cmd-h.

It turns out that this is a feature accessible in the view-menu called “hide edges”, accessible via cmd-h.  Of course this is right next to a much more commonly used keyset, cmd-g (for grouping).  If you find your edges are hidden and you don’t know why, you probably miskeyed the cmd-g into cmd-h and … welp…now ya know.

• Pagelines Pro
• 2011

Plugins

• Page Comments off Please – Techism / Joe Melberg
• All-in-One Event Calendar
• All in One SEO Pack
• BWP Google XML Sitemaps
• Facebook Fanbox (with CSS Support)
• Geolocation
• Scissors
• ShareThis
• WP Realtime Sitemap
• wp ecommerce

Quit it and forget it.

I have run into this problem so many times:  I’m banging away on my OSX rig doing something important in Fireworks CS3 (yeah, I know…) and I’ve got a dozen things open.  The client sent me two Word documents and a PowerPoint for the web copy.  Meanwhile I’m uploading some YouTube clips for another client, while at the same time I’ve got Illustrator open with the web assets for the self-hosted WordPress site I’m trying to finish for deadline 10 minutes away.

Quick!  Make some changes to the slices for my custom content boxes, tab over to the preview, good.   Save.  Wha-!?

“Fireworks can not save the document because an internal error has occurred.”

Desperately I tab through all the windows I have open.  Holy god…I don’t know what changes were in the last save.  I mean, I’m good about saving…usually.

I have to grit my teeth and quit fireworks – it’s hell when each window opines “…there are changes to this document that will be lost if you do not save.”  Oh cruel dialog box – taunt me no more.

It ends in heartbreak and missed deadlines.

So when it came up today, of all days, nothing else mattered to me other than outsmarting the demon roosting in my favorite graphics app.  This time, I resolved, it would be different.

After doing some searches on different things that cause this issue, I kept seeing things about font issues being at the core of it all.  I took a break and ranted to my friends about my terrible luck…When I returned it dawned on me: what if simply disabling my font-manager software would let fireworks save without dealing with any of my active fonts?

With a smirk of doubt still on my face, I right-clicked the SuitcaseFusion icon.

“Quit”

And I waited for the lil’ icon light to dim while tapping my foot impatiently.

Finally it went out, and clicked back over to Fireworks.  I tried a fast cmd-s.

Holy cmd-s!  It worked!

So I’m posting this in case anyone else out there keeps running into this and wants to try an easy fix.  You might be able to save your work, even though the error has already cropped up, by simply quitting your font-management software.  For me, closing Suitcase Fusion completely elimintated the problem and my documents could ALL be saved.

Take that Fireworks demon!  I won, you lost.

I’m looking forward to seeing where this visionary new direction goes. See it live: http://www.tacodelmar.com

The images below are a pixel-accurate view of the spaces web designers consider when they segment designs.  We segment them so that the first impression is complete at a glance for our ‘least common denominator’ (the lowest supported resolution) but also takes into account a balanced look on larger screens.  Typically, the contemporary trend is to set a fixed-width for the page matching the width of your least common denominator, and all critical content should stay in that width.  Horizontal segments then flow down the screen segmented at the termination points of common screen resolutions.  Depending on the target market’s technological sophistication these points may be different.  In this example, I chose the common practice of supporting 1024 x 768 as the most common low-resolution setting in the general public.  I then added some segments for the next common size up, and have the footer still on screen for our 1080p users.  However a design can be bottomless.

Bottomless?  Does that mean scroll bars?

People are used to scroll bars now.  The more content on the home page, and links to news articles, blog posts, promotional pages, features and other highlighted content that we present the better.  This gives google and other information centered services lots of hooks to our content and pages.  Maximum connectivity of content means maximum web presence and information propagation.  This is also an easy format to update and control.

Now for some examples

Obviously this is a fake design and not intended as a hard guide for your own work which probably diverges creatively (and in good ways) from a lot of web trends.  However usability wise, we should recognize how the amorphous shape of the web browser will re-crop our work constantly, and so we should design from that awareness.  I hope this example helps underscore some of what we discussed as we move forward to better alignment of the existing designs and a fun user experience for your customers.

The three attached images attached show:

1. How the browser space can change between devices. (Click to Enlarge)

2. How a design can be overlaid on the format-logic of multiple devices.

3. An isolated design shown at maximum supported resolution.

http://www.thermalexposure.com/2011/08/01/wordpress-new-user-tutorial

The technology uses a custom WordPress theme that accomodates easy editing of the feature header on the home page, several custom layouts and templates, and lots of power to make the site grow grow grow.

The target audience is made up of media professionals who want to stay in touch with the latest developments in DC regarding advertising and government.  The client asked for lots of white space, a media savvy design, with a DC flavor that wasn’t too institutional.  I’m really fond of how this turned out and I think they are too.

http://www.theadvertisingcoalition.com/

I was frustrated. I had spent the weekend on a bash script for a client hosting with Pair networks and NOTHING was working properly. Their old and moldy MYSQL 5.0 required I come at a certain client-problem from a rather tedious angle that needed bash to parse a lot of lines returned from a MYSQL command-line query in somewhat sophisticated ways. My first problem was that the MYSQL commands wouldn’t run. This is because Pair actually has my MYSQL and database related things going on another machine. So to run a mysql command, I needed to add some info beyond what I needed in my dev setup:

mysql -hYOURDBSERVER.pair.com -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD -e 'SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST;'

The important part here is your server location at the top of the mysql command. Make sure you don’t miss the -h that leads it. Without a space, you might be confused into thinking your server is hdb123.pair.com, but it’s important to note that the -h part is a flag followed by your db123.pair.com as an argument. Another note is to make sure to add a hyphen before the “e” flag on the MYSQL statement. Pair likes it hyphenated…

My next problem was a stubborn refusal from the shell at bin/sh to process arrays. Whenever I tried array-functions in the shell script, I got this error:


declare: not found


Removing the declare got past that, but then when the array was being split up, I got THIS error:


Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")")


Though this worked on my local box, this fails utterly in the pair environment. To work around this, we must make sure to invoke the correct shell: bash.

If you are using the generic /bin/sh path, you might discover things like arrays and executions of mysql from the bash environment aren’t working correctly. Locate the binary by typing:

which bash

Mine was here:


#!/usr/local/bin/bash


Now my shell script is running and my client is protected against a serious error that was killing her app.

Need a security clearance? Contact Mahoney Jeffrey, the Federal Employee’s Law Firm.