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I Love It. I Hate It. I Love It ...

Good luck on finding a cheap version of the Dreamweaver suite for a bargain price. The best bet is to glom onto a teacher, who can purchase it for about 50% for you.
Amazon.com: $200

Cheaper on eBay: $80

Hey, $90 for CS 5.5

:p

EU court rules resale of used software licenses is legal -- even online

My wife's a teacher. I could get the new version (CS6) for $150ish, rather than the $390ish retail. If I wanted to, that is. I might do that sometime in the future, if they finally support multiple monitors (CS 5.5, which I have trialed, allowed you to have your code display on one monitor and the WYSIWYG on another, but you couldn't have one file on one screen and another on a second screen).

I could talk about how the EU ruling, above, is a *nudge, nudge. wink, wink* for software piracy, but that's a different problem. If I buy something in a retail package, it's retail software. Especially if it's from a retail store.
 
Well, that wasn't a fun hour and 1/2. I tried several CSS menus -- even really old ones -- and I couldn't get them to [work].
The revenge of.

I had about a half hour of free time in between projects, so I decided to look into this again. Again, lots of fail. Then I tried a really old bit of code. It didn't work, but I was able to understand what the actual problem was: Gallery 3 doesn't process HTML tags in a block of code "right."

Let me explain: the thing I'm trying to do -- make a drop-down menu using CSS and HTML -- isn't supposed to be difficult. The HTML can be just an "ordered list," like:

Main Menu Item #1: Sax
Submenu: Buffet
Main Menu Item #2: Clarinet
Submenu: Buffet

(The HTML uses the UL and LI tags for all this.)

All the CSS does is takes that ordered list and puts each item in a different location, so HTML = your content and CSS = your layout. What Gallery 3 was doing was displaying the Main Menu Item #1 right, but it then thought that Main Menu Item #2 was the submenu. This was easy to see in that really old code because it didn't have 500 lines of additional HTML and CSS code to make everything look really pretty. So, I just added another level of LI tags and it all magically worked.

So, I'm again really happy with Gallery 3.
 
I really hate to say that, but in a way I must (this hurts) admit that Apple really has spent some heavy thinking re user interaction. Question should not be "how do I make that menu" but rather "how would a user find the desired info fastest". Simplicity wears a black turtleneck. (this hurts even more, but he got a point there)

In extremis, we wouldn't have menus and the like but just two panels - "find" and "take a tour". No, "take the tour" if the search field was empty when the button was pressed. Rename the button to "Go" ("Do it" is already taken). There.
Oh. Thinking about this and relating to Windows operating systems.

I've got Windows 8. I will eventually have to support users that have Windows 8. I'm really going to detest havening to say, "OK. What I want you to do is hit the Windows key ... that's the key next to the 'alt' button ... and hit 'F.' Now, I want you to type, 'Control Panel,' in the big box, then click on the 'Apps' link. Now, click on the thing that says, 'Control Panel.' OK, now I want you to justify to me why you didn't buy a Mac, because getting to the control panel on the MacOS is, 'Click the Apple menu. Click on control panel.'" (Yes, folks, Control Panel in Windows 8 is under "Apps," not "Settings." There's no start menu or Windows menu. Be afraid. Be very afraid.)
 
I just replaced Suzy's and my 2007 Dell XPS computers; they should be here next week. I chose matching Win8 compatable computers with Win7 installed. I just want to make it easier for me to set them up. I suppose we'll have to go to Win8 sometime in the near future, but I am just so happy with what the Win7 OS has become. And that worries me; am I becoming a curmudgeon? Just sayin'...
 
If you have a touchscreen or some other multi-touch device, you'll want Windows 8. IIRC, all new Dell laptops -- not the netbook thingies -- have multi-touch trackpads. However, the trackpads are way too small and non-responsive to do multi-touch on. I'm also pretty sure that most of the "gestures" you'll use the trackpad for, like scrolling down a page, are supported in Windows 7. 'Course you didn't mention what you're replacing them with. If you happen to be replacing them with ASUS Zenbooks, keep the boxes handy for when you need to return them for warranty repair. In about a week.

FWIW, if I did take a couple hours to configure everything, I could probably make things really usable. For instance, I mentioned elsewhere that it takes about a half-dozen steps to get to the control panel in Windows 8. I could make a desktop shortcut directly to the control panel or pin it to the taskbar. If it was compatible with Windows 8, I could again use Air Display to display all my desktop shortcuts on my iPad, so I'd have my other monitors free of any desktop clutter.

That's actually a good point I made, there: Windows 8 is incompatible with at least three pieces of software I had that worked fine in 7. That's pretty high, especially as I had virtually no problem going from XP to 7. I'd also assume that you'll find some hardware incompatibilities, too, primarily because you don't have drivers that'll work. I know of at least two printers, off the top of my head, that don't work (they're "enterprise class" units; you won't have one).

I did read an article somewhere (probably Tom's Hardware) that said that if you have a newer motherboard/processor setup, Windows 8 is slightly faster than Windows 7. I happen to have a "newer" processor and motherboard (Sandy Bridge I7/Z86 chipset) and the only difference I can see is that Win 8 starts up faster.
 
Back to CSS, for a moment.

I finished tweaking the code. If you look here, I have a section labeled "menu options." There's my new CSS. It works fine in the current Windows versions of Internet Exploder, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. For comparison, I had things laid out like this. The big advantage is how much less space it takes when you look at it on an iPad/iPhone (see attached).

It's not perfect, but it is a bit better.
 

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A New Wrinkle

One thing you may have noticed in my above post is that the page (Buescher) only has one page full of pics -- I'm not talking subgalleries. The three ablums on that one page are Aristocrat, True-Tone and 400 Series. What happens if you have TWO pages full of pics, like on my Conn page? If your answer was that something breaks, you would be correct.

I've obviously fixed it, though.

For some reason, if you have two or more pages of pics, the menu only drops down only TWO items. So, in this example, if you clicked on "More Information," you'd only see "The Conn Loyalist" and "NAMM.org (Interviews)." Even if I just copied and pasted the known-working code on my Buescher page, I'd still see only two menu items.

So, considering I'm now convinced that "consistency" isn't something to expect with Gallery 3 modifications, I tried a couple other makes that I had two pages of to see if I could get the known working code working there. It actually took me only one try: my Kohlert page.

I just pasted my code before the text I already had on the Kohlert page and ... everything magically worked. Logical leap: obviously having a line of regular text after my lines of code seems to be making something work. I tested this by changing the text on the Kohlert page to " " -- the HTML code for a backspace -- and everything still worked. My assumption is that either the code for Gallery 3 or the theme I'm using has a tag that's not properly closed.

-----------

I also two more "problems" when I was playing around with the code:

First, one of my menu items was getting chopped off. If you clicked, "Other Picture Galleries," "Saxophone.org Factory Pics" was chopped down to "Saxophone.org Factory." I checked my rather basic CSS. Sure enough, there was a width value, but for *just* the submenu options (e.g. "Saxophone.org Factory Pics"). Because there wasn't a "width" setting for the menu as a whole, it's "fluid": he menu width is only as wide as the menu name (i.e. not wider than "Other Picture Galleries"). Easy fix: add another WIDTH assignment for the menu name ... or just use our friend " " on the menu name until it's wide enough.

Second, my menus didn't drop down far enough to see all the items. Again, I go to the CSS and find that it does not have a HEIGHT assignment for the menu. Because if I made a static height for all menus, it'd look a little stupid, I again added a couple of "&nbsp;" -- which Gallery 3 interprets as <p>&nbsp;</p> if they're on separate lines -- and you can see the awesomeness that resulted.
 
This is extremely meta. I'm writing a post about my blog.

Anyhow, a few weeks ago, I decided to see if I could create a "minimal" version of my full blog: extremely little on the commentary side, but big on the picture side. The result was my first post on a "photoblog."

I really did like the idea because that meant I could play with more stuff than just cataloging who made what instrument when. I can still do that on my regular blog and Gallery 3 and explore things like "Artisan" Saxophones.

All that's well and good, but I had been looking at some photoblogs and saw whole posts that were just a picture. All the trappings of WordPress, like the Comments and Categories links were shoved off into a corner. Additionally, the pics took up most of the page, which I thought was even better. Fortunately or not, there are about 15 bazillion WordPress plugins and themes out there and the superabundance of choice made my life pretty difficult. Added to that, I had to find something that would look correct on PC, Mac and Apple iDevices. That "iDevice" compatibility is actually the hardest: no Flash for you and limited Java support.

After a week of searching, I found something that fits almost all my needs: Grand Flash Album Gallery. You can see it in action on my blog here. Amusingly, to me, is that I think that it renders even nicer on an iPad, except that you can't hide my commentary. (I could also argue that the thumbnails are too close together, too.) However, I like more stuff than I hate:

* Much easier categorizing of pictures.
* 50 bazillion and 1 (an entire Sagan's worth) easier to use than Dynamic Content Gallery.
* Free (you pay extra for additional layout options).
* Currently supported. Hey, an update came out yesterday.

The absolute #1 annoying thing is that the HTML added to the "Title" line (my "Click here for the full gallery" links) deletes itself if you ever have to edit a link. It's not a showstopper because there are many workarounds (type your Title lines in Notepad or something), but it's annoying.

I took a bit of a look at Global Gallery. I did find that moderately neat-o and it was a "consistent user experience" on both iDevices and PC, but it's also not free. I also still think that Grand Flash Album Gallery does look and work better on an iPad than Global Gallery.

Hmmm. Choices ....
 
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