Free tool

"Fill and save PDF forms - Most other PDF viewers do not enable you to fill and save PDF forms without support from a premium product.
Nuance PDF Reader provides frequently used annotation tools, letting you highlight, cross-out, and underline text."

Labels: Addin, General, Tips

Tips

Labels: Reference, Search, Shortcuts, Tips

HTML codes

A left double quote is “
A right double quote is &rdquo ;
A left single quote is &lsquo ;
A right single quote is &rsquo ;

Labels: HTML, Tips

7 day URL

• Create a notebook
  
• Have a conversation
  
• Create a community

Labels: General, Internet, Share, Tips

Put by the keyboard

Labels: Code, CSS, Tips

Quick graphic reinforcement

Labels: Fonts, General, HTML, Tips

Bargain deal

• Study and train for your certificates at no cost
  
• Study and train for your certificates when it is convenient
  
• Study and train for your certificates from your own computer
  
• Complete your studies in a few weeks
  
• Take your exams over the Internet

W3 Schools

Labels: General, Reference, Tips, Tutorials

It's EZ

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marcs four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
It's rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My checker tolled me sew.

Labels: General, Reference, Tips

Striking sites

How do you pick the sites?

Well first they have to be done in CSS. Tables can only be used for tabular data. Second they just have to look good to me. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so I do not expect every site that is posted to be liked by everyone or even anyone. Also do not expect a site to be posted just because you sent it in.

With the large amount of submissions I get daily and the increasing number of showcase sites, getting your site into the Vault will now be more challenging. I look for use of color, typography, whitespace, IA and how they all fit overall in the site's structure.

Labels: CSS, Layout, Tips

What are the rules?

Like many companies, we have struggled with what guidance to give to our bloggers. I personally checked with several companies. None had formalized a set of blogging rules or written guidance.
One Microsoft blogger told me that the only rule his company provided was, "Be smart." I thought we probably needed a little more guidance than that, so several of us cooked up a list of "Blogging Terms and Conditions." Our corporate counsel has also had a crack at it.

Labels: Blog, Reference, Tips

What size are your relatives?

Labels: CSS, Fonts, HTML, Tips, Tutorials

Ideas to consider

37signals is here to help. In these pages you'll find dozens of ideas for improving the holiday customer experience at your site. Each idea is accompanied by examples taken from top retail sites (we've visited hundreds of sites over the past two holiday seasons seeking smart techniques).

Labels: General, Tips

A few small things you shouldn't forget

• The Page Title
  
  
• The Background Color
  
  
• The Submit Button in Forms
  
  
• Non-Breaking Spaces
  

Labels: General, Layout, Tips

How does your site score?

Readability Test

The readability test analyses a Web page to determine how readable it is.

CSS Analyzer

The CSS analyzer tests for basic accessibility errors such as color contrast and units of measurement.

Luminosity Contrast Ratio Analyzer (Beta)

Tests whether foreground and background colour combinations are sufficient using a new algorithm developed by Trace R&D Center.

Color Contrast Analyzer

The color contrast analyzer tests whether the contrast between the background and the foreground is sufficient.

Image Analyzer

The image analyzer tests Web pages to ensure that images have been specified properly.

Link Analyzer

The link analyzer lists all links on a page with an icon to indicate whether or not the link resolved successfully.

Labels: General, Internet, Tips, Troubleshoot

Office 2003 redo

1. 1. Start any Office 2003 program.
   
2. On Help menu, click Detect and Repair.
   
   
   
   
3. Click to select the Discard my customized settings and restore default settings check box, and then click Start.
   
4. Quit the application, and then click Ignore.
   
5. Click OK when you receive the following message:
   Reset of setting to default succeed.

Labels: Tips, Troubleshoot

DHTML, Javascripts, PHP

• Calendars
  
  
• Date & Time
  
  
• Document Effects
  
  
• Dynamic Content
  
  
• Form Effects
  
  
• Games
  
  
• Image Effects
  
  
• Links & Tooltips
  
  
• Menus & Navigation
  
  
• Mouse and Cursor
  
  
• Scrollers
  
  
• Text Animations
  
  
• User/System Preference
  
  
• Window and Frames

Labels: Code, Tips

Join the group

" Everyone and their dog needs to build a web site these days. But even with the best software there's all sorts of stuff a mammal has to understand before it can create a truly useful site.

eFuse.com offers information, inspiration, and assistance written in plain English by professional writers and designers so it's easy to understand and use. eFuse.com is for everyone who wants to build a more attractive and effective web site. Learn what you need, painlessly. No experience necessary. You'll be web-savvy in no time.

Labels: General, Tips, Tutorials

Browser View

Labels: Tips

Fill in the blank

• Retrieve contact information from site visitors (for example, guest books)
  
• Receive feedback about your Web site
  
• Accept orders and gather shipping and billing information
  
• Conduct surveys
  
• Provide online registration
  
• Offer search box mechanisms
  
• Prompt users to log in to your Web site

Labels: Tips, Tutorials

"If you resize your browser window you will see that these borders are fluid and stay in shape. Resize the text and they will also stay in shape."

Labels: CSS, Tips, Tutorials

When you need more than one

This article describes how to create a multipage form in Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. Each page of the form contains navigation buttons to move to the previous page or the next page. Additionally, the last page of the form contains a Submit button and a Reset button.

Labels: HTML, Tips, Tutorials

The difference between a blog and a magazine is thin

"A List Apart Magazine (ISSN: 1534-0295) explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on techniques and benefits of designing with web standards.

Steal our code? Copy our content?

ALA's content is protected by copyright shared jointly by the magazine and its writers, but our source code is freely available to all."

Labels: Blog, Internet, Layout, Tips

Roll your own

"Learn about RSS and how to programmatically create an RSS file for your FrontPage 2003 Web site. The download that accompanies this article contains a VBA project and an XSLT file that you can use to generate and display RSS feeds.

If you spend any time on the Internet, you have probably heard of RSS, and you may decide that you need an RSS feed for your Web site. An RSS feed is an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file that people can use to keep up to date with the content on a Web site. RSS feeds are frequently associated with weblogs (blogs), but you can use them for any Web site.

If you have a Web site that contains content that you frequently update, such as articles or stories, you may want an RSS feed to help your customers keep up with your updates. This article explains the XML behind RSS and provides a Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) project that you can use to programmatically generate an RSS feed for your FrontPage Web site. The download for this article includes an Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) file that you can use to display the RSS XML file in a browser."

Labels: General, Internet, Tips, Tutorials

Foil the spoilers

<script language="JavaScript">
<!-- Begin
user = "myaddress";
domain = "mydomain";
document.write('<a href=\"mai' + 'lto:' + user + '@' + domain + '\">');
document.write(user + '@' + domain + '</a>');
// End -->
</script>
<noscript>
Here goes some text that can be seen if Javascript is disabled.
</noscript>

Labels: Code, Tips, Tutorials

Move on


<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="3; URL=http://WWW.MiniByteTech.com">
</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">


The operative line is:

<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="3; URL=http://WWW.MiniByteTech.com">

The value of content is in seconds.
The new location for this web site is WWW.MiniByteTech.com! You will automatically be redirected in 3 seconds. If your browser doesn't automatically load, click <a href="http://WWW.MiniByteTech.com">HERE</a>.

</body>
</html

Labels: HTML, Tips

Make it an Internet show

Labels: General, Links, Tips

What happens on your computer, stays . . .

"Links to numerous pages on the Web where home users can find software and information relevant to Windows PC privacy and security.

It also contains a rudimentary "checklist" of basic steps that home PC users can take to enhance their privacy and security while using the Internet.
Finally, you'll find a set of resources developed by the author of this site to help you protect your privacy and security on the Internet, including information about Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and the Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG)."

Labels: Internet, Tips

Control your graphics

• Insert an Image from File also insert images from the FrontPage Clip Organizer or obtain free clipart online at Microsoft's Design Gallery Live
  
• Text can be placed directly on a GIF image.
  
• Automatically create a thumbnail of a larger image.
  
• Position Absolutely
  
• Bring Forward/Send Backward
  
• Rotate Left/Right
  
• Flip Horizontal/Vertical
  
• More/Less Contrast
  
• More/Less Brightness
  
• Crop
  
• Line Style
  
• Format Picture
  
• Set Transparent Image
  
• Color
  
• Bevel
  
• Resample

Labels: General, Graphics, Tips

All in one place

"No coding required. LiveWeb works with documents off your local drive too. You can specify relative paths.

With LiveWeb you can display acrobat documents (PDF), java applets, VRML etc within the slide show real-time.

LiveWeb will create slides with web browser controls embedded on the slides"

Labels: Addin, Tips

Don't look like spam

"Transactional email can be a website's customer service ambassador, but messages must first survive a ruthless selection process in the user's in-box. Differentiating your message from spam is thus the first duty of email design.

Email is one of a website's most powerful tools for strengthening customer service and increasing users' confidence and trust in the site. Confirmation messages and other automated transactional email can complete the user experience: they reach out to customers in ways that are otherwise impossible for websites, which must sit still and wait for users to approach."

From Dr. Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox

Automated Email From Websites to Customers

See all Topics

internet

Labels: General, Tips

High caliber

Shauna Kelly:

How to control bullets in Microsoft Word

Ins and outs of bullets and numbering in Word

Dubbo College :
(an easy five hours drive from Sydney, four hours from Newcastle and a ten hour drive from Melbourne and Brisbane.)



Paragraph Bullets

Troubleshooting Bullets and numbering

Also see:
Beyond Bullets.com

Beyond Bullet Points, the book



See all Topics

internet

Labels: CSS, Fonts, Tips

• Site Types
  
• Ecommerce
  
• Navigation
  
• Basic Page Types
  
• Managing Collections
  
• Page Elements
  and
  
• Visual Design

Labels: Code, General, HTML, Layout, Templates, Tips

Page spice

Animated page title script

A script that lets you animate the page title in the browser.

Animated message page

This script displays text messages on an introduction page before redirecting it to another page.

Bouncing image script

A script with which you can make an image bounce across the page.

Circling images

A script that will draw a circle consisting of a set of images around your mouse pointer.

Dynamic animation

This script can be used to fly text or images onto the browser screen from different directions.

Falling images

With this script you can make images fall down and then disappear from your page.

Floating images

A script that will float one or several images around the screen.

Search light

This DHTML script creates a search light effect on images using a start/stop link.

Transition effects

A script you can use to create transitions between images.

Text animation

A script to animate and fade in and/or fade out with text.

Labels: Code, HTML, Tips

Writing resources

..."the personal website of Matt Pfeffer. It is an experiment more than anything. An attempt to learn a thing or two, get some exercise, maybe have a laugh now and then.
Everything here is either trivial, or wrong."

"The guidelines this document describes will tell you how to improve the user experience on your site. They apply to web copy generally - both marketing copy and navigational (or instructional or "guide") copy - and their value is indirect but significant: Observing them will improve your site's ability to do its job well. "

"This style guide seeks to serve as a resource for anyone writing or editing web copy, and to document some of the conventions that distinguish good writing, as published on the web, from writing published in other media."

"I am glad to provide free editing help to nonprofit organizations and independent web publishers. The offer is generally for one-time edits of a web site, or of any reasonable amount of web content."

Labels: Tips

I didn't know you could do that!

"This site documents my attempts at understanding and exploring the possibilities of CSS. From standard navigation links to my more bizarre experimental techniques.

All my examples are produced with JUST CSS, no javascript, or any other language, has been used in any of the examples. The demonstrations are designed to work in all the latest browsers, but, if you're lucky, some may also work in earlier versions."

Stu Nicholls' Navigation Gallery.

Here are two of the examples demonstrated:

Messing about in boats
Hover over a picture and it enlarges to 100%

Also:



The Streaker
A piece of animation done with CSS alone, no Java.

(I haven't figured out how to use situational CSS in a blog, so you'll have to go to Stu's site to see if the guy gets to the other door.)



See all Topics

internet

Labels: CSS, Graphics, HTML, Tips

Screen-magnification or zoom

"[Participants] told us that they often copied and pasted material into Word where they could enlarge the font even more and make it bold, thus rendering it easier for them to see."

"We have not done a good job of catering to these screen-magnification or zoom users. Using CSS, it's easy to do, as we shall soon see. And moreover, using CSS to develop zoom layouts is almost exactly what developers of handheld and PDA browsers are doing in their quest for small-screen rendering of wide, multicolumn web pages."

Labels: CSS, HTML, Layout, Tips

Obscure clicks

"I would like to know how to only print part of email, as all the parts of an email conversations are not necessary to print. I have tried by highlighting the part I want and then choose "select" on print menu - but the font is so small then (no matter which printer I use). I can select in the print menu which pages to print, but that is not always clear where the page breaks happens. I could copy and paste into a word document, but then the details are missing."

Labels: Internet, Tips

First steps

"You can use a wireless network to share Internet access, files, printers, and more. Or you can use it to surf the Web while you're sitting on your couch or in your yard. Plus, it's easier to install than you think."

1. Choose your wireless equipment
   
   
2. Connect your wireless router
   
   
3. Configure your wireless router
   
   
4. Connect your computers

Labels: General, Tips

It's in the script

"Have you ever wanted to add a pop-up window to your Web site? Maybe you've wanted to add a hyperlink that closes the page or to display the current date and time. You can add all of these features and more by using JavaScript: A scripting language that can be used to add functionality to a Web page or a Web site, or to enhance the look of one. JavaScript scripts can run on any type of client or server computer."

Days Remaining in Year

Use this script to calculate the number of days between now and the end of the year.

Popup Checkbox Navigation Menu

This script opens a small popup window containing a checkbox navigation menu.

Form Field Help

Add a help link to each section in your form. When clicked, an explanation is given of what is required and a box is offered where the information can be entered and transferred to the form.

Image Viewer

Use this script to display different images without opening a new window. Click the links to change the displayed image right in the current page.

Random Password Generator

This script can be used to generate random passwords for improved password strength

• Free JavaScripts
  
• JavaScript Tutorials
  
• Free Java applets
  
• Advanced JavaScript Tutorials
  
• DHTML/ CSS Tutorials
  
• Web building tutorials
  
• JavaScript Reference

Labels: Code, Tips

DWTs

"FrontPage 2003 introduced Dynamic Web Templates, a new and sophisticated type of Web page template that enables you to share a layout among several pages in a site, preserve specific regions of content from unwanted changes, and save time when you begin to manage the Web pages on your Web site.

By creating a Dynamic Web Template, you can make regions on attached pages available for other authors to add and modify content, while preventing changes to other regions on the same page. This provides you with control to preserve the layout of the pages and the template itself. When you update the content in a Dynamic Web Template, you can update the attached Web pages simultaneously."

Microsoft:
Create a master Web page layout
by using Dynamic Web Templates

Change the master page layout
by using Dynamic Web Templates

Also:

Dynamic Web Template Interchange Guidelines

"The Dynamic Web Template Interchange Guidelines have been established by a consortium of web designers and developers in an effort to provide webmasters using a third party DWT the ability to cross over from one design to another with relative ease. The goal of the DWTIG is not to standardize design; rather, to standardize the method in which the content is added to a DWT through Editable Regions within the design."

Labels: Layout, Templates, Tips

Formating tools

Labels: Addin, Color, HTML, Tips

Point the way

"As a Web designer and HTML builder, one of the first places I visit on a Web site is the site map. The site map shows an entire overview of the structure of the site, and more importantly, indicates how much effort was put into usability testing during the site's construction.

Learn how to chart a better site map
By Jim Kukral -Builder.com

According to Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox Usability Study on Site Maps

"27 percent of users turn to site maps when asked to learn about a site's structure. If your site map is poorly designed, you may lose 27 percent of your Web visitors. That could translate into millions of dollars of missed sales for an e-commerce site, or a massive amount of missed leads for a service company."

Labels: Internet, Layout, Search, Tips

How many mentions

Labels: Addin, Internet, Links, Performance, Tips

Make it easy

"Accessibility, the design of HTML documents for accessibility by people with disabilities, is such an important aspect of the Internet today that the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) has adopted a set of guidelines for designing accessible Web sites. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) closely follow Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act.

For some Web sites, adherence to the WCAG is not optional; it is a necessity. Expression Web/FrontPage 2003 has tools for evaluating the accessibility of an entire Web site, identifying elements that violate the guidelines, and finding ways to correct the violations. The accessibility checker provides all of this functionality in a single dialog box.

To access the accessibility checker on the Tools menu click Accessibility (Accessibility Reports). You can use the accessibility checker to check a single page or an entire Web site. The accessibility checker checks for varying levels of accessibility and specifically for adherence to Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act. You can check for errors or warnings, and you can add a manual checklist."

MSDN:
Adding Rules to the Accessibility checker

University of Toronto:
Adaptive Technology Resource Center (ATRC)

Labels: General, Layout, Tips

Abrogate Obfuscation

Labels: General, Tips

Screen fonts preview

"The Typetester is an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen. Its' primary role is to make web designer's life easier. As the new fonts are bundled into operating systems, the list of the common fonts will be updated."

Labels: HTML, Internet, Tips

Drill down to the answer

Jay White of DumbLittleMan.com has a nice site. One of the features is a list of 20 search tips to be used with Google.

Here are a few:

• Either/or. Google normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use the OR operator -- or use the "" symbol (pipe symbol) to save you a keystroke.
  
  
  
• Quotes. If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes.
  
  
  
• Not. If you don't want a term or phrase, use the "-" symbol.
  
  
  
• Similar terms. Use the "~" symbol to return similar terms.

• Definitions. Use the "define:" operator to get a quick definition.

• Vertical search. Instead of searching for a term across all pages on the web, search within a specialized field. Google has a number of specific searches, allowing you to search within blogs, news, books, and much more

Labels: Search, Tips

Eavesdrop on the experts

Labels: General, Internet, Tips