Welcome to the PixelMill Blog. Here we will talk about news, announcements, products, and more from PixelMill.
It's possible to get Navigation View back into Expression Web, at least temporarily! Here's a great tip from the Microsoft newsgroup for those sites that you want to edit in Expression Web but that use FrontPage link bars or page banners.
Looks like I'll have to go through and modify our Expression Web support articles to incorporate this new information!
Of course -- if you're shooting for an XHTML-validated site, you can't use FrontPage Link Bars because the FrontPage webbot-generated code doesn't validate. Eventually you'll want to move towards CSS-formatted text links, either in a Dynamic Web Template, master page, or include page. We have several support resources on this topic for you, including:
Using shortcuts has not always been my strength, but over the last year I have developed a fondness for anything that will make my life and my tasks easier. For some of you this will be old hat, but for others you may remark “I never knew that”. That being said if you have a shortcut you would like to share please add it to our comments or email me.
The first shortcut I like is the CTRL-N this opens a new page, spreadsheet, or html page, etc. This can be used in most programs and works the same as going to the task bar and selecting File > New.
The second and third shortcuts are the ever faithful CTRL-C (copy) and CTRL-V (paste). These are great when used properly and what I mean when I say used properly, I see lots of customers who have copied and pasted from word into their web page. This serves its purpose, but if you have a site that is using specific CSS formatting to achieve your look you have just lost it with your cut and paste. If you want to cut and paste from word into your website or copy and paste your content from another site to your new site, the best method is to copy and paste from word or your site into Notepad then copy and paste from Notepad into your web page. This prevents any formatting word has applied to carry over to your website.
The Fourth favorite of my short cuts is CTRL-A (select all). When I am making read me files for my web templates, I go into the getting started page and hit CTRL-A to select all the text and CTRL-C and CTRL-V into my word document. This works for most web pages, but do pay attention to the text that is selected, because it may select more than you bargained for. Still this shortcut works great in Word or notepad, or when you are copying a whole sheet of text over to another.
CTRL-S; saves your document
CTRL-P; prints your document
CTRL-Home and CTRL-End; the first takes you to the top of the document and the second takes you to the bottom.
CTRL-Z; is used when you say “I didn’t mean to do that”, the undo function.
CTRL-F4 to close the program you are in, close down your browser or computer.
A really cool shortcut I learned from Corrie was the ALT-Tab combination, this lets you tab between programs you have open, vs. using your mouse to go to your task bar and click on the program.
Again there are many more shortcuts out there that save you time and mouse clicks. I have just listed the ones that I use the most. If there is a shortcut combo that you would like to share with our PixelMill readers, please leave your comment here.
Have a great day!
Heather
Over the years I have been disappointed by the disconnect between advanced photo editors and photo editing software for beginners. There was no real path for beginners to follow to reach the next step with their growing skills. You either went with Photoshop and the learning curve that came with it, or worked with some of the very viable, but limiting beginner photo editors that had proprietary features and no real upgrade path.
A couple months ago I found that Photoshop had a new product, to me at least, which was Photoshop Elements. Shortly after this I was working with a customer that was using Photoshop Elements for their web site's photo editor. At that point, I decided it was a good time to check out this new tool.
Going into it I was certain that Photoshop Elements 5.0 would not stand up to the latest full-featured Photoshop CS2. Obviously, at the price point, Elements wouldn't do nearly as much. I prepared myself and accepted the fact that it probably would be much like some of the other low cost photo editors I had seen in the past. Even reading the product descriptions from Adobe gave me the sense that it was a very simple (in functionality) program. Well, I was wrong...
I'm very impressed with Photoshop Elements and believe it is an excellent tool for beginning and aspiring designers (photo/image/graphics manipulators). Elements not only includes many of the beginner tools and features you would expect from a $99 (list price) photo editor, but also includes a number of features that I feel are ideal for the intermediate graphic designer still learning and building their own skill set.
I could fill a couple pages reviewing the product and all of its features, but I'll focus on the one I find most important and relevant to our template customers. Photoshop Elements 5.0 allows you to open Photoshop PSD (source) files and edit the layers contained in the PSD file. There are a few limitations, but for the most part any PSD source files you find with PixelMill products can be edited in Elements. Since PixelMill templates are built from within the web site editor, we only create graphics and PSD files necessary for the site. You don't receive a large, convoluted collection of layered images cut up to make a web page. You can open the file you need, make the desired changes, and output as a web image.
In light of the value we find in Photoshop Elements with its' ability to be an easy and flexible graphics editor and a solid stepping stone to Photoshop, we have started an ongoing series of articles and tutorials for Photoshop Elements. Much of this series will focus on how Elements compares to Photoshop, and how you can accomplish some of the same effects found with Photoshop. You can see the beginning of this series in our previous two newsletters.
Reflection in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements - February 2007
Fading Images in Photoshop Elements - January 2007
We hope you will find value in our new series, and we encourage you to take a look at Photoshop Elements if you do not already use Photoshop or other photo editor.
Learn more about Adobe Photoshop Elements
After talking to several PixelMill customers about Expression Web, I've realized that there are a lot of misconceptions and myths about Expression Web that are keeping people from even trying it out. Here, I'll attempt to address some of the ones that have come up.
Myth #1: You must use Expression Web with ASP.NET web sites.
Many of the demo videos on the Microsoft site do show .NET web sites as the samples, but you can use Expression Web to manage any non-ASP.NET web site, just as you would use FrontPage! Expression Web is a general web editor that just happens to include support for .NET controls as well. You can completely ignore the .NET controls and just use Expression Web to edit your normal HTML/XHTML web site.
Myth #2: Expression Web isn't compatible with FrontPage-built sites.
In general, Expression Web is fairly backwards-compatible with FrontPage-built sites. Expression Web works with webs and subwebs the way FrontPage does, in the sense that you can continue to open webs and subwebs (live off the server or on your local computer or development machine). The FrontPage webbot components can be double-clicked and modified within Expression Web.
The only thing that you lose in moving from Expression Web to FrontPage is the ability to change link bars, rename pages, etc. within Navigation View. This is because Expression Web encourages the use of CSS over Themes and encourages XHTML-compliant sites (FrontPage link bars are not XHTML-compliant). I've addressed this issue already in my webinars about going from FrontPage link bars to include pages (free webinar) and CSS formatted link bars (premium webinar) if you'd like to learn more about how to do that.
Myth #3: If I'm not using FrontPage, I should just switch to Dreamweaver instead of Expression Web.
It's no longer true that Dreamweaver is the only "proper" tool to use for "professional" web developers. With Expression Web, it really comes down to a matter of preference. Expression Web gives you the ability to produce professional, validated web sites just as Dreamweaver would. FrontPage users will find the interface of Expression Web more familiar than Dreamweaver. In fact, Expression Web comes with better CSS management tools than the current version of Dreamweaver, with task panes that allow you to rearrange and reorganize styles in stylesheets as well as modify and rename them without mangling your code! Both pieces of software have their own strengths and weaknesses, but both can be used to make scalable, compliant web sites.
Any other gossip or myths you've heard about Expression Web that you'd like to share? Post a comment!
Having trouble finding a template for your existing or new website?
The first thing I tell PixelMill customers, when trying to choose a template, is to start by selecting your layout. Find the layout that will suit your needs the best, regardless of images and color. If you think a design will work perfect for you but it has the wrong image or coloring don’t worry the template can be changed with CSS or with custom services.
So how do I tell if I can make the changes myself or if I need to request PixelMill Custom Services? To determine if you can make the changes or you need to request Custom Services, take a look at the getting started page and see if it’s using CSS for color or is it using graphics. If it is using CSS for the colors you can make these changes with ease. If it is using graphics for some of the layout and coloring, you will need a graphics editor (possibly a specific one) to make the color changes.
Let’s look at a PixelMill Edition template to show how easy it is to recolor a template.
Here is a screenshot of the template we want to recolor. We want to change the red in the template to dark green to match our team colors.
When I click on the red section I see that the div is using the ID #body2. That is where I will need to change my red background to my green color. Expression Web makes it easy to select your color without having to know what your hex color is – however if you have a specific color you want to use to match your logo color or your exact team color you should have your hex color code handy. Here is a link about hex color codes.
I open my style sheet and look for the #body2 that my div tag is using. I already have my hex color code selected from my Color Schemer program. That color is #669933. To change my background color, I go to line 143 and change the background from #990000 to the #669933.
Here I have changed the color on my div id #body2 from red to green. Now every page on my website that used that #body2 tag has the new color applied.
Next I want to change my banner across the top from red to green. This is using an image for the coloring so I will open an image editor to modify the image. This is a PNG file that is in the source folder, so I can open with any image editor. For this example I am using Fireworks.
Here is the image opened in Fireworks. You can see on the right this image is made up of 2 layers. I am going to work with. The second layer is my red box that I want to change to green.
I select that layer, and then I change the color in the color selection box on my graphics editor.
When that is done I export my image back out to my images folder and now my background image has been changed on all of the pages on my website.
A design note…
You should have some knowledge of your graphics program to make this color change. If you are not comfortable with your graphics program or have not been properly introduced to one, check out one of Corrie’s webinars on photoshop.
This article shows a quick color change that our PixelMill customers can do to modify their PixelMill template. If you don’t feel you have the comfort level to make these changes don’t worry we can walk you through these changes (and more) with our one-on-one training and education ($25 per half hour of training/education) or signup to attend our webinars. If you think you need a bit more custom or work on your site, then please contact us and we will be happy to discuss your Custom Services request.
Corrie 
8:05 AM
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