Hi all....I would "really" like to be able to choose if and when I want the object properties box to appear while I am designing in VSD. Right now I spend more time moving it out of my way, than designing. If I could make a suggestion that I don't think would be difficult:
In the view tab have the option to put a check mark beside the use of the object properties box or not, I love that I can click on the object icon box at the top to get the box when I want it, and need it, but when it presents itself on its own when I click on new areas to work, it is very frustrationg, as it is not always the next object area I am working on. Hope this makes sense. )

Scott I hope you also saw my much longer VSD wish list above my comments about mobile support and spell check :-)

Perhaps a separate program would be in order for making mobile web sites though...

Scott,

One more thing to add to my long post above. VSD deletes un-needed files from the server after it uploads... but it prompts you to click yes or no to this action.

One of my web sites is for a newspaper and has three years worth of archives on it. My computer crashed a few times and had to be re-formatted. When I got it up and running again and re-installed VSD the site had to be re-synced. Re-Syncing this site turned out to be a NIGHTMARE! That's because the software doesn't believe that the site has been uploaded unless you answer the prompt about deleting un-needed files.

It would have been impossible for me to sit in front of the computer while the site re-synced because it's an 8-10 upload to re-sync. So I'd let it run overnight and come back in the AM and that message about un-needed files would be on the screen but when I answered it, it was too late. The next time I went to upload the site it would upload ALL the archives again. It went around in circles like this for a while before anything was accomplished. Ended up taking about three weeks before VSD didn't have to re-sync the ENTIRE site for every little change. In other words I had to leave my computer on overnight for ANY little change that I wanted to make on the site. I came about two centimeters from canning VSD and finding a different software just due to that one glitch.

I hope your developers can take a close look at this for the next edition of the software. If you look through my trouble tickets you'll see the nightmare this was for me and I submitted trouble tickets and no one knew how to help. The only reason I'm posting this now is because VSD did this to me again just this evening. Major glitch.

What would be great would be if you had a button people could push to "always delete un-needed files". This would save the user from having to answer the prompt each time, and would also solve the above issue I was having with the software :-)

We have tried so hard to replicate the scenario you have describe here in house, but for the life of us we can't. I have a site that has close to 450 pages and loaded with a ton of things. I have never had anything close to that happen. The first upload does take a little while but after that, always works flawlessly.

The good news is we are working on something pretty cool and cutting edge for VSD and it will most likely address every issue you have had. Can't say much about it yet, but you will be hearing more about it very soon.

Hi.

I thought Chad had some excellent suggestions, especially the one about word wrapping.

My suggestion also deals with text display. There are times when the text I am displaying over an image doesn't show as cleanly as I would like.

I can always use the shapes tool to place a rectangle behind the text to make it stand out but of course that hides the image in back.

Would it be possible to create a transparent fill to be used with the shapes tool so that text was more clearly seen while background images were only slightly less visible (kind of like a css quote box at 66% opacity).

I'm using the registered version of VSD 6.0 build 6 (among other things). One of my sites is ChristCovenant.info. I'm working within Win XP. I have no issues with VSD and am growing to appreciate it more and more each day.

Thanks,

David Trammell

Thanks.

Hi David I went to your site, looks like its coming along nicely. It is larger than my screen and I have to scroll back and forth to view the hole page, which is kind of a pain, but over all nice site. If you wanted to eliminate that scrolling just make your width of your page smaller, for me with my puter settings it is a wider of 1000. Keeps the page within the boundries. Sorry not much of technical talk, but thought his might help a bit. )

David,

Maybe I'm missing something here, but is there any reason you wouldn't just want to use a shadow to make the text stand out?

Also, the video on the front page of your site doesn't play for me. I get a message that says "Click here to download plugin." I'm guessing this is maybe a Windows Media File that you've embedded here. If the video has been uploaded to your server and the embedd code is done correctly, then it WILL work for people who have the Windows Media Plugin on their computer, but you should really embed the video using Coffee Cup Web Video Player. This uses flash which is universally compatible (well, almost universally....)

Chad Spillars
http://www.DisneySubmarines.com

Thanks for the response Chad.

Regarding the question of why not use shadowed text; I have used that in the past but in two instances (a moving background and a contrasty sunset background) I found that using shadows contributed to visual clutter and poor readability. I have since found a CSS solution that seems to work for me and I have now submitted it to CoffeeCup SNPs.

As far as the video goes, the site uses different types of video in different places. I use a mpg in one place because any further conversion to another format would degrade the resolution to the point that the text in it would be unreadable. Other places I use flv or swf because of how I want the presentation to be delivered and still others I use mwv because I want to control the initial volume of the video or some other parameter that I have not yet discovered in the CoffeeCup Web Video Player (plus I started doing this type of embedding long before CCWVP was available or I could even afford it, old habits die hard).

Hope all this makes sense.

See you around.

David Trammell

Hi Scott,

I've asked this in the past.

Any chance that you can put in a simple way to add anchors?

I know that you can add anchors if you know HTML, but my HTML skills are very poor.

Jeff