Dreamweaver Bug/"Feature" #2 or "Score Another One for Notepad"...

Dreamweaver's XHTML Validation feature will complain if it finds an ASCII character higher than 127 - most of the foreign letters, such as ê,ö,ä,ü, etc. fall into this category. "OK, fine", one thinks and proceeds to escape them with the appropriate ampersand-code-semicolon set (such as ü for ü - there's an Insert menu for Special Characters).

Oh, one would think...

But, Nooooo! Save the file, close the file, re-open the file...Hello ASCII characters higher than 127!

Yes, folks, they come back, on their own. Those carefully encoded ampersand-code-semicolon sets are gone. Bye bye.

Grrrr.

Never fear; there is a solution: Notepad.

And actually partly Dreamweaver - remember that Dreamweaver is known for not rewriting code it gets from someplace else. You use Notepad as your "someplace else" and put those ampersand-code-semicolon sets back in using Notepad and when you re-open in Dreamweaver they will be preserved.

Yay!

Tech Training Tax Credit Bill Introduced

Representative Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) introduced a bill into the U.S. House of Representatives last week that, if passed, would make technical training tax deductible.

The "Technology Retraining And Investment Now Act of 2004" ("TRAIN ACT," HR 4392) would allow individuals and companies to receive a tax credit for up to 50 percent of technical training costs up to $10,000. Expenses can include training classes (private or public), certification exams and other expenses "essential to assessing skill acquisition."

[See the official version (pdf format) here.]

A fond farewell to background music...

Back in 1997 when I first decided to stake out my claim on Geocities (hey, it was free! I needed it! ;-), the world was a different place: nearly all Web pages were terribly boring, or terribly tacky. I have to reluctantly admit that for my personal pages I erred on the side of tackiness: animated gifs, shockwave files and background sounds merrily caroused about my sites - I believe there was even a marquee or two...

When I redid Alrak's Parallel Universe earlier this year, I jettisoned the animated gifs on the intro page (well, they went to their own parallel universe, the indexb.html page...). With a pang of reluctance, I've come to the conclusion that background sounds are, well, scary. So, I'll be removing the Star Trek: First Contact background sound from Alrak's Blog.

Never fear, though: I'm learning Flash! ;-)

(And I've still got colored scrollbars :-)

Perhaps one more time...

As if there wasn't already enough to do, I need to think of a decent
navigation scheme for the site. Perhaps one of those drop-down list
boxes...or maybe at least a way to get "Home" (the course resources
page) from anywhere in the site. I'll have to give it some thought.

Here's another thought: when will I ever stop spacing twice after
sentences? I don't need the extra non-breaking space in my code. I
wonder if when they teach typing these days they space twice? Google
probably knows. I think Google knows everything...

I think I need to go to sleep now.

ok, I had to test it one more time

Why would it be that it's easier to blog via email than in the blog window? Must be one of life's great mysteries, up there with why a day can drag on endlessly but time accelerates rapidly as a deadline approaches.

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

So, we'll see how this one formats...

Blogging through email and more about Dreamweaver

Now, this should be interesting. Supposedly I'm posting to my blog via email. Hmmm....

Another interesting Dreamweaver, well, not really even a Dreamweaver observation. It's more an XHTML/IE6 observation. Apparently IE6 has a "feature" (bug) that sends it into a Quirks mode if the XHTML doctype is incorrect. Why should this Quirks mode matter?

I'm going to tell you.

It's the IE 5.5 and above colored scrollbars. If the XHTML doctype is set, IE6 won't display colored scrollbars, unless the doctype is incorrect. If the doctype is incorrect, the XHTML won't validate, but you'll have your scrollbars.

However, I have found a way to trick IE and this is where Dreamweaver gets involved.

Dreamweaver has a "Clean up XHTML" command which will insert the XML prolog into the Web page. Somehow, with this XML prolog (which still validates as XHTML), IE6 will display the colored scrollbars. Yay.

Now let's hit the Send button and see if this thing actually posts...

[Note: it posted - it just pre-formatted the text like the email - that's why it's all snuggled up against the left]

Ampersand Bug found in Dreamweaver MX

I nearly flung my computer out the window last Wednesday night when my carefully XHTML-compliant encoded ampersands (in anchor tags) kept reverting on their own back to single ampersands. I had set my preferences to not allow Dreamweaver to do any cleaning up it thought necessary so I was, needless to say, perplexed. (OK, I was pretty livid, and about ready to fire up FrontPage again...).

I Googled the problem and found a helpful newsgroup thread that reports this is bug within Dreamweaver and that if I change the single "&" to the encoded variety (the & and then word "amp" and then the semicolon) in the Property window it will stay. But not if I do it in the code window. I tested it myself, and, by golly, if I change my offending "&" in the Property window, sure enough, it will persist and I can validate as XHTML.

[This is better, I suppose, than FrontPage which will arbitrarily change my encoded ampersands back to single &s.]

Resistance perhaps not so futile...

"Since I have Dreamweaver MX, I might as well use it..."

Thus began the migration of Alrak's Parallel Universe from FrontPage 2002/XP to Dreamweaver MX. Since I wasn't using any FrontPage specific code in the site, the migration wasn't terribly painful. Learning how to make Dreamweaver MX easily do the things I'm used to doing in FrontPage, however...not painful, exactly, but at times I've found myself scurrying back to FrontPage just to get something accomplished quickly.

Other than expanding my knowledge base, I had no compelling reason for switching to Dreamweaver, so it's not that I found FrontPage lacking. And I can't say right now that I would recommend all folks immediately switch if they can. I think some folks are drawn to Dreamweaver merely because of the "cool" factor - it's not Microsoft (but, hey, nothing is "cooler" than using, say, Notepad - oh, wait, that's Microsoft, too...;-). Don't get me wrong, Dreamweaver seems to be an excellent product and capable of everything (if not more) that FrontPage can do. I would say it all depends on what you want your WYSIWYG Web editor to do for you. My demands are simple: don't change my freakin' code unless I run some clean-up command. Both FrontPage and Dreamweaver have been sworn at many times now for not meeting that demand. (Notepad, on the other hand, has never let me down in that department...)

Dreamweaver has forced me into a good habit, which is editing offline and then uploading to the live site. With FrontPage it was so easy to be bad and just edit live.

I'm sure I'll be posting more on my experiences with Dreamweaver. I'm taking a Level 1 class on it through Element K and I think I'm probably beyond the level of the class - I already [I think] know how to do a Web site - I just need to know where Dreamweaver buries its commands.