After two months of grueling work and a lot of brain twisting the final chapter of my 24 chapter masterpiece Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours was submitted to the publisher this afternoon.

From here the next step is author review where my tech editor as well as language specialists, format editors and other people far more versed in the art of book publishing than myself get to pick at every minute detail and tell me that (big shock and surprise) my English is somewhat archaic and I have more spelling errors than a 5 year old on caffeine (actually I’ve already gone over the reviews of the first 6 chapters and they really weren’t that bad).

When author review is done, there is yet another review stage before they finally start cutting down trees to push my carefully crafted words out on the shelves for the tutorial starved public to devour.

If you want a peek behind the curtain, Safari Books have actually published the unedited rough draft of the book on their website.

Now that the worst is over I’ll be gettnig back to writing tutorials and projects for this blog so if everything goes according to plan there should be something up by next week. During the writing of the book I encountered many a strange situation that required some study and eventually a solution and I’ll be sharing the ones that for one reason or another didn’t fit into the book here on the blog.

So I went Twitter to tell my friends that I’m watching Björk live from Iceland via a webcast. And what happens? I fill in my username and password in the login page and click Sign In and I get this message:

Deleted!

Your account is being removed. It may still be viewable on twitter.com for up to 24 hours.

You will be able to restore your account for up to six months.

Great. So there’s a bug on their front page that took me to the delete page instead of the login page. I can’t even begin to explain how shitty the programming has to be for this to happen. My God.

And no, I didn’t do anything wrong. This all happened straight from the Twitter front page. Username + password + Log In = Deleted account.

I guess it’s time to announce the worst kept secret of the century: I’m writing a book about Expression Web 2. More specifically it’s called Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours and it is scheduled for release in October this year.

The book is already listed for pre-order on Amazon.com so if you are real eager to get your hands on this literary masterpiece you can put your money in now and set up your lawn chair and tent by the mailbox. Bring food though… October is still some months away.

In writing the book I’ve tried to show not only all the great functionalities of Expression Web 2 but also how you can develop a good work routine that produces consistent results every time. It is bursting with tutorials and demos of how you can achieve the same results with different techniques and it is my sincere hope that it will help budding as well as fully blooming web designers bring some extra panache to their designs.

So if you are wondering why I have pretty much fallen off the face of the earth, now you have the answer: I’m up to my neck in easy-to-understand-but-hard-to-come-up-with tutorials that will give people the skills and know-how to get the most out of this powerful piece of software.

Building Compelling Websites on the Microsoft Platform

I’m doing an Innovation Briefing Webcast about Expression Web 2 for Microsoft this coming Thursday at 11am Pacific Time. Hit the link below to sign up to join in. I don’t know if there’s still more spots for registration but if not, the entire one hour session will be recorded and published in wmv format for download and streaming.

I’m meeting with the Expression Web dev team on the Tuesday before and I haven’t really nailed down what to present at the webcast so if you have any questions or want to see a demo of a specific function or anything like that, please drop me a line and I’ll work it in.

Before you ask: No, I don’t work for Microsoft.

WEBCAST DATE

Thursday June 5, 2008 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM ET Event ID: 1032350422 Register Now

Paul from Microsoft approached me a while back about doing a one hour presentation on my work with Expression Web. The session now has a name: “Expression® Web — the powerful, new, professional web editing tool” and it will take place at Microsoft’s Vancouver office this coming Wednesday at 8:30AM. For those of you who can’t make it, Paul and I will also produce a screen cast version of the session which will be available online some time in early June.

I attended a very interesting one day conference in Vancouver today called Bridging Media. The intent of the conference was to

open the channels of communication between the broadcast and digital media communities. We aim to increase an understanding of our respective industries and strengthen our approach to building multi-platform projects.

Over the last few yers I’ve been working with pure digital media and video distribution on the web and I’m aslo the technical producer for The Pratt & Taylor Show on Rogers Sportsnet Pacific, so with one foot on each side of the divide this conference was pretty much a must-attend for me.

NOTE: For all you expression people who read this blog and right now scratch your heads because this seems to be totally off topic: It’s not. This has to do with the future of online video and content distribution - something you will be working with no matter what kind of projects you are involved it. It’s a bit of a meta-topic but it’s still quite relevant.

I won’t go through the conference here - Miss604 has done an excellent job live-blogging the entire event. Instead I’ll share with you my thoughts and perspectives on the problems presented and the whole concept of media convergence as a whole.

A bridge built from one side only will probably fall

The title of the conference was Bridging Media, and the intent was a good one. Unfortunately there were few if any broadcasters present, so the bridge was only being built from one side. The conference was attended by all the usual suspects in the digital and social media scene and also a large group of independent movie producers and they shared what I would classify as a standard from-the-digital-world view of the situation: Broadcasters rely on funding, digital media relies on other streams of revenue. The broadcasters don’t want to share our content because they are a bit antiquated and they are afraid of losing control of their own dominance and their own content. The digital realm is the future and we should just ignore the broadcasters and move on. In other words, if you build it (a digital media outlet), they (the viewers) will come, and they’ll bring money. (This of course is my very broad and biased interpretation and I’m sure many will be angered at it. So be it.)

To prove this thinking, examples like Sanctuary, Quarterlife and Ask A Ninja were brought up. And this brings me to my first issue: None of these examples are actually applicable in the conversation: Both Sanctuary and Quarterlife were created by well established producers with a strong fan base and more importantly solid funding.. If a complete unknown with the exact same idea had presented any of these concepts to investors, they would most likely be turned down or get insufficient funding. Furthermore, the chance of them reaching a wider audience would be next to zero. Why? Because the web is saturated with similar content and it’s almost impossible to break through the noise to get people’s attention. As for shows like Ask A Ninja that actually get picked up, they are flukes and one-offs. Building a business based on the thought that your show will be picked up by a major network is financial suicide. And the one commonality of all the similar shows that have been picked up is that they were started as jokes with no intention of making it big. So this whole way of thinking is fundamentally flawed. Such successes simply can’t be reproduced by entry-level content producers, at least not without a fair bit of luck (as in winning the lottery kind of luck).

NOTE: Since posting this article, Sanctuary has been picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel for broadcast release. Quarterlife was picked up by the E! Channel in early February. Both these shows were launched on the web with the intention of migrating to broadcast proving that building a fan base online can help you move to the living room screen. Unfortunately you have to be famous and have millions of dollars backing you tho…

The other idea that was touted, that you can make money off your content if enough people come to your site, is also highly questionable. Simply generating visits is not enough to generate money these days. Having a video series on YouTube that has over 2 million views combined will give you exactly $0 in revenue. To turn your content into money, you have to either use advertising or sell services. And that’s where the divide really shows itself in all it’s width and splendour.

Broadcasters are content producers

Putting on my broadcast hat, I can understand why there were no broadcasters at the conference. And I also understand why even if they were there, they would have no answers: Broadcasters are content producers that expect to get paid for the content the produce. A phrase that kept coming up throughout the conference was the question “What business are you in?” The thinking presented was that if you share your content online and want to get money from it, you should use it as a way to get other business that will generate money. As an example, Papercraft was brought up. They produce funny and informative videos on their website explaining complicated technical terms in an understandable way. These videos make no money but companies ask them to make custom videos and these make money. So it’s a completely different way of approaching the whole concept of revenue gathering.

Broadcasters and other content creators on the other hand, are not interested in using their content to advertise services. Their content is the service they provide. They are in the business of making content. If they were in the content of selling services, they would be an advertising agency. And that’s why there is a divide. The two sides are talking two entirely different languages and thinking about things in completely oposite ways.

The question is if there is any way of making them come together at all. Right now, the digital media community is building a bridge over to the broadcast side, but the broadcasters are digging a tunnel to the digital media side. And while a bridge built from one side is likely to fall down, a tunnell will bore it’s way to the end and start functioning whether the other side wants it or not. TV and film producers are quickly learning that the internet is an excellent marketing tool and are working on ways of leveraging this technology to theri advantage. On the other side, the digital media community feels it has content that should be presented on an equal level with the broadcasters and they are trying to push this content into the classic broadcasting channels. The problem is that once you move into the realm of public broadcasting, a whole mess of legal and financial problems arise: Who owns the content? Who made the content? Who has the rights to distribution? How do we pay the producers? Who is responsible if it turns out the content is illegal in some way? These are issues that are largely ignored by the digital media community because it is based on a somewhat anarchistic approach to content ownership (i.e. once it’s on the web it’s free). Broadcasters on the other hand have to make sure proper ownership is in place and that all the rights are where they should be. Otherwise they lose their licence. Unfortunately many people in the digital media community don’t understand (or choose to ignore) why this is so. But as a content creator I can tell you that when you find material you created on someone else’s web site, and you realize that not only do they earn money from it but they pass it off as their own, you feel creatively raped. So until the digital media community bring a more open attitude to the concept of rights and ownership, the broadcast side will be very reluctant to work with them.

At the same time there needs to be a softening of the firm and archaic guidelines that govern the broadcast side. For the most part, the systems in place both for television and films were created way before the web was even given a name. They are cumbersome, full of red tape and based on an attitude that only “proper” broadcasters can make broadcast content. That’s just not the case any more and the broadcasters just have to accept the fact that they are no longer the only roosters in the hen house. But that doesn’t mean that hot chicks farting is worth broadcasting, no matter how popular their videos are on YouTube. That brings me to my final point:

1,000,000 views don’t make you Stephen Spielberg

The fact that your video is popular on YouTube doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth broadcasting. In fact, many of the most popular videos on YouTube are such trash that they should never be broadcast. And others are blatant misinformation that has no place in the media realm. If you exclude funamenalist states like Iran, China and even the US, most countries have very strict guide lines for media outlets when it comes to balanced coverage. The internet has no such rules and as a result anyone can publish anything and present it as true. It’s a running joke that people who quote the internet need to check their sources, but it’s pretty evident that it’s not something we should laugh at. People, organizations and even governments with an agenda can use the internet indiscriminately to misinform and even blatantly lie to their audience with no reprisals. And because of clever marketing strategies and viral distribution, much of this content becomes so prolific people start believing it. Some of the best examples can be found on YouTube if you search for “global warming”. A public broadcaster would never be allowed to air much of this content because it is based on half truths and whole lies. And it’s often very difficult to tell if content produced is factual, rubbish or even part of some evil ploy. So if a broadcaster is going to get involved, these things need to be checked and re-checked and re-checked again to ensure balance and factuality. What stunns me is that many people on the digital media side don’t see such misinformation as a problem or even think exclusion of such content is equivalent to cencorship. I agree that all sides of any story have a right to be told, but when large corporations or organizations use substantial funds to deliberately misinform the public through lies and manufactured evidence we have a serious problem on our hands.

This is one of the reasons why when a digital media content producer approaches a broadcaster about distribution of her content, the broadcaster is rather reluctant to even talk to her. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just explaining it.

So should we just tear down the bridge then?

I guess I sound pretty pessimistic about the whole thing. I’m not. I just want to get all the facts out and make people understand that the fundamental problem here lies in the lack of a common language. The analogy of a bridge is actually a very good one, but it should be thought of more like a bridge over the Gibraltar strait than a bridge over the Nanaimo river. It might seem like the digital media community and the broadcasters are standing on the same land mass and speak the same language, but in reality they are entirely different countries with different languages, customs and rules. What’s need more than anything is an interpreter or a common language we can all work from. As long as the two sides think they are on the same plane, nothing will change. They need to understand that they don’t see things the same way and that to communicate they need to find a common vantage point somewhere in the middle.

All that said, I applaud the effort and look forward to Bridging Media 2.0.

Finally, for all the Expression people who by this time must surely have stopped reading: This is relevant to you because at some point in the near future, one of your clients is going to ask you how they can put a video online and get it featured on a TV show. Now you know why it’s not as simple as putting it on YouTube (and that you’re not the only one confused about why it’s so hard).

I ran some stats today on this blog and Dabbler.ca to see what browsers people use to view the site. The results were pretty much as expected and prove that even though Internet Explorer 7 has been out for quite a while now and IE8 is on the horizon, people still predominantly use the CSS mangling Internet Explorer 6.

blog.pinkandyellow.com stats:

1. Internet Explorer 6.0 - 18.34%
2. Internet Explorer 7.0 - 11.18%
3. Firefox 2.0 - 6.80%
4. Mozilla 5 - 6.50%
5. Firefox 1.0 - 4.58%
6. Netscape - 3.34%
7. Firefox 1.5 - 2.39%

Dabbler.ca stats:

1. Internet Explorer 7.0 - 18.58%
2. Internet Explorer 6.0 - 16.35%
3. Firefox 2.0 - 15.77%
4. Safari - 3.15%
5. Firefox 1.5 - 2.92%
6. Mozilla 5 - 1.40%
7. Internet Explorer 5.5 - 1.21%

(If you’re wondering why these stats don’t ad up, it’s because I took out the Google, MSN and Yahoo! search bots)

These stats are actually quite interesting. First off, it’s obvious that people insist on holding on to older versions of web browsers. God knows why, but they do. Secondly, considering that this blog only contains info on programming and design and therefore should have visitors who are predominantly programmers or designers, it’s surprising to see that IE 6 tops the list. One would expect that the people who make web sites are the most up to date on the newest versions. I also note that Safari doesn’t figure on this list but comes in at #4 on Dabbler’s (guess Mac users don’t care much about Microsoft Expression). I’m glad to see that Firefox is climbing the charts even though it still has a long way to go before it can top Internet Explorer. But what really makes me scratch my head is #6, Netscape. Seeing as that company officially dumped the navigator last month, I don’t understand why programmers still use it. It’s crap people! Move on.

And now for something completely different:

The smart little anti-commenting-spam filter Akismet has been working overtime for me since I re-installed this blog in January. And over the weekend, it broke the 8,000 spam comments captured mark. That’s 8,000 ads for Paris Hilton nudies , SEO optimization and pharmaceuticals. I have no idea why this blog is generating such a colossal ammount of spam - especially since our other blog Dabbler.ca only collects a fraction of that even though it’s viewership is signifficantly higher.

All I can say is thanks to the WordPress team for pre-installing Akismet in their builds. Without it I would spend all of my time filtering comments instead of writing.

(And an apology to those that have gotten their comments deleted by accident. Problem is that if I forget to purge the filter for a couple of days, I have hundreds of very long messages to sift through and I tend to just delete everything. So if you feel wronged, just try again.)

I always say that unless you start things right, you’re going to run into problems somewhere down the line. Nowhere is that more true than in building websites, especially if you venture into the realm of standards based scripting. Fortunately there are people out there who know how to do things the right way, and they are more than willing to share their knowledge with us layfolk. One such person is Eric Meyer and with his new CSS Sculptor for Expression Web he sets out to make the deceptively complicated task of making web sites look the same across all browsers easier for one and all.

If you’re one of those people who like to write all your CSS in Visual Studio and you know absolutely everything about standards-based coding, you need read no further. If on the other hand you are like me and CSS is like a second language you still have trouble with, this is vital information.

I’m not saying that CSS Scupltor will generate all the code for you or even solve all your problems. What it does is start you off on the right foot, with proper high-end runners and a good night’s sleep.

Why do I need this?

There are two answers to this question: The first one is that for some reason different browsers interpret CSS differently so unless you really know what you are doing, chances are the sites you build end up looking slightly different depending on whether the visitor uses Internet Explorer 5, 6, 7 or 8, FireFox, Opera, Safari or any number of other browsers. There is no good reason for this other than that in spite of many years of work, the “standards” that govern CSS and other web code are so vague and flexible that there is no joint agreement on exact interpretation. It’s worth noting that Internet Explorer has always been the big culprit here and that with the release of IE 8, Microsoft is finally joining the fold and matching the rest of the world. But I digress. What Eric Meyer and other CSS gurus have been telling anyone willing to listen is that with some strategic coding, you can still make the all browsers act the same way. But this requires work. CSS Sculptor sets out to do the brunt of this work for you.

The second answer is that even though Expression Web has many CSS templates, they are mostly empty and they require you to insert all the little pieces that make the code compliant. And that’s a lot of hard work on your part.

To give you an idea of exactly what CSS Sculptor does that EW doesnt, I’ve built two examples. They are both out-of-the-box layouts with standard text inserted. They were both created with about 5 mouse clicks and I only made minor adjustments to get this demo up and running - specifically I separated the CSS from the CSS Sculptor project and put it in a separate file and I inserted the dummy text from the CSS Scupltor project in the EW project to have some filler. Both these pages were made using Expression Web 2 Beta and they have no alterations of any kind from me. You can see the Expression Web example here and it’s CSS code here. The CSS Sculptor example is here with it’s CSS code here.

Anyone can see that the two examples are miles apart in both layout and functionality and you’ll also notice that the CSS part of the generated pages are hugely different. And while none of the pages will apper exactly the same across all browsers (mostly due to lack of defined elements like a background colour), the CSS Sculptor page is by and large fully working while the Expression Web page is unuseable garbage (notice where the footer is located).

OK. So what exactly does it do?

As is obvious from the examples above, CSS Sculptor spits out a lot more code than the native CSS generator in Expression Web. The code generated by CSS Sculptor also contains parts of Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset code which goes a long way in ensuring browser interoperability. In addition, the program gives you a ton of plug-and-play options like menu bars, colour schemes and so on to get you started quickly and easily. To top it off, it even inserts both dummy text and plenty of commented out instructions and explanations to make it easier to understand exactly what’s going on. To an avid coder this might seem excessive or even unnecessary, but to a designer who dabbles in code it will be a life saver.

So should I buy CSS Sculptor or not?

Whether this application is for you depends on what you do and how you do it. Like I said before, if you know what you’re doing and you usually type out your CSS in Visual Studio for a perfect result with no testing, you’re not likely going to use this app even if you should. If on the other hand you are constantly creating new CSS layouts and you find yourself sifting through the web again and again to figure out why your margins keep shifting or why your header is hiding under the main body, this is a good tool to get your on your way.

I’m not saying that CSS Scupltor will generate all the code for you or even solve all your problems. What it does is start you off on the right foot, with proper high-end runners and a good night’s sleep. That way you spend less time fiddling with the framework which means you have more time to tackle the intricate details. And time saved means more time for the important stuff.

Personally I can see a hundred uses for this application and I’m not going to think twice about shelling out the dough to get it. Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor for Expression Web will sell for $99.99, retail but for the first couple of weeks after it is released, WebAssist will be offering a discount on it. For my purpose, the many colour schemes and other nifty editing options included are superfluous, but that’s because I like to see what I’m doing when I’m doing it and I tend to change my mind a lot during the designing process. Even so, having a quick and easy way to get the framework up and running properly means a lot less wasted time and increased productivity, and for that alone it’s worth it.

Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor for Expression Web is a simple one-click install that snaps into Expression Web automatically and requires no work on your part. Once installed, it shows up on in the program and works flawlessly. And although it doesn’t build stunning websites for you all by itself, it gives you a solid foundation to start from.

I’ve been talking about this for a while now and it’s time I got a little more specific. It is my contention that with some small tweaks, WordPress can be used as an excellent Content Management System (CMS) and used to serve small-scale business websites. This isn’t something revolutionary - a simple Google search on the words “WordPress” and “CMS” gives you many interesting entries - but I don’t think the full potential of this alternate use has been explored. So I’ve taken it upon myself to see just how much I can get out of this small little program and if it can be used to serve my many clients in a more effective manner.

Why WordPress

That’s the first question I get: “Why WordPress? What’s the point? Why don’t you just use a CMS like Joomla! or Drupal?” To answer the last question first, in most cases using Joomla! or Drupal is like trying to kill an ant with a tank. Not only is the tool way too big and wasteful to do the job, but chances are the ant slips between the belt threads and you don’t actually achieve your objective at all. These huge Open Source CMSes are excellent if you are building large-scale community based websites with multiple blogs etc etc but for small business applications they are often too large and cumbersome. What’s needed is a simple, easy to understand CMS that gives the client the ability to quickly edit, update and manage her website with the least ammount of hassle. Sure, you can build something like that yourself, but why bother when there is already an application that pretty much does what you want available for free?

There are a couple of other reasons why I want to tap the full potential of WordPress for this project: First off, WordPress has an extensive and growing library of plug-ins and ad-ons that make it a very powerful piece of software. Seccondly, blogs have become an excellent way of promoting yuour business by letting your clients interact with you on a semi-informal basis. And WordPress is a blogging platform. Nuff said. Thirdly (and maybe most importantly), WordPress blogs has an uncanny ability to get synced up with search engines like Google and MSN almost immediately upon being launched. Through a couple of very interesting experiments I’ve learned that the best way to get your website listed on Google is simply to build it on a WordPress platform. And if you are running a business, geting listed on Google can be the difference between being noticed and going under.

Project Outline

What is needed to make this work? One major hurdle used to be the ability to put the standard blog front page on a sub page. This used to require quite a bit of coding, but in WordPress 2.3 and above it’s actually built into the main setup.

The next big issue is to get out of the standard header, body, footer layout scheme that all WordPress themes are built on. Although this feature is unneccesary in most cases, I can think of a dozen scenarios where you want individually styled pages with their own CSS backend and right now, that’s not something you can do right out of the box. I’ve been theorizing about this problem for some time and the solution appeared most unexpectantly at a session at MIX08 where the presenter to save time ignored the whole WP theme and built an external page with the loop calls inside it. It was a bit of an aha moment for me that you don’t actually need to stick to the rigid frame of WP, and although it is technically not correct to do so, if it makes my life easier, to hell with correctness.

Another question is to what extent one can use the Custom Fields to make styling changes in pages. I’d like to experiment and see just how far I can push this feature.

Finally, is it possible to make a non-WordPress site utilizing the WordPress infrastructure and database? In other words, can I build completely separate pages outside of WordPress and then use the loop calls etc to insert the required info in such a way that the site can be managed from the regular Admin panel without the client having any access to the controlling files. This final question is the crucial one because in the end what is needed is a manageable CMS that gives the client unlimited access to the content but limited or external access to styling, layout and other important files so that nothing can be “broken” by mistake.

The Future

In the coming weeks I’ll be launching two sites built on a WordPress as CMS v0.1 platform (pretty much stragith WordPress with some heavily customized themes) and once these are done I’ll dive head first into a major hacking project to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes. With any luck I’ll have a fully operational and customizeable CMS to use as a base for my client sites before the summer. In the spirit of cooperation I have every intention of blogging about all my findings and sharing the code and hacks with the online community. I’ll also blog further on how to modify WordPress blogs using Expression Web to help bring some beauty to the blogosphere.