Every knows that Adobe bought Macromedia a while back. Web Designers in the know have always preferred Fireworks as a graphics and photo editing tool over Photoshop. Alot of Web Designers aren’t actually We Designers though, they are Graphics designers, who have had to adapt to web design. And they were taught in schools (since until recently there were no web design degrees) how to use Photoshop. Therefore they don’t even know about Fireworks usually. It’s one of the reasons you shouldn’t hire Graphic Designers to design web sites.
It’s true you can use Photoshop to make web pages. It’s true, they’re a couple things that Photoshop can do that Fireworks can’t. But there are so many things that Fireworks can do that any graphic editing software should do, that once Designers learn Fireworks, they never go back.
Anyway, the point of this article isn’t to rag on Photoshop (but if one knows both software the comparisons are inevitable, sorry Adobe fans, Photoshop sucks), but rather to say we’re all glad Adobe hasn’t killed off Fireworks!
I looked through Adobe’s web site (what a mess!) to find the “new” features of the latest version of Fireworks, called Fireworks CS3. Sadly they went all republican and most of what they are saying is new Fireworks already did, let’s hope they haven’t broken these features. The few things that are actually new are pretty self explanatory:
Adobe Bridge integration
This is a software interface to adobe resold and far overpriced stock photography. Don’t bother you can get the same stuff cheaper from the people who sell it orginally or even better, try istockphoto.com
That’s it, that’s the only actual new feature, and given its spammy nature I feel dirty calling it a “feature”.
Here’s what they say is new but actually already exists in Fireworks: (more…)
I’ve created a site for a Florida Contractor titled “Florida Construction“. It’s a Premium Plus website which means it has a Flash Header on it too. I made two versions of the Flash Header, one with sound, for the home page and one without, for the rest of the pages. We don’t want to irritate the web site visitors with our sound effects do we?
I just created a new Premium Web Site at decks-docks-usa.com. It’ll be marketed under the the keyphrase Florida Deck Builder or Florida Dock Builder or maybe even Florida Decks and Docks, were not sure yet, we’ll have to see what the research tells us!
This article is mostly for the other web designers and web publishers in the Florida area and a few of my clients who have purchased their won domain names. I will try to keep the language simple enough that non-trained people will be able to read it, but it is an intensely technical subject matter so some “tech speak” will make it’s way in.
Registryfly.com is a domain name registrar, a company people buy domain names from. It seem it was run by some very unscrupulous people who had an internal power struggle over control of the profits of the company and how they were paid. Things got so bad during this struggle they stopped doing the actual work they were being paid by their clients.
Here’s a little video that sums up the devastating consequences of RegistryFly.com failure:
As you know, you must renew a domain name yearly, some times, you need to transfer ownership of a domain name, and sometimes you have to change the location of where a Domain name points too (the address of the server where the files that make up that web site reside - aka; nameservers).
Each of these transactions costs a little money (it can add up if you have many domains). It seems registryfly was taking the money for these transactions and not performing the transactions. Including renewals! This caused peoples domain names to expire and the web site the domain name pointed to disappear. Clients of RegistryFly.com were also unable to transfer the management of the domain name to a different company.
There is even news of even more unscrupulous activities from this company. Things like changing the information about the ownership of the domain name etc.
On March 16 of 2007, ICANN (the non-profit group in charge of all domain names and domain name registrars), announced the de-accreditation of RegisterFly. This means RegistryFly.com can’t sell, renew or transfer domains any longer. No one knows what is going to happen to the domain names they still have.
ICANN also indicated that “ICANN intends to hold a forum to discuss the reform of the Accreditation policy and process at its Lisbon meeting in a week’s time.” What will come of this meeting is uncertain but there is no doubt that ICANN needs a far larger stick to wield at future companies like RegisterFly.
ICANN just makes the rules that govern how a registrar and individuals must manage domain names, the protocols used, the technical specifications etc. They don’t monitor registrars activities and their only recourse against n unscrupulous company is de-accreditation.
How can you stop this from happening to you? (more…)
Every knows that Adobe bought Macromedia a while back. Web Designers in the know have always preferred Fireworks as a graphics and photo editing tool over Photoshop. Alot of Web Designers aren’t actually We Designers though, they are Graphics designers, who have had to adapt to web design. And they were taught in schools (since until recently there were no web design degrees) how to use Photoshop. Therefore they don’t even know about Fireworks usually. It’s one of the reasons you shouldn’t hire Graphic Designers to design web sites.
I’ve created a site for a Florida Contractor titled “
