I just received the latest issue of Web Designer magazine, which includes a write-up of the many announcements and festivities that went on during the recent Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles. If you were there, or have ever attended MAX, you know that the most anticipated event every year is known as “Sneaks”, in which Adobe engineers, product managers and evangelists get to show off technologies and projects which “may or may not ever make their way into a current or future product”.

This year, I had the pleasure of showing off an experimental project codenamed “Rome”. I’ve received literally hundreds of questions about Rome since that 5 minute demo. And, although I would love to tell you more, unfortunately at this time, my lips must remain sealed. However, for those that missed it, someone took the “liberty” of filming my presentation and posting it to YouTube. So, since it’s on the web, I thought I would help my readers out by linking directly to it. :-)

Now, just don’t ask me if/when/where/how you can get more information about Rome, ‘cuz I can’t tell you. But if you were excited by the demonstration, have thoughts about the “possible” product, feel free to leave a message or send me an email.

The subject of image optimization always crops up during my seminars, and one of the “oh, wow!” moments for almost everyone in the audience is when I compare JPEG optimization from our beloved Photoshop and Fireworks. As everyone who has seen this knows, we get a much smaller JPEG out of Fireworks. But for those of you who have not had the chance to check this out, I wanted to document it here.

To follow along, you should find your favorite uncompressed picture, or if that’s too difficult to find, you can download my RAW image – even if you try this with a compressed JPEG, you’ll still see a dramatic difference. But the optimal workflow is to start with the highest quality possible. I always shoot in the Raw format for many reasons – not the least of which is that I get that completely uncompressed image. If you have a Raw image, you’ll first make any desired adjustments in Camera Raw and then open it in Photoshop CS4.

Save the file as a PSD, since we’ll need it in a few moments. And if you’re working with a RAW image, that means that you’re probably dealing with a rather large image size – my image is a 12 megapixel shot. For this example, I’ve scaled it down to 350 x 233. In order to get the smallest possible JPEG out of Photoshop, it is important that you do NOT try a “Save As” and select JPEG. Instead, we need to go through the “Save for Web and Devices…” process (in the File menu).

(more…)

It’s unfortunate that most web designers and developers pay little-to-no attention to their sites on anything but a browser running on their local computer monitor. The thought of designing a page to display properly on a mobile device or set-top browser rarely gets any braincells thrown at it. This is somewhat understandable, given the fact that the mobile browsing space is in such disarray.

But it frustrates me to no end when I need to save or print a web page, only to be given something that is at best barely useable. I’m sure most of us have had the pleasure of the four-page-print-phenomenon in which a seemingly simple web page causes the printer to spit out three additional (and completely blank) pages. It’s not rocket science to create a print stylesheet, but only the cream of the crop take the time to do it.

I think one reason that many Dreamweaver users don’t do it, is not only because they have the misconception that it’s difficult, but also because we did a really good job of hiding an essential tool for creating a print stylesheet (or handheld sheet for that matter). (more…)