Interwebtranet

Use Keyboard Shortcuts To Maximize Efficiency

Mr. Matthews — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 03:29:59 +0000

If you’re new to OS X or you want to get the ultimate speed upgrade for you Mac, try using keyboards shortcuts. These little gems will boost your productivity and help save your wrists as well. Many functions found in your menu have keyboard shortcut equivalents which appear with somewhat cryptic symbols just to the right in the menu.

One of the best resources I have found in deciphering those symbols and listing shortcuts is Dan Rodney’s List of OS X Keyboard Shortcuts. While you’re there, check out some of his other Tips & Tricks.

New To InDesign?

Mr. Matthews — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 01:30:19 +0000

If you’re new to Adobe InDesign, check out this post on things you should know when starting out.

Spanish Character Test

Mr. Matthews — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 02:03:12 +0000

What happens when you type á é í ó ú

Don’t Let Snow Leopard Leave You Out In The Cold

Mr. Matthews — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:55:35 +0000

Apple releases it’s latest feline into the wild today. OS 10.6, or Snow Leopard, is more of a fine-tuning of Leopard, rather than a break-through leap ahead. It’s primary change is that it is optimized for Macs with Intel processors and leaves behind those with the aging PowerPC chips. This means that some older applications may not work. Check out this list to see if your applications are compatible.

Back To School 2009!

Mr. Matthews — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:22:22 +0000

It is the end of day one of the 2009–2010 school year. I’m looking forward to a great year.

Mouse—Not The Clicking Kind!

Mr. Matthews — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:56:21 +0000

Apple Safari 4 Beta

Mr. Matthews — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:03:44 +0000

Apple just released Safari 4 Beta into the wild. It seems like Apple might be following others in this release.

Top Sites looks like Opera’s Speed Dial
Tabs on Top looks like Google’s Chrome and kind of like Opera
Developer Tools is kind of like Developer Tools (extension in Firefox).

Other than that, the new features seem to be better system integration. Download it an try it out. Let me know what you think—especially if you are on a Windows machine. The Javascript engine is supposed to be really fast!

Dreamweaver CS3 Untitled Style Sheet Bug

Mr. Matthews — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:11:10 +0000

There is a bug in Dreamweaver CS3 when creating external style sheets (which—by the way—you should be doing any time your are using style sheets with few exceptions).

Basically, when you enter the style sheet name in the Save As field, it ends up being named as untitled.css, rather than the name you typed. The good news is that Dreamweaver is consistent in that the link to the style sheet that is created uses untitled.css as well. You can rename untitled.css in the files palette and Dreamweaver will update the links, however, that is an extra step that shouldn’t have to be taken.

Currently the best solution is to enter the name of the style sheet in the URL field rather than the Save As field. Enter only the name and not the extension (.css). If you add the extension then you will end up with a file named styles.css .css which can be worse than untitled.css. Also, be sure to leave anything that appears in front of untitled in the URL field like dots, slashes, paths, etc.

Figure 1 below shows where to enter the name of the style sheet to avoid this bug.

Figure 1. Dreamweaver CS3 Style Sheet Bug

I am hoping that this will change in an update or patch to Dreamweaver CS3, but this bug has been around for a while and nothing has happened so far. According to other posts, Dreamweaver CS4 has fixed this bug. The question is whether or not Adobe will fix currently broken software or simply expect you to upgrade to their latest version.

Basic 1-Column Layout

Mr. Matthews — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:44:39 +0000

Most websites have a similar structure consisting of a header, content, and footer. The header is located at the top of the page and contains the title of the site, along with perhaps a logo, tagline, and some other branding. The header is usually consistent from page to page.

The content is where the “meat and potatoes” of the page goes. The information here will change for each page. Often this section of the page is divided into two columns with one being primary content and the other being secondary content. Some sites will features three columns and others just one. For the sake of simplicity, this example features only one column.

The footer is located at the bottom of the page and usually contains copyright information and a text version of the main menu. (Note: On a Mac, the copyright symbol © is typed by pressing option-g.) It may also include legal disclaimers, contact information, sitemaps, and credits. The footer, like the header, is usually consistent from page to page.

Each of these sections are created with a

tag and given an id. Additionally, another div is “wrapped” around all of these sections to control the overall width and positioning of the page. To be consistent, I will always give this div and id of “wrapper”, but you may see it with other names such as “container”.

Here is an example of the html source of a basic 1-column, XHTML layout:



    
        
        
            Basic 1-Column Layout
        
    
    
        
            
                
                    Page Header Here
                
            

            
                
                    Content Goes Here
                
            

            
                
                    Footer Goes Here

WordPress Search & Replace

Mr. Matthews — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:13:03 +0000

As a follow-up to the MySQL Search & Replace post, if you are using WordPress and need to make site wide changes there is a WordPress Search & Replace Plugin available.