e, not mess with) whitespace inside div tags with that class, but to make that happen, we have to surrender indenting within all div tags.

Unless anyone knows a work around?

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Illustrator’s Spiral Tool is great for creating quick decorative elements, but it’s helpful to understand how Illustrator dissects a spiral.

The Spiral Tool is grouped with the Line Tool in Illustrator’s toolbar. Select it and click anywhere in the workspace to bring up the dialog box.

You might think the Radius Option is obvious, but it’s not. In most tools the radius is the measurement from the center point of an object to any of its sides. With the Spiral Tool, it’s the center point of the first, largest quarter-round, or segment.

Now, let’s look at the Decay Option. Decay is simply the percentage that Illustrator will use to multiply each succeeding segment by the previous, or next largest segment. So, if you set the Decay to 100%, the spiral will look like a circle, even though it’s not—it’s just that all the spiral segments are lying on top of each other. The the closer the Decay value is to 100%, the more wraps in the spiral. If the Decay rate is too low, it won’t look like either a circle or a spiral. It will look like a curved line, and that’s also useful to know.

So, what about Segments? The spiral above was created with a Radius of 6p0, a Decay of 80% and 10 Segments. Here’s how Illustrator defines the Segments:

If the Segments were increased to 20, the spiral would continue spiraling inward for another 10 segments. If the Segments is set high enough, the spiral would look like it had a solid black center.

So, now that the science of spirals is clear, try jazzing them up with some of the cool brushes in the Brushes Libraries.

These dingbats were made entirely of spirals with brush strokes applied and took just a couple minutes to create:

So “believe in the infinite grace of the inwardly curving line,” and spiral away!

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InDesign CS5 has many tools for handling color. Color Modes are mathematical models that describe the components of full-spectrum color. We all learned that the primary colors are Red, Yellow and Blue. In traditional offset printing, the primary colors used to produce full-color images are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow (CMY). When 100% of each color is printed on top of each other, the resulting color, in theory, will be black. Black, however, is usually printed as its own separate ink to shape and define the image, which is why the color model is referred to as CMYK, also known as Process Color.

As well as CMYK, printers can use inks that are custom-mixed to exactly match a specific color. These are Spot Colors. In general, spot colors are used for items such as logos where precise color matching is critical, or in cases where it is more ecomonical—if, for instance, a document used only a specific shade of purple and a specific shade of green, it makes more sense to just print these two custom-formulated inks, than to print the four C, M, Y, K inks that would be necessary to produce purple and green.

The Pantone Matching System is an industry standard for specifying spot colors. Pantone libraries are included with InDesign, as well as other color matching libraries. They are accessed in New Color Swatch dialog box through the Swatches panel menu by clicking on the Color Mode dropdown menu.

PANTONE solid coated and PANTONE solid uncoated are the most commonly used for spot colors, and are designated with numbers (ie. PANTONE 185 C). Which one you use depends on the kind of paper you’re printing on. If unsure, check with your printer.

Pantone colors can be converted to process colors by InDesign by editing the PMS color and switching the Color Mode to Process.

RGB Color is the color model used for all electronically displayed documents. The components are Red, Green and Blue. The RGB color model is similar to CMYK, but instead of 100% of each component color creating black, RGB creates pure white.

In the New Document dialog box, if the Intent is set to Web, the color space will automatically be set to RGB. A document can also be converted from CMYK to RGB by going to the Color panel menu.

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To learn more about color and other elements of InDesign CS5, check out our Adobe InDesign CS5 classes.

Normally, code to make content that you can drag is complex; Dreamweaver CS5, however, makes it as easy as following a few short steps!How to Drag AP Divs

The first step is creating an AP Div, as I talked about in my previous blog post.  Once they are created it is time to make them dragable.

1. Select the <body> tag in the Status Bar.  
2. Right-click and select Collapse Full Tag.
   
3. Highlight the line that contains your body div.
   
   
4. In the Behaviors section of the Tag Inspector, click on Drag AP Element.
   
5. The following dialog box will appear.  Select the name of the layer that you want to be dragable.
   Here’s the Advanced Tab.
   

Here are additional options you can set for your AP Div:

• Movement: unconstrained or constrained – If you would like to limit the area in which a layer may be dragged, choose constrained.  Once constrained is selected you may enter the coordinates of a box in which you will limit movement.
• Drop Target – If the layer is to be dragged to a certain place on the page (as it might in a puzzle) you might want to identify that spot as a Drop Target.
• Snap Target – If the user drops the layer within X number of pixels of the drop target, it will snap to the target
• Drag Handle – If you would like to identify a specific section of the layer to be the handle, it can be set here
• While Dragging call JavaScript & When dropped call JavaScript – You may write your own JavaScript that will execute either while the layer is being dragged or when it is dropped.

And that’s all there is to it!

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For our After Effects CS4 classes, we have provided each student a copy of Adobe After Effects CS4 Classroom in a Book or After Effects Apprentice. But with each new release of software, we always reevaluate the books we provide with our classes.  So when After Effects CS5 came out this year, we were interested in seeing which of the After Effects CS4 books would be updated and what new After Effects CS5 books might come out. We asked a couple of our After Effects trainers to let us know which books they like the most and they agreed that the Adobe After Effects CS4 Classroom in a Book isn’t nearly as good as Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects and After Effects Apprentice both of which are written by Trish & Chris Meyer and published by Focal Press.

As it happens, Trish & Chris Meyer run a motion graphics design studio called CRISH DESIGN and they do a bit of After Effects training themselves.  So, I reached out to them to ask them what they used in their own classes and Trish got back to me right away.  Here’s what she had to say (reprinted with her permission):

When we teach beginners, we use our book After Effects Apprentice, which is a 12-lesson course designed to cover the core features. The current version is the 2nd Edition for CS4.

We just released Creating Motion Graphics Edition 5 for CS5 this summer, and will update AE Apprentice for the next AE release (exact date to be revealed!)

The differences between AE CS4 and CS5 are quite small when you are dealing with beginners and teaching the core features and none of the lessons in Apprentice are outdated in the least. So, I really don’t think using Apprentice for CS4 would be much of a problem in a CS5 class.

The CS5 big new features are 16-bit (which is invisible to the user) and Roto Brush, which is a cool new method for pulling a foreground image out of a background. So the features added are additional, and existing features barely changed at all.

So the only missing feature you might want to cover – even in a beginner class – is Roto Brush. If you use the new CMG5 to learn how best to use Roto Brush, you can use almost any suitable footage as source material in the class. Even better, have students each bring in a clip to try out as Roto Brush can seem like magic if the clip is too clean and simple! Trying it with a few different examples can help users have more realistic expectations.

We are working on a PDF document that will highlight any small changes to the user interface that might trip up a CS5 user who is following Apprentice for CS4. For instance, in Lesson 1, the background color has moved to the Composition Settings dialog (it used to be a menu item). I will post it before the end of September on our website.

So, it looks like we’ll have to wait for the next release of After Effects for the updated version of After Effects Apprentice, but the good news is that the content covered in the current version is still applicable to After Effects CS5.  So, students in Webucator’s After Effects CS5 classes will either get that book or Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (updated for CS5), depending on which After Effects class they take.

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“Content [plus experience] is now king,” says Adobe, in their announcement of an upcoming “open, comprehensive Digital Publishing Platform.”

I’ve been following this because the potential is immense. Like Adobe Acrobat PDFs for every form of media… App-independent!?! Platform-independent?!? Wow!!

My job with Webucator is to look down the road, stay on top of what’s upcoming, and develop courseware that’s relevant. But it’s kind of tough when Adobe’s digital publishing and content viewer apps have yet to be released. Webucator is planning on rolling out some app development courses for the iPhone and iPad anyway, but now Adobe is promising to cut through all that Objective-C programming mumbo-jumbo by delivering software that integrates seamlessly with Adobe InDesign and CS5, fits into the normal workflow of publishers and creative agencies, and is platform-independent, sort of…

The idea is that the publication goes through design and production once, and then is rendered in different versions, for different platforms. Publishers will not be forced to hire a slew of Objective-C programmers to enter the iPad arena, and designers won’t be forced to become programmers. Maybe most significantly, publishers will not be forced to choose iPad over Kindle—they’ll be able to release editions for both, without a lot of extra programming and development. Magazines will be published with their own viewers for whatever platform, generated directly from Adobe InDesign CS5.

This is a pretty big deal for entire industries, not just designers and app developers, and this is where business is going, I think… (at least until the eReader rubble has settled.)  It’s like the promise of XML/XSLT on steroids… But how’s it all going to work?

Here’s one independent article that explains it pretty well.

So, back to my opening line, the user experience (on the iPad anyway) is very cool. You can navigate through a magazine or a book just like you use an app on the iPhone or iPad, with interactive video throughout. Check out this video on Adobe.tv, which demos how you can move through a WIRED digital magazine publication on the iPad.

The digital magazine was created, of course, with InDesign CS5 and yet-to-be-released “new Adobe Digital Publishing technologies.”  The video is impressive, but it only shows the experience on the iPad.  It doesn’t show how the same publication would look on the some other viewer, like the Kindle, which only supports video in its iPad and iPhone editions. WIRED chose the iPad for obvious reasons, like the color display, for their first digital edition—they’re the Betas, so they can.

Adobe is supposed to release this stuff late this summer, but they haven’t yet. There’s not much out there, as far as the nuts and bolts goes. Adobe says they’re going to release it as soon as it’s finished, and not hold back with last-minute tweaks as they want to “get the solution in the hands of the customer as soon as possible.” I guess they’re going to tweak it later… (?)

Well, Apple does that too, right?

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If you’d like to learn more about Adobe InDesign and the digital publishing revolution, check out my Introduction to InDesign CS5 training and Advanced InDesign classes.

You may be familiar with divs and how to construct them generally using Dreamweaver CS5, but you can also create another type of div, called AP Divs. The “AP”, which means absolutely positioned, means the div will remain in its position totally independent of any other object in the HTML document, unlike relative positioning. AP divs also operate in a unique manner since they are considered a page element, which means Behaviors can be applied to them. You can also place AP divs anywhere within the page!

Since AP divs may be positioned anywhere on the page, they my actually be placed on top of each other or on top of other content.  An AP Div with text may be placed atop another AP div with an image of a button.  This way, only one button graphic is needed while the text may be changed for each individual button.

What can AP divs do?

With the help of JavaScript (and Dreamweaver’s Behaviors) AP Divs can be used in the following ways:

• Dynamic Visibility – AP divs can be made visible or invisible based on some event (like clicking a link, or rolling over an image).
• Draggable Content – AP divs can be made “draggable!”  This means they can be moved around the page by the user!

This post will focus on dynamic visibility. I will discuss making AP divs draggable in the next post.

Creating AP divs in Dreamweaver CS5

In order to create an AP div, click on the AP div button under the Layout Tab of the Insert Panel.

You may then click and drag to create a box anywhere on the screen. The AP div that you just added may be selected three ways:

• Using the AP Elements Panel, click on the name of the div,
• Using the small white square in the upper left-hand corner of the div,
• Using the yellow anchor that appears on the screen.

Once you select a div, it may be moved or its properties may be changed in the properties window (as seen below). Note: The yellow anchor that appears on the screen can alter the position of page elements in a way that will not happen in the browser. As always, be sure to test your page in a browser often to ensure it appears as you intend. (You may hide these “Invisible Elements” if you would rather that Dreamweaver CS5 not show them.)

Show/Hide Elements: Dynamic Visibility

All elements have a visibility property. Normally divs (and all other content) are visible by default. This can be changed, however. In the screenshots below, the div named “layer1” has been turned “hidden” (as can be seen in the properties window).

You can also show or hide a div by clicking on the Visibility Column (it looks like an eye) in the AP Elements panel.

If nothing else is done, this text will never be visible in the browser. However, when used with the “Show/Hide Elements” Behavior, we can set the element to reappear when some event triggers it.

Before adding the “Show/Hide Element” behavior, you must decide what event will trigger the action. In this case, I want the div to appear when the user rolls the mouse over the link.

After selecting the link I may add the Behavior from the Behaviors window. The following dialog box appears:

Now that the action has been defined, the event must be selected. I chose “onMouseOver.” This means when the mouse rolls over the link, the div will become visible. In order to make the div become invisible again when the mouse rolls away from the link, the entire process must be repeated. This time, the event that will be used as the trigger is “onMouseOut.”

That’s it for adding Behaviors to AP Divs (and general page elements) within Dreamweaver CS5. Look out for my next post on how to make AP Divs dragable!

If you’re interesting in learning more about advanced Dreamweaver CS5 topics in general, take a look at my Advanced Dreamweaver CS5 class. Hear about our latest Adobe blogs, classes, and webinars by signing up for our newsletter.

In Adobe InDesign, Compound Paths are multiple closed paths that are turned into a single object. For example, when an outline is created from the letter “O”, the O-shape is made up of two ellipses, one inside the other, with the inner circle being a transparent doughnut-hole. InDesign lets you do the same thing with frames.

1. Select the Rectangle, Ellipse or Polygon Frame Tool and make a few frames.
   
2. Choose the Selection Tool and select all the frames by shift-clicking each one, or dragging a marquee around all of them.
3. Go to Object > Path > Make Compound Path.
   
   Note that all the individual x’s in each frame have been replaced with one spanning all the frames.
   
4. With the Compound Path Frame still selected, go to File > Place and select an image. InDesign will treat the compound path frame as one single frame with one image.
   

And that’s it! To hear about the latest Adobe news, blogs, and training, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to subscribe. Don’t forget to check out our Introduction to InDesign CS5 class to learn even more!

As you may already know,  Adobe Dreamweaver provides some very useful functionality through the Spry JavaScript Framework, such as the Spry Menu Bar.  However, there are many other popular JavaScript Frameworks which have additional Widgets. Of course, if you know JavaScript adequately well, you may write your own JavaScript.  What if you do not know JavaScript, though?

Here is where Web Widgets can save you! Widgets are objects you may easily add to your web page to provide additional functionality not native to Dreamweaver or the Spry Framework. You can install widgets through the Adobe Extension Manager and add icons and menu items to Dreamweaver. Once installed, you can use these objects just like any other object natively built-in to Dreamweaver.

Using the Widget Browser to search for Web Widgets

To begin searching for web widgets, look for the small gear-like icon in Dreamweaver. (Depending on your chosen Workspace layout, it might be in a different location. This is how it appears in the default “Designer” view.)  When you select “Widget Browser…” it will open a browser and take you to the Adobe Exchange Website.

The Adobe Exchange has many Extensions for Adobe products.  Many are free, but some do have a cost.

Installing a Web Widget

When you select an item on the Adobe Exchange, you will download it onto your computer as a .mxp file and execute it. The Extension Manager will then ask you to agree to the terms (as shown below).

You must now restart Dreamweaver in order to use the newly installed Widget.  Once you have restarted, your Widget will be added somewhere to the menus and toolbars; the widget’s documentation should tell you exactly where.  Our slideshow Widget, for example, is added to a new category in the Insert panel named “Web Widgets,” as shown below:

You’re now finally ready to insert the photo gallery! In Design or Code View, simply place your cursor in the spot you would like the gallery to appear and click the new icon.  The next time you try to save the document, it will ask you whether you want to save the necessary supporting files for the gallery. Dreamweaver will add them to your site and they must eventually be uploaded to your web server.

This Web Widget provides you with four sample images and the thumbnails for the bottom.  A caption appears on the bottom of the image and the gallery automatically plays.  If you hover over the image, controls appear to stop, advance and rewind the show.

You surely want to replace these sample images with your own, however. To do so, you must edit the code directly.  But, don’t worry; you can just mimic the example that they provided.

Customizing the Photo Gallery

Below you will find the code for the entire page in which the photo gallery has been added to. Notice the <script>, <link>, <div> tags, and the “var” variables:

<!--mce:0-->
<!--mce:1-->
<!--mce:2-->
 
<!--mce:3-->

The portion of the code which defines the location of the photo gallery is in a single div. The id and the class of the div must remain the same so that the JavaScript and CSS properties will be applied properly:

<div id="show1" class="slideshow"> </div>

The names of the images and their corresponding captions are stored in an JavaScript Object called data. You must replace the names of the sample images (1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc.) with the names of your images. The captions follow the word caption in single quotes. Be sure to leave the rest of the punctuation as is. Notice one important detail: Each line ends with a comma except the very last one. Be sure that each of yours end with commas except the last one.

var data = {
'1.jpg': { caption: 'Volcano Asención in Ometepe, Nicaragua.' },
'2.jpg': { caption: 'A Ceibu tree.' },
'3.jpg': { caption: 'The view from Volcano Maderas.' },
'4.jpg': { caption: 'Beer and ice cream.' }
};

The last important section defines some of the slideshow details, such as duration (the length of time each picture is displayed in milliseconds).

var myShow = new Slideshow.KenBurns('show1', data, { captions: true, controller: true, delay: 4000, duration: 1000, height: 300, hu: 'images/', thumbnails: true, width: 400 });

One more important note. In order to show thumbnails, your thumbnail images must have the same name as the main image, but with a “t” on the end.

If you want to learn more, check out our Introduction to Dreamweaver CS5 Training classes. Hear about our latest Adobe blogs, classes, and webinars by signing up for our newsletter. Best of luck!

The default underline in InDesign CS5 is just as uninspiring as it is in MS Word or any other program. The difference is, you’re not stuck with it. While working in pharmaceutical, I often had to highlight a physicians’ product information guide. I used the Underline Options dialog box and Character Styles to do it quickly. Here’s how:

1. Fill a Text Frame with some text and select a word or two.
2. Go to the Control Panel and Alt-Click (Opt-Click on Mac) on the Underline button to bring up Underline Options box.
3. Set the Weight to a couple points larger than your text. (My text is 10 pt., so I set the Stroke Weight to 12 pt.)
4. Set the Offset to a negative value to move the stroke upward. (I used -3 pt.)
5. Choose a Color for the highlight. (I like to screen the colors back to a tint so they’re not quite so harsh.) Click OK.
6. Once you have the highlight the way you want it, save it as a Character Style. If you look at the Underline Options section of the Character Styles dialog box, you’ll see all your specifications.
7. Now you can just select the text and click on the “Highlight” Character Style to apply the yellow highlight.

And that’s all there is to it.  Happy highlighting!

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Adding images to your site is one of the simplest and easiest ways of making your web content come to life. I’d say it’s almost mandatory, actually. After all, what better way to ensure your content resonates with your viewers than to provide visual aids and imagery? You can add further interactivity to your site, however, by making your images more than static visual aids, but a dynamic, multi-part navigation system that can link to other pages on your site. These types of images are called image maps.

What are image maps?

An image map allows a regular image to serve as a type of navigation system. We can use an actual map as a perfect example of this. For instance, when users click on certain locations–sometimes called hotspots--on the image, they can be taken to pages related to those locations.

For example, Southwest Airlines’ Route Map page displays a map of the United States. The cities that Southwest flies to are indicated with a small circle. When users click on a circle or city name, they are taken to a page about that city through the use of an image map.

How to make an image map

You can make any image an image map by designating clickable areas on it and giving it a link or an action. To create an image map, insert an image (Insert –> Image) on a page and select it in Design View. The image map tools are available in the Properties Inspector as seen below:

Clickable hotspots can be created in three shapes:

• Rectangles
• Circles
• Polygons

Once a hotspot has been placed on an image, the link location must be completed. Each hotspot may link to a different page.

And that’s all there is to it!

Have you thought of any creative or brilliant image to make into image maps? A map of the world, perhaps, or even a photograph of people? Please share if you have!

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If your work involves regular projects for specific clients, InDesign Libraries can really improve efficiency by making routine tasks an easy, drag-and-drop affair. Here’s how:

1. Go to File > New > Library.  Name the Library appropriately.
2. Create a new document with all the common assets: the logo, color swatches, and text with Paragraph Styles applied. (If you have an existing file where the color swatches have been spec’d, logos are in place, and paragraph styles are established, you can use that rather than creating from scratch.)
3. With the Selection Tool, drag the logo and swatches onto the Library Panel you just created.
4. Double-click on the icon in the Library Panel and give the Item a name.
5. Do the same with text frames that have Paragraph Styles applied. (I like to keep branding and type separate, but you don’t have to.) Double-click the icon and name that Item, as well.
6. The next time you start a new project, simply drag the Branding Item from the Library Panel onto your pasteboard, and all the branding colors will instantly appear in the Swatches Panel.
7. Then drag the Font Styles Item onto your pasteboard and the Paragraph Styles will be added. You can modify from there, as needed.

Libraries can hold just about anything, so use them to your advantage. If a logo is commonly used at two different sizes, size a large and small version in InDesign, and add them to your Library as separate Items. Who wants to keep doing the resizing and spec’ing over and over again? With Libraries, you do it once and you’re done. One thing to keep mind when using Image Links in a Library is that if you move or modify the file, you will have to re-link it.

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Adobe needs to work on how it handles Find defaults in Dreamweaver CS5. Currently, Dreamweaver CS5 (and earlier versions too) uses the last “Find in” value for the next search. But it shouldn’t. It should understand by the user’s behavior how and where it wants to search.

My suggestions:

1. If an open document has focus but nothing is selected, Dreamweaver should assume that you want to search within that document.
2. If a folder is selected in the Files panel, Dreamweaver should assume you want to search within that folder:
   
3. If part of a single line is selected, Dreamweaver correctly assumes that I want to search for the selected text. However, if multiple lines of a document are selected, Dreamweaver should assume that I want to search within the selection (as Textpad does).
   

What do you say Adobe? Can you make these changes for Dreamweaver 6?

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Catalogs commonly have the price aligned flush-right on the last line of the product description. Here’s a simple trick to achieve this with ease.

Before the price, go to Type > Special Characters > Other > Right Indent Tab (Shift + Tab key on both PC and Mac). The great thing about this is the Special Character is not recognized as a tab by InDesign, so you don’t have to override a Paragraph Style.

There are almost endless possibilities to what you can do with Tabs, Special Characters and White Space, and I’ll have more tips and tricks in the future. If there’s anything that you’d like to know about, please feel free to leave a comment. It’d be great to hear from you.

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Rollover images are flashy yet simple visual effects that can help your website to stand out from others and may even unwittingly aid visually impaired viewers. If you are even an occasional web user, I’m sure you have encountered them before. Any button that has ever changed as you rolled your cursor over it is likely a rollover image.

How Rollover Images Work

First, "unpressed" image

You might be inclined to think that this feature is technical and hard to execute. To that, I’d say: you’re somewhat right.

Second, "pressed down" image

It typically requires some knowledge of JavaScript, which, depending on your programming background, may be nothing or could be a daunting task. The mechanics behind the coding are simple, however: all a rollover image does is replace one image for another! No wild and crazy animation necessary–it’s as simple as that.

But, still, what about knowing JavaScript? Dreamweaver CS5 can save your life here since–as with many features involving coding–Dreamweaver can simply do it for you!

Create a Rollover Image

To create a rollover image:

1. In the Insert Panel, go to Insert –> Image Objects –> Rollover Image
   
2. Fill out the “Insert Rollover Image” form
   

Notice that there are fields for:

• Image Name – a unique name that is used by JavaScript.  Do not use spaces.
• Original Image – the image that will appear when the mouse is NOT hovering
• Rollover Image – the image that will appear when the mouse is over the image
• Preload rollover image – Check this box.  It forces the rollover image to be loaded by the browser when the page is loading so that it will be ready when it is needed.  Otherwise the browser will have to ask the server for it later and there will be a delay when it is rolled over.
• Alternate Text – Text to appear in a “tool tip” when the mouse is over the image and if the image is not able to load (for example if the user has images turned off or is using a text editor or screen reader for blind users).
• When clicked, Go to URL – This is the link.

That’s all there is to it! Dreamweaver will then write and insert the code into the document for you.

I’d love to see any image rollovers this post may have helped you make, so feel free to comment with questions or feedback!

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In my last blog, I showed how you can create custom Bulleted List formatting in InDesign when you want something different from what InDesign’s Bulleted & Numbered List command provides. Here’s another variation on the same technique for Numbered Lists. Say you have a list of 30 items. The first thing you need to do is establish what the widest two digits would be. Using 00 or 99 is a pretty good bet, as they are the widest digits in most font families.  So here’s how you do it:

1. On the line above your first list item, type in “00.” (don’t forget the period).
2. Place a tab before the rest of the numbers in the list and select all the list items except the 00 at the beginning.
3. Go into your Tabs panel and set a Decimal Tab that aligns on the period after 00. You’ll see that all the numbers from 1 through 30 align perfectly on the period after the numbers.
4. To get enough separation between the numbers and the text, in this case I used an Em Space (Ctrl-Shift-M, Cmd-Shift-M), but if you need more, use two en spaces, or em spaces, whatever works.
5. Follow up with Indent to Here (Ctrl-\, Cmd-\).
6. Delete the 00. spacer at the beginning of the list, and you’re good to go.

Please feel free to leave me a comment or question.

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Tabs and indents can lead to frustration for a lot of new (and even not so new) InDesign users. I’ve seen the Tabs panel bring even experienced users to the verge of tears, so here are a few InDesign typesetting tricks.

New InDesign users who have worked mostly in MS Word or WordPerfect might not understand how InDesign handles bullet alignment. The key is to use Special Characters and White Space. You can use the Bulleted & Numbered Lists command, but maybe you don’t like the preset spacing, etc. So here’s how you do it yourself.

1. In InDesign, open the Tabs panel by going to Type > Tabs (Ctrl-Shift-T on PC, Cmd-Shift-T on Mac)
2. Set a left-aligned tab where you want your bullet. (I used 0p9 or .125”)
3. Press the tab key on your keyboard before your first bullet text and type your bullet (Alt-8 on PC, Opt-8 on Mac).
4. For proper space between the bullet and the text, go to Type > Insert White Space > En Space (Ctrl-Shift-N, Cmd-Shift-N).
5. Go to Type > Insert Special Character > Other > Indent to Here (Ctrl-\, Cmd-\).

And that’s it! No messing around with the hanging indents. The result:

Leave me a comment and let me know what other features of InDesign you’d like to hear about.

I will be providing a brief internal training webinar for Webucator’s trainers on how to use Camtasia for creating vlogs.  The following video is my rehearsal for the second half of the webinar, which will cover Camtasia Studio, covering everything from title clips, transitions, flash hotspots, to voice narration. If you need to, feel free to review my Camtasia Recorder tutorial.

Use the table of contents to the left to jump to your area of interest! (A nifty Camtasia feature.)

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So you’re a right-clicker. You don’t need to use Control-C/Control-V to copy and paste. It’s just as quick with clicks, and in this case, you’re absolutely right. But when you’re in a production environment, on a tight deadline, knowing some basic keystrokes can shorten your work exponentially.  Say your in the Text tool and now you need the Selection tool, you can go over and pick it off your Tool panel, or you can simple press Escape and you’re there! Another example would be zooming in and out on graphic elements. Is it easier to grab your Magnification tool and draw a marquee, or always have your Navigation panel out, cluttering up your desktop? Simply use Control – +/-. That way you can stay in your current tool, and keep your desktop tidy and spacious.

InDesign is great at making learning the keystrokes simple. If you’re a former QuarkXpress user who was comfortable with that program and knew the Quark shortcuts, go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, and you can change InDesign’s shortcuts to match Quark. You can even customize and create your own sets. If you’re new to desktop publishing, in addition to the keystrokes listed in the Menu items, InDesign provides tooltips telling you the the keystrokes for selecting tools. Just hover your cursor over any of the tools and the name of the tool with its associated keyboard shortcut will appear. Pretty cool! (One note of caution: Things change a bit when you’re in the Text tool working in a frame. For example, Tab will not show and hide your panels; it will create a tab in your text.)

The bottom line is, you probably don’t need to memorize every single keyboard shortcut, but learning the basic ones that you use all the time can make your life a lot simpler. It is so worth it.

Here are a couple quick reference sheets to InDesign CS5 keyboard shortcuts:

• ID Keyboard Shortcuts_PC
• ID Keyboard Shortcuts_Mac

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How would you share this folder/snippet with others?

I’ve recently written on the usefulness of creating snippets in Dreamweaver CS5 for easily and instantly reusing long, complex pieces of code that recur through your document. What if you work with a team of web developers, however, with whom you take turns working on the site? You’d certainly want to share your innovative, time-saving snippet with them to make their lives easier, as well. How would you do that, though?

For instance, I recently had to correspond with an associate who is developing a class for the first time using Webucator’s HTML-based courseware system. He requested any snippets that I had for the courseware creation. A prime example that I had already blogged about came back: my “Webucator” snippet folder, and my “Exercise” snippet.

The Secret Behind Snippets in Dreamweaver

Snippets are really just files stored in a Dreamweaver directory on your computer. Specifically, the directory is the Dreamweaver directory in the Application Data folder of your Windows account/Mac computer.  The path for the directory on a Windows OS would be: C:\Users\[YOUR ACCOUNT NAME]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS5\en_US\Configuration\Snippets, where you’d substitute “[YOUR ACCOUNT NAME]” for your actual account name.

When you navigate to this folder and compare it to your Snippet panel list, you’ll see that, with the exception of certain special default folders, they reflect each other perfectly.

Side-by-side comparison of the snippet folder and the snippet panel

Going into the “Webucator” folder, I see my exercise snippet as “Exercise.csn”.

Now that you know where Dreamweaver CS5 stores snippets, you can now share them. You can even share whole snippet folders – just zip them up and email them as an attachment.

If you’re sharing a whole encyclopedia of snippets with an entire department, however, a better system would be establishing an SVN repository for your team, which would essentially operate like a shared network folder in which anyone with credentials can add, remove, and edit files. This folder can either be an entirely new one of your own making, or a preexisting one. If you choose to make a preexisting one, an excellent idea for you might be to make your Dreamweaver snippets folder your SVN repository, so that whenever anyone updates the repository, they’re also automatically updating the snippets right within Dreamweaver! I would recommend Tortoise SVN as a good SVN client; it’s what we use at Webucator for our courseware system, and it’s intuitive yet efficient.

Happy snippet sharing!

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Snippets are covered in our advanced Dreamweaver CS5 class.

First the use case: why would you ever need to share Dreamweaver snippets with TextPad users?

Our courseware system works like this:

There is one HTML file for each lesson in a course. Class files (code samples, exercise starting points, and solution files) are separate from the lesson files and are marked up as XML to indicate what parts should be included in the manual. At build time, the class files are “sucked into” the manual. This gives us the write once-use anywhere benefit of XML.

So, the process of authoring a Webucator course involves creating a bunch of HTML and XML files. Our system allows for both a subset and a pseudo-superset (extended through classes and ids) of HTML. For example, we don’t allow the <dl> tag and we’ve added a Book Title tag (<span class=”BookTitle”>). We also have additional rules (e.g, we require the use of <thead> and <tbody> within the <table> tag).

To make this easier on authors, we’ve created a bunch of Dreamweaver snippets:

Some of these are just standard HTML tags included to indicate that our courseware system allows them. Others are simple <span> and <div> tags with classes or ids. And others are blocks of code to provide structure. For example, the Conclusion snippet looks like this:

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<div id="Conclusion">
	<p>In this lesson, you have learned</p>
	<ul>
		<li>...</li>
	</ul>
</div>

All this is to say that we use Dreamweaver snippets a lot and find them extremely helpful. However, not all of our authors and editors have Dreamweaver. For these poor souls, I wanted to make our Dreamweaver snippets available as a TextPad clip library.

So, I wrote my first PowerShell script. I’m sure that it’s riddled with inelegancies, but it does the job. Here’s what the code does:

1. Loops through the Dreamweaver snippets, which are stored as individual files (sample snippet file), and appends them one by one to a new file.
2. Uses regular expressions to find and replace a bunch of strings (I thought about using XSLT, but decided to go this route instead).
3. Writes the output to a TextPad Clip Library (.TCL) file (sample text from clip library).

Here’s the code:

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Param ($source="C:\Users\Nat\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS5\en_US\Configuration\Snippets\WCWC", $extension ="*.csn", $tempFile = "temp.txt") 
$fullPathToTempFile = $source + '\' + $tempFile
$textPadClipLib = 'C:\Users\Nat\AppData\Roaming\Helios\TextPad\5.0\WCWC.TCL'
 
[System.IO.DirectoryInfo]$directoryInfo = New-Object System.IO.DirectoryInfo($source);
$rgFiles = $directoryInfo.GetFiles($extension); 
 
$builder = New-Object System.Text.StringBuilder; 
 
$builder.AppendLine("!TCL=1,")
$builder.AppendLine("!TITLE=WCWC")
$builder.AppendLine("!SORT=N")
$builder.AppendLine("!CHARSET=ANSI")
 
foreach ($fileInfo in $rgFiles)
{
	[System.IO.FileStream]$fReader = $fileInfo.OpenRead(); 
 
	if (-not ($fileInfo -eq $null))
	{ 
 
		write $fileInfo.Name;
		$reader = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader($fReader); 
		$builder.AppendLine($reader.ReadToEnd());
	}
} 
 
#$builder.AppendLine("</snippets>")
if (-NOT $source.EndsWith('\'))
{
 $source = $source + '\';
}
$tempFile = $source + $tempFile;
[System.IO.FileStream]$fWriter = New-Object System.IO.FileStream($tempFile, [System.IO.FileMode]::OpenOrCreate);
$writer = New-Object System.IO.StreamWriter($fWriter);
$writer.Write($builder.ToString());
$writer.Flush();
$writer.Close();
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '<\?xml version="1\.0" encoding="utf-8"\?>', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '<snippet name="', '!TEXT='} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '</snippet>', '!'} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '" description=".+', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '.+type="block">', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '.+type="wrap">', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '<insertText location="afterSelection"><!\[CDATA\[\]\]>', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '</insertText>', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '<insertText location="beforeSelection">', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '<!\[CDATA\[', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '<insertText location="afterSelection">', '\^'} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '\]\]>', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace 'MM_END_NESTED_CDATA', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
(Get-Content $fullPathToTempFile) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace 'MM_BEGIN_NESTED_CDATA', ''} | 
Set-Content $fullPathToTempFile
 
gc $fullPathToTempFile |
where {$_ -ne ""} > $textPadClipLib
 
(Get-Content $textPadClipLib) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace "!TEXT", "`n!TEXT"} | 
Set-Content $textPadClipLib
 
(Get-Content $textPadClipLib) -join "`n" -replace "`n\\.", "\^" |
Set-Content $textPadClipLib

And here’s the TextPad clip library:

If you want to run this script (and I can’t imagine you will), you’ll need to make a couple of changes:

1. On line 1, modify C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS5\en_US\Configuration\Snippets\LIB
   1. Reference the proper user name.
   2. Verify the path to the Snippets directory.
   3. Change LIB to the name of the Snippets library you’re converting to a TextPad clip library.
2. On line 3, modify C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Helios\TextPad\5.0\WCWC.TCL
   1. Reference the proper user name.
   2. Verify the path to TextPad
   3. Change WCWC.TCL to the name you want to use for the TextPad clip library.

I like PowerShell, but, as with any new language and programming environment, I ran into some frustrations. I’m especially unhappy with line 103. I needed to merge all lines that started with \^ with the preceding line and this was the only way I could get it to work. Perhaps I should take our PowerShell training. J

Sample Dreamweaver Snippet File

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<snippet name="Conclusion" description="The conclusion usually consists of paragraphs and lists, but may include other elements." preview="code" type="block">
<insertText location="beforeSelection">
<![CDATA[<div id="Conclusion">
			<p>In this lesson, you have learned</p>
			<ul>
				<li>...</li>
			</ul>
		</div>]]>
</insertText>
<insertText location="afterSelection"><![CDATA[]]>
</insertText>
</snippet>

Sample TextPad Clip

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!TEXT=Conclusion
<div id="Conclusion">
			<p>In this lesson, you have learned</p>
			<ul>
				<li>...</li>
			</ul>
		</div>
!

If you read my last blog post on creating snippets in Dreamweaver CS5, you should now know how convenient and powerful they are, especially if you continuously reuse large pieces of code. You can simplify this task down to selecting a snippet in a list. You can even further simplify this task (and almost any other task in Dreamweaver), however, down to the push of a button–and whatever button you like by creating a keyboard shortcut.

You can access keyboard shortcuts in Dreamweaver CS5 either by right-clicking from the Snippets menu…

or going to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts…

You’ll then view the Keyboard Shortcuts window.

Dreamweaver CS5 Keyboard Shortcuts Explained

First, to explain keyboard shortcuts: every shortcut is part of a set. The default shortcut set is called the “Dreamweaver set”. You cannot edit the Dreamweaver set at all, since it is the default, but you can duplicate this and other sets, and you can edit and delete any other set.

Thus, the first step to creating your own shortcuts would be to simply duplicate and rename the original Dreamweaver set. Using my previous post’s example, I can make my own set called “Sean’s Shortcuts” and make a keyboard shortcut for my “Exercise” snippet.

My own shortcut set, with my Exercise snippet and a new shortcut

Now, every time I press CTRL+SHIFT+*, my entire exercise snippet will automatically enter my document.

So, in short:

1. Go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts…
2. Duplicate the original “Dreamweaver set” and rename.
3. In the “Commands” field, select the category and then the specific command for which you’d like to create a shortcut.
4. In the Press key field, press the key(s) you want to use for your shortcut.

And don’t worry if you select a shortcut that’s already taken: Dreamweaver will yell and tell you so.

You can create snippets for essentially anything in Dreamweaver. Inserting SWFs, making divs, anything you can access in the “Commands” section. I’d love to hear what functions you made shortcuts for, so please comment!

Snippets and Keyboard Shortcuts are covered in our advanced Dreamweaver CS5 class.

I will be providing a brief internal training webinar for Webucator’s trainers on how to use Camtasia for creating vlogs.  The following video is my rehearsal for the first half of the webinar, which will cover Camtasia Recorder, with features such as setting your recording area, and adding mouse click effects.

Use the table of contents to the left to jump to your area of interest! (A nifty Camtasia feature.)

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Snippets in Dreamweaver are an excellent way of reusing a certain piece of code that you find yourself using constantly, over and over again, without having to manually retype it or copy and paste it.  I find myself using it in my own line of work quite often, when developing exercises for courses.

Example of complicated code I have to enter often

I use Dreamweaver to develop our courseware, and every exercise in our class documents are usually made up of nested divs, each of which pertain to specific details about the exercise, such as the exercise’s title, length, and instructions. I used to type these nested divs out manually and oftentimes unwittingly created errors, which required me to dig into the code and hunt the bug down. Here’s where snippets came to my rescue! I’m going to make a snippet that’s just a blank exercise.

Creating a Snippet

1. Write your code in the Code View, highlight it, right click it, then select “Create New Snippet”.
   
2. Fill out the corresponding info for your snippet. There are two different Snippet types: Wrap selection and Insert block.
   1. Wrap selection provides Insert before and Insert after fields for the opening and closing snippet pieces. In the example below, it is used to wrap the selected text in a “FilePath” span:
      
   2. Insert block simply inserts the snippet into the code wherever the cursor is:
      

Once you’ve created your snippet, it will appear in the Files panel, in the Snippets tab. If you right click in the Snippets section, you can even create a new folder just for your own snippets, for better organization.

Now, every time you click on your snippet here, Dreamweaver will automatically insert it wherever your cursor is.

You can even create keyboard shortcuts for snippets (and essentially any function in Dreamweaver), so you can insert it at just the push of whatever button you want! Look out for my next blog entry to find out how.

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Snippets are covered in our advanced Dreamweaver CS5 class.

Create your first page in Dreamweaver CS5 in 81 seconds. It just involves a few simple steps.

1. Go to File –> New.
2. In the New Document window, select “Blank Page”
3. For Page Type, select “HTML”
4. For Layout, select “<none>”
5. For Doctype, select “XHTML 1.0 Transitional”
6. Click “Create”
7. Add some simple content.
8. Press F12 to save and view in a browser.

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Learn all about creating websites in our Introduction to Dreamweaver CS5 class.

Two Things You’ll Need

1. Dreamweaver CS3, 4, or 5
2. A Microsoft Access database file

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When you have a team of web designers and developers working on the same website using Dreamweaver CS5, you don’t want each person to have to set up the Dreamweaver site separately. You can save time by defining the site once, exporting it to a .ste file and then allowing others to import the site definition. In the following video, I show you how to do that using the site we use in our Advanced Dreamweaver CS5 training class.

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I hope we’ll see you in one of our Dreamweaver CS5 classes soon.

A student in a Camtasia class of mine recently asked about how to insert a SWF into Dreamweaver for accessibility.

Here is how you do it in Dreamweaver CS5, but it should be exactly the same in Dreamweaver CS4 and CS3.

1. On the Insert tab, select Common.
   
2. Under Media, select SWF.
   
3. Find and select your Camtasia-produced .SWF video.
   
4. Click Yes to make sure the .SWF video is inside of the root folder of the website.
   
5. Add accessibility attributes.
   

A grey Flash square should appear in the Design view: this is your video. It should play when you preview it and when you upload it online.

I’d love to hear from anyone who this may have helped, so feel free to comment!

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Camtasia (yes that’s the correct spelling) may just be the most misspelled of all software products. Check out the following from Google AdWords Keyword Tool:

• Camtasia, the correct spelling of the word is searched about 1,000,000 times per month.
• Cantasia, with an n, is searched about 22,200 times per month.
• Camstasia, with an extra s, is searched about 14,800 times per month.
• Cantasia Studio and Camptasia are searched a combined 9,000 times per month.

So the misspelled versions of Camtasia are searched on a total of about 46,000 times per month or about one time for every 20 times the correctly spelled word is searched.

Other software products are also often misspelled. Often it’s an issue with spacing or case. For example, we regularly see ColdFusion, Dreamweaver and Photoshop spelled Cold Fusion, DreamWeaver and PhotoShop on resumes – a big mistake as it gives the impression that you can’t be that much of an expert if you don’t even know how to spell the word correctly.

Luckily, Google does a fantastic job of correcting searchers spelling for them. For example, search on cantasia and you’ll see these results:

As you can see, Google guessed that you really meant Camtasia and gives you a chance to correct yourself. Google calls the feature that figures out intended spellings “Spellmeleon.” I’m not quite sure why, but it appears to be a play on the word Chameleon. In any case, it’s a helpful feature for searchers.

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When we create outlines for our courses, we often start with Microsoft Word and then, when the outline is ready, we copy and paste the list into Dreamweaver as a quick and easy way of converting the list to HTML. Unfortunately, the copied list is not properly nested, resulting in invalid HTML.

Here is an example of the start of our Introduction to Excel 2010 class outline as seen in Microsoft Word:

When you copy and paste this outline into Design View in Dreamweaver and then view it in Code View, you’ll see this:

<ol>
	<li>Getting Around in Excel
<ol>
	<li>Exploring Excel 2010
<ol>
	<li>The Application Window</li>
	<li>The Quick Access Toolbar</li>
	<li>The Ribbons</li>
	<li>The File Tab and Backstage View</li>
	<li>The Status Bar</li>
</ol>
</li>
	<li>Navigating and Selecting in Excel
<ol>
	<li>Mouse Navigation</li>
	<li>Keyboard Navigation</li>
	<li>Selecting Cells</li>
</ol>
</li>
	<li>Customizing Excel
<ol>
	<li>Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar</li>
	<li>Exploring Excel Options</li>
...</ol>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>

Notice that the second <ol> tag (line 3) is a child of the outer <ol> tag (line 1). That is not valid HTML. The nested list should be nested within an <li> tag. We created the following XSLT to fix this problem:

And we build this little web application to make it easy. For the XSLT transformation, the application uses the Sarissa library, which unfortunately does not support Google Chrome, but it should work in other major browsers.

Here’s a short video on the whole process:

If anyone knows of a fix to make Sarissa work with Chrome, please let me know.

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I did a vlog review of the new features in Camtasia 7.

New features in Camtasia 7

• Added webcam and audio capability to Camtasia Recorder and Camtasia Studio
• Sleeker timeline
• Updated and consolidated interface
• Easier audio editing in Camtasia Studio

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When you need to get the maximum amount of work done in the least amount of time Photoshop PlugIn Software might be your answer.  Often the effect you want can be done in seconds.

You would need to consider your time vs. the investment cost.  If the Photoshop plugin saves you time the return on your money would soon pay for itself.

• My favorite Photoshop plugin software is Autofx’s Mystical Suite, which they describe accurately on their site  as “an integrated bundle of products that work together to create some amazing visual effects.” Here is a sample of Mystical Lighting used on a picture . You can see the interesting light effect in the woods.
  

• Imagenomic’s Portraiture is a great plugin to use when you need to soften & smooth skin.  Imagenomic features bundled software that can also save you money.  Spend some time viewing the videos on this site as they’re very cool.

• Alien Skin Software’s Eye Candy helps you easily create slick designs.  Eye Candy has 30 filters and over 1000 preset.  If you love digital photography then check out their Photo Bundle, which consists of 5 Photoshop plugins that helps you improve the image quality and most important will save you time.

• Fluid Mask by Vertus is another great Photoshop plugin.  I call this the plugin Masking Made Easy, because that’s what it does.  Specifically, Fluid Mask does the following:
  1. Faster Initial Image Processing
  2. Localized Edge Detection and Blending
  3. Intelligent Edge Blending
  4. Great New Tools for Color Based Selections

  Masking is a great way to design beautiful cutouts.  This Photoshop plugin is worth every penny when you need to have great high-end images for your designs.

Though the good ones aren’t free or even cheap, the right set of Photoshop Plugins can make a world of difference and save you a lot of time.

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We discuss Photoshop plugins in our Introduction to Photoshop class and we can cover any set of Photoshop Plugins in a private onsite class.

These days you have three options for including images on your web pages:

1. JPG (pronounced jay peg)
2. GIF (pronounced jif like the peanut butter, though often mispronounced with a hard G as in gift)
3. PNG (pronounced ping as in ping pong)

So, which should you use and when? Let’s start with GIF and JPG as they have been around much longer than PNG.

When deciding between GIF and JPG, the rules of thumb are:

GIFs are better for:

• Line drawings and clip art.
• Graphics with large areas of uniform color and the total number of colors is fewer than 256.

JPGs are better for:

• Photographs.
• Images without text.
• Drawings with a lot of gradients.

So what about PNG?

PNG officially stands for Portable Network Graphics and unofficially for PNG’s Not GIF.  It was designed as an open format to replace GIF, which was patented. The PNG format would likely have become more popular more quickly had Internet Explorer 6 supported it more fully.  This, unfortunately, is still an issue as many people still use IE6. Otherwise, I would recommend using PNG over GIF every time.  However, you’ll have to make that choice based on the browsers you want to support.

One further note about PNG is that it doesn’t natively support animation (arguably a good thing).

So, web pages require JPG, GIF, or PNG image types. For the widest support, JPG is your best choice for photo images and GIF is best for graphic images.

Of course, the choice is yours. Whichever format you choose, remember the most important rule of all: SAVE THE ORIGINAL!

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We cover saving files for the Web in our Advanced Photoshop class and Fireworks  Web Integration class.

Over the years, I’ve taught literally thousands of students in HTML, CSS and Dreamweaver clases and I have always felt that students should first learn to “hard code” web pages before learning to use a tool like Dreamweaver. But the reason has changed.

The early versions of Dreamweaver couldn’t do everything you could do yourself in HTML and CSS code. You needed to know how to tweak the code to get things done.

That’s not really the case anymore. In Dreamweaver CS4 and the soon-to-be-released Dreamweaver CS5, you can pretty much do everything you need to do in Design view without ever touching the code. However, in these newer releases of Dreamweaver you are forced to use CSS from the beginning and this overwhelms most students who have no prior knowledge of web design.

Dreamweaver is more complicated if you don’t have a good understanding of HTML and CSS and learning all three at once is challenging. Many students I have taught over the years who started with a Dreamweaver class ended up “dropping back” to take the HTML class to have a better understanding of how web pages are constructed. Having an understanding of CSS is essential with Dreamweaver because the layout & all formatting are controlled with CSS.

So before learning Dreamweaver, I strongly recommend that, at a minimum, you:

1. Understand how web pages are constructed.
2. Know what HTML tags look like and do.
3. Understand the role of CSS and know how to construct a simple rule.

We do cover all of these concepts in our Introduction to Dreamweaver class; however, you’ll have a great head start if you come into the class with some hands-on experience already.

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Voice over Internet protocol, commonly known as VoIP is a technology which allows users to place phone calls over the Internet. Conferencing, a feature which was seemingly lost in the initial VoIP boom has made significant strides as of late, with such software as Adobe Connect, but understanding how it works is a little tricky. If I want to make a VoIP call to a friend it’s a pretty straightforward process. My IP address makes a connection with their IP address; our voices are then digitized and broadcast directly to each other. With this is mind, how can you make a call with more than two people then? Well, something called a PBX server is needed. Essentially an IP based PBX server takes many calls from many users and outputs the audio from the sum of the calls back your telephone, headset, or whatever you are using. The effect is identical to a traditional land line conference call, except you’re using the Internet!

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