While I don’t normally post on this blog anything that is not related to Web Design (focusing on Expression Web, Dreamweaver and web standards) sitting at Denver International Airport I can’t help but comment on my experience today.
I’m ashamed of my government right now.
To give a little background I was scheduled to fly out of Denver Airport back to Houston on Tuesday after spending Christmas in Breckenridge, CO with my in-laws. Two days ago I received a phone call that told me my aunt had passed away and the funeral would be on Monday. So I went to the Southwest Airline website and changed my flight from going to Houston on Tuesday to going to Nashville on Saturday. I applied the cost of my ticket to Houston to my new Nashville flight and paid the difference using my Southwest Visa. One associated with my frequent flyer account (which has enough miles in the last year for 4 free round trip flights so I think you can say that I am a frequent traveler.)
So today I arrive at Denver airport after driving through a snow storm from Breckenridge, go to the Business Select check-in for my one bag I’m taking to the funeral. Then I go to security. From the Business/First Class line I pull my computer out, take off my shoes, put my coat in the bin and put my computer backpack (with my purse inside it) and go through the metal detector.
The TSA guy then says step in here, put your feet on the yellow marks and raise your hands over your head”. I asked him if this was one of the full body scanners and he said “yes”. So I refused. I’ve seen how those scanner work on Good Morning America last week and frankly, I consider them to be unreasonable search under the US constitution. So I’m told to go in this glass booth while they call a female TSA officer to do a full body pat down. She arrives and is pleasant & business like (other than a comment on how soft my sweater is.) No real problem there though having to sit down while the soles of my feet are patted down through my thin socks was rather silly.
The TSA guy who was put out by my refusing to be subject to a full body scan tells the others that my carry-ons are to be subject to a level 2 security search. So now I get to walk in my stocking feet over to the tables set aside for such screenings. I will say that one of the other officers kept my computer, purse & computer bag where I could see them at all times while the pat down was taking place. Something that I appreciated.
Now over to the tables, where every compartment of my computer bag was opened and every pocket emptied. My iPhone & its case, my external hard drive & its case, the adapter for my computer, my GPS, my pocket camera & Flip were all wiped down with some explosive detector. Every compartment or pocket of my computer bag that held an electronic device was wiped separately with an explosive detector as was my shoes and the inside of my purse that held no electronics at all.
I was then told that I could have my possessions back. So I start repacking my bag since things were left hanging out of pockets so that the zippers wouldn’t close and I couldn’t put everything back in it that had been there before TSA searched. When I was partially repacked the TSA checker came back and said they needed to re-xray my purse, wallet and iPhone/case. WTF? When he returned with those items he started going through two of the compartments AGAIN. There he found a credit card size tool I was given at TechED 2008. The tool consisted of a sliding case that had a compass on the outside. When the case was open a square with a bottle opener was exposed. One side was marked so you could measure (in 2” increments), a flat screwdriver blade was on one corner while the other had a can opener with a small point. This was confiscated and I was told I could exit the security line, return to the Southwest desk and check my computer bag. Right, I don’t know about any of you but my laptop isn’t going to be checked on any flight much less one that is delayed over an hour (so far).
Now you may have noticed that I said this little tool was given to me at TechED 2008 and has lived in my computer bag ever since. Since that time I have taken at almost two dozen flights where I have passed through security with that tool in my bag. Its gone to Denver at least 4 times, to Seattle, to California, to Nashville (for my grandmother’s funeral March 2009) and not once has it been questioned but today when I refused a full body scan which if I had seen it I would have simply chosen one of the other 11 security lines that didn’t have a full body scanner behind the regular scanner) it suddenly is too dangerous to allow me to take on an airplane. Never mind that even if someone had a lot more strength than I do would never penetrate to a depth that would cause more than a surface wound. I could do more damage with the ball point pen in my computer bag than I could with that tool. Oops, guess I shouldn’t have said that since next time they’ll confiscate my ballpoint pens from my bag.
I’m in favor of security at airports but I’m not in favor of violating our constitution in the name of “security” when those security measures violate the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. Maybe it is time for me to put my attorney’s hat back on and join the ACLU or something but frankly the only reason that I was singled out for this intensive scrutiny seems to be because I did not submit to having a full body scan.
My so called “last minute ticket” given as a partial reason for the level two screening was nothing more than a change in an itinerary book a month earlier. I checked bags, paid with a credit card that was linked to a frequent flyer account that would show trips booked with anywhere from 1 day’s notice to three months notice (depending on why I was traveling – business, family emergency or vacation). You tell me how a middle aged female traveler with an extensive history of airline travel within the US (and some overseas to such threatening countries as England, France & Mexico) is such a threat that every item in a standard computer bag needs to be searched, tested for explosives and subject to a full body search (either by hand or machine)?
I want to know what happened to the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable search & seizure under the 4th amendment to our constitution.
People have been asking me about learning a variety of web technologist Obviously when we reopen Start to Web I will recommend our classes <g> but we only offer a limited curriculum. For a wider offering I recommend Lynda.com which includes javascript, php and other scripting. I even have discounts codes available.
For those of you who weren't there or even if you weren't the PDF of my Expression Web 3 -What's New presentation is now available.
Most of you know that I’ve been avoiding writing in my blog while in the process of migrating this site over (I just didn’t want to have more stuff to migrate and keep in sync) but this new offer from Microsoft is worth going ahead and writing up (twice since I’ve already exported posts from here). Take a look at ScottGu’s blog http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/09/24/announcing-the-websitespark-program.aspx
If you are a small company (even a SOHO as long as there are less than 10 folks at your company) for $100 payable when you leave the program (max participation is 3 years) you get licenses for Expression Studio 1), Expression Web (2), Visual Studio.NET Pro (not Standard), 4 cpus license for Windows Web Server, SQL Web and an ASP.NET web hosting control panel that you can use in production. (So if you want to host your own sites/colocate you have a production license for that server) plus a listing on the MS site for potential customers to find you.
Sweet deal, especially since you get support – 2 telephone support incidents, free training and what they are calling “managed newsgroups”. I’m particularly interested in that last one since to me that means there will be actual MS support personnel who are paid to respond to posts there.
Beyond the max of 10 employees of the company the only other requirement that I could find is that you have to add the url of a website you create using the products that come with WebsiteSpark within 6 months of your enrollment application being approved.
I’ve already signed up (and been approved and even have invite codes I can send out) so we’ll see what happens next.
With the release of Expression Web 3 we here at by-expression.com will be updating our tutorials and other content to reflect the changes to Expression Web in this version. We will sort our tutorials into categories:
General Web Design: This will include CSS and other technologies that are editor independent.
Expression Web v1 & v2: This will focus on using Expression Web version 1 and 2. This will primarily contain our existing tutorials. I do not expect that there will be many more added to it unless we create a tutorial to address a specific issue. Our popular “Basic Website” will live in this section.
Expression Web 3: Here we’ll have tutorials that use the new interface and will be created to show you how to use it effectively.
Additional Categories: When time permits I plan on adding some Dreamweaver tutorials as well.
Our site samples and DWTs will continue to be offered and we hope to expand the selection available soon.
Since Microsoft opened forums at http://social.expression.microsoft.com/forums/en-us/web/threads/ our forums have had few active threads we will be closing our forums but our blogs will continue.
For those who don’t follow me on twitter I figured I better post here what I posted there a couple of hours ago: Expression Web 3 trial now available http://bit.ly/bKJf3
The full studio as well as individual trials of all the programs are available at http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/Default.aspx#PageTop
Today in my Google Alert on web design topics I saw reference to a post that made me think how clueless some “so called” experts can be. There was a post that lead me to a thread where one of the “experts” was ranting
“If the external css file already exists, you don't have to worry about it. I created one for him and he doesn't change it. He used Dreamweaver in the past and it added style code in the head of the page that was not consistent with other pages and would override the external css files. We got annoyed with that. Microsoft Expressions is just another Front Page with extra files that are not necessary. I still edit his files in Notepad and they work fine.”
The person hasn’t a clue, especially since the issue I see in this comment isn’t the application whether Dreamweaver or Expression Web but in failing to educate the person about how to use CSS – both external stylesheets and when to use head section or even inline styles.
The reason people use a program like Dreamweaver or Expression Web is so that they are more productive. One really good example of this is that when you change the name or file path of a page, image or other file in the site all of the links in the site are updated to reflect this change without you having to do a find/replace (and make sure that what you do doesn’t mess up any document relative paths. To do this both of the programs use meta data. Neither will publish the meta data to your server by default. If you don’t use meta data (which you can choose not to do but is a dumb thing to do) then those links won’t update. You lose the advantage of using DWTs (Dreamweaver Web Templates or Dynamic Web Templates depending on which program you are using) so why would you want to turn off meta data?
Oh and another reason to use Dreamweaver, Expression Web or TopStyle – you write the CSS and choose where it goes BUT you get code completion/intellisense and you don’t get typos like you do (if you are anything like me) with notepad. Think about it.
On Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 10:30 CDT (-6GMT) we will be hosting a live meeting on Expression Web v3. During this live meeting I will have Expression Web 3 running and will answer questions on it and demo the new features.
If you submit questions in advanced they will have priority over questions asked during the meeting. Connect using the following information:
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Start Time: Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009 10:30 AM CDT
End Time: Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009 11:30 PM CDT
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Today I was reading the articles related to the Expression Studio launch last Friday. So far my favorite is from InfoWorld:
Expression 3 features the $599 Expression Studio 3 suite, with tools including Expression Blend, for interactive design and including SketchFlow; Expression Web, for Web design and supporting CSS and the soon-to-be-discontinued XHTML standard; Expression Encoder, for video encoding; and Expression Design, for illustration and design.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/update-microsoft-silverlight-3-unveiled-925
I love the “soon-to-be-discontinued” part in regard to XHTL. Realistically there is no browser support for HTML 5 and will not be decent support for a number of years assuming that InfoWorld is correct and it will be published as a recommendation (what we loosely call a standard is actually just a published recommendation) by September 2010.
Heck, the XHTML 1.0 was published Jan. 26, 2000 and last revised Aug. 1, 2002 has only received decent support by the browsers used by the majority of web users in the last year or two. Even with the push for web standards support in browser I really don’t see decent enough support by in use browser for at least 5 years. Don’t get me wrong I would love to see support sooner since there are some very nice features in it and CSS 3 that I wou
Technorati Tags:
HTML 5,
XHTMLld love to use but not until until the recommendation is actually finalized AND there is browser support in more than just an experimental form (as there is in Firefox 3.5 currently.)
Ed Meadows started by showing how you can encode videos, put them in a player and insert them in your web page. I showed a few static screenshots of the process in my review but you can it the encoding on the video of this breakout session when it is released on http://seethelight.com
Ed ended with the Photoshop import improvement before handing off to Eric Saltwell who walks through the designer/developer workflow improvements. Eric started off with the current version of SuperPreview (I do have screenshots of the new SuperPreview versionb in Expression Web in my review.) Eric is showing using your Photoshop comp to compare with your work in progress page not just comparing how the page renders in different browsers. I must admit that I hadn’t really though of using SuperPreview that way. He segwayed to showing some PHP to render tweets in his page that he will be using in SuperPreview. The demo gods struck briefly when Eric put the php include snippet in twice for his twitter feed <g> which showed up with previewed in the testing server. To show speed things up when you have dynamic content such as the twitter feed mentioned Eric demoed snapshot mode to see how you could speed up previewing. (Not quite sure I followed this one so you and I may both want to review the video when it appears.) Eric then went on to show what most people will use SuperPreview for – cross browser testing. The version that ships with Expression Web includes support for locally installed browsers like Firefox and whatever version of IE you have installed, plus IE 6.
The next bit that Eric talks about is the entire rewrite of FTP publishing adding support for sFTP and FTPS for secure publishing. The result is that the speed issues are gone and there is now multi-thread FTP connections for faster publishing. If you hosting does not support multiple FTP upload threads you can set the threads used down to one if necessary.
What wasn’t mentioned is the integration with Team Foundation Server. The update to use it is available on the web so why wasn’t it mentioned during the presentations,.
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Expression Web 3
Somasegar is on the podium now talking about the direction and philosophy of the technical foundation of developer tools. Hearing Soma channel Ballmar with “developer, developer, developer” is strange.
Some very interesting stuff with Silverlight 3 and offline-desktop experience. Scott Guthrie says it works on both PCs and Macs. Guess I’m going to have to look at it more, possibly as a way to deliver some of my videos. Right now I use Silverlight Encoder for the Basic Website tutorial (which will be released with a new site using Expression Web 3 in the near future.) Looks like the offline experience will provide competition for Flex.
I must say that I prefer listening to Scott Guthrie over Soma, or perhaps I just prefer the more practical, less directional/philosophical approach Soma took.
Pricing for EW $149 for the full version which includes Expression Design and Expression Encoder. Full Studio $599, with Visual Studio Pro $999. Two subscriptions: Expression Studio subscription which includes all the platforms (Parallels to run it on Macs) as well as the studio and MSDN.
My review is longer than I want to put in a blog post so it is on the main part of this site at http://by-expression.com/content/ExpressionWeb3.aspx Another review by Ian Haynes is at http://www.ew-resource.co.uk/v3/
You can follow my twitter feed on what I see a the launch during the rest of the day at http://twitter.com/cdwise
As I have mentioned before I subscribe to Google alerts on a couple of web topics. Primarily, Expression Web since I happen to write about it but in addition to being a Microsoft MVP for Expression Web I am also an Adobe Community Expert for Dreamweaver so I tend to watch for Dreamweaver topics as well as general web design/front-end web development stuff.
In the last week I have seen several threads in my Google Alerts asking “Which is Better FrontPage or Dreamweaver?” So rather than go and register at a bunch of different forums and respond in the threads (after having gotten disgusted with some of the CAPCHAs I have seen and not received the confirmation email from two others) I decided to address the topic here.
First, why in 2009 would someone even be asking which is better “FrontPage” or “Dreamweaver”. FrontPage has been discontinued since 2006. Anyone who hasn’t been using FrontPage since before it was discontinued shouldn’t even consider buying it now – that is assuming they could even find a copy legally for sale. While never as bad as painted by most web professionals FrontPage does tend to write Microsoft Internet Explorer proprietary code. Since FrontPage has not been updated since 2003 its target version of Internet Explorer is IE 5 and Internet Explorer has changed a lot since then.
Second, unlike some of the people in the threads I don’t consider Adobe Dreamweaver to be the best choice of editor for every web design purpose or situation. I will say that Dreamweaver is my primary web editor and I use it on a daily basis. However, I also use Microsoft Expression Web on a daily basis.
So why do I use both editors?
I do so because each has their strengths and weaknesses.
CSS, both have very good CSS editors but their approach is somewhat different, which you prefer is an individual preference. I slightly prefer Expression Web’s but your preference may vary. I am not going to spend a lot of time explaining the differences since that is an area you can easily test for yourself with the free trials each company makes available.
Site management tools in the current versions Dreamweaver’s site management tools are considerably better than Expression Web’s for publishing but the gap narrows quite a bit when Expression Web 3 is launched on Friday but Dreamweaver still wins on site management. Dreamweaver’s DWT architecture and capabilities are the more advanced, so in this category I prefer Dreamweaver.
Extensibility, Dreamweaver wins this one quite handily. Microsoft doesn’t have a good SDK for Expression Web and has not settled on a good framework for extending Expression Web reliably across versions. I have add-ins from InstantFX that only work in Expression Web 1 and other extensions from WebAssist and D2Stuff.com that had to be updated by the makers for each version of Expression Web. On the other hand I have Dreamweaver extensions that were created for Dreamweaver MX and still work in Dreamweaver CS 4. That means the extensions work over 5 different versions of Dreamweaver (MX, MX 2004, 8, CS 3 & CS 4) without a single update. Okay, I wouldn’t use some of those extensions anymore because the web has changed a lot in that time frame but I could if I wanted to and if I were an extension maker I’d much prefer to write Dreamweaver extensions so I didn’t have to rewrite every release.
Previewing your work, both editors have pretty good WYSIWYG design surfaces approached in different ways. Neither are what you would actually see in a browser but given the variety of browsers and operating systems out there anyone who expect the design window to look exactly like what their visitor will see is foolish at best. Dreamweaver offers live view which is good and allows you to set up connections for testing servers as well as production servers. Expression Web includes a light weight testing server that lets you test asp.net and php pages in whatever browsers you have installed on your computer. There are pros and cons to each approach depending on your workflow.
Scripting, here is where you see real differences in the programs. If you work on pages with ASP.NET 2.0 and take advantage of the power of master pages, then frankly Expression Web is the design tool you should be using. Adobe’s decision to not support ASP.NET 2.0 is one that I have disagreed with from the first time I heard about it. As far as I am concerned I don’t particularly care if Adobe provides the web applications for ASP.NET 2.0 (forms to database add/update/delete) that they do for Classic ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP but I really do wish that Dreamweaver supported Master Pages. They are basically server side DWTs and if you work in an ASP.NETshop as a UI or web designer the ability to work with them is essential.
However, while Expression Web does offer support for php, Dreamweaver has a far more robust feature set and the ability to “see” server side includes in the design surface makes Dreamweaver the better choice here. Obviously, if you use ColdFusion Dreamweaver is the choice as well. Surprisingly, Dreamweaver is also the choice if you are maintaining a Classic ASP site since Microsoft’s Expression Web testing server doesn’t support Classic ASP and there is little benefit to using it over Notepad.
Dreamweaver has Spry, APIs for jQuery and YUI libraries while Expression Web only has ASP.NET AJAX support so for client side scripting Dreamweaver again is the better choice.
Troubleshooting, one of things I do both for clients and for students is to figure out why something isn’t displaying correctly on the web and how to fix it. For this I tend to use Expression Web since I can easily open a page directly from the internet and step through the display issue’s html and css. This ability using IE’s Page > Edit with Expression Web is so handy I haven’t even tried using Dreamweaver for such troubleshooting since Expression Web v1 came out as a CTP (Customer Technology Preview).
Conclusion
There is no clear winner hands down winner between Dreamweaver and Expression Web both are very good web editors but each has a different approach and methodology. They both require you to know basic HTML and CSS. Both require you to have an understanding of how the web works and the other technologies behind it. Both require an understanding of browsers and their differences in rendering. Both have a learning curve – Dreamweaver steeper than Expression Web due to its wider support of web technologies. Neither is perfect and each has feature sets the other doesn’t which is why I use both.
My recommendation – if you already use Photoshop or other Adobe programs check Dreamweaver first. While if your primary applications are from Microsoft check Expression Web first. Notice that I say “first” because what I really suggest is that you download the trials of each and see which fits both your needs and how you work. For me, I’ll continue to use both.
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