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November 2002 : The year of the technophile.

Well, it's been a while since I was here. I've been rebuilding a couple of other sites which needed it, believe me!

Since my last foray up into this part of the ether, I've purchased another machine and a couple of thousand pounds worth of new software. Ever the glutton for self imposed punishment. So now I'm trying to make sense of Macromedia Studio MX - having had a go at Microsoft Front Page 2002, seen all the extra code it feels obliged to lob in (not to mention some not so useful, 'state of the art', improvements so that only the latest browsers can see all the goodies!), the nice, helpful, way in which it rearranged some of my imported pages (so helpful that they had to be ditched and re-written) and eventually slung the whole bloody thing away!

A not so good start to my idea of getting a bit more up to speed with 'what's happening' (at around the £100 mark for FP2002, a definite bummer!). Then I discovered HomeSite from Allaire - absolutely brilliant. There was an update to the copy I bought, for about £60, which was 'only' £20 or so. Ok, I thought, let's go for it.

This is when I found out that Allaire was now owned by Macromedia - the abundance of flash on the site was one give away, but the other was the inclusion of 30 day trials of Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. I was hooked.

Like a lemming to a cliff, I went and bought Fireworks. It could be upgraded - this is when sanity started to leave the building!

The upgrade was to Fireworks MX but for not much more (funny concept of cash some of these companies have), I could upgrade to Fireworks MX and Dreamweaver MX.

So again I parted with the hard earned (well, the credit card parted with it, I'm still paying) but this time a small glitch in the process omitted my discount. I was duly billed for the full amount. I was duly pissed off and duly rang the kind bod's at Macromedia.

Unfortunately, there was no way to credit the difference back to me as it had been my small glitch - I'm still absolutely certain I did everything I was meant to, but this seems to be my fate in life. Guess what?

For a small sum, as I now owned two full price products, I could upgrade to Studio MX which has everything in it!

I looked at the small sum involved and wondered if there was any work going at Macromedia, because it looked to be a pretty hefty whack of change to me. I then looked at the cost of upgrading to Studio MX from one full product (I was now sold on the idea of having Studio - madness, sheer and utter bloody madness!) and found that it wasn't so terrible! The reason it didn't look so terrible was because I could sell my brand new copy of Dreamweaver MX for between £200 and £250 (the value of the discount for keeping it was only around £125). So out with the plastic and we're off ....

Not quite, as Macromedia goofed and sent me an upgrade from 2 (not one but sodding 2) products version. Fortunately, within a day of finding this out they emailed to say they had goofed and sent me a key to allow installation. And another e-mail to tell me that I'd probably be billed again as they had only taken for a two product upgrade but, by dint of the key, had provided a one product upgrade." Whatever", I seem to remember saying - being both mentally and financially numb at this stage!

The final, financial, kick in the chops was to receive two bills from customs and excise (I'd imported the software) totaling just under £100 - all in all Studio MX and all the bits I bought before have cost about £1,600. And I wonder why I'm skint!!

Anyway, the upshot of all this is, that apart from paying for a new PC (a P4 laptop in case anyone was interested!), I also have more new software to learn than I thought possible. And, what with the imminent approach of Xmas and other little things like trying to find some spare moolah (the racing season is not too hot at the moment!) things are a bit hectic around here.

Christmas and the New Year being over, it was time to write something else. The result is the link below :-

The current special is for Valentine's Day (or any other!) at:

Valentine's Special

The "Chrissie Special" is a just around the corner at:

The Christmas Special

If you haven't seen it, (I forgot to tell you - oops!) there was a Halloween Special, which can be found at:

The Halloween Special


	Wildepages.net \| home The Current Topic November 2002 : The year of the technophile. Well, it's been a while since I was here. I've been rebuilding a couple of other sites which needed it, believe me! Since my last foray up into this part of the ether, I've purchased another machine and a couple of thousand pounds worth of new software. Ever the glutton for self imposed punishment. So now I'm trying to make sense of Macromedia Studio MX - having had a go at Microsoft Front Page 2002, seen all the extra code it feels obliged to lob in (not to mention some not so useful, 'state of the art', improvements so that only the latest browsers can see all the goodies!), the nice, helpful, way in which it rearranged some of my imported pages (so helpful that they had to be ditched and re-written) and eventually slung the whole bloody thing away! A not so good start to my idea of getting a bit more up to speed with 'what's happening' (at around the £100 mark for FP2002, a definite bummer!). Then I discovered HomeSite from Allaire - absolutely brilliant. There was an update to the copy I bought, for about £60, which was 'only' £20 or so. Ok, I thought, let's go for it. This is when I found out that Allaire was now owned by Macromedia - the abundance of flash on the site was one give away, but the other was the inclusion of 30 day trials of Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. I was hooked. Like a lemming to a cliff, I went and bought Fireworks. It could be upgraded - this is when sanity started to leave the building! The upgrade was to Fireworks MX but for not much more (funny concept of cash some of these companies have), I could upgrade to Fireworks MX and Dreamweaver MX. So again I parted with the hard earned (well, the credit card parted with it, I'm still paying) but this time a small glitch in the process omitted my discount. I was duly billed for the full amount. I was duly pissed off and duly rang the kind bod's at Macromedia. Unfortunately, there was no way to credit the difference back to me as it had been my small glitch - I'm still absolutely certain I did everything I was meant to, but this seems to be my fate in life. Guess what? For a small sum, as I now owned two full price products, I could upgrade to Studio MX which has everything in it! I looked at the small sum involved and wondered if there was any work going at Macromedia, because it looked to be a pretty hefty whack of change to me. I then looked at the cost of upgrading to Studio MX from one full product (I was now sold on the idea of having Studio - madness, sheer and utter bloody madness!) and found that it wasn't so terrible! The reason it didn't look so terrible was because I could sell my brand new copy of Dreamweaver MX for between £200 and £250 (the value of the discount for keeping it was only around £125). So out with the plastic and we're off .... Not quite, as Macromedia goofed and sent me an upgrade from 2 (not one but sodding 2) products version. Fortunately, within a day of finding this out they emailed to say they had goofed and sent me a key to allow installation. And another e-mail to tell me that I'd probably be billed again as they had only taken for a two product upgrade but, by dint of the key, had provided a one product upgrade." Whatever", I seem to remember saying - being both mentally and financially numb at this stage! The final, financial, kick in the chops was to receive two bills from customs and excise (I'd imported the software) totaling just under £100 - all in all Studio MX and all the bits I bought before have cost about £1,600. And I wonder why I'm skint!! Anyway, the upshot of all this is, that apart from paying for a new PC (a P4 laptop in case anyone was interested!), I also have more new software to learn than I thought possible. And, what with the imminent approach of Xmas and other little things like trying to find some spare moolah (the racing season is not too hot at the moment!) things are a bit hectic around here. Christmas and the New Year being over, it was time to write something else. The result is the link below :- The current special is for Valentine's Day (or any other!) at: Valentine's Special The "Chrissie Special" is a just around the corner at: The Christmas Special If you haven't seen it, (I forgot to tell you - oops!) there was a Halloween Special, which can be found at: The Halloween Special copyright 2001-2003, Jezter Ltd.