Webvanta Web Design and Information Architecture Resources

Does a Freelancer Need to Use a Contract?

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:43:10 GMT

HTML 5 Cheat Sheet

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:41:38 GMT

CSS 3 Cheat Sheet

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:41:01 GMT

molly.com

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:39:58 GMT

Molly E. Holzschlag is a well-known Web standards advocate, instructor, and author.

Guesses vs. Data as Basis for Design Recommendations (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:17:19 GMT

The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:15:54 GMT

New Features: Code Editor and Rich Text Editor

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:25:24 GMT

Tonight we made an exciting upgrade to Webvanta's editing capabilities. There's now two editor modes:

Rich Text Editor, with a Word-like wysiwyg interface and styling you can control
Code Editor, with syntax highlighting and tab indenting

Both editors have undo/redo.

We could go on and on about them, but it would be far more tedious than using the new editors. You'll find them all over the place: in in-place edit windows, database forms, page admin, snippets, and JavaScript, CSS, and XML editing.

The editor opens in code edit view on admin pages. When used in-place on your site, it opens in wysiwyg mode as long as there is no WebvantaScript in the content being edited. You can switch modes manually once the editor is open.

You can read all about how to use both editors, and to configure the editor styles, in our online help

Please check out the new editor, and let us know what you think!

This is a large body of complex JavaScript code, so browser-specific issues are possible. Please let us know if you have any problems with it. You'll have the least chance of encountering problems if you use a recent browser, such as Firefox 3.x, Safari 4, or IE 8.

The Future of (X)HTML

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:34:11 GMT

Last week, the W3C officially threw in the towel on XHTML 2. This was a Good Thing, as the bulk of the web community has been behind HTML 5 and there was little apparent future for XHTML 2. Eliminating it just cuts out some confusion and largely fruitless effort.

Some observers have misread the demise of XHTML 2 as a failure of XHTML 1. The death of XHTML 2 does not, however, mean the end of XHTML syntax, which is fully supported by HTML 5.

A Brief History of Web Standards

HTML started as a stand-alone language for describing web pages in terms of both content and appearance. It evolved erratically in the early days of the web, culminating in HTML 4 (and the minor revision to HTML 4.01), which became a formal standard in 1999 and remains widespread today. It's ironic that in one of the fastest-moving technologies of all time, we're tied to a standard that hasn't been updated in a decade.

XHTML 1, which debuted in 2000, is a reformulation of HTML 4 that provides a stricter syntax that conforms to XML rules. There's nothing new in XHTML 1, in terms of capabilities; it's just a new syntax.

XHTML disallows the presentational aspects of HTML, delegating these controls to CSS. Most web designers now design this way in any case, whether they are using HTML or XHTML. So it's easy to think of XHTML as meaning "clean HTML," but it's not the only way to write clean HTML.

Here are some of the additional syntactical requirements of XHTML 1:

All tag names must be in lower case.
All attributes must be in quotes.
All tags must be closed, so single-part tags end with />.
All documents must be well-formed, which means you can't, for example, overlap tags.

(There's more to it than that, but this isn't intended as a tutorial; see HTML vs. XHTML for a comprehensive list, and XHTML Explained for a more readable discussion.)

XHTML 2 Charts a Different (Dead-End) Path

The standard that is dying is XHTML 2. This is in no way a condemnation of XHTML 1.

Whereas XHTML 1 took an existing HTML standard and simply provided a stricter syntax, XHTML 2 was a radical revamping that might have created superior markup, in a theoretical sense, but at the price of backward compatibility. XHTML 2 also continued to focus on web sites as documents, rather than applications.

HTML 5 Supports Both Syntaxes

The HTML 5 standard began life as a splinter group from the XHTML 2 effort, leaving the W3C in mid-2004. It was embraced by the W3C in March 2007 after its "years in exile," and with the demise of XHTML 2, HTML 5 is now the primary next-generation web standard.

HTML 5 defines both an HTML syntax and an XML syntax -- you can choose. HTML 5 using XML syntax is an excellent successor to XHTML 1 for those who prefer this approach. Those who want to stick with HTML syntax and its more generous parsing by the browser can take that path. In either case, all of the old and new capabilities are available.

As for using the new features in HTML 5, it's going to be a while — like a decade or so — before you can assume that nearly all of your web visitors are using browsers that fully implement HTML 5. Today, there's a few features you can use, and some really interesting ones if you ignore Internet Explorer. But that's a subject for another article.

Customizing the Rich Text Editor

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:25:54 GMT

The Rich Text Editor is customizable in two ways:

The styling that is applied to content in the editor preview window
The styles that appear in the Style pop-up menu

Preview Area Styling

Your site comes preconfigured with a generic style sheet, which will set text color according to the Config Settings (if you're using our standard webvanta.css for your site). The background is set to white.

You can change this styling by modifying the stylesheet webvanta-preview.css. You can also change which stylesheet is used by changing the Config Setting system.rte.admin.EditorAreaCSS.

The entire preview area is wrapped in a div, whose ID you can set by changing the config setting system.rte.admin.BodyId. By default, this is set to wrapper. This style in the webvanta-preview stylesheet defines the padding that gives some space around the text. You could add a background color if desired.

If the styles you want to use in the preview area depend on a parent or ancestor of the individual styles (as in #article h2), then you may want to set system.rte.admin.BodyId to the corresponding ID (article in this example) to activate those styles.

Providing Preset Styles

To preserve the integrity of your design, you don't want content editors choosing fonts, colors, or sizes; you want them choosing from styles that you have defined for them.

You can configure the RTE to provide exactly the styles that you want. This configuration is done via an XML file, whose path is in the Config Setting system.rte.admin.StylesXmlPath.

You can modify or replace the provided XML file directly, by choosing Design > Feeds & XML Files from the control panel menu. For details of the format for this file and the options available to you, see the FCKeditor Styles documentation.

Creating Styles XML from CSS

To simplify the task of creating this XML file, we have provided a translator that processes a CSS file to create the XML file.

We've included a few example styles at the start of webvanta.preview.css. Each style that you want to have appear in the Style picker must be preceded by a comment of the form:

/* style: Name of the Style */

The name that appears in the comment determines what the style is called in the picker. The name of the style is correspondingly styled, so the Style picker provides a wysiwyg chooser.

The styles that are commented in this way and appear in the Style picker must be simple styles. That is, it must be of the form

.classname {} or #id {}

It cannot be, for example,

.wrapper h3 {}

To create the XMl file, choose the appropriate CSS file in the pop-up at the bottom of the CSS file list, and click Create.

The name of the created file will then be displayed. Before this new file will have any effect, you must copy this filename to the config setting system.rte.admin.StylesXmlPath.

Using the Rich Text Editor

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:24:20 GMT

Using the Rich Text Editor

The Rich Text Editor (RTE) allows you and your client to edit HTML content without seeing any code: it is a wysiwyg environment much like a stripped down version of Word.

The RTE mode is enabled automatically when editing the site via the in-place editor, as long as there is no script in the code being edited. It is best to keep script in a separate region of the page, so the HTML code that represents the content can be edited with the RTE without worrying about affecting the script.

Wysiwyg text editing in an HTML environment has many challenges. You're counting on the editor to insert sensible HTML markup with a minimum of information, other than the raw text itself. The visual appearance of any given HTML markup depends, of course, on the stylesheets applied to it, and it may also depend on surrounding HTML markup to trigger certain rules in those stylesheets.

Because of this complexity, all wysiwyg editing that creates HMTL is an approximation, both in creating the optimal code for the content, and in creating a preview that represents how the text will look on the page, while it is being edited.

You can control both the stylesheet that is applied to the editor region, and the styles that are shown in the Style picker on the editor toolbar. See Customizing the Rich Text Editor for details.

Editor Toolbar

The RTE toolbar has many options, which are largely self-explanatory with a little exploration. For "excerpt" fields, which are small but sometimes need HTML content, a stripped down version of the toolbar is provided.

Cut, Copy, and Paste

In addition to the usual cut, copy, and paste commands, available via the toolbar or keyboard, you can paste text in two special ways by choosing the appropriate button:

Paste as plain text: all HTML markup is stripped out.
Paste word document: retains most styling from Word while cleaning up the markup.

Styling Text

To style text, first select it, and then click a button in the toolbar or choose an item from one of the toolbar's pop-up menus.

To preserve CSS formatting, it is best to avoid using the editor controls, when possible, except for choosing the Format and optionally a Style.

The Format is really the tag: p, h1, h2, etc.

The Style is chosen from a set of styles that you can define by customizing the editor settings. This lets you create a set of predefined styles from which your client can choose.

Inserting Images

To insert an image, position the cursor where you want to insert it, and click the image button. In the dialog that is displayed, enter the path to the image.

If you uploaded the image directly to your Webvanta site, and did not use a zip file to create a folder, then the path should be in the format /filename.jpg. If you are loading an image from an external site, include the full URL, starting with http://.

Enter the alt text to describe the image.

You can enter the dimensions of the image, but keep in mind that this is providing a size instruction to the browser, not resizing the image on the server.

If you want a link on the image, you can specify that on the Link tab.

You can also specify alignment and padding options, apply classes, and so forth.

Adding Links

To attach a link to a piece of text, select the text and click the Link button. Enter the URL for the link. If you want to force it to open in a new window, click the Target tab and choose New Window (_blank).

Using Cut and Paste

There are icons in the editor's toolbar that you can use for cut and paste, but your browser's security settings will probably block them from working. This is because access to your system clipboard is prohibited by default, and you don't want to enable it broadly because you wouldn't want arbitrary web sites being able to access your clipboard.

You can always use ctrl-X for cut, ctrl-C for copy, and ctrl-V for paste, so just ignoring the icons is the easiest fix.

If you do want to change your browser's security settings, here's where to look. To configure Firefox for this, enter about:config in the address bar; see this article for more details. You should only enable clipboard access on the specific site(s) you trust.

For IE7 and IE8, the default behavior is to prompt the user (on all sites) asking for clipboard permission; to suppress the prompt, click Tools, Internet Options, Security tab, Internet, Custom Level. Under Scripting, click Enable for Allow Programmatic clipboard access. See this article for details.

Using Full-Screen Mode

When you are editing a large body of text, click the Full Screen icon (the first icon in the top row) or press Ctrl-Alt-Enter (Ctrl-Option-Enter on a Mac). The editor region now fills the browser window. (It may then be too wide for easy editing, in which case you can simply resize the browser.)

To return to the normal view, click the Full Screen icon (or press the shortcut key) again.

Cheat Sheet

Ctrl-C	Copy selected text
Ctrl-X	Cut selected text
Ctrl-V	Paste text

Ctrl-Z	Undo
Ctrl-Y	Redo

Ctrl-B	Bold
Ctrl-I	Italic
Ctrl-U	Underline

Ctrl-L	Open Link window
Ctrl-Shift-S	Save
Ctrl-Alt-Enter (Windows) Ctrl-Option-Enter (Mac)	Resize to fill browser

Credits

The RTE is based on the open-source FCKeditor.

Using the Code Editor

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:45:54 GMT

The code editor provides a variety of features that make it easier to write, edit, and debug your code. It supports HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and WebvantaScript.

Syntax Highlighting

Your text is colored to show which parts are strings, comments, numeric values, etc. If the code has a structural error, such as a close tag for which there is no matching open tag, the offending code is shown in red.

Note: WebvantaScript syntax highlighting is currently limited and will be improved in future versions.

Indenting

The tab key indents the current line or, if multiple lines are selected, all the selected lines.

Shift-tab removes one level of indentation.

Undo and Redo

Ctrl-Z undoes the previous action, and Ctrl-Y redoes it. On Safari, Ctrl-Z may not work, in which case you can use Ctrl-Backspace.

Find Matching Brackets

Ctrl-[ looks for the matching bracket and, if found, highlights it briefly. The cursor must be immediately after a (, ), [, ], {, or } for this to work.

Cheat Sheet

Ctrl-C	Copy selected text
Ctrl-X	Cut selected text
Ctrl-V	Paste text

Ctrl-Z (Ctrl-Backspace for Safari)	Undo
Ctrl-Y	Redo

Ctrl-[	Highlight matching bracket
tab	Indent current line(s)
Ctrl-tab	Outdent current line(s)

Credits

The code editor is based on the open-source Code Mirror project.

Using the Editor (Overview)

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:23:52 GMT

Webvanta provides a dual-mode editing widget that is available to you throughout your control panel, and as an in-place editor when viewing your site.

The editor has two distinct modes:

Code Editor, for editing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code
Rich Text Editor, for editing HTML text in a WYSIWYG environment

The editor appears in many places throughout the control panel, and also in the in-place editing window when viewing the site.

Switching Modes

Depending on the context, the editor may start up in either mode; when it knows you're editing code (beyond HTML), it starts in code mode. If you're editing JavaScript or WebvantaScript, you should work in code mode.

You can switch between modes by clicking on the small icons at the lower-left corner of the window: the gear enables code mode, and the document enables RTE mode. There's also a third icon that disables the editor widget entirely and shows a simple text area, for those rare situations in which you want unfettered access to the raw information.

The two editors are entirely separate bodies of code, which has two implications you should be aware of:

Shortcut keys and available commands are different in each mode.
Both modes have undo/redo capability, but the undo history is lost when you switch modes.

Common Features

Here are some shortcuts that work in either mode:

Ctrl-C	Copy selected text
Ctrl-X	Cut selected text
Ctrl-V	Paste text
Ctrl-Z (Ctrl-Backspace for Safari)	Undo
Ctrl-Y	Redo

Details

For more details, see the following articles:

Lesson 1: What You Can Create with Webvanta, and How to Get Started

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:20:57 GMT

Welcome to "Learning Webvanta," a free online course in building database-driven web sites with the Webvanta hosted CMS.

This is the first of a series of lessons. If you' aren't already on the mailing list to receive them, please complete the form on the right.

In this first lesson, we'll briefly explore what you can create with Webvanta and how to get started.

What You Can Build with Webvanta

You can benefit from Webvanta's capabilities on any site for which you:

Want the client to be able to easily edit the site, while preserving the design integrity
Have more than a few pages of content, and content that has some repeating structure
Need an integrated blog, commenting on articles, or an RSS feed

Here's two examples:

www.osmosis.com is a business site with lots of static CMS pages and integrated blog. It uses the database for lodging and restaurant directories and for press clippings.
www.commercialspacegateway.com is an information portal for the space industry. It shows how you can build a large and complex site with just a little styling of the Webvanta starter site and lots of content.

There's many more examples at www.webvanta.com/sites if you're curious.

Rather than explaining how it works...

... we'd like to start by showing you.

This 5-minute screencast gives you a quick tour of how Webvanta works:

www.webvanta.com/intro

Once you've seen this screencast, set up your free site at:

www.webvanta.com/trial

And then watch the Getting Started video. There's a link to that video on the home page of your site; you can also find it here:

www.webvanta.com/getting-started

Finally, skim the help materials at:

www.webvanta.com/help

So you know what's available there.

Check out the User's Guide section, so you know what reference materials are available, as well as the WebvantaScript Cheat Sheet.

This will give you a solid introduction to Webvanta and prepare you to dive in with setting up your site in our next lesson.

If you have any questions or comments, you can post them below

Check Out Our New Video and Quick Reference

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:04:30 GMT

We've just posted a new introductory video that gives a whirlwind 5-minute tour of how to build sites with Webvanta. Check it out and let us know what you think!

This video also provides a first look at our new syntax highlighting for code editing and wysiwyg rich text editor.

We've also been hard at work on easy-to-use WebvantaScript references, and we have a great new cheat sheet.

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Best Practices For Effective Design Of "About me"-Pages | Design Showcase | Smashing Magazine

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W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:04:19 GMT

A Beginner's Guide to Anything and Everything - SitePoint Forums

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:03:45 GMT

Twitter Promotion Done Right: #moonfruit

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:02:41 GMT

HOW TO: Get Retweeted on Twitter

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:01:41 GMT

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Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:00:42 GMT

Javascript - Usefull Tips & Tricks - SitePoint Forums

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:00:11 GMT

Twitter Tips for Beginners: Lessons from the Evolution of Blogging Part 1 - Journaling

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:59:07 GMT

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Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:04:07 GMT

WDVL: Introduction to Style Sheets

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:54:53 GMT

Module Tabs in Web Design: Best Practices and Solutions | Design Showcase | Smashing Magazine

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:53:17 GMT

All About Floats | CSS-Tricks

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Keryx (X)HTML Elements Best Practice Sheet

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:36:18 GMT

Best pratices for HTML elements

2 Ways To Create Realistic “Depth of Field” | Minervity

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:16:06 GMT

Two methods for creating realistic depth fields in photoshop.

9 SEO Tips You’ve Probably Forgot About

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:12:40 GMT

Nine tips that are often forgotten about SEO.

Serving XHTML As HTML

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:17:24 GMT

Webvanta Web Design and Information Architecture Resources

Does a Freelancer Need to Use a Contract?

HTML 5 Cheat Sheet

CSS 3 Cheat Sheet

molly.com

Guesses vs. Data as Basis for Design Recommendations (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer

New Features: Code Editor and Rich Text Editor

The Future of (X)HTML

A Brief History of Web Standards

XHTML 2 Charts a Different (Dead-End) Path

HTML 5 Supports Both Syntaxes

More Reading

Customizing the Rich Text Editor

Preview Area Styling

Providing Preset Styles

Creating Styles XML from CSS

Using the Rich Text Editor

Editor Toolbar

Cut, Copy, and Paste

Styling Text

Inserting Images

Adding Links

Using Cut and Paste

Using Full-Screen Mode

Cheat Sheet

Credits

Using the Code Editor

Syntax Highlighting

Indenting

Undo and Redo

Find Matching Brackets

Cheat Sheet

Credits

Using the Editor (Overview)

Switching Modes

Common Features

Details

Lesson 1: What You Can Create with Webvanta, and How to Get Started

What You Can Build with Webvanta

Rather than explaining how it works...

Check Out Our New Video and Quick Reference

When good browsers go bad—and they all do | Web Publishing | Creative Notes | Macworld

Keep Users Updated During Long Load Times | UX Booth

Web Designer Notebook » 20 Gorgeous Icon Sets That You Have To Pay For

Web Designer Notebook

90 Beautiful, Useful and Free Icon Sets

A Match Made in Heaven: How to Interview a Client

Digg the Blog » Blog Archive » Much Ado About IE6

Max Design - standards based web design, development and training » CSS cascade - a simple step-by-step presentation

35 Beautiful Photography Websites | Design Showcase | Smashing Magazine

Tips for Starting your Own Web Development Business | Admix Web

Rounding Up the Top 10 jQuery Lightbox Scripts

20 How To Creating Icon Tutorials Enhance Your Illustrator skills

7 Fabulous Tips & Tricks Daily Sources for Designers & Coders | Inspired Magazine

Web Design Rules to Follow | Admix Web

45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires | Developer's Toolbox | Smashing Magazine

Best Practices For Effective Design Of "About me"-Pages | Design Showcase | Smashing Magazine

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

A Beginner's Guide to Anything and Everything - SitePoint Forums

Twitter Promotion Done Right: #moonfruit

HOW TO: Get Retweeted on Twitter

Javascript Links & Resources - Beginner to Advanced - SitePoint Forums

Javascript - Usefull Tips & Tricks - SitePoint Forums

Twitter Tips for Beginners: Lessons from the Evolution of Blogging Part 1 - Journaling

20 Ways To Make Your Website Crap | Web Design Tutorials | Creating a Website | Learn Adobe Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver

Pricing Skills and Services as a Freelancer: Part 2, Tips and Quotes | Freelancing and Outsourcing Tips, Commentary, Analysis, and News from oDesk

Using jQuery to play Media Files (MP3,WMA,etc,etc) | Evan Riley

15 jQuery Plugins For A Better Photo Gallery And Slideshow

GoMediaZine | Real world advice from working artists and designers.

The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer

WDVL: Introduction to Style Sheets

Module Tabs in Web Design: Best Practices and Solutions | Design Showcase | Smashing Magazine

All About Floats | CSS-Tricks

Keryx (X)HTML Elements Best Practice Sheet

2 Ways To Create Realistic “Depth of Field” | Minervity

9 SEO Tips You’ve Probably Forgot About

Serving XHTML As HTML