This post is for those of you that use absolutely positioned page elements, or for those of you that might use DreamWeaver (I’m forced to use DreamWeaver on our current existing site, since that’s what was used to generate it in the first place), or for those of you that use “base” elements in your pages, and for quite a few other people as well, as this bug in IE 6 (and lesser) can be a real pain in the butt to figure out and get fixed.

My supervisor pointed out over the weekend that she is unable to select any snippets of text on our web site for some reason, and set me to fixing the problem. I opened the site in Firefox, and didn’t have a single problem. So, I decided to give it a shot in IE (still using IE 6 here at work). Sure enough, when I tried to select some text using the click and drag method, the whole darn page got selected, from the cursor all the way down to the bottom of my code. I knew immediately that it must be an IE bug, since it worked just fine in Firefox. However, it’s not good business practice to tell your supervisor to stop using inferior, though hugely popular software. Especially when anywhere between 50 and 75% of your public is using that same software.

(more…)

Today we will take a look at a photo editor that believes it is better than the current market leaders. And I think it is a pretty powerful piece of software. Called Xara Xtreme Pro, it comes to us from London and offers an interesting combination of the best of Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark and Flash in one easy-to-use package.

Since this is a review for a web designer, we will only focus on the features that will help someone in creating web-ready graphics. The app is strong for illustration and desktop publishing but that is better covered by someone who has more experience than I in these areas.

Let’s start with the Flash capabilities. Over the years, I have reviewed Flash versions as well as worked with flash designers and developers. Let’s be honest… Flash is not a program that you can pick up in a day. Creating nice looking, smooth animations (even basic ones) takes a lot of time and effort and patience. With Xara Xtreme Pro, creating flash animations is very easy. Basically all you need to do is create the key frames (those that are in the states you want) and Xara creates all of the inbetween frames to make the flash movie smooth.

On the web graphics side, Xara does a good job of making sure your files are saved in the most optimal format for quick downloading by your users. That is one of the things I don’t like in Photoshop. There is a save as/save for web option but which is the best for this specific graphic? JPG?PNG?GIF? Xara takes care of it for you. I was able to create some nice looking buttons and they looked pretty professional. Of course I am not a designer so they were not perfect, but good enough for an average personal web site.

Lastly, the photo editing capabilities are good. I compare them to Paint Shop Pro in its ease of edit. Crop, Rotate, Resize, color, red eye, etc. are all included as is the ability to add text, borders, shadows.

So how do I sum up Xara Xtreme Pro? Easy. It’s a mashup. They have the best features of Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator, Flash and Paint Shop Pro together in a package for $199. Will it replace these other tools? No. Design houses will probably stick to the status quo. But for either someone who wants to get into design, a freelancer or independent designer, this is a perfect solution for them. Especially since you can import and export from the other guys mentioned. The only other negative is that there is no Mac version. Since most designers use a Mac, they are losing the opportunity to switch these users to Xara. So I think many of the pro designers will be out in terms of customer base. But if you use Windows you are in luck. They offer a 30-day demo so give that a try and post a comment in the forum about your experiences with the tool.

Here are some screenshots from Xara Xtreme Pro:

Product Rating:

Company:
Xara

Requirements:
Windows

Pricing:
$199

Reviewed by:
Allen

Competition:
Photoshop, Illustrator, Paint Shop Pro

Pros:
Excellent combination of print design and layout along with robust web design features.

Cons:
No Mac Support

Bottom Line:
For $200, it’s worth a try. Because everything is in one environment, you will save time and money.

Overview / Introduction

Suitcase Fusion is a combination of Suitcase and Font Reserve. In addition to the easy to use interface, Suitcase has launched a number of new features. Suitcase Fusion is a professional font manager targeted at the professional who is working with type and fonts. Suitcase Fusion represents a seamless, dependable tool to manage your fonts, no matter how many you use. No matter how many documents you work with. No matter how demanding your workflow is.

Included in the delivery of Suitcase Fusion is a version of Font Doctor 7 (Morrison Software) for checking and repairing your fonts. Suitcase Fusion is a single-license product specifically for Mac OS X. Unfortunately, with the launch of Suitcase Fusion the support for the Classic version vanished.

Helpful Tip: After upgrading, keep the “Suitcase Bridge” and “Suitcase Extension” of your Suitcase X1 in the system folder/system extensions. That way the fonts are ready to be used, if supported by Classic.

System Requirements

Suitcase Fusion supports Mac OS X (version 10.3.9 or higher) and needs a Macintosh G4 or faster. 30 Megabytes of free disk space and 256 Megabyte RAM, as well as a CD-ROM drive for installation and setup.

General Features

Efficient font management is achieved through features such as Font Vault or Type Face Activation. The Font Vault is a central font repository that houses all your fonts, while the Type Face Activation safely adds your fonts to the Font Vault and checks if there are any defective typefaces within your library. Furthermore, Suitcase can automatically activate fonts that you need for a specific project or document. That way you don’t ever have to worry about manually activating them.

The Font Vault exposes users to highly professional font management. Font Vault is the manageable repository interconnected with the Suitcase Fusion database. This truly eradicates conflicts, especially if you have more than one version of a font with the same PostScript name. Font Vault supports the Font Sense-Technology for the precise identification of fonts and the efficient handling of multiple fonts on your disk.

Suitcase Fusion automatically splits up a font suitcase if any single font of the set has been added to the Font Vault. Also new to the product is the ability to work with multiple previews, collecting fonts for export/output and also organizing your fonts within nested fonts and applying keywords. Suitcase Fusion lets you create an Application Set. Application Sets makes working with fonts easy. Fonts stored within these sets are always automatically activated whenever a specific application is started. Attributes and the classification through keywords (for example project name, client) come in very handy. Exploring your fonts, searching and finding them is a lot easier and a huge benefit and time saver in the end.

(Suitcase Fusion offers font exportimg, type faces, fonts in (nested) sets, font families simply by dragging-and-dropping them.)

Screenshots

Suitcase interface; View at Font Sense identifier-code, Font Vault activation and Quicktype		keywords and allocation: example cape arcona
Preview at various font styles, showing “ABC 123″ characters

My favourite features

Workflow optimization through Font Sense: Suitcase Fusion utilizes a technology called “Font Sense” to analyze and identify fonts. Fonts are identified on the basis of their kerning and the virtual outline of each character. Beyond the font name, these unique identifiers are used to prevent conflicts among fonts. Fonts with the same names are being kept apart nicely! This feature also applies to fonts embedded within EPS or PDF documents. The Font Sense technology is also available as a plugin for Quark Xpress, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator.

Auto Activation has been improved since the latest version and is a real time saver, because you don’t have to activate them manually anymore. You open Adobe InDesign for example, and it will activate the needed fonts instantly.

Helpful Tip: In case you are not installing a new version of Suitcase Fusion, make sure that you remove the old version to avoid problems. Definitely go through the Quick Start Guide prior to your installation. It has a number of really helpful tips. For example the way OS X handles fonts or conflicts. In addition, you get an introduction to the Auto-Activation and its settings.

Product Rating:

Company:
Extensis

Requirements:
Mac OS X

Pricing:
$99 full / $49 upgrade

Reviewed by:
Simona

Competition:
n/a

Pros:

Cons:

Bottom Line:

This review will focus on Photoshop CS 2 from the web designer/developer point of view. When it comes to creating web art, Photoshop still is king. There is nothing else on the market that even comes close. Yes, there are other tools, but there are no other industry-accepted tools. It is important to consider image output just as image creation and manipulation. All printers accept “psd” formatted files, and exchanging files between web designers is quick and easy. Even transferring a Photoshop file between the mac and the pc is effortless (except for potential font issues). Let’s start with a simple statement; Photoshop is King of web design applications.

Installation

I will start this review with the installation process. If I had to rate the program solely on the installation process, I would give it 1 star. This is based on having to insall six (6) total cds. Why can’t Adobe provide the installation on a single DVD? If their argument is about piracy, that is hooey, their activation technology is rock-solid. (this is the installation process for the CS2 Suite, this review is about Photoshop and general Suite elements only)

One of the features I like from a web design standpoint is being able to save a file natively to PDF. This allows for easy comp creation and submission to the client for review.

New Features

Love the font samples — finally you can see a preview of the font without having to play “which font was that”.

The next big new piece of Photoshop is actually not part of Photoshop at all. It is called “Adobe Bridge”. Basically it is the new file browser for Adobe applications and really is well done. The Bridge allows you to view all of the details about your photos and easily organize them. I like being able to view all of the characteristics of a digital photo or psd file by just clicking on the file. No application to open, all of the information is presented. Changing the size of the thumbnails is easy, using the Size slider, you can make them any size you want. You can also rate photos from 1-5 which is great for weeding out the poor images from your camera’s memory card.

One of the changes that you might be shocked by is the layers pallette change. You can now Shift-click to select layers, or Shift-click layers in the image window. But the link column is gone. Takes a bit of getting used to. You can still highlight multiple layers and right-click to link.

The tools palette has remained basically unchanged. Which is a good thing considering that many designers use the keyboard shortcuts so any change could become a major issue. Probably the number one feature that Adobe is promoting in Photoshop CS2 is the new Vanishing Point filter. It allows you to edit, clone, and retouch images in perfect perspective.

Another great feature in CS2 is Image Warp. Image Warp is similar to Text Warp but for images! So take an image and wrap it around a product for quick product mockups or wrap a building or car easily.

Adobe ImageReady CS2 continues to be bundled as a separate application within Photoshop CS2. There is tighter integration of the two products in this release. Of course, today it seems that Flash has become a designer’s first choice for animation. I don’t hear the same buzz about ImageReady that I did 2-3 years ago.

There is a lot of support within Photoshop CS including many tutorials on how to use the featues of Photoshop CS. It sure does seem that a lot of the links within the help push you to the ExpertSupport (fee) or to training cds/dvds (fee). A bit over the top if you ask me.

One thing of note, the specs needed to run Photoshop CS — this comes straight off the package so you probably should look to have at least 30% more to be safe (windows version):

• Pentium III or 4 processor
• 384MB Ram (1 GB recommended)
• 3GB of disk space - more for additional add-ons, 1GB on primary disk
• 1024×768 resolution (what designer is still working in this)
• CD-ROM (grr!)

Final comments

Photoshop is still King. I suggest that anyone looking to buy a new packaged version of Photoshop, get this version. The new features make it worth it over picking up a CS or 7.0 version at a reduced price on eBay and the like. If you are already using CS or 7.0 and are just working on standard web design, I am not sure it is worth the upgrade. Adobe has lowered the upgrade price to $149 which might just be worth it for the new features described above.

Product Rating:

Company:
Adobe

Requirements:
see review

Pricing:
$649 full / $149 upgrade

Reviewed by:
Allen

Competition:
Paint Shop Pro

Pros:
The most widely used design application on the planet. Transferring files is a breeze.

Cons:
Price. Resource needs. Learning curve. Installation process is very slow.

Bottom Line:
Photoshop is still King among web design applications.

When designing a website, you want to set yourself apart from others by using unique layouts, elements, graphics and other things that identify you or your business. Same applies for a logotype and other elements of your (corporate) design. Colors are a big part of this! You can either use colors to get a certain effect, or you can mix various colors to arouse a specific mood and feeling associated with these colors.

For example yellow reflects joy, summer, hope. Brown reflects tradition, stability, and calmness. Orange is best known for its energetic feel. The effect that colors have are enormous, and that’s why you should spend a good amount of thinking about the “right” color scheme for your next project. While you don’t need to know everything about color theory and color psychology, you should at least pick colors that go well together and form a complete image in the end.

Color Schemer Studio is a good helper with this task and even if you have no idea what color scheme to go with on your next website, Color Schemer Studio gives you hints and tools to get started from scratch. Furthermore it is obvious that you can easily store and save your palettes and color schemes for later use in other programs or arrange colors within Color Schemer Studio.

You get started with the color wheel by selecting a base color. Through many ways of adjusting colors, color settings or simply by playing with color variations you will have no trouble getting started.

Once you are within the color wheel, Color Schemer Studio offers a broad range of possibilities to manage, define and detail your preselection of colors. From different palettes, websafe mode, Color Harmonies and Suggested Colors you are offered many possibilities that Photoshop or other graphic applications do not have built in. Having defined a color in more detail, you can add it to your Favorites, compare it to others and more!

Another neat function of this software is the Photo Schemer. You can easily add a photograph and the software will give you the color scheme of this picture. This is especially helpful if you want to capture the mood of a certain picture and rework this into a color scheme.

Besides features such as color blindness simulations, smooth exchange between programs (you can import Photoshop color palettes or export HTML color sheets and more!) this software also goes beyond your computer and extends online: you can share, rate and download other users color schemes and have another great option of finding schemes. Download them, load them into your software and start adjusting to your needs! This setup is very flexible and it’s great to see a community grow around this software.

About the only thing that I missed was a more profound preview option. Right now your project-preview possibilities are limited to a small window which is called “Quick Preview” and is meant to apply a color scheme to a sample project or sample setup. I would hope that in the future you will be able to import EPS or JPG graphics and style or colorize them directly within this software instead of having to deal with this very basic preview-example as currently.

The bottom line is: It is certainly a breeze to work with Color Schemer Studio. The workflow seems to be streamlined and this tool is great for everybody who needs results quickly, efficient and without studying color theories. As it works for PC and Mac computers everybody can access this tool and enjoy colors, color schemes and probably will have better results for your next project!

Product Rating:

Company:
ColorSchemer

Requirements:
Mac / PC

Pricing:
$49

Reviewed by:
Mark

Competition:
Color Wheel Pro

Pros:
Easy-to-use, online mode to share colors, great for newbies to color selection.

Cons:
Quick Preview mode could be expanded.

Bottom Line:
Using Color Schemer Pro will help you obtain better results for your next project!

Most web developers have dealt with picture and/or image data in one of their applications before - examples include the development of an online gallery, profile pictures (avatars) in community software, photo processing for services, pictures inside articles, etc.

Dealing with this kind of data from PHP, you might know that the bundled GD library is limited indeed and you eventually end up looking elsewhere for a more comprehensive solution.

Here comes ImageMagick (IM) to the rescue.

Background

Many developers have used at least one software which relies on IM’s “convert” utlity.

Examples of this kind of software include the infamous gallery called
“Gallery(2)”, another well known one is called “Coppermine”, the award
winning content management system “Typo3″, community software such as
“phpBB” and “smf”, or even commercial ventures such as “vBulletin”.

Even though my list of examples is very PHP-flavoured, interfaces for ImageMagick are of course also available in other programming languages, such as Perl, Java, C and many more.

ImageMagick is quite a powerful tool, beyond the “convert” utility it includes a couple other helper applications - sometimes far too many. Unfortunately the manual is not always detailed enough when it comes to providing examples of usage.

Since all the capabilities never match up to documentation provided, “ImageMagick Tricks” looked very promising to me at first sight. The book is divided into an introduction starting with a short rundown on the utlities (display, convert, import, animate, composite, montage, mogrify, conjure and identify), then continues to “Installation and Configuration”, followed by more in-depth chapters about the utilities and is concluded by three chapters with “real-life examples”.

Getting into it

I started to read this book over the course of three days on my daily U-Bahn (subway) trip to work. So imagine getting on and off the train, not always having a seat - the book is still very readable and easy to understand - once you get home/to work you itch to try out some of the examples.

Due to the nature of a current project, I found incredibly helpful tips in this book - even though I have five years of working experience with ImageMagick, but I guess the saying that, you really never stop learning, has some truth to it.

The overall style in writing and structure reminded me a lot of the various cookbook-books by O’Reilly - a series I really respect, recommend and adore for its simplicity and helpfulness.

You do not have to learn what you do not want to or need to in order to get down to business and solve problems. For example in the beginning I skipped right through the installation part and only used the examples for “convert” since I did not use “compose” (and all the others) in the project.

And that is what I like.

Last but not least “ImageMagic Tricks” is also a book to refer back to every once in a while. It gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling of security to solve more issues when the demand arises.

Product Rating:

Company:
Packt Publishing

Requirements:
n/a

Pricing:
$31.49

Reviewed by:
Till

Competition:
n/a

Pros:
Easy to read, includes many real-life examples.

Cons:
None.

Bottom Line:
A comprehensive guide not to be missed on your bookshelf when you use ImageMagick.

Let me preface this review by giving you a little background on myself, and my qualifications for reviewing the software. First of all, I am about as far from an artist as you can get. However, I do have extensive experience in graphic layout and web design, and have been using Paint Shop Pro since version 4 was released.
I will be writing this review from the point of view of an avid PSP user with limited experience using PhotoShop and The GIMP.

Installation

Installing this program was truly a breeze. It required very little user intervention, and finished very quickly. The program is contained on a single CD, and actually comes with quite a few extra applications. As soon as you insert the disc, a menu pops up asking what you want to install. Simply choose Paint Shop Pro, and off you go.

New Features

When you start up PSP X for the first time, it will look much like the picture to the right. You should notice two new features right off the bat. First of all, there is now a “Learning Center”, which is very similar to the help topics found in Adobe programs. Simply click on a topic, and you will see information about that topic. In addition, you will see the Browse palette. This is not really a new feature, so much as it is a re-development of a classic PSP feature. Now, rather than having to open the Browse window by itself, you can set it up as a palette, so you can keep it open and accessible while you’re working on other things.

In reality, there are only a few new features, but almost every existing feature has been enhanced and re-worked, making the new experience truly enjoyable.

They have completely reworked the photo editing features, including new red-eye reduction (which is brilliant), teeth-whitening, skin-tanning, blemish-removing, purple-fringe removal, color balancing and much more.

In addition, Corel has seriously enhanced the performance of PSP. Once you open the program, you can close it and re-open it very quickly. The first time you open it, it may take a short while to load, but if you open it a second time without re-starting your computer, it will load almost immediately. The Undo and Redo features have also been improved.

For people that have not used PSP since the earlier versions, a lot of things may surprise you, as the program has improved and changed by leaps and bounds since versions 4 and 5. For those of you that have used PSP version 9, you will feel very comfortable using this new version, but you should be impressed by the new functionality.

One more thing I have noticed within PSP X (it may have existed in previous versions, but I don’t recall ever seeing it before) is native support for opening PDF files. Not only can you open the PDF files within PSP X, but PSP treats them as scalable graphics, so you can choose at which resolution you would like to open the file. It also now has native support for opening CDR (CorelDraw) files (rightfully so, since it is now developed by Corel)

Final Thoughts

There are a few more things I would like to mention at this point, on which I have both positive and negative opinions, but I will simply report them objectively because of my mixed emotions.

First of all, when you start PSP X for the first time, it will most likely take a rather long time, as it will automatically check the web for updates. It will find available updates, and will open a new Internet Explorer window (whether that is set as your default browser or not) showing you the available updates. You can then download those updates for free.

In addition, PSP X comes bundled with a few other pieces of software. Animation Shop is not one of those programs. However, it does come with the following programs:

• Photo Album 6
• Lynda.com Training Videos
• PixMantec RawShooter Essentials
• MyPublisher BookMaker

Most die-hard PhotoShop fans will probably still look down their noses at Paint Shop Pro. However, I must say that, as far as bang-for-your-buck is concerned, Paint Shop Pro is heads above PhotoShop. With Paint Shop Pro, you get almost as many features as you’ll find in PhotoShop, and it’s affordable for just about everyone.

Product Rating:

Company:
Corel

Requirements:
Win/Mac

Pricing:
$59-99

Reviewed by:
Curtiss

Competition:
Paint.net

Pros:
Easy-to-use, inexpensive

Cons:
Not as compatible as PhotoShop

Bottom Line:
As far as bang-for-your-buck is concerned, Paint Shop Pro is heads above PhotoShop.

Well, my first day at work was actually kind of boring, but that’s a good thing, and it was fully expected. After leaving a job where they had to replace me with two people that are doing about half the work I was expected to do, it’s a nice change of pace to be a little bored during the day.

(more…)

While browsing the Internet, looking for nothing in particular, I found a very interesting article about plastic discoloration. For those of you that have noticed your monitors, computer cases, or even video game consoles turning yellow over time, this is a very good read. For those of you looking to prevent your computer parts from yellowing in the future, this article is invaluable. For those of you simply interested in the science behind plastic discoloration, this article is a fantastic resource.

For anyone interested in the topic at hand, please visit and read the article. It really is a good, informative read.

A lot of people decide to buy FrontPage when they decide to start authoring websites, because they see it advertised everywhere. Whether on TV, in magazines, and the Internet, HTML editors are everywhere. Although there are good WYSIWYG editors, I still advise learning HTML and using Notepad to create and edit pure source code. Most people feel editing your site in a text editor will provide for a better and faster loading site. Of course typing source code in Notepad basically offers nothing else than plain text editing.

There are many programs that offer more functionality than Notepad while still being considered pure text editors. UltraEdit 32 is a so-called Notepad replacement, because it offers the same basic functions and then adds new functionality. What I like a lot is that I started the application as fast as Notepad.

Ultra Edit has a very user-friendly interface. It offers a tree structure on the left, which shows you all files that are open at the moment or you can browse disks, CD’s or harddrives to open a file. The menu on the top gives you access to important actions, such as copy, paste, cut, find and replace, or open the current file in the standard browser (I like that feature a lot when I work on a website and want to know what it looks like.) There is also a lot more if you dive into the menu structure. There is an advanced macro option, a spellchecker, which supports English and additional languages (spellchecker for other languages can be downloaded from the official website.), a hex converter, and several ways to format your document.

UltraEdit contains a HEX editor, programming editor, and a plain text editor all combined in one. Its toolbar is intuitive, probably because it’s not cluttered. Most features are accessible from the menu options instead of the buttons. It has a powerful Find and Replace function, allowing you to make changes to multiple documents and directories. Also, UltraEdit supports multiple files, so you don’t have to keep loading up files one at a time. Its Undo function is perfect, allowing to Undo things that you messed up very far back in the document. However, probably one of the most useful features in UltraEdit is its color tags. All text is black, tags are bright blue, and attributes are red, while comments are light blue. This helps to keep track of things in long HTML documents. I thought that UltraEdit was a very useful program, so useful, that well, I’m using it!

I am not finished yet. There is built-in ability to open document from FTP sites, save to FTP sites, and convert files from DOS to Mac and UNIX. Besides using Ultra Edit to work on HTML, it’s the perfect text editor for all kinds of scripting. CGI, Javascript, and practically any scripting language. Its very advanced syntax highlighting will come in handy while working with the tool. This is by far my favorite tool to write scripts and HTML and if you do webpages hardcore, you should really get Ultra Edit 32.

Product Rating:

Company:
UltraEdit

Requirements:
Windows - any version

Pricing:
$30

Reviewed by:
Till

Competition:
Editpad, Homesite 4.0, Spiderwriter

Pros:
It is the perfect editor for all kinds of text.

Cons:
Nothing!

Bottom Line:
Retire Notepad today!