I read so much technology news these days that it really takes something interesting to get my attention (such as the massive arrival of unnamed devices in the U.S. from Apple's manufacturing facilities overseas). Yesterday, Adobe gave me an early birthday present by introducing the Fireworks CS4 Beta, a program I am heavily reliant upon and eager to see develop. I am now running Fw CS4 at home and at work, and suffice it to say, I love it to pieces.

Allow me to round up for you some of the changes that I find particularly welcome.

Color Palettes

I have building color palettes by hand for years now. I could draw little boxes and mix in more/less black to create several shades of a color. At long last, Adobe is giving me tools to do some of this. I can already feel myself getting faster at design.

Measure Tool

Many times you want to provide some specifics in your design so that creating the XHTML is a little faster. One of the new Auto Shapes is a measure tool that allows you to click and drag and create dimension markers on any element on the canvas. I currently waste a lot of time going back and forth between my code and my PNG just to double-check the dimensions of a graphic element. Hopefully this will speed that up and also provide reference to a coder in a situation where I hand off a design.

The Tabs Are Back

I really loved this about the PC version of Fireworks that they had a couple versions ago. Having everything flying around in its own window seemed so Windows 3.1. Another huge improvement is collecting all the toolbars back into one parent window (another Fw PC advantage). Spaces doesn't handle toolbars in Fireworks very well. Every time I go to another space and come back to the space that holds Fireworks, I have to hit Tab a couple times to bring the toolbars back. No seriously, every time I change spaces. What a bother. Now I don't have to worry about that. In fact, there are several new ways to manage your toolbars:

• Expanded Mode
• Iconic Mode
• Iconic Mode with Panel Names

UI Cleansing

It seems that UI enhancements come with every new release of software, and Adobe really hit the mark this time. They dulled out the deactivated options and muted the whole interface so you can focus on your design and the tools you currently have out. I really dig the new interface (and I'm pretty picky).

So what don't I like about Fireworks CS4? Well, it's a little early to have my grief all lined up especially since I'm still in wow-is-it-Christmas-already-with-my-software mode. My only expectation is that it doesn't get slower and that it remains stable. So far, it has been a little wobbly on its feet, and I'm beginning to wonder if it has new Spaces issues, but we'll see. So far, it's a definite step up. I better start saving up for the upgrade.

My dreams have come true, and I'm headed to Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference in June. We're working on some mobile applications at work and we're particularly interested in what the iPhone can do for us. I'm not a developer, so I'm hoping that the interface-related classes at the conference are suitable and pertinent.

I've dabbled with the iPhone SDK and have managed to throw together rough interfaces inside Interface Builder as well as manipulate some pre-written Objective C in simple ways. After all is said and done, another designer and myself will create the iPhone interfaces and hand them off to a couple of our talented developers who will take a stab at it. We're still undecided whether to pursue thick client apps or web apps, but it shouldn't take too long before the answer is clear.

I've been using an iPhone at work as a development platform and successfully got the iPhone 2.0 OS running. The Exchange integration, 802.1x certificates, and Cisco VPN functionality all seem to work quite well and are much-needed for our purposes. Other than those subtle back-end changes in the OS, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot that's different on the device. It's still blissfully usable, though, and I'm anxious to watch Steve Jobs introduce the 3G version.

I have been drooling all over the iPhone ever since Steve Jobs announced it back in January of 2007. I watched in anxious anticipation and read boatloads of blogs as the device became available in June of 2007. I've read countless articles and spent all kinds of time in the Apple Store flipping, tapping, and pinching. I've run in to people with iPhones and shown them how to do things on their phone. I speak incessantly on the topic and am sure to have driven many of my peers crazy (to say nothing of the insanity with which I have imbued my wife). I can't help but be interested in a gadget that's both highly functional and a killer user experience.

After so much ado, and at long last, I'm finally going to own one.

The catch, however, is that I'm holding out for the 3G iPhone. Apple hasn't officially announced such a device yet, but I have plenty of reason to believe that they'll be available in June. Allow me to cite my sources:

"Several sources confirmed the introduction of a new 3G iPhone during [the second calendar quarter]."
– Rich Gardner, Citigroup Industry Analyst after meeting with members of the related electronics supply chain (via Apple Insider).

"Goldman said that while industry watchers have been expecting Apple to introduce a 3G capable iPhone by late 2008, his sources are suggesting that the device will be on store shelves by late May or early June at the latest."
–Apple Insider, emphasis added (Jim Goldman is a CNBC analyst whose Macbook Air rumor was spot-on)

"We believe this is one of the HSDPA [High-Speed Downlink Packet Access] solutions design wins management referred to as being due to ramp in [the second quarter of 2008].... Consistent with these checks, our Apple analyst Ben Reitzes believes that 3G iPhones will be released by mid-year."
–Apple Insider, emphasis added

"With these aggressive initiatives, we're expanding the scope and the speed of our 3G capabilities, connecting people with their world and enabling more customers to do more with their wireless devices, wherever they may be."
–Ralph de la Vega, AT&T Wireless CEO, via Apple Insider (again)

So why wait for 3G? Isn't the iPhone cool enough already? Well, considering I've waited this long, a couple months won't be much to wait to get a significant boost in bandwidth. Check it out:

I think a 5x speed boost is worth waiting for since connection speed is the most common complaint I come across. Having wireless access in most of the places I go would mitigate this problem, but theoretically the 3G connection could be even faster than a bogged-down, shared 802.11 hook-up. In addition, the iPhone 2.0 software with all its Exchange wonders and the AppStore will be added incentive and is bound to take the iPhone from awesome all the way up to wicked awesome.

There are several other sources to cite, and Steve Jobs himself mentioned the advent of 3G iPhones "next year" (referring to 2008), so there's lots of evidence to make this pretty much a sure thing. With Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference coming up June 9th, Steve Jobs' keynote will be a perfect time to make the announcement. Hopefully it'll include the words, "shipping immediately." My birthday will conveniently follow on July 3rd. Giddy up.

As a pursuer of both code and design, a web designer has to make a lot of decisions along the way about what they won't worry about. There's a lot of art out there to stare at, and software development has oodles syntax waiting to be understood. A web designer has to take bits and pieces of both to seek for balance between the two disciplines.

A server-side include, or simply an “include,” is a technology that likely gets ignored by most XHTML/CSS coders simply because it delves into the world of server-side scripting. The include, however, is something that I believe is wildly useful to the front-end coder. If you are such a coder, you likely use CSS as a global solution to control a variety of styles. It's a helpful and intuitive thing to want global control.

But what do you do about global markup? Surely there are parts of your site where the code gets repeated over and over again. This is where the include makes your life much easier.

For me, using includes comes in most handy when taking care of that ever-important header information. There are scripts to include, stylesheets to reference, and more. The include allows you to write all that code in one place and have the rest of your site reference it. Let's look at an example.

I first create a separate HTML file called header.html. In that file, I put the following:

<!--This contains all the data for the header so I don't have to edit it in multiple locations-->

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="description" content="..." />

<meta name="keywords" content="..." />

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="/atom.xml" />

<title>fusionfox</title>

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/ff7style.css" type="text/css" />
<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/juice/ieHacks.css" type="text/css" />
<![endif]-->

<!-- jQuery -->
<script src="/juice/jquery-1.2.1.pack.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

After that file is created, I can now reference that block of code anywhere. Here's how I do it in another HTML file inside the <head> tags:

<head>
    <? include "path/to/header.html" ?>
</head>

Pretty easy, right? Well, there are a couple catches. The first (and most obvious) is that your server needs to be running PHP. For local development, I recommend running MAMP if you're using a Mac. It's a snap to use, and it comes with a Dashboard widget to turn the servers on and off. The second catch is that header.html may need to be header.php if your server isn't configured to allow PHP calls from within an HTML file. On my remote server, all I had to do was add this to my .htaccess file.

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php .html

Those catches are into the neety greety of getting a server up and running, but the include principle is simple. Doing this you can keep one instance of a block of code and use it everywhere, making global changes a snap. Just edit header.html, save, and you're done. This technique can save the front-end coder a ton of time, especially on a site with lots of pages.

I was totally blown away by last week's iPhone SDK announcement. I wasn't surprised about the SDK or even the coming of Exchange with ActiveSync. I was impressed with the repercussions of the SDK and the iPhone platform.

The iPhone, as far as I can tell, is the future of mobile computing. The new industry standard is that you carry a mobile computer in your pocket, and it does essentially everything a computer does: allow you to communicate (phone, IM, text, email, messaging, video chat), let you work (email, attachments, internet, mini apps), and entertain you (music, videos, and podcasts). This proposition puts tremendous pressure on phone manufacturers and PDA manufacturers. Apple is running way ahead of the competition here, and that's only going to become more obvious as killer apps start making their way on to this platform.

That said, I'm very interested in the prospect of developing apps for the iPhone. I did a lot of microcontroller programming in C back in college, but all-in-all I'm pretty darn rusty. With the slick tools the SDK includes (particularly the Interface Builder and the iPhone Simulator), and the surprising amount of help documentation available, I'm thinking it's worth dusting off my brain and giving it a whirl. Unfortunately I'm primarily concerned with the platform and the development environment, and I'm not spurred to action by a particular software need, but hey, that's just a detail, right? I'll report later on whether or not I'm getting somewhere with this. I'd be curious to hear of the experiences of other people who aren't hard core developers and also want to give this a try. There's something alluring about trying to pull off development when Apple (the user experience geniuses) has your back. I guess there's only one way to find out.