For the record I bought and now use Coda and love it for the hand-coding portions of my site work.

Anyone really paying attention will wonder how I went from version 6 to version 7.5. Where’s version 7?

Version 7 in all it’s iterations exists all the way up to functioning markup and CSS. I created a series of what I felt were interesting designs but none of them really got to the point of what I really needed to do – which like all sites is deal with content first. So I started stripping down until I had the shell you see now (which as of this writing does indeed still have some minor CSS bugs). The idea was to force a starting over and at some point this really needs to happen with live content. All good sites start on one foot and continue with the other, eventually becoming something one can be proud of. I haven’t built a site like this for many years as a result of lack of time in addition to my spreading everything too thin with unfinished or unrealized content.

The truth is I have more artwork than I have time to present in any medium. I still feel that the web is the ideal place to archive one’s steps in creativity, regardless of the size of your audience. If my family and friends are the only people to visit this site it’s still worth building a cohesive record of the things that I’ve created. So I want rework what is worth keeping and provide a more media-rich showcase around that.

There is a laundry list of upcoming things: a nearly finished album that is dying to be published, many short films and samples of my video work (both commercial and experimental). There is artwork galore, especially collage and my Photoshop-based digital “paintings”. I’m a busy guy and it’s been years since this site really showed that.

So back to the the whole version thing. Version 7.5 is a stripped down variation on what 7.0 was – and I suspect that the old designs will be utilized in some way in the future. One step at a time and all that. I’ve already taken a sharp turn by building in dynamic Flash slideshows via Slideshow Pro Director and from that I’m giving a lot of thought to how multimedia can live in a liquid CSS layout that remains semantic and fully compliant with web standards.

It looks weak now, but the challenge is a creative one. I’ll grow a lot more if I embrace that and work with rather than slap out another version 6 that never fully matures. Time to get back into the fold…

Those unfamiliar with the story should scan the following articles:

Duke Uni Eyes Apple iPhone As Source Of Wireless Network Woes (CNN Money)

iPhone may not be cause of Duke wireless woes (MacWorld)

Update on Duke’s wireless network and Apple’s iPhones (Duke University News & Communications)

The Problem With Duke’s iPhone Problem (WSJ Online)

Basically Apple’s iPhone is fingered as bringing down a complex university wifi network. Nobody else has the issue with iPhone users. Duke’s IT claims it’s Apple’s problem and their complex Cisco hardware should be fine. But after all is said and done, Cisco finds and fixes a flaw that the iPhone somehow exposed. Nobody really seems to have the full-on technical explanation here but the point was that folks were way to quick to fear the newest wireless device on the block.

I’ve seen this my whole career – sometimes it is an Apple issue – they make as many mistakes as any company, but since the dawn of OS X and Linux there is a much larger push for standards from Apple so it’s harder and harder for any tech guy to assume that Apple is somehow subverting wifi standards. Believe me, if Apple had a network killer in their wifi implementation they wouldn’t be selling so much product – the iPhone has been reviewed with great wifi speed and battery life (over other protocols), a selling point if there ever was one.

Any other vendor would be the same way – if your networking failed that bad on your mobile device everyone would know right out of the gate. Duke is clearly trying to be professional in the wake of a one of their IT staff’s unprofessional accusations and have set the record straight.

Still, I’m sure I’ll be talking to someone at some point in the future who will claim that they won’t ever buy an iPhone because they heard that it brings down wifi networks…

Let There Be Web Divisions

And so the now infamous Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) controversy continues:Searching for the HIG’s Bosun, at Daydream Blog.

I’m learning that some of the things that I’ve always stood behind from the original Macintosh design have indeed changed – but so far Apple hasn’t drafted any definitive stance to update the older HIG, at least not publicly. This seems to be what has made folks a bit upset along with the experimental nature of every new Apple application with a new UI that doesn’t match others. So the rules have changed – except that consistency is and probably always will be the way to go. Leopard appears to lock it down a bit, but we’ll see. 

Other than the newer format-specific quibbles most of the annoyances are problems that have existed with standard DVDs. When DVDs first came out they were pretty much bare-bones, then discs starting getting excessive with the menus and transitions. After that it seemed that a lot of folks learned to simplify their menu design while others just kept making gratuitous fluff. All this time I’ve mostly heard the same complaints over and over – users don’t like the extra crap.

The biggest offender is placing no-skip advertising before a film. Previews and trailers are OK but having an ad for not pirating the disc I just bought or even worse, and ad for the same movie on the disc is just stupid. If you do this allow skipping – don’t disable the Menu or Title buttons. Seriously, if I bought the disc I will watch it more than once, so I will hate that outdated ad next time around all the more (DVD profit is mostly from sales, not rentals).

Interactive formats do require thinking. UI considerations and user flow are still significant. I’ve always try to put a lot of thought into the menus I put on any shipped DVD, be it a one-off demo or a replicated disc. Even when pressed with doing “cheap” menus I avoid making use of excessive effects and features that authoring software makes easy. Nobody is going to pat me on the back and say “thanks” after experiencing the disc, but if I hadn’t done that they would have had a far worse user experience, which will color whatever content you have on your discs. The experience is important.

DVDs will still sell no matter how much crap is tacked on but now with the pressure to buy the new HD formats every good customer experience will help. If I was producing your disc I’d take this very seriously. You want your format to look and feel good after all. Plus, it’s often cheaper to avoid generating all the extra art or scripting that don’t add to the project.

Looks great, and just in time for all the raw-based photo shoots I just did.

If you do professional web work you should take it.

The box is a layered thing. It’s outer shell is a slipcase that comes off to reveal a raw cardboard shell with a little window that shows the inner contents, also in their own little box. This is of course all designed to be flexible among all the various flavors of the CS3 product.

Inside the box is a nice little printed overview of the new features, a registration card and of course the software.

The window didn’t align with the inner content with my box, probably a capacity issue that got missed this round.

I like the Workflow Guide booklet. It’s the right size to be inviting, which is good since there is a little bit more to adjust to with the new UI and Macromedia apps.

Everything is on DVD now, so it’s two discs for the Design Premium I got, plus one more with video tutorials. The last handful of Adobe releases have included extra video learning content, so this is no surprise.

In all it’s probably the biggest change Adobe has made to their shipping boxes in a while. The old red and black look is now replaced with a more natural paper feel, and the whole package is nicely compact.

It does feel sort of odd to shell out that much cash and get a tiny box. If I was buying the $3K full version of everything I’d feel even more weird about the small box. But this is software, you’re paying for millions of lines of code, not the box.