Archive for July, 2009

Useful Adobe Fireworks tips

Jul 27

Posted by Nick in Web Design | Comments off

- While drawing a line, hold down SHIFT to make it straight horizontally or vertically.

- While drawing a rectangle, press the UP or DOWN arrow keys to make the corners round (or sharp).

- You don’t need to ungroup to edit objects within a group, simply use the Subselection tool to select and edit an object.

- Change the corner roundness mode to px instead of %, making duplicates with various size won’t affect the roundness anymore.

- Use the arrow keys (with an object selected already) to position precisely an object.

- To apply a fade effect on any object, use the Auto Vector Mask command found under the Commands > Creative menu

- You can curve a text object by drawing an ellipse, selecting the text and the ellipse and applying the Attach to path command found under the Text menu.

That’s it for now!

Apple = bunch of whiners

Jul 16

Posted by Nick in News | Comments off

Microsoft probably got the best phone call in history, it’s worth reading:

http://gizmodo.com/5315666/microsoft-gloats-apple-begged-them-to-stop-running-laptop-hunter-ads

Way to go Apple…

How to bypass Windows Live Messenger anti-virus requirement

Jul 15

Posted by Nick in General | 3 Comments

If you don’t use an anti-virus and your friend is trying to send you a file over Windows Live Messenger, you probably noticed that it requires you to have an anti-virus installed or the download will fail. Sure, it’s a good protection I guess, but providing an option to disable that functionality would have been appreciated…

Fortunately, you can bypass this protection quite easily.I made a little C++ .exe that simply returns 0 and exit. Basically, an empty project in Visual Studio! Then you simply assign that .exe as your anti-virus in Windows Live Messenger.

1) Download the app: DoNothing.zip

2) Extract the .exe to a location of your choice (My Documents).

3) Set the anti-virus in Windows Live Messenger:

- Go to Tools > Options > File Transfer
- Check the Scan files for viruses using option
- Click Browse… and select the DoNothing.exe application you extracted.

Windows Live Messenger - File Transfer Options

Enjoy file transfers without an anti-virus

(Adobe Air) Bring a window to front by clicking the systemTrayIcon

Jul 6

Posted by Nick in Adobe AIR | Comments off

While developing an AIR application, I had an issue with bringing the application to front (above all other windows) when clicking the systemTrayIcon.

Usually, you would use the method:

systemTrayIcon.addEventListener("click", function() {
window.nativeWindow.orderToFront();
});

But doing so will result in… actually nothing at all. The window doesn’t move.
Using the same code on a menu item of the SystemTrayIcon will work, but not on the click action of the Icon itself.

Workaround:

Set the window property alwaysInFront to true and then to false:

systemTrayIcon.addEventListener("click", function() {
 window.nativeWindow.alwaysInFront = true;
 window.nativeWindow.alwaysInFront = false;
 });

Not the way it should be, but it works…

5 things to avoid in web design

Jul 4

Posted by Nick in Web Design | Comments off

A list of 5 things you should totally avoid while designing (and coding) a website:

1) Default colors

I know it’s not always easy to pick the right color for text and background, but seriously, some colors are just ugly in any situation. I guess part of the problem are the design software themselves. When you open the color picker, you always get a choice of default colors. These are the colors you should avoid. Even Microsoft took care of the problem. In Office 2007, they got rid of the usual colors found in highlighters and replaced them with some more professional tones:

Office 2007 Colors

If you still have no idea which colors to pick, you can always try Kuler from Adobe: http://kuler.adobe.com/

2) You could put some more padding here…

This one is quite frequent for beginners. You just coded a box and inserted some text. But the text goes right on the border…

More padding please

If you never looked at CSS, now is the time. Use at least 8px and you’re good to go.

3) You gotta love that high-contrast monitor…

Always use low contrast gradients when you’re going to put text above it. If the contrast is too high, no matter what the color is, it’s going to be unreadable.

Gradients Contrast

Trick: Use the first color you picked, open the advanced color picker and choose the color 5-12 steps above/below.

4) 1 box + 1 box + 1 box + … = Too many boxes

Unless you plan on making a CMS style design, you don’t need to put a box around everything.
Keep it simple, one box for your sidebar and another for your content. Use bars or bigger text to separate content.

5) Left we go

It was fine 10 years ago but now with monitors being larger and the resolutions reaching the 1920×1080, it just doesn’t make sense anymore to put a website aligned to the left.
Eyes are focused at the center of the screen, so either center align your website or make it liquid style so it fills the entire screen.

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