Hi,

I was just looking around the CMS and Blog scene, in terms of software, and I just finished taking another look at Drupal 6.

… Based on what I’ve seen so far, it looks very cool.

With this version of Drupal (Drupal 6.2) you see a lot of administration panel improvements and the whole process of installing and configuring Drupal has been streamlined. It is actually really easy.

Drupal 6 has a lot of other cool additions and tools like:

• Built in triggers: you can tell Drupal to do things when say for example someone post a comment.
• Better Forums: more features now.
• Drag-and-drop admin UI capabilities. It is easier to manage where things appear on your pages.

… And much more.

Most important, Drupal looks to be much faster than it was in previous versions.

… That’s one thing that bugged the hell out of me about old and slow Drupal 5.

You can get Drupal at: http://drupal.org/

I know, short post. I’m just busy with other stuff.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I’ve been hearing the quiet murmur of nerds lately, soft sounds that speak of Dreamweaver CS4.

Yes, I do have my finger on the pulse of the nerd-zeitgeist and from what I understand, Dreamweaver CS4 is coming out sooner than later. I’m guessing sometime this winter.

Are there any details?

I’m not sure what is coming (in terms of new features), but I have heard what is leaving and not coming back:

• ASP.net support.
• Layout Mode and Timelines.
• JSP support

Some speculation:

I am guessing that Adobe will position Dreamweaver to be more web developer centric than designer centric.

Not that they will turn Dreamweaver into a glorified text editor, I just get the feeling that they will spend more time on the coding end of things, than on the design end.

My thinking is based on the work Adobe has done with Flash CS3 and especially Actionscript 3.0.

… It is clear with AS3, that Adobe made the decision to make the Flash scripting language more appealing to hard-core programmers than to designers. AS3 is much more powerful but it is more complex and harder to learn than Actionscript 2.

That said, please do keep in mind that when it comes to what may be coming in Dreamweaver CS4 … it is total speculation on my part.

CIAO,

Stefan Mischook

This first article is meant to give you a global picture about creating Wordpress themes. Let’s start by answering a few common questions.

Do you need to know PHP to create or edit Wordpress themes?

The short answer is no. It would help to know some PHP but many theme designers don’t, and they do just fine.

Do you need to understand MySQL to create or edit Wordpress themes?

Again, no. Mysql is the database that drives Wordpress and is a key component … nonetheless, it has no impact on creating themes. So don’t worry about it.

What do you need to know in order to be able to edit or create a Wordpress theme?

I would say that you need to know three basic things:

1. HTML/XHTML
2. CSS
3. The Wordpress page hierarchy and behavior.

I think the first two are obvious, but the last needs some more explaining.

(more…)

Hi,

This is just the first of many new video tutorials on Flash CS3 (and the upcoming Flash CS4) and Actionscript 3.0.

Video: Nested Movie Clips in Flash CS3

Summary of the video tutorial:

Using Nested Animations in Movie Clips with Flash CS 3
By: Santo Romano
Tutorial level: Beginner to intermediate Flash users.
Flash version: Flash MX, MX2004, CS2, and CS3

When creating simple animations in Flash, the main timeline is often the best place to position your animations. However, when these animations are repetitive, the best way to handle them is to utilize the movie clip symbol in Flash. Unlike the other symbols you’ll find in the Flash environment, the Movie clip symbol is perfectly suited to handle this kind of work. Rather than creating multiple key frames over and over again, it is much better to nest the simple animation inside of a Movie Clip, and to let it handle most of the work.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I can’t tell you how many times that my programming experience (in Java, PHP etc) has guided me in my web design work … and strangely, even in other aspects of my life not at all related to topics ‘nerd’.

… Ah, nerd wisdom prevails in all aspects of life.

Anyway, here yet again, is another example where programming guides me: this time, it’s all about web design and code.

-

Over the last few years, the consensus in the web design community has been to streamline code. In real terms, that comes down to:

• collapsing html
• collapsing css
• … and consolidating css code into one file, to minimize the number of server hits.

… The idea is to speed up web page load times and to reduce web server loads.

This is an important goal and something all web designers should be concerned about. The problem is that if you are concentrating on optimizing your CSS or HTML to speed things up, you are concentrating on the wrong parts of your websites.

The fact is, that most of the optimization opportunities is actually found in your images, Flash movies and other multimedia content – not the code.

(more…)