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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I didn't keep track, but I imagine I've spent over 80 hours on this bad boy (just ask my wife—she'll attest to the time I've spent). I wanted to take it pretty slow and try to insert detail wherever I could. It's also particularly difficult to create a design for yourself. I went through several designs and struggled to finally land on something I could run with.

Movable Type 4.1 has been a thrill to work with. The back-end user interface is gorgeous and light years ahead of the prior version. I installed a fresh version and imported my prior blog articles, and it worked seamlessly. I highly recommend it if you're looking for a highly customizable blog platform.

As always, I'm still squishing bugs for those mysterious people out there that still aren't using Firefox or Safari. Feel free to email me any issues you find.

Be sure to grab the RSS feed and come back often!

Each bug will be described below in its own section, and I'll tack them on as I find and fix them. I welcome your suggestions in the comments section.

The Big Fat IE float clearing divYou may have noticed that when you use clear:both; in your CSS to sit below a multi-column layout that the div is several pixels tall in IE6.

In Firefox, the div is 0 pixels talls (as far as I can tell). Here's the IE-specific CSS fix:

.clearit{
     clear:both;
     height:0px;
     overflow:hidden;
     margin-top:-1px;
}

As pointed out in the comments below, there are cleaner ways to achieve this same effect. You can fiddle with the :after pseudo class which requires an IE hack, or, as SitePoint points out, you can just add overflow:auto; to the containing div. That seems to be the simplest solution I've seen so far.

Looking at the source, it looks like just a bunch of JavaScript. But you'll also notice (if you aren't crying yet by looking at the painful amount of code I had to write) that much of what you see looks redundant. Let's take, for example, where I define some variables so that when you mouse over the ads, you can see more information.

// Variables for tooltip content
var ad1 = '<strong>iPod Touch</strong>Uploaded on 11/21/2007';
var ad2 = '<strong>iPod Nano</strong>Uploaded on 11/26/2007';
var ad3 = '<strong>iPhone</strong>Uploaded on 11/27/2007';
var ad4 = '<strong>Leopard</strong>Uploaded on 11/28/2007';
var ad5 = '<strong>Macbook</strong>Uploaded on 11/29/2007';
var ad6 = '<strong>iMac</strong>Uploaded on 11/30/2007';
var ad7 = '<strong>.Mac</strong>Uploaded on 11/31/2007';
var ad8 = '<strong>iLife</strong>Uploaded on 12/01/2007';
var ad9 = '<strong>iWork</strong>Uploaded on 12/02/2007';

A JavaScript declaration is required to make each floating tooltip work. But what if you want to drive the number of ads by what's available in a database? This is where the beauty of mixing JavaScript and PHP comes in to play. The actual source of these repetitive variable declarations looks like this:

// Variables for tooltip content
<?
//Ads...
$adtitle = array("iPod Touch","iPod Nano","iPhone","Leopard","Macbook","iMac",".Mac","iLife","iWork");
$adname = array("ad1","ad2","ad3","ad4","ad5","ad6","ad7","ad8","ad9");

$aduploaded = array("11/21/2007","11/26/2007","11/27/2007","11/28/2007",
"11/29/2007","11/30/2007","11/31/2007","12/01/2007",
"12/02/2007","07/03/1979");

//Total Number of Ads
$num = count($adtitle);

//Spit out the JavaScript
for($i=0;$i<$num;$i++){
?>

var <? echo"$adname[$i]"; ?> = '<strong><? echo"$adtitle[$i]"; ?></strong>Uploaded on <? echo"$aduploaded[$i]"; ?>';
<? } ?>

So this may look worse (and maybe it is) but it's way cooler. I used those arrays you see up there because I wasn't plugged in to their database, but if you know a little PHP, you can easily infer that database-driven data could fill those arrays up. So essentially this script says:

"How many ads do we have here? Okay, 9? Let's run a loop and create 9 variable declarations and then go get some pizza."

One of the trickiest things was to visualize what the end-result JavaScript syntax needed to be so that I could write the PHP accordingly. I had to "View Source" countless times until I got the script right.

Well, that's one of my latest adventures of nerdery. That shopping cart has plenty of other chunks of complexity (it got much worse than declaring variables believe you me). It was pretty cool to actually complete, and a miracle to see operate correctly.

Overall, I think the new design is brighter, crisper, and hopefully more elegant. It's certainly not much more frilly or flamboyant, since that still hasn't weaved its way into my design style. I'll be sure to make a big fuss once the new site's implementation is complete.

Disclaimer: If my wife experiences pre-term labor, I reserve the right to delay the publication of the new design significantly.

I guess I reserve that right no matter what, but it's worth mentioning that my life may, at any minute, go nuts. Once the kids come, I'll have little to no time for any FusionFoxing (yep, it's a verb now).

I recently heard a radio ad where LOC confirmed the lack of thought behind their advertisements. They pitched an offer to the whole Beehive State that you can visit one of their stores and get a free calculator!

What!? Who in the world wants a free calculator? Did someone accidentally order 10,000 calculators and now you have to get rid of them? Of all the tchotchkes you could think of, you went with the most uninspiring and undesirable one on the planet. "Here, customers, do your math homework!" I just don't get it.

I'm inclined to believe that people would be far more interested in something like an ice cream cone (assuming your advertising budget is tight (which is a pretty safe assumption)).

Come on, Les, hire a real advertising firm since you own so much airtime so that we can at least be entertained a little.

• More emphasis on my services as an interaction designer, as well as how I like to work.
• A portfolio that's easier to update and provides more information (visual and otherwise) about each piece of work.
• De-emphasizing my blog (maybe) and making it more of a tumblelog (I love tumbling).
• Making the entire site dynamic such that no page reloads are required. I know, it's debatable whether or not that's a good thing, but I'm tinkering with the idea. That would be much more difficult if I keep the blog, though.
• New blog software (Movable Type 4). I'm currently running 3.31, I believe, and 4 is wayhayay better.
• Non-image blog titles. This becomes a pain after a while, though the non-standard type is fun.
• A new design which is hopefully an improvement.

I've got several other projects queued up, so I'm not certain when this will happen, but I'm likely to start tinkering with designs in the coming weeks. Overall, this will be the seventh online design I have created for Fusionfox since 2002, when I first booked the domain name. It's crazy that I just celebrated my five-year-iversary.

You could have gone your whole life without reading this article, but thanks for reading anyway.

Anyway, head on over and check it out. Please forgive the IE bugs. This site will be one of the next that I redesign, but it'll be a while before that happens.

Labrums.org

If you've looked at my portfolio recently you may need to clear your browser's cache for the new images to appear. Since my portfolio runs inside Flash, a simple refresh doesn't quite cut it.

There's more on the way. Thanks for visiting.

Here are my thoughts:

• Considering that manufacturing has already begun so soon after the iPhone, I will make the assumption that the form will be largely the same. It would make sense for them to make it a bit smaller so that it's distinguishable physically from the iPhone.
• I'm betting (as are many other speculators) that the device will be a phone and an iPod. The functionality for those two parts of the phone will be identical to the iPhone.
• All the other features and apps will be present that don't require a data plan.

Here's my visual take on what it'll be as well as my price predictions:

Some speculators claim it will be available as soon as September so it's here in full-force for the holidays. I'm anxious to see what it turns out to be.