Adobe® Dreamweaver CS6 Website Design Program By Howard Berenbon Dreamweaver is by far the best Website design program that any creative computer professional can own. Even if you not planning a career in Web design but want to try your hand at designing a site for your company, or even for personal use, you absolutely needed this tool, and you won’t regret spending the time or your money on Dreamweaver. It takes a complex design task and makes it easy as pie. Once you leap the learning curve, you'll never look back. It will help you design that professional looking site, and once the project is complete, it will be very easy to manage and maintain. If you need help over the learning curve there's Adobe TV to the rescue, or many other free and some paid aids. If you want a complete video training course for a low monthly fee from experts in the field, visit Lynda.com. They offer excellent training for many of the Adobe products (and other software products in the field). Also, some of their videos, or snippets of videos, are available free from tv.adobe.com. And that’s the place to find a lot of free tutorials on Dreamweaver by various Adobe.com experts. What’s New & Improved So, what's new and improved since their last update CS6? Well, besides the improvements listed below (Adobe is always adding features), one excellent addition is their very new Fluid Grid Layouts. It creates 3 sets of CSS styles, 2 for the various mobile devices that are such the rave, and 1 set for the standard size LCD/LED video monitors. A small set of styles is selected for the iPod, iPhone and similar sized android phones, a medium set is used for the iPads and Android based tablets, and a full size set is accessed for the standard video monitor, or larger. The @media command is used to detect the type of display accessing your site, and picks the correct CSS layout for that device. So if it detects an iPhone, it will change to the small mobile device style sheet with the correct layout so your site will be easy to see on that device. Now, you will need to design the layout for each of the sizes, with the help of Dreamweaver. The alternative (without Fluid Grid Layout) is to design separate pages for each device, but that's extra work and wasted space on your server. Now it's fast and simple to support those new devices. If you need a reason to upgrade, Fluid Grid Layout is the reason. I haven't mentioned Adobe's Creative Cloud, but I think it's important. The Creative Cloud is not just an online storage service, but allows access to their collection of CS6 tools that you can use to create apps (Website or iPad), add audio and video to your sites, and more, for , just $49.99 a month. If you join the Cloud, you'll get extra support for HTML5 programming. Fluid Grid Layout. Create cross-platform and cross-browser-compatible web designs using the CSS3-based Fluid Grid Layout system. Work faster and more efficiently as you develop projects using clean, industry-standard code for a wide range of devices and computers. Visually construct complex web designs and page layouts without getting buried in code. Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 sells for $379 (upgrade from CS5.5 is $125, from CS5 is $249) and will run on any multimedia PC, Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 processor, 512 RAM, 1 GB available disk space with Windows 7/8, XP/Vista/Enterprise, 1280x800 display and a DVD-ROM drive. It will also run in the Apple Mac OS X v10.5.8 or v10.6, Multicore Intel processor with 512 MB RAM, 1.8 GB available disk space, 1280x800 display and a DVD-ROM drive. For more information, or to order, visit Amazon.com. Adobe® Systems Incorporated |
VIPRE® Internet Security 2013 from GFI Software Last year about this time I reviewed Vipre Antivirus Premium 2012, and this year I had a chance to evaluate the newest version for 2013. I have to say I have been using and reviewing Vipre since 2008 (originally from Sunbelt Software), and it’s proved itself over and over again. To be honest, I was skeptical about installing a program that claimed to work in the background without limiting your use of your machine. But, to my surprise, from day one, Vipre has always worked as described, has not limited my use of my computer either with Active Protection, or while updating the Threat Definitions. I especially find the bad Website alert feature helpful. It seems like there are lots of sites out there trying to compromise your computer. Just last past month, I had a dozen or more warnings—don’t go there, and I obey. You can override, but it’s not recommended. Some New and Some Improved Features Easy Update TM (new)--Updates the most common cause of PC infections and Easy Install TM (new)--Ensures a smooth, trouble-free installation process by Two Way Firewall--Protects against incoming and outgoing Internet traffic quickly Spam Filter--Filters unwanted email from your inbox and safeguards against spam, phishing scams and malicious URLs. Bad Website Blocker--Blocks access to malicious websites to prevent you from inadvertently browsing to them and compromising your PC. High-Performance Anti-Malware Engine--Advanced antivirus and anti-spyware technologies to provide complete security that doesn't slow down your PC. All-in-one PC Security--Detects and removes viruses, spyware, rootkits, bots, Trojans and all other types of malware. Real-time Monitoring and Protection--Leverages multiple detection methods to monitor and protect against web threats, including zero-day threats, in real time. Removable Device Scanning--Scans USB flash drives and other removable drives and files for threats automatically when plugged or inserted into your PC. VIRPE® Internet Security 2013 sells for $49.95 with a one year license for a single computer. Requires a 1 GHZ PC with 512 MB RAM and 300 MB free space. Runs in Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7/8 (32/64-bit) and Windows Sever 2008 (32/64-bit). They offer a 30-day money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied. |
Adobe® Dreamweaver CS6 and Vipre® Internet Security 2013 . March 2013 . Vol. 19 No. 3
