March 13, 2008
It seems like everyday some new website pops up with something that might be cool, useful, interesting or educational. The best ones seem to be a combination of all these things. The trouble is how do you find these places. I wanted to share a good source to get you started. Each year a conference is held in Austin, TX called SXSW Interactive. Originally this started out as a music festival then a film festival was added. Now and Interactive conference in a major part of the festivities.
Anyway as part of the conference a Awards are given to a whole selection of Web sites. Here is a link to this years winners: http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/web_awards/winners/
Enjoy exploring some of the “New and Cool” and hopefully useful.
Posted in Tim 
No Comments »
January 9, 2008
Okay so this is the continuation of the Jott post that I previously I guess it’s a 30 second timer but it seems but Jott allows you to record things to your phone and have them transcribed and sent either to yourself as an e-mail or as a text message or you can even have them transcribed and posted straight to your blog and that’s the kind you’re reading here so check it out. listen
Powered by Jott
Posted in Tim No Comments »
January 9, 2008
Hi,
This is Tim coming to you from my cellphone. I just discovered this new service called jott.com which is sorter one of those services that is a little bit hard to describe. But I talking on my cellphone now I just called a free toll free number and it is taking my voice recording it and then transcribing it and posting it …
listen
Powered by Jott
Posted in Tim No Comments »
January 9, 2008
In our Dreamweaver Part 2 workshop, Fireworks is introduced as a layout design tool. Without too much trouble a design can be created that seems to fit together. It is also much easier to try out different option than it is in Dreamweaver. This design is then sliced up and exported over to Dreamweaver. Everything works great except that the result is a rather table/graphic heavy site. Which is fine but none of the benefits of CSS are being used. Implementing a CSS layout from the code generated by Fireworks is a bit beyond the scope of our workshops. That is until now.
In a recent article from Adobes Design Center John Wylie writes
“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply create your designs in Fireworks and then, with a click of a button, your page would be converted into production-ready HTML and CSS?”
Well, he has actually created a free extension for fireworks that does just that. Yesterday I read and followed his article and low and behold it worked. Not only did it work it worked really well and I didn’t have to do any code tweaking. I got a html file that was ready to turn into a template and start using…
So, if you have recently taken our workshops read John’s article then take the png created for your layout and give it try.
Posted in Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Tim, css No Comments »
December 3, 2007
Well Dreamweaver CS3 has been out for awhile and I am finally having a chance to take a look at some of the new features. One stands out as something usable right away and that is the new SPRY tools. What is SPRY you say? Well not to get too geeky but it a way for you to easily add AJAX functionality to your website. OK, now what is AJAX…? Let’s not get into that, suffice to say, if you would like to add more interactivity to a site without having to continually refresh the pages then SPRY/AJAX is for you. Dreamweaver CS3 a set of Spry widget that add some very nice navigation bars, tabs and accordion panels.
Spry Navigation Bar
SPRY Tabs
SPRY Accordion Panels
Each one of these was dead simple to make and easy to edit and customize.
See a video tutorial about using the Spry widgets.
Posted in Dreamweaver, Tim No Comments »
November 6, 2007
40, Yes 40 full CSS layouts available for free. Using one of these layouts is a great way to get into CSS design. They are all clean, simple, and have valid markup. So if you have wanted to redesign your site and get rid of all those pesky tables this is a great way to go. You can download the entire pack all zipped up. Then take them into Dreamweaver and make one your own. Each layout is its own html file with all the css right in the head. Visit Layout Gala to download and for more info.
Posted in Dreamweaver, Tim, css No Comments »
October 29, 2007
Need to do a litte photo editing but aren’t sitting at your usual computer? No need to start downloading a Photoshop trial version, just pull up one of these two websites and edit you images with a simple web based tool.
Picnic(www.picnik.com) is a free service that lets you upload your image and then you can do all sorts of basic editing from removing red-eye to croping to making black and white. Once finished the image can be saved back to your computer, emailed or uploaded to one of the many photo sharing sites. Not bad for free.
Rsizr (rsizr.com) does a lot of the same stuff Picnic does but it really excels at resizing without distortion and removing portions of the image, like an unwanted cousin or ex. The creators are using a new technology called seamcarving. You really have to check out the gallery (http://rsizr.com/about/gallery/) to see how amazing this works.
Posted in Tim, imaging No Comments »
October 8, 2007
Over the past few weeks I have created a whole bunch of new video tutorials on Dreamweaver and Fireworks. You can find them in the Resources section. The tutorials follow the same steps as our in person course so you can use them as a preview or a review or just by themselves. Also I have just about finished a whole set of tutorials on Fireworks. They should be available in the next few days.
Posted in Dreamweaver, Tim No Comments »
September 10, 2007
For everyone looking to move their web design skills up a notch here is a nice article introducing a layout method using Cascading Style Sheets instead of tables.
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/css/article.php/3642151
If you are completely new to CSS this article might be a better first read.
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/css/article.php/3616241
Posted in Dreamweaver, Tim, css No Comments »
September 6, 2007
In an effort to help everyone keep up on all the new stuff they are doing Adobe conducts many online seminars. You can join in live or watch a recording at you convienence. Here is the link to the list of Education related topics.
“Join Adobe education experts as they conduct free online seminars about using industry-leading Adobe software solutions. During these live, easy-to-follow sessions, you will discover brand-new ways to prepare engaging curriculum, teach essential digital communication skills, empower students to creatively express what they?ve learned, simplify complex concepts, and improve communication.”
Posted in Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Photoshop, Tim No Comments »
