I will be presenting 'Using 3D Tools in Photoshop CS4 Extended' to the User Group and Experts community on September 16th via Adobe Connect. I'll cover the basics of how the tools work using a graphic design example, as well as a model from Google's free Warehouse 3D collection.

Here's the info you need:
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)

If you are a member of Adobe Groups, you can check out the details here:
http://groups.adobe.com/posts/aebfa20efe
Or just join the meeting on the 16th:
http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/techweds2009/

This is a free community event, one of the last of the summer, so stop in and soak up some 3D goodness!

When I reviewed Extensis Suitcase Fusion 2 released last November, it was only available for Mac OS X. At the time, they promised a Windows version with feature parity. Now, Extensis has released Suitcase Fusion 2 for Windows.

A review of the product site reveals that the new Windows version does seem to have parity with the most critical features:

• font previewing featuring the floating preview
• plug-in based auto-activation for the latest creative professional applications
• robust database featuring SQL Lite
• portable built-in font vault
• font searching, tagging and classification options
• system font management

They promise the same graphic performance as on Mac OS X in Windows XP, Vista. Their blog mentions that they have been performing tests in the upcoming release of Windows 7.

If you do a significant amount of graphic design or wish to more easily manage a lot of fonts, I suggest you give Suitcase Fusion 2 for Windows a look. They have a free 30 day trial. If you are not familiar with the product, have a look at the videos.

I'm very excited to announce that my latest video training title is now available on lynda.com!

Recorded earlier this summer, the 4.5 hour course discusses and walks you through wireframing, storyboarding, interactive HTML prototyping, in a far more in-depth manner than my Essential Training title is able to. I also introduce you to creating Flex skins, exporting MXML and exporting FXG.

I had a lot of fun putting this course together and I think it will be a great resource for anyone wanting to learn more about using Fireworks for prototyping web and other interactive projects such as AIR applications.

Here's a quick run down of the main lesson topics:

• Rapid Prototyping Options in Fireworks
• Wireframing
• Storyboarding
• Multi-page Mockups
• Adding Interactivity
• Creating AIR Prototypes
• Creating Flex Mockups
• Going Further with HTML Prototyping

If you're interested in how to maximize Fireworks' potential as your mockup tool of choice, I hope you check out this course.

Hey Everybody!

I'm picking through my idea file for new tutorial concepts for Fireworks and I thought I'd put the request out to you, our faithful CMX subscribers. Is there something you've been dying to know about Fireworks? (or Photoshop or Dreamweaver or ~insert favorite app here~ . . .)

And what about the types of articles? Creative? Technical? Workflow? Business oriented?

Drop by the Community Clubhouse forum and share your thoughts and ideas.

So there's been a pretty decent sized debate going on through the webosphere. Designers should know how to code. Developers should know how to design (or shouldn't need to design). I considered weighing in on the 37 Signals blog -- but the comments were already closed. Call me slow (yes, I've been on the road, had a birthday, and had my mom visiting with her birthday. ;). You'd be right. Oh well.

I do have one thing to say. Well, I probably have more than one, but I'll start with that. I recently did a couple sessions at the HOW design conference. One was on "Mistakes Print Designers Make on the Web." Yes, I definitely agree there are common mistakes from the print paradigm. Many times I can tell how people's brains work when they ask for help on lists. I can tell they don't understand the web or come from a print background. However, that does NOT mean I think they are useless. Do I think they should know how the web works? That the web is a fluid, not static medium? Am I willing to help them learn (if they're going to be in my "designer stable")? He77s yea. I am willing. Because I think they are very important to our industry.

Do I think that coders should not use a graphic medium. Lord no. "Designing" (or so they call it) using the constraints of "what's easy to do with code" is really a sad, and less attractive, way to work. I say bring on the tough comps -- we'll work it out, or we'll ask for a small revision. We'll come up with a way to make it work accessibly. A way you might not have thought of before -- but a way that is equally lovely. But lord knows I think you design types are valuable. I quit designing years ago. Why? I'm a tweakaholic. I make more money hiring people that are more creative, better trained and faster. My clients save money with those same people. The designers are freed to be their creative selves -- but yes, it's nice for me if they understand the web. It's nice if I don't have to lead, guide, explain. That said, because I know my craft, I'm willing to help them at the beginning. And no, I don't expect them to know how to code. Just to have an overall understanding that the web is not print. Everything will not have line breaks where they want it to. It won't be glued down. But I, with my experience, will guide them through what can and can't be done. In time, they will be one of my favorite designers. They will understand, but they will send it to me to code. Because that's what I do best.

Do you create the site with HTML? Do you create it without a graphic program? Well, gawd bless you. But I'd venture to say your designs are likely boring. I think 37 signals rawks in usability. I have no bad words to say about them. But what I'm seeing from their recent blog posts in this area is just silly. And no, I've never seen a super creative design come out of that group (at least that I KNEW was from them. I'm certainly not barring it).

Personally, I welcome the challenge of the design minds. I find that if I create the site IN HTML, I do what's easiest to do with HTML/CSS. I don't challenge my abilities. I don't push the envelope.

Yes, the site is about the content -- the message. People are generally looking for information on the web. I teach that all the time all over the world. But there's another side of it. There's the package that same content comes in. Is it readable and usable? Good. That's important. Does it work when the text size is large. Does it work with assistive technology. Excellent. Accessibility is even more important. But goodness knows that a majority of your readers are going to be influenced by what it looks like. Yes, even the colors. Study color psychology. Look at eye patterns. Immerse yourself in usability and interaction. Heck, watch your mom try to navigate things -- I just did. It's eye opening. How it looks is important. Sorry, that's just the facts. Why do you think company's spend so much on their Superbowl commercials?

And let's not leave out how you interact with the database -- how well that content dynamically appears. How much sense it makes. How usable the interface is. There are many things to think about. The root of my story and my point is -- it's the rare individual that has all the strengths needed for one web site. It's the team that matters. Should everyone have a basic understanding of the other member's jobs? How they work? What they can accomplish. Oh yes. Absolutely. Should they be able to do them? That's just ludicrous. Absolutely not. Surround yourself with people more brilliant than yourself. Always learn. Work hard. You, and those around you, will be enormously successful.

Ciao.

There is a bill which passed in the US congress which is H.R. 5889, the Orphan Works Act of 2008. I'd contacted my congressman about the bill and my concerns over the bill. I've received a reply which I would like to pass on here:

---

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So ... I suggest people start getting familiar with the copyright office...

As the title indicates, my Fireworks article is now live on Adobe Edge. Feel free to check it out. I'm quite happy with the end result and I hope you gain some insights on the Fireworks work flow as well.

I have covered this topic in both written and video form here on CMX, but in this article, I atcually take someone else's single page design and build it out into a series of interconnected pages.

Enjoy! 

If you have read my most recent article, Tools for Designers: del.icio.us and Flickr', I made mention of starting a CMX Blog piece for anyone interested in sharing their design and inspiration tools,resourceful solutions for their business, and for self-organizational purposes.

Please leave a comment on this post to share your thoughts. I look forward to seeing what you're up to and if I can get new ideas and be inspired by your ideas.

Happy blogging!

Recently, I did a presentation at Webmaster Jam Session in Dallas. In my session, one of the things I showed were some faux column techniques. During the QA at the end, a problem was brought up that I hadn't run into. The statement/question was that, evidently, there's a reported bug in Internet Explorer 7 (OMG, imagine!) where background images are not zoomed with the rest of the page when the Page > zoom accessibility feature is used. So when you use a faux column technique on your web page to create the illusion of equal columns, your text can end up not being on top of the column color you want. In some cases, this can lead to some pretty major legibility problems. The attendee stated they had given up faux columns due to this issue. Talk about depressing! I use faux columns so regularly -- I just couldn't imagine I had to give them up!

I talked to a couple Microsoft people and yes, they said it was a known bug, but I couldn't get any information about a possible fix time frame. Now that I have IE7 on my computer (yay, VMWare!), I had some time to have a look (well, I didn't really have time, but due to something I was working on and with my curiosity piqued, I did some testing). What I found was actually so much better than what I expected. I'm sharing it for those out there that may have the same misconception I did -- along with a couple of workarounds I've discovered.

• Misconception: When using a background image to create the illusion of equal columns (faux columns), the background images don't zoom with the rest of the page causing legibility problems.
• Fact: The problem actually only occurs when you put the faux column on the body element (depending on the situation, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't).

Two Solutions for IE7's Zooming Issues

1. Place the faux column image on a div that wraps your entire page instead of the body element. This graphic will zoom with the rest of the page. Since many times, this is my preferred method, it's no wonder I hadn't run into the bug.
2. If the graphic must be place on the body element, don't lose hope. I found a workaround there as well. If there is a background property declared on the HTML element, the background image on the body element will zoom. This seems to work on the HTML element with both background images and background colors (I tested using the short property name background with both). I removed the background color from the body element and placed it on the HTML element instead. In all major browsers I tested, it worked perfectly.
3. Update! I should have thought of this when I was testing. This works where I've tested it (IE6, IE7, FFOX, Safari) but I've not been exhaustive across every browser due to other deadlines. It shouldn't cause any problems though and it gets Dreamweaver users around a rendering issue (where the color on the HTML element isn't rendered in the DW workspace). Keep the normal background properties on your body element -- background color and image. Simply add a background property on the HTML element as well:

   html { background: #FFF; }

   The body zoom still works properly in IE7, and due to the cascade, the html color is overridden by the background properties on the body selector. It's valid code. It's not a hack. It makes one of the handiest techniques in my arsenal work until IE7 is fixed (no bets on when that might be) and no harm is done. Only good. ;)

So don't give up hope on the fabulous faux column technique just because IE7 has some issues. Continue to use it all you need to -- just keep the above parameters in mind to decide what you need to do in your situation.

Well, I was all ready to make a tutorial on how to make those cute little RSS feed icons - I was doing well, working in Fireworks, getting it done. Then I hit a snag, getting the arc to look right. I searched the regular resources for hints on how to get this done and one of them pointed me to a website. When I got there, I realized, this was the perfect solution. Unfortunately, it also made the creation of the icon moot - it was a free collection of PSD and other graphic formats of the icon all sized, colored and ready to go, even a grayscale copy of the image for customization.

Check out Feed Icons to pick up this handy little resource.

I feel like there are two types of creative people: idea people and implementation people. (This is a gross oversimplification, of course.) I think I'm an implementation person. If you give me a rough idea, I can execute it in a beautiful and efficient way. I don't, however, feel like I'm really good at coming up with ideas. At least not marketing ideas. Check out this blog post of extremely creative ads from around the world. It's great how these advertisers have come up with ways to take advantage of the facilities already in place and integrate their products into them in ways that feel fun, not "Oh my gosh, I can't believe they're forcing another ad on us." I hate the enormous amount of advertising we are bombarded with nowadays, but if all advertisers were as clever as these folks, I wouldn't mind advertising at all and would probably be a much better consumer. Thank goodness they're not all so good, eh? :-)

Yes, design can sometimes have health consequences! The household cleaning products called Fabuloso feature clear bottles with brightly colored liquid inside and slick, dynamic packaging. Unfortunately, the packaging makes them look like sports drinks, and almost 100 people across Texas have drunk the cleaner. This is yet another example of why the purpose and audience of your product matter. Not every type of design is appropriate for every type of product, whether that product be a retail good, print piece, or web site. Design with caution!

In my quest to learn how to draw with more skill in Fireworks I think I have found the perfect method. What I have been doing is selecting a simple object to draw on a daily basis.

Some of the things I have been attempting are:

• Simple three dimensional shapes, like cubes and cylinders
• Cartoon faces
• Cartoon penguins :)
• Trees
• Ugly looking houses :(

These experiments have gone rather well, and through my attempts I have picked up some rather nifty imaging techniques that I will be able to apply to more advanced drawings at a later stage in my development.

I said that the experiments have gone rather well, but unfortunately a lot (maybe most) of them would be embarrassing to show here. So I will stick to presenting you with only the PNG files that I'm most proud of :)

Last night I attempted to draw a flower, one that doesn't actually exist in nature :P I managed to easily get the flower looking pretty darn good, and in turn I felt pretty darn good too. So much so that I got carried away and added some sky, then some clouds, then some more clouds, then some grass and ground to plant my flower in.

The amazing thing about starting off simple is that your highly unlikely to be completely disappointed with the fruits of your labor. In fact, in my case it made me more enthusiastic.

So much so that I don't find this picture embarrassing enough to make me want to hide my face for a year if I show you it:

(Download the PNG source file here)

If you're really serious about designing web sites you should consider learning to draw in Fireworks. It's a lot of fun and it's also a great way to create graphics that are unique to your own designs.

I hope that some of these posts I have been making are enough to whet your appetite.

Have fun :)

Today I heard about a very cool new tool developed by NASA. From their press release:

The MDE (Math Description Engine) distinguishes itself from other accessibility software by determining the key characteristics of a graph "on the fly." Using this determination, it builds natural-language text descriptions that enable visually-impaired users to view spatial relationships through sound alone.

Check out the demos at the MDE web site for examples of the text and sound the software can generate. It's pretty neat. I can see a great use for this, as I work for a research center that deals with a lot of data. So far, we've laid graphs out and written their alternative text manually. But with this new tool, it might finally be time to look into graphs that are built dynamically, because now they can be accessible too.

When I'm bored I sometimes watch TV, I sometimes read a book, but most of the time I switch on my computer and fire-up Fireworks, then iTunes and then start drawing things.

For me boredom generates productivity and ideas. The need to do something during those times normally leads to a PNG with a doodle planted slap-bang in the middle of it.

The images folder on my Mac contains around 500 Fireworks PNG files that consist mainly of random ideas that have poured out of my head and onto a blank canvas. Not all of them are good, and some of them are downright ugly, but that's not the point, the point is that I can go back to them at some time in the future and maybe use them for a project, or for something to tutorialize here at CMX.

Boredom led me to make this post, so I will share with you the product of that boredom.

Here it is:

(Right click to save the PNG to your desktop)

I don't know about you guys, but there is something about penguins (maybe it's a Linux thing, hehe) that makes me happy.

Anyway, please feel free to tear the PNG apart, edit it... use it... do whatever you want with it... just have fun :)

We published my very first JumpStart today. When I'm not working like a fiend, I love to garden. So I combined my two passions into our latest JumpStart offering: Greenville.

Like all of our JumpStarts, this one is uses valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 markup and follows WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines

Be sure to check out Sheri's redesign. Besides being a lovely site, it does a great job of showcasing how easy it is to adapt our JumpStarts to your own projects.

 

I hope you have fun with Greenville!

Hey folks,

I don't know how most other people draw up inspiration for their design work when using Fireworks, but for me it normally begins with a series of basic shapes. Rectangles, squares, polygons, whatever, are the core building blocks of all graphics. You can't do anything without them.

When you start punching holes in those basic shapes, joining their paths, changing their colors, or even just overlapping them, they start to gel together as a more creative formation... then all-of-a-sudden it hits you! BANG!! You have an idea!!

Maybe it's simply because your crazy array of pixels has begun to actually look like something that you could possibly use for a current project, or maybe it's something you could archive in some deep, dark directory on your HDD for future use.

Either way, it's possibly one of the coolest feelings you could have sitting in front of a computer (OK, I have left myself open to some fairly creative comments with that statement :D .)

(This is the method that I have used when creating the Design Elements and JumpStarts here at Community MX.)

Just the other day I was staring at a blank Fireworks canvas, feeling the effects of designer's block and I started pushing random shapes around in the way I just described. Would you like to see what happened on my canvas? Well, here it is, right here.

It's not the coolest of creations, granted, but it could be something I may develop into a bigger “something” in the future, who knows.

While I think that it's important to learn how to use Fireworks' (or whatever graphics package you use) massive library of functions, I still believe that it's more important to play around and get creative without being all technical about it. So think back to when you were a kid, and all you needed to make you happy and creative was a box of crayons and some rag paper, open Fireworks with that feeling fresh in your mind, and get doodling!

PS: This is my first blog post here at CMX, so please be gentle :)

As bizarre as this may sound, I just recently discovered flickr.com. I found it by seeking out a disheartened poster on another newsforum. Some of the other posters had been giving her a rough and rude time because of her frustration with a new digital camera. Well I know ALL about that! Anyway, I found a link in one of her posts to her space on flickr and went a-lookin'. What I found - aside form some great images of her dogs and local scenery - was how dang easy flickr was to use! I htink that very afternoon, I set up my free account and started uploading images.

Flickr is a boon to me, becasue I've plum run out of room on my own web space for posting images, and I didn't really want to buy more disk space right away.

The software for uploading files is dead easy to use; you can even download a system-resident app that will help you find, size and upload your photos. It's like the iTunes of photo gallery apps.

 I'll soon be buying a pro account, which is only $25/year and gives me a huge amount of uploading bandwidth, including the ability to store my hi-res images. Possibly a great option for backing up my files, but I'm still looking into that.

Anyway, feel free to drop by and see what I've got on display at my flickr page. Don't forget to say hi!

For those of you using Picasa, here's official notice that Google has released an upgrade. Make sure to drop by and download it.

There's a whack of new features in this free imaging utility:

• Multiple languages Support 
• BlogThis! button allows you to post one photo at a time directly to the Blogger.com web editor
• Print CD covers 
• Improved RAW file handling - support for more makes and RAW file types: Canon (.CRW, .CR2), Nikon (.NEF), Olympus (.ORF), Pentax (.PEF), Kodak (.DCR), Sony (.SRF), Minolta (.MRW), and Fuji (.RAF).
  I'm hoping that it wil read the RAW files from my new Fuji S9000 camera. Of course, reading RAW files and being able to properly edit them are two very different things.
  
• Import from additional cameras
  

I find Picasa really helpful for sorting and viewing images as well as quickly creating quick web photo galleries. It has a decent range of built-in tools for fixing up images, including some nifty special effects. All in all, not bad for a freebie.

Picasa helps you find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open the app, it automatically locates all your pictures on your hard drive and sorts them into albums organised by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organised. 

It's a pretty cool image management tool and has one thing that FW has always been sorely lacking - an image browser. You can see thumbnails of your image files on screen, and either sort or edit them right within Picasa, or locate the file on the disc and open it within your favorite app - like Fireworks.

Unfortunately for the Macheads in the crowd, Picasa is only available for Windows users.