Transcript

 CHRIS:    Hey, everybody.  Thanks for listening to Shop Talk Show!  Today's episode is Episode 1-2-3.  It is sponsored by Environments for Humans.  They are promoting their CSS Summit.  Go to csssummit.com.  It'll redirect you to the place right.  It's coming up very soon here, July 15th through 17th.  It's an online conference.  You can attend it from a browser anywhere in the world.  It's three days long.  You get a discount if you use coupon code: ShopTalkShow.  It's going to be awesome.  

And Adobe, thanks to Adobe for sponsoring.  There's one really cool thing that Adobe is doing called ProjectParfait.Adobe.com.  It's parfait that ends in like an A-T.  You know, it's like kind of a French word, I think, but anyway, it's for like dissecting Photoshop files and, like, getting assets and stuff out of them.  It's really, really cool.  I really quite like it.  We'll tell you more about both of those things at the end of the show.  

But I need to say that this is an interesting wonder.  I think you might remember Episode 100 kind of just came and went for us, and we didn't do anything really special.  We had a great show with a great guest.

DAVE:   Ah, it was great.

CHRIS:  But we didn't, like, make it celebratory like you'd think you might do, you know, when you hit the triple digits in a show like this where, like, you know, Dave had a good idea.  He was like, you know what?  We're going to wait.  We're going to do it at Episode 1-2-3 instead, and then that was coming up, and the idea came around.   

We've got to really do something special for that.  So what we did was, Dave and I used to do a Web show.  You know, we've been doing this for a long time.  We were like, we used to do a public access radio show called Shop Talk.

DAVE:   Way back in the day.

CHRIS:  Way back, a long, long time ago.

DAVE:   It used to be on, like, real audio.  You know, that's how it used to broadcast.

CHRIS:  Yes, really old school, so Dave had it on a zip disk he had laying around.  You know, bought an old zip drive, got it figured up, and pulled it down, and re-digitized it up.  And we're going to play that show.  And it's actually from like the summer of 2004 or so that we did it.

DAVE:   Yeah.

CHRIS:  It's really going to be kind of weird.  You know, there might be some surprising information in here, but just kind of a fun thing.  Then we'll catch you back at the end of the show.  But for the rest of the show, we're going to kind of go back in time.

DAVE:   All right.  Here we go.  Boot up the time-traveling machine.  Here we go.

[Xylophone side effect]

DAVE:   You're listening to the Shop Talk Show.

BOTH:   Let's talk about websites.  

DAVE:   Hey, everybody.  You're listening to the Shop Talk Show, a podcast about making Web blogs and forums --

CHRIS:  Yeah.

DAVE:   -- for your website.  I'm Dave Rupert.  With me is Chris Coyier.

CHRIS:  Well, hello, everybody.  Welcome to our public radio access channel.  Thanks so much for listening in.  This is going to be a good time.  As you know, as we do on Shop Talk, like we have for a long time now.  We just do, you know, we do shout-outs, and we do questions and stuff.  So we have lots of you guys that we know really like this show a lot that kind of just sent us in questions.  We're going to have some guests joining us on the show.  We're going to do some shout-outs and stuff.  So I don't know.  I guess maybe we should just get right into it, you know.

DAVE:   We should.  We should get going.  You guys sent in lots of voicemails, a bunch of CDs, lots of questions.  We really appreciate it, so let's see.  Let's just get going.  Shall we?  Cripes!  Here we go.  Hold on.

CHRIS:  This is -- we've got a good shout-out here that we'd like to play for you that, you know, just really has a good, positive vibe to it.

DAVE:   Oh, yeah, this gentleman calls in about a website that he really likes, so here we go.  Let's see.  I've got to put the CD in the tray here.  It takes a little bit.  Here we go.

CHESTER:    Gentlemen, I was on the information super highway yesterday, and I found a delightful site called HomestarRunner.com.  It makes use of Macromedia's Flash Flare and, oh, how delightful those cartoons are.  I watched one redo a dragon, and they called him Trogdor the Burninator burninating the countryside.  It was quite delightful.  

    Anyhow, I just thought you might want to really give Flash a big what's up on the show today because Macromedia is just killing it.  …for life, Chester Paddington.  Bye, chaps. 

DAVE:   Oh, wow, Chester Paddington.  Thanks for calling in. 

CHRIS:  Thanks so much.

DAVE:   We really appreciate it.

CHRIS:  Yeah.  So much.

DAVE:   So have you seen the site, Homestar Runner?  It is cool!

CHRIS:  Is it?  I mean it's the one with the comics on it, right?  And they're, you know, they're a little weird, but I think I get it. 

DAVE:   It's cool.  I think it's kind of like one of the pinnacles of Web, you know, websites and stuff right now, so I think it's great.  I think every site should be like this.

CHRIS:  Honestly, they're kind of copping their idea of, you know, the ones where he responses to emails and stuff.  But that's okay.

DAVE:   Mm-hmm.  Hey, that's okay.  No -- no judgment zone.  Thanks, Chester, for writing in.  We really appreciate it, or calling in.  Thank you.  Should we just go onto the next one?

CHRIS:  Absolutely.

DAVE:   Does that sound good?

CHRIS:  Mm-hmm.

DAVE:   Okay, okay.  Here we go.  Again, it takes a little while to get into the voicemail system.  Here we go.

PAM:    Hi.  This is Pam Sully.  And now that My Journal doesn't require an invite code, I was wondering if you all are going to start a community there or get more involved in the Live Journal community?

CHRIS:  Oh, that's a good question.  

DAVE:   So --

CHRIS:  What's the news there exactly?  I know Live Journal is kind of like a Web blogging service, but didn't they used to be a little exclusive, or how did that work?

DAVE:   Yeah.  So it used to be you had to get invited by a friend into Live Journal.  But now they've opened the doors and anyone can sign up.  It's great.  It's wonderful.

CHRIS:  But I suppose we're a little worried it's just going to get taken over by kids and stuff, right?  Just junk instead of good stuff.

DAVE:   I mean, yeah, maybe, but I don't know.  The quality of content and poetry on Live Journal is just so good.  I really don't see it going anywhere.  I really don't.

CHRIS:  Well, okay.  I mean I can't see myself picking up and moving just like that, but maybe.  You never know.  It seems like it has a bright future.

DAVE:   Yeah, I think so.  I think so.  And, you know, maybe we should start a community there.  That would be good.  We could maybe move our Web ring over to that.  That might be a good plan.  All right.

CHRIS:  We'll see.  Thanks for the question, Pam.

DAVE:   Thanks for the question, Pam.  As always, we're taking questions here, so all right.  Here we go.  We got one from a young Web designer named Trent who makes websites.  Here we go.  And here we go.

TRENT:  Hey, Chris and Dave.  This is Trent.  I hope you're doing really well.  Okay, so my question is, I'm working on my League of Extraordinary Gentlemen theme for CSS Zen Garden, and I got into a little bit of trouble.  See, I had this idea where I would take a quote from the movie.  You probably know the quote.  The one where Dorian Gray says, "Quite the parlor trick," and then Mr. Hyde says, "Wait until you see my next one," and then he transforms, and he goes,  "Dr. Jekyll at your service."  

Anyways, I wanted to put that quote in my theme, but I couldn't figure out how.  I've noticed some of the other themes have text that you can't find in the HTML document, and it looks like it's coming from the CSS.  I was wondering if you guys could tell me how.

DAVE:   Oh, there you go.  Okay.

CHRIS:  Really getting into it, aren't we?

DAVE:   Oh, bring in the nerd.  So, Chris, are you familiar with CSS Zen Garden?  It's pretty new.

CHRIS:  I mean, we do need to back up a little bit here and talk about what is this CSS Zen Garden.  Yeah, it's just come out.  It's kind of a new thing.  Even CSS is a little controversial these days, but I think Mr. Dave Shea put it together, and what's the idea behind it, Dave?

DAVE:   So the idea is that using, you know, a single XHTML document and a bunch of CSS, you can like style it in many, many different ways.  You can move, you know, a paragraph over here or over there all using CSS.  It's kind of to get you out of using, you know, tables and inline, you know, font tags and everything.  It's kind of to get you out of that mode of thinking and playground to share those ideas.

CHRIS:  Yeah.  CSS is pretty cool, and it really does showcase that pretty well, so check out the CSS Zen Garden if you haven't.  To Trent's question, he was kind of saying that there is some text that he can see in other themes on CSS Zen Garden.  And then when he does the view source, you can't really find that text anywhere, which is what we're used to in HTML.  So we'll tell you how that works, Trent.  This is a hot topic these days.

You know, 2003 brought us lots of different things, and they kind of call image replacement.  And it's kind of like taking an HTML element and hiding the text and instead using CSS to apply a background image to that area.  And, in that image can be the words.  You know, isn't that about how it works?  So you could maybe take a span element and do display none on it.  That's tricky though in the CSS Zen Garden though because you can't just go around putting spans everywhere you want because, you know, there's only the one HTML document -- I'm sorry -- XHTML document that you really get access to.

DAVE:   HTML is so out of cool.

CHRIS:  I know.

DAVE:   Oh, my gosh.

CHRIS:  I can't believe I said that.  Nobody uses that anymore.

DAVE:   Oh, my gosh.  Okay.  Go ahead.

CHRIS:  Well, I was just trying to explain what CSS Zen image replacement is.  I think you get it.  So along came kind of the fark method, I believe they're calling it now.  It's kind of -- either that or they're going to name it some time in the future -- where you take the text and the --

DAVE:   I like the sound of it.  Let's roll with it.  

CHRIS:  Okay.  You heard it here first.  We're naming it.  Where you kick the text off of the element by using a CSS property called text intend.  Now you might think a text indent by being able to push in the first line of a paragraph or something like that, but just like that you can use it to set it so far, something like negative 9,999 pixels to remove that text, but the element is still there.  And then you can apply a background image to that element, and that image will show.

Trent, for you, you can put that quote, style it up in, you know, Adobe Photoshop, however you want to, and then put that in there.  And that's how you can get that quote in the page even though it's not necessarily in the HMTL just like you want it.  

DAVE:   That would be good.  You could put the quote in a background image and then just add padding top or bottom to something and, you know, put it at the bottom.  And it's going to look really cool.  You just have to know the exact dimensions of the image and just add that padding.  I think that's the best, that's another way, you know.  Just put it in an image.  Call it a day.  I think that's good.

CHRIS:  We got --

DAVE:   All right.

CHRIS:  Speaking of the CSS Zen Garden, I feel like it's just such a hot topic these days, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about it a little bit more.  And we got a question here from a Mr. Z who himself wrote a book that's just flying off the shelves recently.  I'm sure you've heard of it.  It's called Designing with Web Standards.  And Jeffrey has a question for us regarding the CSS Zen Garden, so why don't we play that one?

DAVE:   Okay.  Here we go.  I've got to pull up the tape here.  

JEFFREY:    Hi.  Hi.  I'd like to participate in the CSS Zen Garden, but I'm Christian.

DAVE:   Oh, wow!  Whoa!  This sounds hot and dramatic, doesn't it?  

CHRIS:  It does.  There's some fire in the room all of a sudden.

DAVE:   I'm -- religious conversations.  Oh, boy.  That's hot and dramatic.  Okay.  

CHRIS:  Well, here's the thing.  I fee like -- now I could be wrong about this, so correct me if I'm wrong though -- but that Zen is just kind of like a state of mind kind of a thing.  You know, it might have some light religious connotations, but I feel like -- I don't know.  I feel like it's a positive environment.  I feel like everybody is welcome here.  I feel like -- I don't know.  Isn't that the vibe you get, Dave?  I wouldn't think that just because you're Christian doesn't mean you can be involved.

DAVE:   Yeah.  I don't.  I wouldn't be too worried, Jeffrey.  I think it's kind of -- in my point of view, a Zen garden is just a bunch of rocks on some rocks that you move around, and you move into different shapes and kind of just look at it and, you know, think about it.  

CHRIS:  As far as I know, Jesus is fine with rocks.

DAVE:   Yeah, I think it's totally fine and, you know, I wouldn't worry about it.  I think you should participate, or make your own.  I don't think it would be a problem, so there you go.

CHRIS:  I think Dave would love to have you, Jeffrey.  Let's do another question here.  I think, actually, maybe, you know, sometimes we have friends kind of hanging around the studio audience here, and maybe we should pull somebody in.

DAVE:   Yeah, let's.  Is Val around?

CHRIS:  I don't know.

DAVE:   Our friend, Val.  Let's see.  Let's give Val a ring.  Call her.  Maybe she's got her mobile phone on her or something.  Let's see.  

[Ring tone]

DAVE:   Let's see her calling in here.

VAL:    Hello?

DAVE:   Hello.  

CHRIS:  Oh!

DAVE:   Val!  Hey!

CHRIS:  Hey, Val!

VAL:    Hey, guys!  I'm surprised my -- this fancy, new, mobile phone I just got actually works.  

DAVE:   It's exciting, huh, a phone that fits in your pocket?  Who would have thunk?

VAL:    Well, you know, if you have like cargo pants pockets.

DAVE:   Oh, yeah, it fits.  Yeah, I guess so.  I mean, I wear cargo pants about eight days a week.  

VAL:    That's crazy.  

DAVE:   That's perfect.

CHRIS:  That's how many days a week there are.  Maybe Val can help us out answering a couple questions with us.  Val is a professional webmaster herself.  Isn't that right, Val?

VAL:    Oh, yeah, yeah.  I just got my webmaster title.  Pretty proud of it.

DAVE:   That's great.  That's great.  You like websites.  Are you using CSS yet?

VAL:    You know, I'm thinking about it more and more.  And, you know, I just was at my local Barnes & Noble.  Just got that book you mentioned, Mr. Zeldman's book.  And I just, you know, it's interesting stuff.  I'm not sure it's going to catch on though, but I'm thinking about it.

DAVE:   Oh, well, okay.  Well, cool.

VAL:    You know, cautiously.

CHRIS:  I feel the same way.  

DAVE:   Yeah.

CHRIS:  I'm not about to move all my production projects over to it just yet.

VAL:    I know.

CHRIS:  I'll play with it on my personal Web blog for sure.

VAL:    Yeah, definitely.

DAVE:   You know, we got a question here for a Jeff, I think, Jeff.  And it's kind of about this, so let's jump into it.  Jeff Star calls in here.

JEFF:   Hi.  I've been using frames and tables for my layouts, and I'm just wondering.  I've heard that there's new ways of doing things with just using gifs and CSS, like standards based design or something.  Anyway, I really like tables and frames.  I hope I don't have to change anything.

CHRIS:  You sound….

JEFF:   All right.  Thanks, guys.

CHRIS:  Legitimately confused there, Jeff.

DAVE:   Yeah.

VAL:    Yeah, he does.

CHRIS:  Uh-huh.

DAVE:   I don't know.  I guess, yeah, what we were talking.  Should he move away from tables and frames?  You've got an opinion?

VAL:    I think I'm going with what Chris said.  Like it's good for, you know, your personal Web blog or your own site or maybe like, you know, fancy experimental stuff.  But like client work, I don't know.  You just can't get that pixel perfect, you know, table layout design.

CHRIS:  Good point.  Good point.

VAL:    I don't think my clients would put up with it, you know.  Plus it takes so much longer.  And, yeah, I wouldn't do it for real work yet.  

CHRIS:  Yeah.

DAVE:   That's a good point.  Isn't there stuff with floating?  Did I read that?  You float things.

CHRIS:  Ah!

VAL:    Yeah, that stuff is confusing me.

CHRIS:  It's a whole new world.  I'll tell you what.  And, Jeff, you know, he's worried about not having to change anything.  I'll tell you what.  You're going to have to change just about every line of code on your entire website, so it's kind of a -- it's not something that --

DAVE:   It's a big, big project.  

CHRIS:  You're probably going to be starting new projects if you want to mess around with this stuff.

VAL:    Yeah.

CHRIS:  It's not so much about moving old projects over.  That's all I have to say.

DAVE:   All right, well, hey, we got another one, a voicemail from Ben Frane, sort of similar, I think, but let's just get a -- let's just listen here.

BEN:    Hi, Chris and Dave.  This is Ben Frane.  I'm a Web developer in the UK.  I've been designing sites using tables for quite some time having fairly consistent results.  

CHRIS:  Good.  Good.

BEN:    …I've noticed lots of difference between IE5 on the Mac and I have friends who have got IE6 on the PC.  And I've noticed this new thing called CSS popping up a lot.  I wondered if you think that's something that's worth building sites with or if you think it's something that will catch on.  I'm anxious about spending a lot of time understanding it if you don't think it's going to be something that's going to go the distance.  All right, hope you can help.  Thanks a lot.  Love the show.

DAVE:   Well, that's good.  Good point.  So IE5 and 6.

VAL:    Yeah.

DAVE:   5 on the Mac and 6.  They are so cool.  Oh, my gosh.  They look so good.

CHRIS:  That's the thing with IE6 too is that it kind of supports CSS and it supports the old table stuff.  So it's kind of the best of both worlds, really.

VAL:    Yeah, it does.

DAVE:   Yep.

VAL:    You can kind of stick with the old way or try some new stuff, and IE6 has you covered.  It's kind of like the future.

CHRIS:  Revolutionary, yeah.

VAL:    Yeah.

DAVE:   It's pretty awesome.  Hopefully it'll stick around.  

CHRIS:  I can't wait for IE6 for Mac.  That's probably just right around the corner.

VAL:    Oh, yeah, yeah.  I hope that comes soon.

DAVE:   Yeah, that would be great.  My favorite feature of IE for Mac is you can favorite a website, you know, make a bookmark, and it will ping.  It will go out and ping the site when you open the browser and let you know if there's been an update to the homepage.  It's so great.  I love it.

VAL:    I haven't even found that feature.  That's amazing.  I'm going to try that.

DAVE:   Oh, yeah.  It's great.  It's great.  So all right, so let's see.

CHRIS:  Well, if you ask Mr. Zeldman, he'll tell you that CSS is the way forward.  If you ask the rest of us, I think this thing is a little bit of a phase.  It's hard to tell, but that's how I think.  Ben, good luck, you know.  I feel like, you know, if you want to be practical, coding in tables isn't going to do you wrong.

VAL:    Yeah.

DAVE:   Yeah.  I think --

VAL:    Stick with what works, right?

DAVE:   Yeah, stick with your moneymaker.  Don't sacrifice that.  And also, I would just pick up that book.  And if it, you know, inspires you to do it, but don't worry too bad.  

Here we go.  Well, we've got one from a special guest.  Let's see here.  It's Bobby Steils who calls in.

VAL:    Cool.

DAVE:   So here we go.  Let's see.  I've got to put the CD in the tray.  Maybe one day it'll get better.  All right.  Here we go.

BOBBY:  Hello, David and Christopher.  This is Bobby Steils, webmaster at geocitiesandtripodtemplates.co.uk.theletters, and I've got a question about Internet browsers.  I heard about this thing coming out called Godzilla Flamewolf by them good folks at Mozilla.  I'm so tired of using Internet Explorer 6.  It's just miserable.  Do you think Godzilla Flamewolf will handle CSS properties better, because I sure hope so?  Well, gentlemen, I look forward to hearing from you.  All right.  Bye-bye.

CHRIS:  I think what Bobby means is Firefox from Mozilla.  Am I right there?

VAL:    It is Firebird?  Fire something.

DAVE:   Firebird?  

VAL:    Fire --

DAVE:   Fire Eagle?

VAL:    I like Fire Eagle.  They should call it that if it's not.

CHRIS:  Flame.  I think it's Flame Eagle, guys.

VAL:    Flame Eagle.  

DAVE:   Okay.

VAL:    All right, so Flame Eagle.  

DAVE:   So have you guys heard about this one?  Does it look like something you might want to use, or is it not ready for primetime?  

CHRIS:  I don't know.  I mean, it's new.  What's with -- nothing new is good, right?  

VAL:    Yeah.

DAVE:   I think it's based on Netscape, you know, when Netscape was at AOL.

VAL:    I was a fan.  I like Netscape a lot.  

DAVE:   Yeah, then it went to AOL, and so.

VAL:    Yeah.  So all this new stuff, I don't know.

DAVE:   Yeah, I don't know.  My fear is if a new browser, you know, comes out, now we're going to have to code for one and then the other.

VAL:    Ah, yeah.

DAVE:   But that's my fear.

CHRIS:  Some kind of -- it feels like a browser war to me.

VAL:    Do you think we'd have to make, like -- do you think we'd have to make, like, three different versions of our websites, like one for this Fire Eagle, one for like IE, like --

CHRIS:  I sure hope so.

VAL:    That's just sounds horrible.

CHRIS:  That means I can charge my clients three times as much, you know.

VAL:    Oh, yeah.  Yeah.  You're onto something there.  

DAVE:   That's pretty good.  I think that's -- yeah, that sounds smart.  That sounds like the safe route, so that's what I would do.

VAL:    Yeah.

DAVE:   Okay.

VAL:    I'm more optimistic about this after you brought that up.  More money; I like it.

CHRIS:  Good.

DAVE:   That's great.  That's great.  Well, all right.  Hey, Val, we're going to cut you off.  Thanks so much of coming on.  We really appreciate it.

VAL:    Oh, thanks for calling me.  It's great to talk to you guys.

DAVE:   Take care and good luck on all your projects then.

CHRIS:  We'll see you soon.

VAL:    Thanks.  You too.

DAVE:   All right.

VAL:    Bye.

DAVE:   Good.  Good-bye.  Okay.  Oh, that was great to have Val on.  She's a really talented webmaster.  Okay.  This one -- okay, here we go -- is from a guy named Doug, Doug from Iowa.  Here we go.

DOUG:   Yeah.  This is Doug Niner.  I'm working with a frameset, and I just want to know the best way to allow users to toggle the left frame on and off by clicking a button in the right frame.  

DAVE:   Oh, okay.  All right.  So Doug has two frames, it sounds like, in a frame set, right?

CHRIS:  Kind of.

DAVE:   That's what it sounds like to me.

CHRIS:  I feel like I've got to use Yahoo search to do some searching for this one because it's pretty complicated.

DAVE:   Yeah.

CHRIS:  I think what Doug is talking about is kind of basically like DHTML, you know.  Meaning, it's kind of using, you know, some of the advanced features, JavaScript.  I don't know if any of you guys have used that word, you know.

DAVE:   Yeah.

CHRIS:  Yeah, it's just a little complicated.  It's just that's the D part is dynamic, meaning that you can kind of, you know, watch for clicks and do kind of fancy stuff like that.  It turns out, if you run some JavaScript in the browser, you have kind of access to some kind of like deep internals of the browser, and it's pretty cool.  There is a variable in there called top and, I think, if you access that, it has kind of access to all of the different frames on your site.

DAVE:   Mm-hmm.

CHRIS:  It's something like that, right?  It's kind of like you're able to access them both, so you could affect them both, maybe.  

DAVE:   Yeah, so you're going to want to use DOM scripting, you know, to go.  And I think you, like, make a script tag, you know, script type equals, I think it's, text JavaScript.  You'll have to … search around….

CHRIS:  And make sure to put language equals JavaScript too or I don't think it works.

DAVE:   Oh, that's good.  That's right.  Okay.  So then you're going to add that.  And then what you're going to want to do is, yeah, let's say you called that one frame you're trying to hide frame one, that's the name of it.  So, let's see.  So you'd want to do top.frame1, and then kind of start working.  You could set that new CSS to, I think, is it show none or something like that?

CHRIS:  Yeah.  So it'd be like top.frame1.activedef.style.visibility=hidden is basically what you want to do and attach that to an unclick handler right on the button itself.

DAVE:   Mm-hmm.  Okay.

CHRIS:  It's pretty futuristic, but I think that's the way you're going to want to go.

DAVE:   Yeah, I think that sounds simple enough.  That's pretty easy.  All right.  Cool.  That sounds good.  How are we doing, Chris?  Are we good?

CHRIS:  Yeah.  

DAVE:   Yeah.

CHRIS:  I think we've got our friend Jen here is ready to kind of join us over the telephone.  

DAVE:   Okay.  We've got Jen on the telephone.  Here we go.  Let's give her a call.

CHRIS:  Do you have her on speed dial?

[Dial tone]

DAVE:   Yep.  

JEN:    Hey, what's up?

DAVE:   How are you doing?

JEN:    I'm good.  I'm drinking coffee.

DAVE:   That's great.  Hey, thanks for coming on the radio here.  We really appreciate it.  We're taking questions from listeners, and we're trying to answer them.  How does that sound?

JEN:    It sounds awesome!  

DAVE:   All right, cool.  Well, we've got one here.  Let's see.  I'm going to try to pull it up in advance here.  I think it's from a guy named Alex, a young guy named Alex.  Here we go.

ALEX:   Hi.  My name is Alex Sexton.  I live in Austin, Texas.  I'm just getting into Web development.  My question for Shop Talk Show is this: I have a Web ring that I plan on launching even though it's not quite ready, and I wanted to know what good resources there are for finding, like, under construction, animated giffies to put on the page.  And also, how long can a page be up and under construction before Geocities takes it down?

DAVE:   Oh, that's a good question, Alex.

CHRIS:  It's kind of a two-parter.

DAVE:   But, yeah, Jen, do you got any insight?

JEN:    Well, I too am new to Web development.  I start college in the fall.  And I put up a Web page, and it's been under construction for like two years now, and no one has taken it down.  So I don't think that there is a maximum amount of time.

CHRIS:  I mean it's hard to say, don't you think?

JEN:    I mean, when you think about it, like everything else in life, isn't everything under construction?

DAVE:   Oh, that's a very metaphysical question.

JEN:    Well, Web development is very metaphysical.  

DAVE:   That's good.

JEN:    As for the under construction giffies, I just -- I get those off of, like, my favorite Weezer fan sites and you know.

DAVE:   Oh.

JEN:    Yeah, and I just, like --

DAVE:   That's --

JEN:    You can, like, view the source and just grab the link and then just use that link and put it on your page.

CHRIS:  That's what I was going to say.  You know, we talked about view source later.  You just view the source on the page.  Go down.  Find it.  It'll be a URL to where that image is hosted.  Go to that in your browser.  Save as, and then you have it.  Then you can use it.  Put it wherever you want.  So that's a pretty good way to get any kind of image that you want pretty much.

JEN:    I don't even save it.  I just use the URL and put that into my code.

DAVE:   Oh, oh, so hot linking.  Is that what they call it?  Yeah.

CHRIS:  Saves a step.

JEN:    Then you save space.  You don't have to save it onto your Geocities account because that's all, like, limited and stuff.  And then also when a lot of people, like, go to your page, Geocities will put your out of bandwidth page up.  So if you hot link, you have more time on your site --

DAVE:   Oh.

CHRIS:  Good point.

JEN:    -- that it's up then running on bandwidth.

CHRIS:  Yeah.  

JEN:    Exactly.

CHRIS:  Then at least your site won't go down.  The worst thing that happens is the under construction graphic doesn't go up, but big deal.

JEN:    Yeah, right.  

DAVE:   That's smart thinking.

CHRIS:  Yeah.  Pretty good.

DAVE:   That's smart thinking.

CHRIS:  Pretty good.  I know this is pretty new too.  It just launched last year, I think, but Google has an image search too.  So, you know, I'm sure you guys got lots of websites that you like to visit in which there's plenty of graphics there for you to use, but just in case you can't find something perfect right now, you could try using Google's new image search to find it.  And just put like, you know, hardhat or man scooping rocks in there or something.  I bet you'll find something.

DAVE:   Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I think that's probably the best way to do it.  You can also save it to your desktop.  But if you're on a modem, that's going to take a lot of time, so only do that if you've got broadband.  That's what I'd say.

JEN:    Or you can take -- you can do print screen and then open MS Paint and paint the print screen into there and then save it to your computer.  And then you don't have to worry about, like, your modem and stuff.

DAVE:   Oh, wow!  That's brilliant!  You've done this before.

JEN:    Yeah, well, you know, this is why I'm going to college so I can learn more.

DAVE:   Okay, cool.  Great!  All right.

JEN:    But Alex sounded like a nice guy.

DAVE:   Yeah, I think he's a young up-and-comer, so.

JEN:    Yeah.  I think he's going to do good things.  

CHRIS:  Yeah.  By the guess of it, he's only eight or nine, so.

JEN:    Like myself.  

DAVE:   All right.  Okay.  Well, we've got one more question here while we've got Jen here.  Let's go ahead.  Here we go.  Let's do this one from, let's see, is it Rebecca?  Is that right?  Let's do Rebecca here.

REBECCA:    Hey, Dave.  Hey, Chris.  This is Rebecca, and I'm working at an ad agency right now doing print work, but I think that there might be something to this whole Web thing, and I'm especially kind of interested in the JavaScript side of things.  But I'll tell you, I'm having a really hard time with all the differences in the DOM with this, like, Netscape and IE, and it's just crazy.  

So I was thinking.  Well, at first I was thinking that it would be really helpful if there was a library that would, you know, help me work out the differences between all these different browsers.  But then I realized, you know, what I really need is a guy named Paul to help me figure all of this out.  So I wanted to know, Chris, Dave, do you know anyone named Paul?

DAVE:   Oh, hey, okay.  Well, that's lots of questions in this one.  Before we get to the Paul thing, I know of some Pauls, but before we get to the Paul thing, if you're in a print design job at an ad agency, that sounds great.  I wouldn’t -- I feel like you have a job for life.

CHRIS:  It sounds pretty stable.

DAVE:   Print is going nowhere, so I think you're doing okay, so I wouldn't worry too much about learning this stuff.  And learning JavaScript, well, that's just -- I don't -- DOM scripting is really complicated.  Jen, do you do any DOM scripting?

JEN:    No.  I like print stuff.  I mean there's always going to be trees, but will there all be electricity, so I like to think more long-term.

DAVE:   Wow!  That's a good point.

JEN:    Yeah.

DAVE:   It's a good point.  

CHRIS:  I figure if you're going to mess around with it though, I mean, you just play around with it, use it on your personal site, stuff like that.  I don't know.  I wouldn't make a career out of it.  That's for sure.

DAVE:   Yeah, I wouldn't do that.  I think that's maybe jumping the gun.  

CHRIS:  Lot's of Pauls out there.  There's Paul Boag.  There's Paul Giamatti.  He's coming up in a movie about -- he's like buming around in a car drinking wine with his friend. 

DAVE:   Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

JEN:    Well, that sounds nice.

CHRIS:  That sounds like a good one coming out pretty soon.

DAVE:   Yeah.  Yeah. 

CHRIS:  Yeah.

DAVE:   I've got a friend Paul who is about -- it's a secret right now, but he's about to launch a site called Aurgasm.  And for those on the radio, before you start turning things off, it's A-u-r is how it starts and, yeah, Paul is working.  He likes music and blogging, you know, blogging on his Web blog about music.  So that's -- yeah, my friend Paul is working on that, so it should came out later this year.

CHRIS:  But, you know, he's the one who is building the website, and they're trying to get it to play songs and all kinds of stuff, so if you're looking to, you know, figure out how this JavaScript stuff works, he's probably the guy to talk to.  That's aurgasm.us too, pretty interesting.

JEN:    Wait a second.  He's into music and to Web development?

DAVE:   Yeah, I think so.  He likes both.

JEN:    Wow!  Yeah. 

CHRIS:  I only have the one hobby.

JEN:    I didn't know that you can do more than one thing.  Good to know.

DAVE:   I wouldn't recommend it.  Hmm.  All right, well, Rebecca, hopefully we helped solve your problem.  Thanks for calling in.  Jen, do you want to stick around for one more question?  Does that sound good?

JEN:    Sure.

DAVE:   Okay.  Here we go.  It's a question.  Why don't I start putting the CD in earlier?  This is silly.  This is a question from Karen who is calling in about screen sizes, I think.  Here we go.

KAREN:  Hi, guys.  This is Karen McGrane.  So now that 1024x768 screen resolutions are the most common display type, some of our developers have been advocating that we should use liquid layouts to have the screen adjust to different sizes.  But other developers say that 1024 is the most common screen resolution, so we should just have a fixed layout for that size.  What's the right answer?  Are liquid layouts really worth the extra work?

DAVE:   Oh, boy, liquid layouts.  I've been hearing a lot of this in the blogosphere.  Jen, do you got any thoughts on this?

JEN:    I feel like liquid layouts are an investment not worth making.  Like, yeah, like, screen size might be getting bigger, but I feel like it might get just small again, so why do all that extra work if we're going to go back to small stuff because, yeah.  

DAVE:   Hmmm.

JEN:    I mean, I can't afford -- I can't afford a bigger screen.

CHRIS:  That's a good point.

JEN:    So, like, I have a small one, and I don't see myself going bigger any time soon, so I would just stick with fixed, fixed width.

DAVE:   Yeah.  

CHRIS:  Yeah, it just seems like a losing battle kind of thing.  I mean there's 1024.  That's common this year.  Next year it might be 1124, you know.  Maybe a couple years after that it'll be 1224.  When does it stop, you know?  It just seems like a losing battle to be constantly thinking about it, but I don't know.  I don't know.  1024, and then what's the problem?  You center it in the middle.

DAVE:   Yeah.

CHRIS:  It's like big deal, right?  I mean I think 1024 is a little extreme.

DAVE:   Yeah.  

CHRIS:  I'd go smaller than that.

DAVE:   So what I do is because, you know, not everyone has 1024.  There are a lot of people on 800 still.  But if you want to go bigger, I'd just pick a value in the middle like 960.  That way it fits on the big one and then it can, you know, the little screen just has to slide around a little bit and it's not a big problem.  So that's my advice.  I think it's solid.  

CHRIS:  I saw Metafilter was playing around with liquid layouts and it looks like a pain in the butt.  You've got to have like a nine slice table to get their border around the outside and then one big table sill in the middle that just can be any size.  And look at number A.  Look at the line length on there on a 1024 screen.  It takes you a month to get across one line.

DAVE:   Yeah.  A paragraph is just one line.  Goodness.  Oh, my gosh.  Yeah, so well, Karen, hopefully --

JEN:    And also, like, so much code to write and download.  Again, I'm on AOL.  I can't get all that stuff on my machine.  It takes forever.  

DAVE:   Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.  Yeah, Karen.  It's really important that your content lives everywhere so, you know, just pick somewhere in the middle and just go for it.  

JEN:    The law of averages.  

DAVE:   Yep, I think it's good.  All right, well, hey, Jen, thanks so much for stopping by.  We really appreciate it, so good luck going into college this year.  

JEN:    Thank you.

DAVE:   Hopefully you're studying hard.

JEN:    I'm going to learn Java.

DAVE:   Oh, that's great because Java, I hear -- here's a joke they say: Job for life, right?  

JEN:    Yep.

DAVE:   Java -- job for live.  So that's great.  Well, good luck.  Come back on the show and let us know how Java is.

JEN:    Will do.  

DAVE:   Bye.

CHRIS:  Okay.  Bye.

JEN:    Bye.

DAVE:   Oh, well, that was great.  Okay.  Chris, how are you doing?

CHRIS:  Doing okay.  I feel like we just -- there's just so many questions.  You guys just keep sending them in over and over, so I feel like, you know, just to do this thing of service, I guess we better just keep her going.

DAVE:   Keep it going.  Okay.  Here we go.  We've got a question from Sam.

SAM:    Hey, Chris and Dave.  It's Sam Kapp.  I'm working on my MySpace page, and I was wondering if you had any advice on what I could to make it look cooler.

DAVE:   Okay.  Classic question.  

CHRIS:  Body display none -- am I right?

DAVE:   Ha!  Ha, ha, ha.  So, Sam Kapp is trying to make her MySpace look cool.  Chris, you've done this before.  You got any tips?

CHRIS:  You know, it's been like six months since I've done it.  I can barely remember.

DAVE:   Well, so what I -- I'm just thinking here.  I think what you do is you go into your bio.  You edit your bio, and then you can just put CSS in your bio and start changing things.  It takes a long time because you have to kind of go back and forth, but you can start putting CSS in your bio.  You just have to use those style tags and maybe use the important, you know, flag.

CHRIS:  That's pretty crazy.  So you can just write basically HTML right in your bio and it just renders, huh? 

DAVE:   Yep.

CHRIS:  It seems a little scary.  I mean it's pretty cool that you can exploit that for CSS, but I wonder if they're thinking about JavaScript there at all, you know, how you can kind of, I don't know, get access to some browser internals and stuff.  Anyway, I don't really know much about that.

DAVE:   Yeah.  Yeah, I don't know, but it's pretty cool because you can make your MySpace look like whatever you want.  And that's the cool thing about MySpace is you can customize it.  You know, I think that's what's maybe over, you know, all those other kind of blogs and stuff.  

CHRIS:  Yeah.  Really make use of the fact that background image default value or background repeat is just on repeat.  You know, you kind of have to change it if you don't want it to repeat.  So I feel like if you've got any kind of like sparkling gifs or any kind of funny thing that moves or stripes or anything, I feel like just chuck that in there and just go wild.  Just any kind of graphic you got, just slap her in there.  I feel like that's what's really going to impress people on MySpace.

DAVE:   All right.  All right.  I think we got your question.  All right.  Thanks so much, Sam Kapp, for writing in.  I've got a question from Rachael here.  Let's see.  

RACHAEL:    This is Rachael Neighbors.  I'm building my first website, and I want to make a blog.  I want to know, should I use WordPress or should I use Grey Matter?  Now, Grey Matter has been around longer, so it has a bigger community and a lot more, like, questions and answers on its support forums, but WordPress uses PHP, and I've been learning PHP to build a triple site too, so I was wondering which one you would use.  Thank you.

DAVE:   That's a good question.  Chris, have you played around with Grey Matter or WordPress?

CHRIS:  I mean, like Rachael says, Grey Matter has got the community behind it.  I would pick that every time, you know.  Go with the think with the bigger community.  You know, that way you've got the support when you need it.  I barely heard of WordPress.  I think it's in like 1.0 right now built by this kid who can't be 20 years old, you know.  It just seems like, eh, it looks neat, but I'd go with the established winner.

DAVE:   Yep, I would probably go for community.  You know, I've used moveable type for that reason.  It's good.  It's written in Pearl, you know, and so everyone knows Pearl, and it's really easy.  So that's what I would pick.

CHRIS:  And if you don't want to do any work at all, of course, you can have your MySpace blog.  You can have your Live Journal blog, you know.  Rachael is trying to take it up a notch here and go with her own website.

DAVE:   Yeah, I think that's good.  I would probably use the one with all the plugins and everything.  I think that's probably the best, best way to go.  So hopefully that works.  Yeah, you've got to make sure you got all the mods uploaded.  

CHRIS:  And Google just bought Blogger, so I don't know.  You know, that's a little iffy.

DAVE:   Yeah, it's nice to have Blogger because you can get a blog up really quick, but for me, I like to, you know, kind of be in charge.  I like to fix it up every time, you know.  I like to make sure I'm fixing everything up all the time, every day.  So that's what's handy about websites, you know, is having to fix them, so that's good.  Okay, anything else there?  

Let's see.  We've got one from Zo.  Hold on.  I'm getting it here.  Here we go.

ZO: Hi, guys.  I wanted to change to the color of the text on my nav when you hover over it.  And since those are images, I had heard about some JavaScript that when you hover over an image, it can swap in another image.  It sounds really cool.  Can you help me find a script like that or figure out how to write it?

DAVE:   Okay.  So she wants to change the background on her navigation when she hovers, which is a cool effect if you haven't seen it.

CHRIS:  It is pretty cool.

DAVE:   Chris?

CHRIS:  I think we're kind of in DHTML territory again here, so I hope we don't lose anybody, but Zo is right.  That is a pretty neat effect.  You know, that's what I was talking about with JavaScript how you can kind of do special things when the mouse goes certain places, does certain things.  And remember how we were talking about you had the access to that top thing, and you can kind of drill down and find.  You could find a frame; we were talking about.  Well, you can drill down and find individual elements as well and then change properties on those elements to things like what the background image is.  So there is a script to handle that.  

Gosh, it might take me a little while to dig out, but I feel like Macromedia does a tremendous job of letting you kind of drag and drop different images on there, and then you kind of just drag and drop two of them on there.  It kind of knows what to do, and it puts that script on there for you.  So that's be kind of the easy way out, I think.  

DAVE:   Mm-hmm.  Yeah, well, that's exactly what I was going to say.  This is why you've got to use an IDE, a Web editor.  And you don't just want to use Notepad or something like that because you can get all these effects, you know.  I think it's, you know, you just right click and say, you know, add this -- is it an animation?  I forget, but -- and then it'll do all the DOM scripting for you.  It'll write a little tag for you.  And it just sits up there, and it just -- I think it's like FF or MM replace image or something, image replace.  But that's, you know, it's really hard to write out, so that's why you want to use these editors for those rich text features.

CHRIS:  Sure.  I mean, you're never going to remember to do it right anyway.  You write the script once that flops the image.  Then you're going to have to remember to flop it back.  And then you're going to have to be allocating some memory to remember about which one it had before it and, you know, the next you know it, you're having buffering errors.  Who knows what can go wrong.  I would just, you know, use one of them editors.  I'll do it up right for you.  

DAVE:   Yep, I think we -- I think that's it.  And another cool editor, I don't know if you've used it, is Microsoft Front Page.  It's really -- it's from Microsoft.  It works on IE6.  It's pretty great.  I recommend it.

CHRIS:  Who doesn't trust Microsoft?

DAVE:   Microsoft has these cool filters in their browser that are really -- they're complicated.  I won't lie.  But they're really fun to use.  You get some cool effects like glow and things like that, so.

CHRIS:  Mm-hmm.  Set an opacity down.  Designers have been begging for opacity for I can't tell you how long.  Filter finally comes along and brings it.

DAVE:   That's great.  We really appreciate it.  Thanks, Microsoft, for making the Web a better place.  All right.  Here we go.  Next question.

LOUIS:  Hi, guys.  This is Louis Lazarus, webmaster from Toronto, Canada.  I'm working on the main navigation bar for an Intranet website, and I'm having trouble with my JavaScript image rollovers. 

CHRIS:  Whoa!

LOUIS:  When I roll over the navigation bar, there's a flicker while the rollover images load.  I'm currently using Macromedia Dream Weaver 6.  Do you know if there's a rollover plugin in that version of Dream Weaver to help with this or maybe you know of a good script that can do those rollovers better.  

CHRIS:  Yeah.

LOUIS:  Thanks.

CHRIS:  You know, it's 2004.  We've got all the same questions, you know.

DAVE:   Yeah.  Just coming back in.  I mean, this is the same thing we were talking is, you know, MM image swap is maybe what it is….

CHRIS:  Well, Louis has got it figured out.  He's just having trouble with the flashing.  So I wonder if there's something to do about that.  I wonder if, like, a newer version of Dream Weaver kind of solves this problem.  I feel like what's happening her is that you know how sometimes when you load over your modem like an image will just come in kind of line by line like that.  It takes a little while to pull down an image.  So if you roll over something with your mouse there, the browser has got to go get that second image, and it just, it takes a second.  So thus you get a flash, you know.  I don't know if much can be done about that unless you requested that image ahead of time, which I'll be gol-darned if I know how to do it, but I bet, you know, a new version of that script will come along any day and handle that.

DAVE:   Yep.  Yep.  Yeah, I think -- yeah, it might just be you're waiting on an image, so that might be the problem.  You could try a smaller image, but I don't even know how to do that, so there you go. 

We've got another question.  These are -- some of these are voicemails I haven't even listened to, so we're just going to go and answer off the top of our head here.  

MAN:    Hi, guys.  So I'm the webmaster for a fairly large, well known, computer hardware manufacturing company.  And I have developed all of my company's site using tables, and I know - I know that there's a CSS thing, and I use it to a degree for fonts and colors, but I'm just not sure about this whole dev thing because, you know, with tables I can get things exactly where I want them to be, and they can be right locked into place, and I don't understand this whole CSS thing where it's you make a wish and the browser maybe kind of builds it.  

I prefer the rigidity of tables.  And I'm getting a little bit of a hard time from other people saying that I should really be on the CSS bandwagon, but I just don't trust them, and I just don't believe them.  Can you guys maybe give me the good word on which way to go with this?  Thanks.

DAVE:   All right.  Classic question there.  I feel like, you know, we kind of answered it, but what do you do?  You work for a big company.  Do you just change the way you're doing things?

CHRIS:  It's hard to give advice, you know, when you're mentally stuck like that.  And I have voiced my opinion earlier in the show here, and I feel like, you know, I'm sticking to it.  But if you wanted to hear kind of a different opinion on it, you could try Mr. Zeldman's book that we mentioned earlier.  I feel like that's kind of the, you know, the hippy-dippy new way.  So I feel like if you're looking to be convinced, you should pick that up, check it out, give it a read, see if it convinced you.  And, you know, in the meantime, I'm going to build about 50 websites.

DAVE:   Yeah.  Exactly.  Speed.  One thing I've heard, and this is, you know, I don't know too much about this, but if you look around about accessibility, it's a buzzword, and I've heard some things that may be, like sites and tables are really hard for assistive technology like a screen reader.  I don't even know what that looks like, but some kind of screen reading device.  That how it can read a table, I think, maybe it's pretty difficult for them to piece together the information because you have your little spacer gifs everywhere, and I don't know.  

CHRIS:  Yeah.

DAVE:   So that's maybe what I've heard, so look into that.  Read that book.  I think that's good.  

CHRIS:  What's next, like hand controls for cars for amputees?  I mean, at what point do you just stay home and do nothing?

DAVE:   I'm with you.  I mean, you have to make a website for everyone that goes everywhere.  I mean what's the deal.  

CHRIS:  Pie in the sky.

DAVE:   That's impossible.  Yeah.  That's a little too hard, a little too far fetched for my liking.  

    We've got another question from Jen here.  Let's see.

JEN:    Hey, guys.  I love your show.  It's really, really great.  I'm in school right now, so it's really helpful for me to hear all this great stuff.  So my name is Jen.  So like I said, I'm in school.  And I was wondering.  So I had heard that it's really good to focus on one thing, and I just love Director.  I think Lingo is just the coolest language in the world, and I just want to go to the Frame, like all day long.  But my teachers keep telling me that Authorware is going to be the next big thing and that e-learning is going to have a lot of jobs.  So I'm sort of torn because my passion is with Lingo and Director, but it seems that Authorware is all of the rage.  So any tips on where I should go?  Thanks, guys.  Love the show.

DAVE:   All right, so she's been using Lingo a lot.  Very good.  

CHRIS:  Hey.

DAVE:   You know what I -- yeah.  Director is pretty cool.  Let's see.  You know what I would -- I would just, you know, if you know that, you probably could pick up some Flash.  You know, Flash works on a lot of computers, so just get a copy of Macromedia Flash there and use it.

CHRIS:  How can you go wrong with Flash?  It seems like everything I put is right where it's supposed to be.  It's got all this interactivity.  It's got their really intuitive timeline.  I can just put something here.  Put something here.  Rollovers on it are easy.  There's no Flash when I roll over an image.  The whole thing is downloaded before I can even see anything, so of course there's no Flash.  It's already got the image there.  You know, you can click on it, go to other websites.  It just seems like the perfect solution.  

And if you've got some -- you know, you've got some experience in Director, it has the same kind of timeline based situation there.  It seems like a natural flip.  One is for making CDs.  You know, CDs are great too, so you got the skills in one; you can move to the other, and you can be making CDs, and you can be making websites.  So it seems really like kind of a smart move.  

DAVE:   Yeah, I guess, you know, do you want to make kiosks or are you making websites?  That's something you're going to have evaluate as well.  So, yeah, I think, you know, just -- I call it straight Flash.  If you just want to go straight Flash, that's a good way to make a website.  You can do some, again, kind of those DHTML effects are pretty cool when you get it into Flash.  So I saw this navigation where you mouse over and it follows your mouse across the navigation.

CHRIS:  What?!

DAVE:   Yeah.  Yeah, it was pretty cool.  I think, you know, and again, that's all that scripting stuff, so I think it's really smart.  So all right.

CHRIS:  Well, you know, they're going to kick us off for one of the next radio stations coming in here, but I think we just got like a couple more we'll power through, and then we'll --

DAVE:   Just a couple more, and we'll just power through, yeah, because we've got to get --

CHRIS:  We've got to drag the couch out of this room and, you know, pull the banner down and stuff.  

DAVE:   This one, it looks like a really -- let's see -- really honest question here.  All right.  Oh, it's kind of about the future is what my notes are saying.  

PAULY:  Fellas, this is Pauly Castrano from StinkyMikesBabyFace.com.  Listen.  My Uncle Sal has been having these weird dreams about the future and the Internet and stuff, and he wants to tell you about them.  Uncle Sal, are you ready?

SAL:    Yeah, kid.  Listen.  I keep having these dreams about the future, and on this information superhighway where the youngsters, they're always taking pictures of their dinner.  And then they try to show it to you.  I don't care what they're eating, but they keep trying to show me their dinner.  I'm tired of seeing little, tiny plates of organic, local garbage.  Listen.  Stop showing me your dinner, and get out of my dreams!

PAULY:  All right, that's Uncle Sal's problem there.  If you want to help him out, I'd appreciate it.  I'm tired of him waking up in the middle of the night screaming about locally sourced beef.  Okay?  That'd be great.  Thanks.

DAVE:   Oh, man.  That's pretty deep.

CHRIS:  I mean, I feel like pills are the answer here or -- I don't know.

DAVE:   Yeah.  I am not a doctor.

CHRIS:  Yeah.

DAVE:   So, yeah, I think your Uncle Sal might be on the way out because that sounds like crazy talk.

CHRIS:  That's a theoretical future I can't picture.  I mean, can you imagine the world in ten…?  Are we going to be having these same stupid arguments ten years from now?  Probably not.  I mean what are the chances of Shop Talk Show existing in 2014?  Pretty slim, I think. 

DAVE:   Pretty slim.  And the whole point of the Internet is so that we blog, you know, and talk about these problems in depth with each other.  That's the whole point of the Internet right now, so, you know, I think it's going to solve a lot of these problems and all that mundane stuff about -- what did he say -- pictures of food.  I don't see it happening.

CHRIS:  Yeah, like people can wait three minutes to listen to a picture at dinner, you know.  

DAVE:   Yeah.

CHRIS:  It's like who's got the time for all that stuff.

DAVE:   Yeah, because you'd have to take the picture, you know, load it onto your computer --

CHRIS:  Print it out.  Scan it.

DAVE:   Yeah.  And then, you know, digital cameras cost so much now, I don't even -- who can afford them, you know.  But I don't see it being so popular, but we'll -- hopefully -- I don't know -- hopefully that doesn't happen.  That's what I'm thinking.

CHRIS:  And the pictures that people take are going to be real kind of meaningful moments and, you know, security is going to be high in the future and, you know, just people really take care to really, you know, connect with people in meaningful ways.  You know, I just can't see a future where it's just mundane garbage all the time.

DAVE:   Yeah.  Yeah, I don't.  I don't because he's describing a dystopia, you know, like if Blogger tried to manipulate your emotions or something like that.  That's just crazy talk.  I don't know.  I think the Internet --

CHRIS:  I think we're all a little too smart for that.  

DAVE:   I think the Internet is making the world a better place and, you know, you've just got to trust these companies, like Google, you know, to not be evil.  I think that's the most important thing.  So all right, well, I think that's all for this episode.  We really appreciate you listening.  Thank you to KUTV Radio for putting us on.  We really appreciate that.  And be sure to write us in, send us voicemails.  We really appreciate that.  So, Chris, you got anything else you'd like to add?

CHRIS:  Nah.  Well, thanks, everybody, for listening.  We've got to get this couch out of here, and we'll talk to you next week.

[Xylophone side effect]

CHRIS:  Wow.

DAVE:   Whoa!

CHRIS:  Yeah.

DAVE:   Chris!

CHRIS:  I can't believe that.

DAVE:   Wow!

CHRIS:  We made it all the way through that old episode that we recorded all those many years ago, and only are airing now for the first time.  

DAVE:   Yeah.

CHRIS:  That was pretty wild.  Apparently I had quite a midwestern accent back then.  You know, I hadn't yet left Wisconsin, so that makes sense that we would.

DAVE:   My voice cracked quite a bit and also assumed a midwestern accent at times.  That was the most depressing thing about the past. 

CHRIS:  That's just the way 2004 was.  It was just like that, I guess.  Lots of heavy accents.

DAVE:   Yep.

CHRIS:  Midwestern no matter where you live, stuff like that.  So thanks.  You know, maybe we'll dig out some more old episodes some time and play them for you.  You know, it takes a little while to get these things, you know, off the zip drive and stuff, so we'll see how that goes.  Again, we wanted to mention some 2014 based sponsors here, which one of them is Adobe, and they're, you know, doing some awesome stuff in 2014 with the Web, with their Edge Animate and, like, I don't know.  They really are kind of it seems like they're betting on the Web big, and they're doing all kinds of awesome stuff with Web standards and Web animation.  Their Snap SVG library is really cool.  

They wanted to mention ProjectParfait.Adobe.com, which is really worth checking out.  It's literally ProjectParfait.Adobe.com, which is like a -- you open up a Photoshop file in the browser in it, and it shows you that Photoshop file.  And then you can click around on it and click like text elements and layers and all that kind of different stuff.  And then it'll tell you what color it is.  It will tell you the width and height of it and background color, the background image and, you know, it gives you all this information about it.  It's really a nice way, you know, if you're a designer working with a front-end person, it's like the link between.  

It's really cool.  And I'm not just blowing smoke here.  One of my favorite features of it, for sure, is that you can click on like a shape layer, you know, if there's an icon or an arrow or something that's probably drawn in vectors in Photoshop.  You can click on it and there'll be a box around it just around it, and then you can download just that as an individual asset as like jpeg or png or svg, which is really cool.  So if the designer is in there working with icons and stuff and you're like, I need this little icon, and I know svg is cool.  This thing should probably be svg because it was vector in Photoshop.  It should be vector on the Web.  You can download just that little cropped asset as svg, which is really cool.  And that's just one of like a million features it has, and it's cool.  So like if there's a gradient there, it will give you the syntax of that gradient in CSS gradient and stuff.  It's really quite a nice little project from Adobe.  

Thanks for sponsoring the show and the CSS Summit.  Go to csssummit.com, and you'll be redirected to the Environments for Humans site who are promoting their conference coming up July 15th through 17th.  It's a three-day show about CSS.  It turns out CSS was kind of the right answer.  We didn't know that back in the day.

DAVE:   Uh.  We sounded like idiots.

CHRIS:  Uh, I know.  So dumb, us back them in the past.  

DAVE:   Way past.

CHRIS:  So now there's whole conferences about it, including this three-day event, again July 15th through 17th.  It's coming up very soon.  You can attend it from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection because it happens in your browser.  The talks happen in your browser even though they're live.  It's not like you're watching it recorded, so you can ask questions, interact with the author and stuff while looking at their slides and their face and stuff.  It's all pretty cool, you know.  

Let me just name random names.  Estelle Weyl, Jing Jin, Matt Carver, Jason Pamental, Rachel Andrew, Ana Tudor are people that you recognize from CodePen or the Internet or the show, in general, lots of people even from 2004.  There's Rachael Neighbors is doing a talk and stuff.  Anyway, it should be pretty cool.  If you want to go to it, you need to buy a ticket and you should do it, and you should save some money doing it by using coupon code: ShopTalkShow to save 20% on any of those tickets, so thanks so much for listening.  What else?  Do you want to take us out, Dave?

DAVE:   Yeah.  Well, yeah, I was just going to say Snugug is going to be there, and he's going to melt your brain, so that guy knows his stuff.  So thanks, everyone, for listening.  We really appreciate you sending in your questions, whether that's in 2014 or 2003 or '04, whatever we did.  And it's really great.  Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ShopTalkShow, and rate this episode or actually not this episode, but every episode up in iTunes.  Just five stars, that's just that easy.  And, Chris, do you got anything else for us?

CHRIS:  ShopTalkShow.LiveJournal.com.

DAVE:   Whoo, Chris.  

CHRIS:  That was officially weird.