Craig Soup Web Design Blog

Does the phrase “semantic HTML” mean anything to you?

If you’re a web developer, then you’re probably familiar with the concept, if not the name. Semantic HTML refers to clean HTML code that’s free of any type of presentational markup. That means no more table tags for layout purposes and no more empty gif files that serve as spacers. You’ve heard of separating content and design with the use of HTML and CSS, and the concept of semantic HTML is a key component of this separation.

The main idea of semantic HTML is to create simpler, cleaner code . . . so why use such a bulky name to describe it? Well, recently someone else asked the same question, and the term “POSH” was coined. It stands for “plain old semantic HTML”, and its monosyllabic nature allows it to roll off the tongue in a way “semantic HTML” never did.

So I’m hoping this new term catches on. Thanks to Dan Cederholm for introducing me to this term in his blog.

Yesterday, I finally downloaded and installed Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium onto my computer. This includes new versions of Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and more! And so far, I’m thrilled with the products.

The integration between products is now flawless. It’s remarkably simple now to import Photoshop and Illustrator files into Flash, which is going to save me tons of time in the long run.

Like many others, I was a little nervous when I heard that Adobe was going to acquire Macromedia. All kinds of nasty, unsubstantiated rumors were whirling about: Adobe was going to drop Flash, kill Dreamweaver, and set up their own colony on the moon. Naturally, none of these rumors were true. In fact, at the Flash Forward convention last year, we were told that the main reason Adobe wanted to acquire Macromedia was because of Flash. We also discovered that they were keeping the team that developed Flash in the first place.

No need to mess with a good thing, right?

Anyways, I just wanted to give a big shout out to Adobe and all the hard work they’ve done in the release of Creative Suite 3. The result is a masterpiece. Keep it up, guys!

If you’ve been thinking about buying Photoshop just so you can edit a few photos, think again.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Photoshop, and I don’t know what I’d do without it. In fact, my Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium should be arriving in the mail any day now. But if all you’re going to use Photoshop for is image correction, then you might want to consider using an online photo editing tool like picnik. Why?

3 reasons:

1. It’s free
2. It does an amazing job with editing photos
3. You can tie it to your Flickr or Picasa accounts and edit photos you’ve already uploaded!!

Here’s an example of an image on my Flickr account BEFORE I edited it with picnik:

And here’s what it looks like AFTER:

Who knew that a free online tool would be able to do such amazing things with your photographs??

Now we all do! Enjoy!