Project Seven Announces CSS Layout Magic

PVII CSS Layout Magic: "Whether you are a CSS novice or a seasoned pro, CSS Layout Magic is an indispensible addition to your developer toolkit — instantly providing you with a rock-solid and standards-based foundation for your CSS-based projects and allowing you to focus more energy on your site's content and style than on its underlying structure."

Interested in how this compares to the template selection built into Dreamweaver...

iPhoney - an iPhone simulator for designers

Marketcircle: iPhoney: "Looking for a way to see how your web creations will look on iPhone? Look no further. iPhoney gives you a pixel-accurate web browsing environment powered by Safari that you can use when developing web sites for iPhone. It's the perfect 320 by 480-pixel canvas for your iPhone development. And it's free."



This is very handy for those that may not be in the market for an iPhone strictly for testing purposes. Also, you can actually use new specialized sites like the Digg iPhone Beta.

Apple Safari 3 Public Beta Fixes Flash Drop-menu Issue

Apple has released a Beta version of its Safari browser for both Mac and Windows. While this is news itself, I'm more excited about the following revelation.

Anyone out there who has done website work where the design called for drop-down navigation menus which overlap Adobe flash content will be happy about this announcement. In previous versions of the Safari Mac browser, there was a 'bug' where drop down menus would flicker badly if they overlapped Flash content. This issue even plagues www.adobe.com in Safari 2.x!

After testing both the Mac & Windows versions of Safari 3, Apple appears to finally have fixed this problem!



Check out the Apple - Safari 3 Public Beta

Adobe Launches Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) BETA

"Adobe® AIR™, formerly code-named Apollo, is a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to use their existing web development skills to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop."

70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding

via digg: "Smashing Magazine does it again with a superb list of little CSS tips & tricks to increase your productivity."

This is an excellent compilation of many of the tips and tricks posted to digg, but all rolled up in a nicely organized package with plenty of source-links to expand on the techniques outlined. There's definitely a buzz around what's to be considered "Best Practices" when it comes to CSS design and development. I see a strong opportunity out there for the development of a tool or app that puts a ui on top of these practices, making it easier to replicate across multiple projects.

read more | digg story

Panic Releases Coda "One-Window Web Development for Mac OS X"

Panic.com: "So, we code web sites by hand. And one day, it hit us: our web workflow was wonky. We’d have our text editor open, with Transmit open to save files to the server. We’d be previewing in Safari, running queries in Terminal, using a CSS editor, and reading references on the web. “This could be easier,” we realized. “And much cooler.”

When Panic releases an app, it's usually just perfect for the subset of users that they choose to target. So Coda has definitely caught my attention. I've only played with the trial a few moments and can say that it looks pretty interesting, especially if you don't already have Panic Transmit and/or CSSEdit. With CSS editing properties still squished in a small floater within Dreamweaver, this could be an actual threat for those more into hand-coding. As always it's beautifully Mac-like and the visual bookmarks are a sweet touch.

Here's a more in-depth review by MacApper.

Adobe CS3 Official Launch

Here's a round-up of some other interesting coverage and details:

• AppleBlog coverage
• digg.com coverage
• Apple.com special feature
• creativepro.com: What's New in Adobe Creative Suite 3
• CNET coverage

Microsoft releases Expression Web

news.com: "As a start, the company on Monday released Expression Web, a tool for designing user interfaces. It is offering the product as an upgrade to its Microsoft FrontPage Web authoring tool.

In addition, Microsoft posted a public beta download of Expression Blend, its Windows-specific design software. And in the third related announcement, it delivered an early version of Expression Design, a tool for creating logos, animations and other individual visual elements.



These three products will be in Expression Studio, set for shipping in the second quarter of 2007."

Also, see the Microsoft Expression site for more details. I'll be interested to see what Adobe has in store for Dreamweaver post acquisition. Hopefully this release from MS will provide some healthy competition.