Archive for October, 2008

Dreamweaver Template Tutorial

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

Dreamweaver Template

I just came across a simple, well written tutorial on creating and publishing templates with Dreamweaver, posted in N.Design Studio’s tutorial section. This is 101 for most web design pro’s, but many people interested in Konductor still wonder how a lot of this stuff is accomplished within Dreamweaver. This article gives you a nice overview of what is involved in the typical design process in Dreamweaver, which should in turn give you a clearer understanding of the angle we are taking with the Konductor Dreamweaver Extension.

Of course a lot of the time consuming / technical / annoying stuff is made a little easier with the Konductor Extension :P

Konductor Pre-release Now Open!

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Hey guys, just thought you might be interested in knowing that the Konductor pre-release is now open! Better sign up now, it’s filling up very fast!

Web 2.0 Architectural, Design And Social Patterns

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Duane Nickull posted an interesting blog entry the other day on “Forensic Architecture”. I really had no idea what exactly that was supposed to be, but his post describes it pretty well. He first outlines what the ideal process is for coming up with an appropriate system architecture. He then uses some real world examples to show how deviation occurs from this in the real world, and what lessons he has learned.

I find system architecture fascinating, so having some real world experiences documented is a cool idea. I think more interesting though is that fact that Duane is writing a book called Web 2.0 Patterns: What entrepreneurs and information architects need to know. Just learning about MVC and standarized design patterns had a big effect on how I planned for and wrote software from that point onwards. Having a book outlining architectural, design and interestingly enough social patterns for Web 2.0 is something I’m sure will be beneficial not only to decision makers, but also developers and micro-ISV’s who work with new school web applications.

Duane is a super smart guy with tons of experience – It will be very cool to see his no doubt logical and practical guidelines for Web 2.0 architecture.

Dreamweaver Goodness

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Dreamweaver Property Inspector

I has been a little while since updates, but there has been a reason for that – I have been working hard! I know a lot of Konductor’s focus is on the AIR application, and for good reason, but the Dreamweaver extension definitely warrants some attention too.

I will post more detailed information soon, but here is what we’ve got working in the extension since the demo video:

  • Automatic updates (this is an exciting one for me – big thanks to the Extension Manager CS4 team for making this super easy in the new version!)
  • Menu management using standards compliant XHTML and CSS (again, this looks great in Dreamweaver CS4 as you now get the nice, accurate WebKit rendered previews for dropdown menus)
  • Intuitive interface (if something is not right with your design, or has a chance of causing some problems, the designer is made aware of this and offered the likely solution with the click of a button – this is huge for new designers, as Dreamweaver can be a little daunting at times…)

Also, I’ve been working with the pre-release builds of Dreamweaver CS4 and Extension Manager CS4, and they really do add a lot of cool new features. To be perfectly honest, when I started playing around with the new Dreamweaver I thought it was just CS3 with a new skin, WebKit rendering, and Subversion support. But after using it, and especially after developing for it, I have found that it adds a lot of value. More on that later too.

Anyways, thats it for now. Stay tuned for more updates, there is a lot of exciting stuff coming down the pipe.