Sorry ’bout that

can you help me with something?

I have a private blog which I’m trying to change the template. and there is something I’ve been trying to do but no avail, and that is to change the part that says posted by…

right now, mine is just a symbol followed by the time. I would like to change it to something like posted by … and the time. something like yours.

and how do I draw a line between two posts? do i do that in my template or something?

and lastly, if i were to post more than once a day, how do i get the dateheader to appear again?

Thanks a lot. If you could answer all these questions, or link me to some one who can, I would be most greatful.

By default in Photoshop, underlines on text that is not anti-aliased appear physically attached to the text’s baseline. This trick “lifts” the text up off its baseline one pixel, leaving space between it and the underline. It works in Photoshop 7. Not sure about CS.

This little corner of the Web is where I learned the trick.

Hope that helps!

It still has some teething issues. Large (8mb+) files cause it to bog down after a while (memory leak?).

It’s JPEG compressions is pretty much the same as Photoshop:

It’s GIF compression has some issues:

and

Fireworks 2004 GIF Export Bug

Sadly, the FW community still has a lot of “deziners” hawking template designs and eye-candy/how-to books. The Macromedia Fireworks Forum/Usenet Group is a frustrating excercise due to over zealous hobbyists who don’t understand photoshop’s strengths.

But I still love it! :)

I tried this technique and it moves the underline directly underneath the text but not further from the text. Is there something sneakier to be done?

More generally, I’m consistently surprised at how little Adobe really listens to (or asks) Web designers about their needs, particularly about the integration of PS and AI.

Beautiful work on Blogger, btw, Douglas.

… bump down underlines in Photoshop one pixel from the text baseline, like they are in web browsers …

How is this done? I’d really like to know.

* Zoom in at least 300%.
* Select all of the text.
* On the Mac, hold down the Command key and drag the text upward ever so slightly. (Not sure what key to use in Windows.)

Pretty sneaky, huh?

I just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know this post has been picked up by the Design Weblog and the Magazine Design Weblog.

The posts also include a cross-platform downloadable Underline text character style.

thank you for the example. I can see what you mean. What I see there is a template for the underlying structure of the page, which definitely makes sense to pin down on paper, before starting to code the html (or whatever). I agree with you, you need something like this to exchange thoughts with clients and colleagues.

But – if you are in a pitch, this would hardly be enough to show your client the final “look” of the site. After all, it’s about the neat little things and the prettyness of the design that makes the client choose you as the designer.

Don’t you have, apart from your example, one page of the website that is almost finished, with the actual buttons, logo, background, photos and typography?

Because that’s when I think it makes no sense to have comps at all. For the page / site structure, of course, you’re right, but for the look, I don’t see the use.

Best Regards,

Steve

How is this done? I’d really like to know.

I am really curious, I am not promoting my method over it…

A lack of an native underline is just one of the many reasons to NOT USE illustrator for web design. Another is poor pagination — which has only gotten worse, not better in more recent versions. Adobe’s made it painfully clear that they want illustrator to be used for print design and little else. Fortunately, they’ve given web designers (specifically interaction designers and information architects) a wonderful tool with InDesign.

I’ll admit that I’m equally impressed with the type engine in the CS product line. But if underlines were implemented in Illustrator, I would expect tighter control over them. After all, Illustrator is known for its infinite typographic control, and although I’d be a little satisfied to see the same underline feature present for quick use, parts of me would be bummed not to find absolute control over the underline offset, stroke weight, etc. that I mentioned in the post above.

Oh, well. Not tossing blame to anyone. Just raising the heat a little, and asking you not to discount the power in using an app like AI for web-based work…

Thanks again.

Let me explain.

I have long been vocal on my views that underlines in web design used for the expression of hypertext links was about as poor a decision that can be thought of in the history of high-tech design. And yes I blame Berners-Lee. 8^) You may or may not disagree with me on that point, but from my point of view, to study typography is to see just how beautiful italics, bold, medium, ultra light, and true ligatures are for various typefaces. Hard, laborious work goes into designing type, and underlines are a remnant of the dark age of typography, also known as the electric typewriter period. (People still have problems breaking the double-space after periods rule that became acceptable during that dark age. Ugh.)

As such, I fought against underlines for both Photoshop and Illustrator. They are a bane on promoting and practicing good typography. But alas due to the web, there are here to stay, and even I am now using underlines (in dotted form, to ease the pain). As such, getting underlines supported was more of a philosophical hurdle, and obviously not a technological hurdle.

Getting over the philosophical hurdle occurred for Photoshop in version 5.5. or 6.0 (I forget which off the top of my head.) Illustrator, aimed more at print design, stayed the course of presenting more “accurate” typography. Around the time it seemed people started using AI for web work, more in the past few years, the engineers went to work on recreating the the entire type engine code library. A huge feat and a technical marvel if I may brag for my coworkers. All the extraordinarily cool features found in InDesign, and some of the high-end type stuff in Illustrator, got combined into one very extensive and comprehensive type code library. That library is now shared amongst all the apps found in the Creative Suite. The type engine in Adobe’s products is quite amazing if you ask me. That engineering feat took some serious time.

So, it’s not that the AI team is not listening. There have just been bigger fish to fry. (InDesign added underlines early on because they wanted to promote ID as a web page mock-up tool. I’m not sure how many people use underlines with ID though, as only web people really seem to need it, and I’m not sure how many ID use it for web creation these days.) AI is not considered as much of a web mock-up tool as Photoshop has been, so the addition of this minor feature — while obviously present in the new type engine as discovered by the copy/paste Photoshop trick — has just been below the red line when it comes to things that had to get done. Things are changing for AI though it seems, as it becomes more and more at the same level as PS for this sort of work.

And yes, my stubbornness on this issues back in 1997 and 1998 probably contributed to the delays in supported underlines. So blame me more than you blame the hard working engineers on the product. I probably deserve the heat more than they do.

But… (You knew that was coming…) That still doesn’t change my opinion on how much I hate underlines for links, even though I’m now using them in my own web site. 8^P

This comment is in no way a representation of my employer, an official answer from Adobe, or the official views of the company. It simply one lowly worker bees’ opinion. Please take it as such.