I was working on a script the other day at work and came upon the need to determine the dimensions of some images. Because the script was being written in VBScript, I was basically stumped, since, although I’ve figured out a great deal about simple scripting in VBScript, I’m still an absolute novice when it comes to file manipulation and the more advanced features available.

I hit the Web and started googling. Luckily, I came across a great solution on one of my first tries. The Four Guys from Rolla (which, if you’re working with VBScript and haven’t bookmarked this site, yet, I highly recommend it - they seem to be the number one authority on VBScript) offered a great tutorial, with code, explaining how to obtain the dimensions and a lot more information from any image.

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I recently discovered a very neat program that we’ve begun using on one of my hobby sites.

IMANDIX Cover Pro automatically converts any image into a 3D preview of what it would look like as the cover of a CD or DVD case.

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My supervisor at work e-mailed a nice accessibility resource a few weeks ago. The “Division of Instructional Technology” at the University of Wisconsin has put together a good collection of videos and podcasts related to Web accessibility. The in-house videos are narrated and led by a blind man named Neal Ewers, who works for the Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The videos are extremely interesting to watch, and very informative. If you have considered improving your Web site’s accessibility, I highly recommend visiting the site and watching each of the videos.

My advice for photo restoration is to know what your final product will be before you start working on it that way you know what you need to do to throughout your editing process. Of course, that can go for any project, but knowing what you are doing it for in this case can be extremely helpful.

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My parents bought me a Fujifilm S700 Finepix digital camera for Christmas. I bought myself a Sony Cybershot digital camera about six or seven years ago, but it was finally starting to get worn out. It took great pictures as long as you held perfectly still and you had ideal lighting conditions, but other than that, it was pretty dodgy.

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The old school developers will remember, and for the new ones, a quick history lesson. In the 1990s, Netscape Navigator (Mozilla rendering engine) was the dominant browser. It “had a few bugs”, and as a result, when Internet Explorer started playing catch-up, there were a lot of reasons to start using IE instead of Netscape. Towards the end of the paradigm shift, we all started doing something deemed unacceptable by todays standards. The dreaded “Your browser is not supported” page.

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My supervisor at work sent me a link to the following video the other day. It starts off kind of boring, and it’s a bit long, but it does get much better as the video goes on. It’s a great video for graphic designers. Enjoy!

http://www.makemylogobiggercream.com/

Okay, so Marble Madness was a really cool game back in the day. I am willing to admit that. However, using that same concept as the navigation for your Web site is a really poor choice.

Janet Jackson’s Web development team obviously disagrees, however, as that’s exactly what they’ve done with her site. I happened upon her official Web site a few weeks ago (please don’t ask me to explain why I was there, I’m really not certain) and found it to be the most horrendous site I have ever encountered.

Navigating Janet’s Web site is similar to playing a puzzle game like Marble Madness. You apparently have to move your mouse at just the right speed and place the pointer in just the right place in order to get anywhere on the site. It’s a skill I have not mastered, although I did take the time to try simply to see if I could figure it out. I didn’t.

If you visit the site and click on one of the initial links, good luck getting back to the main navigation.

I submitted the site to WebPagesThatSuck.com a few weeks ago, but I don’t know if it was ever published there or not. Regardless, I just had to share my experience with the public. Enjoy!

CenterNetworks, which, I suppose, is now considered the “parent” site of HTMLCenter, has been quietly redesigned. Although the previous design was attractive, and there was not really anything inherently wrong with it, the new design is quite a bit better.

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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.

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