You’ve seen piped navigation before. Typically found in the footer of websites, appearing as a list of links separated by a | (pipe).

There’s a nice way to fake piping using really clean, standards friendly code along with our friend, CSS. I’ve been using this method for years now and am quite happy with it. Basically, you start by creating a typical unordered list containing the list of links.

<ul id="piped">
  <li><a href="first">One</a></li>
  <li><a href="second">Two</a></li>
  <li class="last"><a href="third">Three</a></li>
</ul>

I’ll explain the class=”last” in a minute.

Now in your stylesheet you tell the list to be displayed without any bullets and displayed inline rather than stacked as is the default. You also give each link a nice pad on both the left and right. To fake the pipe, you simply add a border to one side. This is where the class=”last” comes in. You don’t want there to be a border after the last link, so for that class, you can simply set the border to none.

ul#piped li{
  display: inline;
  border-right: 1px solid #000;
  padding-left: 10px;
  padding-right: 7px;
}
ul#piped li.last{
  border-right: none;
}

(Realistically, you could also do border-left and class=”first.”)

The end result:

• One
• Two
• Three

I was upgrading Kubuntu today, when it told me something went wrong and so I stopped it. Then, when I went back to restart Adept Manager, I got the message:
Another process using packaging system database
I started looking around my running processes and attempting to kill whatever I thought might be causing the problem, but it wasn’t working. So, I followed my mantra: “When all else fails, reboot!” and did what no Linux person will ever admit doing. I rebooted the system.

To my chagrin, the error was still coming up, even after a Linux reboot. ;(

Then I learned of this command:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

which causes things to continue where they left off in the upgrade and I was back in business! No GUI this time, but at least I could get my stuff back up and running properly.

Today I got a promotional email from Google, because I’m an Analytics user, to try to convince me I need AdWords and even gave me a $20 special offer. The strange thing is, they called me Tony. So my question is, did they call everyone Tony? Did Tony get mine? Or is the array number one off and everyone is getting the wrong name in their email?

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I’m at Adobe MAX this week. I’m currently sitting in the sneak peek session and blogging it with my phone (so forgive any typos or misunderstandings).

Out of over 600 entries, the MAX award’s people’s choice was given to eBay Desktop.

Now for the sneaks:

Adobe Visual Communicator is new to Adobe. We all got a copy when we got here but had no idea what it was until the session explained that its pretty much a way to create video as though you are in a TV studio with teleprompter and effects. You can also do live streaming. It handles green screening, multiple cameras etc. with just a single simple laptop. This is the first time we’ve been able to play with a sneak peek at home!

An online diary service called Coconiki (or something) being used internally at Adobe is a tool to create an online diary for close knit friends. I guess it’s more than blogging software because it has voice, video, photos, music, etc., etc.

Flash Home for Mobile wants to change poor usability in cell phones. This will boot the phone directly into flash instead of the native interface. It contains a slick interface with animations, etc. It can also connect to the web. Flash Home is similar to AIR in that it’s integrated with the phone, not the phone’s browser. You can make it show a custom image based on the area code of the person calling.

Photoshop Express is a consumer *online* version of photoshop. Not intended to replace Photoshop for hardcore users, but rather a consumer product for the average joe. Uses Flash player as the delivery platform. Red eye removal, rubber stamping, color replacement, distort, and a pretty cool “timeline” history (undo) interface were demonstrated.

Some new (or not) features in FireWorks “Next” will allow you to actually export Flex (or AIR) app code directly from Fireworks using built in Flex Components.

ColdFusion can be used to create AIR apps. Or something…not only am I not a ColdFusion user, the guy presenting barely spoke English. No offence Hemant.

Web to print apps will be possible using Flex and Indesign servers(?) where a user can update a document online and it can be spit out beautifully via PDF.

Future version of Flash may include a new stage core which will allow you to play flv video on the stage during development time. You could tweak the videos while they are playing! New tweening tools will allow you to monkey with a tween visually on the stage rather than on the timeline and is transferable with the object. Flash will also have IK capabilities!!! Killer!

Flash and PDF can now talk to each other using JavaScript and ActionScript. Therefore Acrobat collaboration can happen over connect.

Building Flex applications on linux will now be possible (not just using a text editor) using a Flex Builder for Linux. This is available *right now* on Adobe labs as an Alpha product (very early version).

An experimental technology that allows you to use C/C++ to do some XSLT stuff with Flash was demonstrated. Essentially you could extend ActionScript with C++, Python, Ruby, etc. in Flash for many uses, and use the libs or protocals for those inside of Flash.

The final presentation was by Shai Avadan showing off his now YouTube made famous technology which allows you do to lossless image resizing. If you haven’t seen his video yet, it’s well worth it. Your jaw will drop to the floor. Adobe immediately hired the guy ans are planning to use his idea in future versions of Photoshop.

That’s about it. I’m going to the party now.