If you follow this site and my Tweets you will surely have noticed my relative silence over the summer. Well, there is a reason… more precicely 3 reasons. I’ve been colossally busy dealing with three major projects that as of now are either nearing completion or at a point where I can start focusing on other stuff (like long neglected clients) again. So, to stave off the criticism for my falling off the face of the internet here’s a taste of what I’ve been working on:
Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression 4 in 24 Hours
Earlier this summer Microsoft released version 4 of Expression Studio. The new version brough major upgrades to Expression Web and as a result my hugely popular book Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 4 in 24 Hours had to be updated. That meant I had to go through every nook and cranny of the new version to find all the new goodies, come up with new examples to show them off and then rewrite whole chapters to reflect these changes. It may come as a surprise, but revising a book like this is almost as much work as writing it from scratch. Which means once v5 comes out I am likely to do a complete rewrite. But that’s a different story.
The new book, scheduled to be released end of October, features updated and extended examples, new features, removal of deprecated features. New content worth noting is an extended chapter on the new and improved Expression Web SuperPreview which now includes full support for IE6, 7, 8 (compatibility mode) and 8 as well as a new feature called Remote Browser Testing that allows for testing on external browsers like Safari for Mac and an entire chapter on the new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checker tool.
Expression Studio 4 and Expression Web 4 comes as a free upgrade if you already own version 3. That means if you have version 3 you should upgrade right away. And if you alredy have my version 3 book you should get the new version once it comes out. I’m not saying this because I want to sell more books but because there are some new features in there that are important to understand and get the full use out of.
Microsoft Expression Web 4 LiveLessons (Video Training)
In addition to the book I’ve also created a colossal 27 lesson video series clocking in at around 5 hourscalled Microsoft Expression Web 4 LiveLessons (Video Training) for those of you who either don’t want to read a book or who want more hands-on training using Expression Web. The LiveLessons series features an entirely new example project based on the 12×12 Vancouver Photo Marathon website and provides a best-practice model for how to create professional, rock solid and stylish websites using standards-based HTML and CSS. The LiveLessons series is complementary to the Sams book so there are things that are covered in the videos that are not covered in the book and vice versa. Thus even though you’ll get a lot out of each item alone you’ll get a much better and more in-depth understanding by getting them both. Again, this is not a sales pitch – I’m being honest here. The combo really is the better deal.
The video series will be available on DVD early October and I believe it will also be available for download or online viewing on InformIT’s website (tba).
12×12 Vancouver Photo Marathon 2010
Because I don’t already have way too much on my plate I decided to start a huge photography event/contest last year called the 12×12 Vancouver Photo Marathon. In a nutshell it’s a contest where 60 photographers show up on a set date, pick up a 12 exposure 35mm film and then at the top of every hour for 12 hours are given one theme to interpret in one photo. At the end of 12 hours the films are returned, developed, judged and finally put up in a huge exhibit. In the end we end up with 720 photos divided into 60 sequences of 12 consecutive themes. The 2009 event was a massive success with over 300 people showing up for the gallery exhibit and we expect this year’s event to get even bigger.
In the runup to the even (and to kill two birds with one stone) I developed a new site for the marathon and used this site as the demo project for the Expression Web 4 LiveLessons series. As a result the site features some pretty fancy elements like a transparent CSS-only drop-down menu with multiple in-button styles, CSS3 drop-shadows and rounded corners and tons of other fancy schmancy style elements.
As I’m packing up for a rush trip to Norway to see my dad defending his doctor’s dissertation the Microsoft Expression team is hard at work in New York City presenting the new version of my favourite web development application Expression Web 4. Now packaged as Expression Studio 4 Web Professional and bundled with Expression Design and Expression Encoder version 4 is a programmatical improvement on the already hugely successful Expression Web 3 that introduces some new and nifty features that will make your web development process even simpler.
New in Expression Web 4
There is a long list of new features in Expression Web 4 but here I’m only going to mention three – because they are the most important ones.
In-app SEO reporting
Like the name suggests Expression Web 4 provides a full SEO report for selected pages or the entire site. Gone are the days of trying to remember all the SEO rules or using 3rd party apps to make sure your site gets listed on Google and Bing. With the click of a button Expression Web 4 will give you a list of everything you forgot to add to your site, like a title tag, proper description, keywords or broken links. But more interestingly it also gives you tips, in the form of warnings, that are not so obvious. During beta testing I ran the SEO reports on some of my existing sites and got feedback like “title is too general” and “description is too general”. This might seem like weird error reporting but it’s actually vitally important if you want your site to be noticed in the search environment: To be noticed your pages need proper titles that tell the visitor what’s on them. And the descriptions have to be specific enough to stand out. There are tons of other such warnings that, if heeded, will not only increase your SEO but will also teach you to write your code in an SEO friendly way the first time around. Which is exactly why I like Expression Web so much – it teaches you through its use to do things the right way.
More SuperPreview
I’ve raved about SuperPreview – the in-app or stand-alone cross-browser compatability tester that was introduced with Expression Web 3 – before. With Expression Web 4 SuperPreview has been enhanced and improved to include more browsers (IE 6, IE 7, IE 8 Compatibility Mode, IE 8 etc), more file inputs and most importantly an online component that lets you test your pages against the Mac version of Safari. It’s the same application with onion skinning, active areas, DOM view and all that great stuff, only improved for broader functionality.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: SuperPreview by itself is reason enough to buy Expression Web.
Publish Current Page
For people like me who tend to work on multiple disjointed pages and do live updates to sites all the time the process of saving a page, going to the publishing panel and then uploading the pages to the external server is extremely cumbersome. The obvious solution to this problem would be to have a button or function that lets you publish the current or all open pages to the server right away. I requested this feature at some point in the pre-beta process of Expression Web 4 and I’m happy to say it’s now included in the app making publishing of your latest and greatest errors updates a one-click process. It may seem like a small and insignifficant upgrade but it really isn’t: After working with an early beta and going back to Expression Web 3 I kept swearing at my computer because I couldn’t just push my files straight to the server but had to go through the publishing panel. That quick one-click or shortcut process is a huge timesaver and a hugely important addition to an already excellent application.
If you have version 3, version 4 is a free upgrade
Yes, that’s right: If you already purchased Expression Web 3 or Expression Studio 3, Expression Studio 4 is a free upgrade. That means you get all the cool new stuff at no cost. Very cool.
More to come
I’m hard at work writing tutorials and other stuff (TBA) about Expression Web 4 so stay tuned to this blog for all the updates and other useful tips!
Further reading
I’ll try to compile a list of all the news on this exciting new app as they get in. If you have a link, dump it in the comments below and I’ll post it:
After designing and building the Fancy Profile Box for the Pink & Yellow Media site I published an article on how to recreate it as a cool author box in your WordPress blog. This tutorial spurred a lot of interest and I got several emails and tweets asking me to convert it to a plugin. So I did.
As of right now the virst version (0.0.1) of the Cool Author Box plugin is available for download from the WordPress plugin directory. It is pre-beta and comes without any warranty or guarantees, but I’ve tested it on 4 very different blogs and it works fine on all of those.
The Cool Author Box WordPress plugin has been submitted to the WordPress Plugin Directory and I’ll announce it once it is accepted.
The Cool Author Box plugin adds a stylish author box after the content in posts and/or pages. The box displays author name, author bio, author gravatar and a link to other articles by the author.
The Cool Author Box plugin adds information about the author to the bottom of the content of posts and/or pages. The information is gathered from the profile info set inside WordPress.
Items displayed are:
Display name of the author of the post or page
Gravatar of the author (set at www.gravatar.com)
Link to other posts by the same author
Link to author’s website
To make the author box appear you need to activa the plugin and go to the Cool Author Box settings under Settings and select if the box should appear under posts, pages or both.
It’s no secret that I’ve been playing around with various pre-beta and beta versions of version three of Microsoft Expression Web for the last few months, all in preparation for the release of my new book Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 3 in 24 Hours which is available for pre-order from Amazon.com right now (even though it’s not finished yet!) So for all this time I’ve had to keep my mouth shut about my new toy and what it can do. Well, no more. I just got the all clear from the development team to talk about the application publicly and share some screenshots of what you can expect when it goes public in the next couple of months.
So, without further ado, here is a quick rundown of the new features, the new appearance and my innitial thoughts on the new member of the Expression Web family.
New Flat-tastic User Interface
The first thing you’ll notice (apart from the new logo in the splash page of course) when opening Expression Web 3 is the new UI skin. The application looks very different from its two prior iterations in that the team has moved away from the classic fake 3D/embossed look to a 2D/3D inspired look with flat surfaces and drop-shadows. The interface is also a lot darker than the prior ones with a dark gray being the predominant colour. The new look makes me think of new media applications like TweetDeck and DestroyTwitter and there is little doubt in my mind that much of the inspiration was taken from what I want to refer to as the post-web2.0 look.
As you can see in the graphic at the top of this article the new look is very clean and sharp and makes icons, toolbars and panels pop out. This dark flat-tastic look has already been used in Expression Design and Expression Blend and I think it is a welcome change that not only links Expression Web to it’s application siblings. It also visually separates the new application from those of the past and signals a new beginning of sorts. Not to mention that to me at least it is much easier on the eye (I tend to do a lot of design work in the dark).
AutoHide Panels
One of the things that really irks me with design applications in general is all these toolbars and task panes that take up valuable screen space. To curb my frustrations I prefer to work on a dual-monitor setup where I can stash all the tools and task panes on one monitor and leave the application on the other. But this doesn’t work when I’m on my laptop (which is where I’m at most of the time these days). And in Expression Web 1 and 2 even with a widescreen monitor the task panes ate up a lot of real estate. As a result I kept turning the task panes on and off all the time – a process that was a real time waster. In response to complaints and suggestions to do something about the task panes, the dev team introduced a simple AutoHide feature that lets you collapse the panels (they’re not called “task panes” anymore) to the sides from where you can open them by hovering over their names. In practical terms that means you can leave all your favourite panels on the workspace without having them take up tons of room in the process.
The AutoHide feature is easily toggled on and off with a pin logo (seen in the upper right-hand corner of the grab to the right). When the pin is lying sideways as in the grab, the panel is pinned to the wall (AutoHide on). When it’s in the upright position, the panel is a permanent part of the workspace. It’s a simple feature but it makes a world of difference, especially because you can pin individual and rarely used panels to the sides for easy access if you were to need them.
New and improved publishing options
It’s no secret that the publishing options, and especially the FTP publishing option, in Expression Web 1 and 2 were less than stellar. It was so bad in fact that I urged the readers of my book to not use them. Well, without breaking any deals with my publisher I can tell you that my recommendation in the new book is quite different. Not only has the troll that was messing with the FTP been slaughtered but two all new publishing methods have been added to the list providing more secure transfers and options. The list of publishing options now features SFTP (Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol), FTPS/SSL (File Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer) as well as the original FTP, FrontPage Server Extensions, WebDAV and File System. But that’s not all. Expression Web 3’s publishing option has been rebuilt from scratch and features a whole new range of functions including the ability to define multiple publishing locations for one site so you can push your files to a backup storage as well as publish them online, or publish them to multiple servers, or set up a testing server and a main server within the same project. This again is a seeminly minor but actual major improvement that makes life a lot easier for people like myself who do a lot of server testing and cross-publishing.
In-application Browser Previews with Snapshot
In addition to alterations and improvements to the old versions of the application, Expression Web 3 introduces some new features that are going to make your life as a designer/developer a hell of a lot easier. They are connected at the hip but I’d rather deal with them independently. The first one is the Snapshot panel. Like the name suggests, Snapshot takes a real-time browser shot of your current page and displays it in a panel inside your workspace. This means you now have a quick and easy way to see what your recent changes will look like in different browsers, including Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and Firefox, without having to actually run the page in a real browser.
Snapshot’s output is just that – a snapshot – and does not provide functional links and the like. But it does generate JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PHP and whatever else you want to throw at it and gives you a true representation of what your page looks like in the different browsers.Like the other panels you can undock the Snapshot panel and place it somewhere else, for instance on your second monitor.
SuperPreview – Browser Testing Made SuperSimple
I’ve written about SuperPreview before both here on DesignIsPhilosophy.com and in the official Microsoft Expression Newsletter but it can’t be repeated enough: Expression Web SuperPreview could one of the most important innovations in web development of the last several years. SuperPreview is the powerful big brother of Snapshot – a stand-alone application that lets you perform cross-browser testing that lets you compare true output from multiple different browsers with onion skinning and side-by-side preview. To identify incompatibilities, problems and even tiny shifts the application also features simultaneous box highlighting of individual elements and even provides full FireBug-like DOM trees to give you as much info as possible about what’s going on when things go wrong.
I’m not going to go into too much detail here – the application will be better served with a tutorial video that shows how it actually works in real-time – but I will say one thing: Even if I was still a DreamWeaver user, I would buy Expression Web 3 just to get the full version of SuperPreview. And that says a lot cuz’ I’m a cheap guy. With alligator arms.
Since Amazon.com was kind enough to list my book months before it’s done and I’ve been Tweeting about it for weeks there really is no reason to pretend it’s a secret any more: I am currently in the process of revising my book Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web in 24 Hours 3 for the upcoming release of Expression Web 3 which is slated for some time later this summer.
Needless to say writing a book about software that not only is not out yet but is not even finished yet is a bit of a challenge. And like last year (when I wrote the first version of the book) I will probably spend the next couple of months in constant revision mode making new screen grabs, changing tutorials to fit a not-yet-completed user interface and so on. But hey, I’m not complaining: Writing these books means I have to learn and understand every minute detail about the software. And knowing your tools inside out makes for a faster and more productive work routine.
The new book is more than just an update to fit the new user interface: Over the past year I’ve received countless emails from readers with questions and comments about everything from how to save files in Expression Web to how I got a book deal and I’ve taken all these comments, suggestions and criticisms along with my own experiences and thoughts to rewrite many of the chapters and add new and exciting content. And yes, my sentences are just as long in the book!
New features in the book
The new version of the book will, amongst other things, include:
a completely new project that the reader will build from the ground up. The new project has a better design, more flexibility and new choices for the designer to make the site her own. The idea behind the new project is that once the site is completed by the end of Hour 24, the reader can simply replace the content from the book with her own content and launch the site.
New menu tutorials showcasing vertical and horizontal CSS based menus as well as a CSS based drop-down menu.
A CSS layout tutorial explaining how you can use CSS to create multiple different layouts within one site without having to make separate style sheets.
An entire chapter on cross-browser testing using SuperPreview and the other accessibility and reporting tools built into Expression Web 3.
I am currently rewriting Hour 18 and, having skipped some chapters, still have about 10 to go (plus a couple of apendixes and a bonus chapter) so if you have comments, questions, concerns or anything else you want to say before I wrap this baby up, please feel free to put it in the comments below or send me an email. The book is written to help you so if you need help, speak up!
That said, go to Amazon.com and buy the book now. That way you know you’ll have it the minute it comes out!
A month or so ago Microsoft contacted me and asked if I would write an article on Expression Web for their Expression Newsletter. How could I say no to such an opportunity? After some back and forth about the topic I landed on an article on how to create a Pure CSS Drop-Down menu. Over time I’ve encountered numerous solutions, most of which were clunky and didn’t work properly. So the tutorial demonstrates how to create a fully functional CSS-only drop-down menu utilizing the excellent CSS features in Expression Web.
That’s not to say you have to use Expression Web to get something out of the article though. You can follow the tutorial and get the same results even if you’re using Notepad to build your sites. It’s just that Expression Web makes it a hell of a lot easier to manage.
This article comes hot on the heels of my book Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours which contains an expanded tutorial on the same topic that also covers a layers-based drop-down menu. If you are an Expression Web 2 user of if you are considering buying or switching over to this excellent web authoring and publishing platform I humbly suggest you pick up a copy for yourself. It’s a quick read and it gives you hour-by-hour instructions on how to create a web site from scratch with the application. And once you’re done, you’ll have a fully working and standards based web site at your disposal. I wrote it as the book I wish someone had written when I started out and from the response I’ve gotten so far people are learning a lot from it. Which is what I set out to do.
If you’ve tried placing a Silverlight application in a HTML page in Expression Web 2 (or any other web authoring application for that matter) and previewing it in your browser you know it doesn’t work. Here is a small exerpt from my upcoming book Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours that explains how you can use the Expression Development Server to trick your browser into previewing Silverlight applications without having to run them off a server:
To make sure everything is working properly, you should preview the page in your browser. But if you do all you’ll see is an empty white page. This is because Silverlight is a server-side script that must be running on a web server to work properly. In other words technically you need to upload your files to a web server and test them from there. Fortunately there is a way around this problem: Because a big part of Expression Web 2 is the ability to create advanced dynamic websites using Microsoft’s server-side script language ASP.NET, the program comes equipped with a small application called Expression Development Server. This application creates a virtual server on your computer that behaves like a web server and lets you run server-side scripts in pages even though they are only stored on your computer. You will be introduced to the Expression Development Server in more detail in Hours 22, “Beyond the Basics: PHP in Expression Web 2,” and 23, “Beyond the Basics Part 2: Building a Site with ASP.NET.”
The problem at hand is that the Silverlight script will run only on a web server. So to be able to preview the application you need to make Expression Web 2 think that the page you are currently working with is actually an ASP.NET page. That way it will be previewed using Expression Development Server and the Silverlight script will run properly. Doing so is surprisingly simple: Open the HTML file that contains the Silverlight application you want to preview, select File, Save As on the menu bar, and change the file extension to .aspx – the extension for ASP.NET pages that can contain regular HTML code. Now when you open the page it will be previewed in the browser through Expression Development Server and the Silverlight application will run properly.
Clever eh? Now go crack open your piggybank and buy my book!
Anna Ullrich just published an excellent article called Who’s Editing Your CSS? explaining how Expression Web 2 handles CSS and why you can trust the program to spit out proper non-bloated code.
If you’ve watched my webcast or read any of my articles you should have an idea of this but Anna’s article is far more thorough than anything else I’ve read.
Oh, by the way Anna: Who is editing your CSS? Your page is broken in Opera ;o)
I guess it’s time to announce the worst kept secret of the century: I’m writing a book about Expression Web 2. More specifically it’s called Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours and it is scheduled for release in October this year.
The book is already listed for pre-order on Amazon.com so if you are real eager to get your hands on this literary masterpiece you can put your money in now and set up your lawn chair and tent by the mailbox. Bring food though… October is still some months away.
In writing the book I’ve tried to show not only all the great functionalities of Expression Web 2 but also how you can develop a good work routine that produces consistent results every time. It is bursting with tutorials and demos of how you can achieve the same results with different techniques and it is my sincere hope that it will help budding as well as fully blooming web designers bring some extra panache to their designs.
So if you are wondering why I have pretty much fallen off the face of the earth, now you have the answer: I’m up to my neck in easy-to-understand-but-hard-to-come-up-with tutorials that will give people the skills and know-how to get the most out of this powerful piece of software.
Building Compelling Websites on the Microsoft Platform
I’m doing an Innovation Briefing Webcast about Expression Web 2 for Microsoft this coming Thursday at 11am Pacific Time. Hit the link below to sign up to join in. I don’t know if there’s still more spots for registration but if not, the entire one hour session will be recorded and published in wmv format for download and streaming.
I’m meeting with the Expression Web dev team on the Tuesday before and I haven’t really nailed down what to present at the webcast so if you have any questions or want to see a demo of a specific function or anything like that, please drop me a line and I’ll work it in.
Before you ask: No, I don’t work for Microsoft.
WEBCAST DATE
Thursday June 5, 2008
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET Event ID: 1032350422 Register Now
This is an expansion to Anna Ullrich’s tutorial Center a page (horizontally) by using CSS which can be found on her blog. I’m picking up where she left off, so if you are confused about where we are when we start, I suggest you read her post first.
In this tutorial I’m going to isolate the CSS styling in Anna’s tutorial and move it to a separate style sheet (.css file). Doing this has two benefits: First off you can apply the same style sheet to multiple pages without having to insert all the code in each one. Seccondly, by leaving all the styling in a separate file, you can make global changes to a whole web site by just changing one file. This is a major benefit if you are working with larger sites that have many pages.
Starting point
At the end of Anna’s tutorial we were left with this block of code:
Untitled 1
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Curabitur id lectus.
Vivamus vitae neque. Morbi at sapien. Etiam pharetra velit non dolor tempor
bibendum. Nullam nibh. Aenean quis elit. Cras posuere, sem eu tincidunt dictum,
nisl arcu laoreet ipsum, ac aliquet orci augue sed nulla. Nunc libero sapien,
egestas id, aliquam eget, semper id, nunc. Quisque tempor consequat quam. Nullam
sapien libero, viverra non, varius vitae, pharetra nec, nisi. Cras egestas
consectetuer justo. Nullam ante orci, luctus ut, ullamcorper nec, eleifend eu,
justo. Donec eleifend nibh eu nunc. Nunc porta consequat mauris. Cras libero
diam, ullamcorper id, adipiscing non, tincidunt ac, eros. Ut auctor tortor vel
purus. Nullam dapibus. Mauris pede urna, vestibulum eget, pellentesque a,
consectetuer at, eros.
This code creates a page that looks like this:
Let’s quickly dissect the code to help understand exactly what’s going on. The first important part of code is contained in the <head> area:
Everything within the <style type=”text/css”></style> containers will be interpreted by the browser as styles to be applied to the content further down in the document. What this particular piece of code says is that every time the style of the class “style1” is applied to content, that content should have a background colour of hot pink (#CC0066). You can see the class being called further down in the document:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit …
In addition to the very attractive pink background (sorry Anna, but in spite of my company name, pink really isn't my colour) there is more styling applied to the text, but this is contained in a div within the html code itself:
This line of code says that all content between the two <div></div> containers should be 395px wide and have a left and a right margin set to "auto". It's this line of code that centers the content: By telling the browser that both the left and right margins are automatic, the browser will give them equal values depending on how big the window is and put whatever is in between in the center.
But this is a somewhat messy way of doing it, because most of the styling is inside the html code and is not repeatable. What we want to do is make it a style that can be used again and again. You can avoid this problem by employing a different method when you build the site - I'll post a different tutorial for this technique - but for now, we'll just fix the code to make it more funcional:
Sifting out the styles
Since we already have the style settings, all we need to do is move them to the style area in the <head> by cutting and pasting the definitions like this:
To make this more understandable, we can rewrite it like this:
To make this work properly, you also have to make a small change in the html section replacing this:
with this:
Much simpler, right? Well, we can do even better. Notice how the <body> is also defined within the html code? We should move that to the styles section as well:
Finally we remove the styling from the <body> in the html section. Now the html is "clean" and the styles are all contained in a separate area.
Modifying the styles
This is where Expression Web's excellent CSS tools kick in for real. Now that we have separated all the styles, Expression Web lets us play around with them in any way we want without typing a single line of code.
You'll notice that the Manage Styles panel now has two entries: body and .style1. By right-clicking on either one of them and clicking "Modify Style", you open the Modify Styles panel where you can edit the styles in pretty much any way you wish. If we open the panel for .style1, we see all the information contained in the style: The name of the style, what categories are active (in bold), a preview of the style as a whole and even a complete text sting of the entire style. From this panel you can make all possible changes to the style and see the results in real-time both in the preview window, the code window and also in the visual area of the design page. Likewise you can use the "New Style" button in the Manage Styles panel to create new styles through the same window. And once you have styles in your Manage Styles panel, you can apply them to any portion of the content simply by highlighting the area, right-clicking on the style you want and selecting "Apply Style".
Making a separate style sheet or CSS file
Finally, we are going to port the styles to their own file, also called a Style Sheet or a .css file. Microsoft Expression makes this very easy. First off, you need to make a new .css file: File -> New -> CSS. This opens a fresh CSS document. Save it wherever you want and give it a reasonable name. I tend to name the main .html file and it's corresponding .css file the same, so since my main file is called centeredContent.html, I save my .css file as centeredContent.css in the same folder.
Next, click "Attach Style Sheet" in the Manage Styles panel and select the file you just created. This causes two things to happen: First, a line of code is added to the <head> of the html page:
This is a relative link telling the browser that there is a file that relates to the page called "centeredContent.css", that this file is a stylesheet and that it's content is css code.
NOTE: At this point I renamed the style ".style1" to ".box" to reflect exactly what it does. You can do this in the Manage Styles panel, in the code or in the pop-up window. Just remember to change the name in the html code as well so that where it used to say <div class="style1">, it should now say <div class="box">.
Secondly, the Manage Styles panel now shows the attached style sheet file:
But as you can see, centeredContent.css has no styles in it yet. So next we grab the styles and simply pull them down on top of the name of the .css file and voila, the styles are in the external style sheet. If you look at your <head> you'll see that the styles are gone from the <styles> area, so you can delete the whole <styles> section without anything happening. When you open the centeredContent.css file, you'll see that the styles are now resting there. You might think that this will cause problems, but because of the way Expression Web handles CSS code, nothing really changes. You can still manage the CSS code from the Manage Styles panel the same way you did before, from the html file, without ever opening the .css file, and you still have the same control as before. The main difference is that you can now create multiple html files that get their styles from the same .css file and that changing styles in that one file will impact all the other html files.
The end result looks the same (but appearances can be deceiving)
That's it. The page looks exactly the same as before, but the code is much cleaner and we now have the ability to build many pages using the same style sheet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Curabitur id lectus.
Vivamus vitae neque. Morbi at sapien. Etiam pharetra velit non dolor tempor
bibendum. Nullam nibh. Aenean quis elit. Cras posuere, sem eu tincidunt dictum,
nisl arcu laoreet ipsum, ac aliquet orci augue sed nulla. Nunc libero sapien,
egestas id, aliquam eget, semper id, nunc. Quisque tempor consequat quam. Nullam
sapien libero, viverra non, varius vitae, pharetra nec, nisi. Cras egestas
consectetuer justo. Nullam ante orci, luctus ut, ullamcorper nec, eleifend eu,
justo. Donec eleifend nibh eu nunc. Nunc porta consequat mauris. Cras libero
diam, ullamcorper id, adipiscing non, tincidunt ac, eros. Ut auctor tortor vel
purus. Nullam dapibus. Mauris pede urna, vestibulum eget, pellentesque a,
consectetuer at, eros.
I always say that unless you start things right, you’re going to run into problems somewhere down the line. Nowhere is that more true than in building websites, especially if you venture into the realm of standards based scripting. Fortunately there are people out there who know how to do things the right way, and they are more than willing to share their knowledge with us layfolk. One such person is Eric Meyer and with his new CSS Sculptor for Expression Web he sets out to make the deceptively complicated task of making web sites look the same across all browsers easier for one and all.
If you’re one of those people who like to write all your CSS in Visual Studio and you know absolutely everything about standards-based coding, you need read no further. If on the other hand you are like me and CSS is like a second language you still have trouble with, this is vital information.
I’m not saying that CSS Scupltor will generate all the code for you or even solve all your problems. What it does is start you off on the right foot, with proper high-end runners and a good night’s sleep.
Why do I need this?
There are two answers to this question: The first one is that for some reason different browsers interpret CSS differently so unless you really know what you are doing, chances are the sites you build end up looking slightly different depending on whether the visitor uses Internet Explorer 5, 6, 7 or 8, FireFox, Opera, Safari or any number of other browsers. There is no good reason for this other than that in spite of many years of work, the “standards” that govern CSS and other web code are so vague and flexible that there is no joint agreement on exact interpretation. It’s worth noting that Internet Explorer has always been the big culprit here and that with the release of IE 8, Microsoft is finally joining the fold and matching the rest of the world. But I digress. What Eric Meyer and other CSS gurus have been telling anyone willing to listen is that with some strategic coding, you can still make the all browsers act the same way. But this requires work. CSS Sculptor sets out to do the brunt of this work for you.
The second answer is that even though Expression Web has many CSS templates, they are mostly empty and they require you to insert all the little pieces that make the code compliant. And that’s a lot of hard work on your part.
To give you an idea of exactly what CSS Sculptor does that EW doesnt, I’ve built two examples. They are both out-of-the-box layouts with standard text inserted. They were both created with about 5 mouse clicks and I only made minor adjustments to get this demo up and running – specifically I separated the CSS from the CSS Sculptor project and put it in a separate file and I inserted the dummy text from the CSS Scupltor project in the EW project to have some filler. Both these pages were made using Expression Web 2 Beta and they have no alterations of any kind from me. You can see the Expression Web example here and it’s CSS code here. The CSS Sculptor example is here with it’s CSS code here.
Anyone can see that the two examples are miles apart in both layout and functionality and you’ll also notice that the CSS part of the generated pages are hugely different. And while none of the pages will apper exactly the same across all browsers (mostly due to lack of defined elements like a background colour), the CSS Sculptor page is by and large fully working while the Expression Web page is unuseable garbage (notice where the footer is located).
OK. So what exactly does it do?
As is obvious from the examples above, CSS Sculptor spits out a lot more code than the native CSS generator in Expression Web. The code generated by CSS Sculptor also contains parts of Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset code which goes a long way in ensuring browser interoperability. In addition, the program gives you a ton of plug-and-play options like menu bars, colour schemes and so on to get you started quickly and easily. To top it off, it even inserts both dummy text and plenty of commented out instructions and explanations to make it easier to understand exactly what’s going on. To an avid coder this might seem excessive or even unnecessary, but to a designer who dabbles in code it will be a life saver.
So should I buy CSS Sculptor or not?
Whether this application is for you depends on what you do and how you do it. Like I said before, if you know what you’re doing and you usually type out your CSS in Visual Studio for a perfect result with no testing, you’re not likely going to use this app even if you should. If on the other hand you are constantly creating new CSS layouts and you find yourself sifting through the web again and again to figure out why your margins keep shifting or why your header is hiding under the main body, this is a good tool to get your on your way.
I’m not saying that CSS Scupltor will generate all the code for you or even solve all your problems. What it does is start you off on the right foot, with proper high-end runners and a good night’s sleep. That way you spend less time fiddling with the framework which means you have more time to tackle the intricate details. And time saved means more time for the important stuff.
Personally I can see a hundred uses for this application and I’m not going to think twice about shelling out the dough to get it. Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor for Expression Web will sell for $99.99, retail but for the first couple of weeks after it is released, WebAssist will be offering a discount on it. For my purpose, the many colour schemes and other nifty editing options included are superfluous, but that’s because I like to see what I’m doing when I’m doing it and I tend to change my mind a lot during the designing process. Even so, having a quick and easy way to get the framework up and running properly means a lot less wasted time and increased productivity, and for that alone it’s worth it.
Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor for Expression Web is a simple one-click install that snaps into Expression Web automatically and requires no work on your part. Once installed, it shows up on in the program and works flawlessly. And although it doesn’t build stunning websites for you all by itself, it gives you a solid foundation to start from.
Earlier this summer Microsoft released version 4 of Expression Studio. The new version brough major upgrades to Expression Web and as a result my hugely popular book Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 4 in 24 Hours
In addition to the book I’ve also created a colossal 27 lesson video series clocking in at around 5 hourscalled Microsoft Expression Web 4 LiveLessons (Video Training) for those of you who either don’t want to read a book or who want more hands-on training using Expression Web. The LiveLessons series features an entirely new example project based on the 12×12 Vancouver Photo Marathon website and provides a best-practice model for how to create professional, rock solid and stylish websites using standards-based HTML and CSS. The LiveLessons series is complementary to the Sams book so there are things that are covered in the videos that are not covered in the book and vice versa. Thus even though you’ll get a lot out of each item alone you’ll get a much better and more in-depth understanding by getting them both. Again, this is not a sales pitch – I’m being honest here. The combo really is the better deal..png "Expression Studio 4 Web Professional")
As I’m packing up for a rush trip to Norway to see my dad defending his doctor’s dissertation the Microsoft Expression team is hard at work in New York City presenting the new version of my favourite web development application 
One of the things that really irks me with design applications in general is all these toolbars and task panes that take up valuable screen space. To curb my frustrations I prefer to work on a dual-monitor setup where I can stash all the tools and task panes on one monitor and leave the application on the other. But this doesn’t work when I’m on my laptop (which is where I’m at most of the time these days). And in Expression Web 1 and 2 even with a widescreen monitor the task panes ate up a lot of real estate. As a result I kept turning the task panes on and off all the time – a process that was a real time waster. In response to complaints and suggestions to do something about the task panes, the dev team introduced a simple AutoHide feature that lets you collapse the panels (they’re not called “task panes” anymore) to the sides from where you can open them by hovering over their names. In practical terms that means you can leave all your favourite panels on the workspace without having them take up tons of room in the process.
In addition to alterations and improvements to the old versions of the application, Expression Web 3 introduces some new features that are going to make your life as a designer/developer a hell of a lot easier. They are connected at the hip but I’d rather deal with them independently. The first one is the Snapshot panel. Like the name suggests, Snapshot takes a real-time browser shot of your current page and displays it in a panel inside your workspace. This means you now have a quick and easy way to see what your recent changes will look like in different browsers, including Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and Firefox, without having to actually run the page in a real browser.
.jpg "CSS Based Horizontal Drop-Down Menu")
You'll notice that the Manage Styles panel now has two entries: body and .style1. By right-clicking on either one of them and clicking "Modify Style", you open the Modify Styles panel where you can edit the styles in pretty much any way you wish. If we open the panel for .style1, we see all the information contained in the style: The name of the style, what categories are active (in bold), a preview of the style as a whole and even a complete text sting of the entire style. From this panel you can make all possible changes to the style and see the results in real-time both in the preview window, the code window and also in the visual area of the design page. Likewise you can use the "New Style" button in the Manage Styles panel to create new styles through the same window. And once you have styles in your Manage Styles panel, you can apply them to any portion of the content simply by highlighting the area, right-clicking on the style you want and selecting "Apply Style".
