Template Customization

WordPress Theme Kubrick K2 Review

Posted on 29. Nov, 2006 by Dave.

If you liked this post, please subscribe! You’ll be glad you did!

WordPress is a free, well-structured blog publishing software. One of its sophisticated features is the Kubrick template. It is an easy to install and customizable open source template. Open source is a programming code that can be read, viewed, modified and distributed by anyone who wants to. Open source allows the user to make whatever changes he sees fit and releases the results as long as it is under the same terms as he received it. Kubrick comes bundled with WordPress as the default style.

WordPress Theme Kubrick K2 is an advanced template, a WordPress modification. It is developed by Michael Heilemann, Chris J. Davis, Zeo, Steve Lam and Ben Sheratt. It is sort of an improved
version of Kubrick. WordPress handles logistics such as verifying users, receiving and sending data to and from the database and provides the user with the backend administration interface. K2, on the other hand, is the front end of WordPress. Its main job is to display data fetched through WordPress in the exact way at the exact time. K2 is what reaches the readers of a
blog. K2 is a notch higher than the basic Kubrick because it serves not only the readers but the administration of the blog as well.

Upon installation of WordPress, the default theme is Kubrick. Say, after you have posted a couple of entries, you soon realized that you need to keep better track of the comments left
by readers. To solve the problem, you download Brian’s Latest Comments plug-in. A plug-in is a programming script that adds functionality to your blog. This feature enhances already
available feature or add them to your blog.

WordPress offers an easy way to allow plug-ins to your blog. From the Administration Panel, there is a Plug-in Page. Just upload the plug-in to WordPress Plug-in Directory. Simply activate it from the Plug-ins Management SubPanel and the plug-in is ready. If you want to change your default style to K2, it takes care of everything. It can support a range of widely used plug-ins. All you have to do is upload and activate the plug-in, sit back and watch it work. For a unique and beautiful looking blog, K2 has sub-themes called CSS styles. CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is a programming language that specifies how a blog page is presented. It allows web designers to create formatting and
layout for a blog independently of content. CSS files are placed in a “styles” directory. Any CSS file in the directory can be selected from a drop down menu in the K2 “Options Panel” and can
then be used to overwrite the default CSS in K2’s styles.css. You can also distribute your own CSS styles for other K2 users. K2 will automatically show the information about your style in
the footer of the blog using it.

In K2’s “Options Panel” which is under “Presentation” you can
also upload and manage custom headlines aside from selecting CSS
styles. You can write a blurb or a short publicity notice about
yourself for the front page and turn the AJAX features on and
off. AJAX is a programming language that allows your Web browser
to communicate with the server without having to reload the blog
page you are currently viewing. Through AJAX, it becomes easier
and faster to work with Web applications.

K2 has several major AJAX-powered features. Live commenting
enables readers to leave comments without having to reload the
page. LiveSearch does not require set up or code editing. You
can type your search query and immediately have the result.
LiveSearch integrates directly with Rolling Archives, a
navigation method which allows you to navigate through archives
and search results without having to reload the page. K2’s
JavaScript code is less likely to break across browsers and
hides complicated mechanics behind readable code. LiveSearch and
Rolling Archives are highly customizable and can even be brought
to your own template if you want to. All these can be done in
the Options Page.

Sidebar Modules also comes bundled with K2. This allows you to
totally customize your sidebar whatever way you deem best.
Because the code is modular, created with standardized units,
you can either write your own modules or allow plug-in writers
to supply their own. You can freely drag and drop modules onto
and off the sidebar. The Sidebar Modules also support WordPress
Widgets. K2 also includes an Asides feature. If you want to use
Matt’s Asides, K2 can implement them for you plus allows you to
choose whether you want them inline or on the sidebar. If you
want to have comments on a steady blog page or draw up an
archives page, K2’s page templates make these easy.

K2 also provides you with relevant edit links for posts and
comments, welcomes back previous commenters and make sure the
readers get all the information they need when they need them.
K2 can detect multiple-user blogs and shows author only when
multiple authors are available. K2 allows the comments of the
author of an entry to be highlighted.

While K2 has great backend functionality, there are downsides or
major stumbling points going against WordPress Theme Kubrick K2.
For one, development is still in the alpha stage, thus there are
some pretty serious bugs to fix. Refrain from using K2 unless
you understand what an alpha version is. There are likely to be
plenty of bugs and the feature set and design are still in
complete. In the alpha stage of development, each minor point
release (i.e. 1.0 to 1.1) would mean significant update to the
structure of the style. A letter increment (increase), on the
other hand, (i.e. 1.1a to 1.1b) would mean a minor bug has been
fixed on the previous release. A major increment (i.e. Alpha One
to Alpha Two) would mean some major new features added or big
changes to the code.

When the style reaches beta stage, there are only some minor
improvements and bug fixes before the release, candidates should
be feature complete and few bugs left only. Therefore, expect
serious bugs as K2 is still in the alpha stage. There are a
couple of bug fixes along the way so it is advised for anyone
planning to upgrade to wait awhile for more bugs to be found and
fixed before upgrading.

If you attempt to install the upgrade, strange errors occur when
you play around with the Options Page. When you click on the
sub-tab below the Presentation tab, a plain text that says
“cannot load http://functions.php>http://functions.php” error
occurs. The Links Option Page does not work too. Links cannot be
deleted. Hours of configuring K2 still proved futile. There is
no blogroll and even the sidebar cannot be found. It is also
such a bother having to move away from the main screen just to
select a previous post one is looking for.

I guess all these downsides are to be expected as K2 is still in
the development stage. Hopefully, a final version, more
user-friendly, is in the can.

About the author:
Author: Danny Wirken

http://www.theinternetone.ne

Continue Reading

The Top 10 Reasons You Need a REAL Website

Posted on 28. Nov, 2006 by Dave.

By now, most entrepreneurs know that they need a website of some sort. Many don’t realize that they need a REAL website, one with its own domain name. You need a real website ….

1. …because it’s professional.

Upgrading from a free sub-site at geocities to a full fledged site gives your company a professional appearance. Whenever I go to a website about a product and don’t see a domain name, I think to myself, if they can’t even afford to have their own site, how can they afford to have a quality product? Your total start-up cost for your website can be below $100, and the monthly hosting fee for a professional site can be as low as $25. Some sites, like Host4Profit, even give you the chance to have your site hosted for free. See http://www.host4profit.com/cgi-bin/home.cgi?13217 for details.

2. …because you can get indexed by major search engines.

Where do you go when you’re looking for a service, product or information online? Google? Yahoo? A bookmark? To end up in any of these three place yourself, the first thing you need to do is get a domain name and build a basic site. The search engines can give you lots of referrals who are looking for you specifically, if you set it up correctly.

3. …because you can install programs and run scripts that will

save you time. Many small business owners I know don’t have their own sites because they don’t know how, or think it is too expensive. All these issues can be overcome by outsourcing, or a few minutes of your time. There is software that you can have installed that will build your site for you. And it’s free. All you’ll have to do then is type in the content and you’ll be ready to go. The software I have in mind is called PHP-Nuke. There are other content management systems out there that are free but this is my favorite. Go to http://www.phpnuke.org for details.

4. …because it can reach non-local customers

This point doesn’t necessarily help every entrepreneur at first. For example, if you run a mom-and-pop store, being able to reach non-local customers might seem like it’s unnecessary to you. But consider this… if you sell or have access to a product that is hard to find outside your area, you could end up taking orders from home-sick college kids, from traveling people, from folks who’d like their groceries ready when they come back from vacation- the possibilities are out there. Not always obvious at first, but certainly no reason not to have a website.

5. …because it can eliminate “nuisance” calls

Of course, our customers are Never a real nuisance- they’re the ones who put food on our table and we love them to death. However, if you’re constantly getting calls from people asking for directions, wanting to know when a promotion started or stopped, needing your fax number or other such repeated common questions, posting this information to a simple, small website can solve all of this for you. And if you pay for an 800 number or a service to take these kinds of calls for you, it may save you some money too.

6. …because you can control its design

At a free web site host, you normally have limitations as to what kind of look to have- if you own the site yourself, the options are only limited by your imagination. If you have an idea that is beyond your capabilities, you can always pay someone to bring the idea into fruition for you.

7. …because you can give away or sell parts of your website that you aren’t using.

Let’s say your hosting account gives you unlimited free auto-responders (robot-like emails that work similiar to fax on demand). You either don’t know what they are for, or don’t need them. You could re-sell those auto-responders to other site owners. You can also think about registering a domain name for your area, and giving neighboring businesses sub-domains as a Christmas promotion.

For example, if your business is located in a strip mall called Lotsa Shops, you could register mylotsashops.com and give the other stores in the mall static information pages like pizzaplace.mylotsashops.com – as sub-domain there aren’t all the benefits of a full web site, but enough to be appealing as a free listing. And you could put a one line ad about your site at the bottom of each page.

8. …because you can accept advertisers

Generally, if you have a strong product, you probably don’t need links leading out of your site. Your customers are probably going to leave your site eventually anyway, so you might as well sell advertising, at least at first to cover your hosting costs. There’s also the possibility of starting an electronic newsletter, with information that your local area would be interested in. You could charge local merchants, or anyone who feels your audience is valuable, to place ads, once your circulation rises above 1000.

9. …because you can use it to expand your product line

Even if you don’t need your website for any other reason, another possibiility is selling information about your field. No matter how long you’ve been in business or studied your area of expertise, you know something about it that no one else knows, or you have a unique perspective that no one else has. If there is enough interest, you could create a manual and sell it online to hundreds or thousands of other merchants who could use a heads up. Or you could give it away free to promote interest in your site.

10. …because in the end, it can save a lot more money than it costs to have.

If you’re a home-based business owner or a small business owner whose product or service has regional, national, or international appeal, then you should really have a website. It can save you hundreds of dollars in marketing and advertising in the long one and bring you customers you may not otherwise reach.

About the author: Tinu’s friends bet her she couldn’t put her traffic where her site is- guess who won? Find out how she did most of this for free by downloading her Free Traffic Weapons Ebook at http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/?timearticle.shtml

Continue Reading

Web Site Design or Website Templates – The Big Debate

Posted on 27. Nov, 2006 by Dave.

Introduction
In this article we reveal the big behind the scenes mystery of custom web design verses website templates. The piece focuses on differences between being somewhat artistic and being an actual scenarists, artists or Flashers with the capability of bringing together all the elements of a website headers, judicious use of graphics, menus and layout into a cohesive and pleasing whole. We strongly believe in our website template line of products. If you weren’t convinced here we’ll prove it by providing you with a free sample template so you can evaluate the quality of the product and try your skills before you buy

Article:
A lot of custom web site designers are really critical of commercial website templates. I have seen snide comments on Forums and Blogs along the lines of ‘This site has template written all over it’. There are two main reasons not to like templates, and then some ways to mitigate these problems.

Lets explore these.

~ Templates are not original ~

There is something to be said for creating your own, all original work. But there is a difference between being somewhat artistic and being an artist with the capability of bringing together all the elements of a website headers, judicious use of graphics, menus and layout into a cohesive and pleasing whole. Not to talk about creating a website with a definite wow factor and one that loads fast to boot.

I discovered soon in my website design career that I am just not quite artistic enough to really create the effect that I was looking for. My first websites were all created from scratch by hand and I spent hours and hours on choosing the right colours, selecting the graphics, optimizing the graphics and designing the menus with the right rollover effects.

The most frustrating thing was that after my masterpiece was designed, it still fell far short of some of the other websites that I regularly came across in my travels on the Internet.

Now, professionally designed website templates are, as the name implies, designed by professional graphic designers. They might not be professional website designers as such since these templates often have certain intrinsic flaws, however, most of the time the look and feel created by the template, especially its graphical elements, work together in a way that is difficult to achieve for someone without either years of practice or formal training (not to talk of intrinsic artistic capabilities and talent!)

But lets look at the second reason why people don’t like templates:

~ Templates are often badly designed from a website design perspective ~

Website templates might look nice on the outside, but any experienced website designer will tell you that under the hood they suffer from the following problems:

1. In most cases they do not make use of Cascading Style Sheets to control layout, fonts or colours. Some of them nominally make use of an external css file but most of the times style commands abound inside the html code, often negating the benefit of the external style sheet.

2. Probably the biggest problem and biggest bugbear of web design purists is that most of these templates are heavily tables based. While tables undeniably make it easy to quickly position text and graphics it does go against the grain of good website design. Tables are supposed to contain content, not website design elements.

3. The last big problem is that they are rigid. Often a content block is a specific size and if your content does not fit into that, it is your problem! Because the content and the presentation are not separated it is very easy to break the template if you want to make extensive changes to your website content.

So how can these persuasive negatives related to the use of templates be overcome?

Firstly, the fact that there might be another site out there somewhere that might have the same look should not really be a deterrent. There are over 8 billion pages on the Internet, according to Google. Admittedly there are fewer websites than pages but even at 16 pages on average per website, we might have close on 500 Million possible websites. What are the chances? But there are things that can be done to minimise the screaming template effect: 1. The stock photos and graphics used on the template can often be replaced by photos of the company or person that the website is being designed for. Even just using other stock photos or graphics can make a big difference.

2. Company logos can be incorporated into relevant places

3. Sometimes the whole colour scheme can be changed by making use of tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks.

Secondly, the bad design elements of the template can be addressed in the following way:

After all the effort that I put into designing my websites from scratch I soon ran into the problem of maintenance. Successful websites need content. They need lots of content and they need content to be added in a constant stream. The only tool that can help you do this is some form of Content Management System.

There are several of these available commercially or under the GPL license; people have their own favourites. The point is that most Content Management Systems work on the principle of separating the content from the presentation, and therefore work on some sort of template system themselves.

The best solution therefore is to convert the commercial website template into the CMS template format. I often convert commercial website templates, after suitable modifications to the graphics to personalise it, into my favourite CMS Joomla’s, template format. During the process I retain the graphics but move all the styling into an external style sheet; I get rid of the tables and make use of CSS positioning. And because you are using a CMS you can easily add menus, new pages and all the other bits and pieces of content that you want without breaking the layout.

As far as I am concerned, the best of both worlds….

About the author: Christine Anderssen is a custom website designer specialising in Content Management Systems. You can find her at Tailormade4you Website Design – Custom Web Site Design Services

Continue Reading

How do I add my code snippet’s to my post

Posted on 23. Nov, 2006 by Dave.

If you’d like to add a code snippet to your post, you may now do so thanks to a new plugin we recently added. The plugin works by escaping most special HTML tags and characters so they display exactly as typed, but allowing certain tags to be rendered as normal HTML. The default set of allowed tags is the standard formatting tags like em, strong, span and so on. You can control this explicitly, or implicitly by specifying the language of the code block. For example, in a normal code block,

will be rendered as emphasised text, but in an HTML code block,

will be displayed as

Here’s how to format your code for Code Markup.
[code lang="html"]
* Enclose all code inside a

Continue Reading

PageRank in a Nutshell

Posted on 15. Nov, 2006 by Dave.

As a freelance web developer I know small business owners generally don’t have a lot of cash to burn on setting up a website as well as feeling a little uneasy simply because they don’t exactly understand how people will ultimately find their website.

Before doing any thing hasty I recommend my clients begin by using a website template, as opposed to spending hundreds of dollars embarking on any projects from scratch, these ready made web designs are affordable, well organized and can be quickly customized to adapt to what will ultimately be a unique and high quality website. On the other hand the esthetic characteristics of your design alone, which Google’s ranking mechanism by the way ain’t too keen on, will not drive visitor to your site.

The majority of the gazillion hits fluking to Google on a daily bases are spawned by it’s single most popular service the search engine. Did I say gazillion? Ok I may be exaggerating a little. Nonetheless as of Sep of 2006 half of all Internet searches relied on Googles technology.

Google’s reign over the search market supports a blooming economy of a billion little businesses and developers who understand the need for their businesses to develop strong ties between the search engine and them. The only way to do this is by ranking high in Google. Now, before we start tinkering around with Flash, Cascading Style Sheets and dynamic to static URL rewrite’s to improve our PR (PageRank) why don’t we find out how this ranking mechanism actually works?

PageRank PageRank relies on the democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure to determine an individual page’s value. In other words Google interprets a links or better said, an inbound-link or links from other sites to your site, as a vote from page A, for page B, notwithstanding Google looks at more than just sheer volumes of votes (inbound-links) a page received; it also analyses the page casting the vote.

Votes cast by more important pages would naturally weigh more heavily and help to make your site seem better established. Of course, the significance of a page may mean absolutely nothing to you if it doesn’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with some fancy text-matching techniques to find pages that are both significant and also relevant to your search.

In other words, is not just about who can gain the highest volume of votes necessarily, but also to ensure that each vote is relevant to your own page’s material. Moreover Google recommends you do not participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s rankings. And specially, avoid span campaigns or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as this might indivertibly lower your PageRank.

Google Webmaster tools There is a lot of advise floating around out there, with many SEO firms making some remarkable claims and all sorts of wonderful guarantees as to what they can do for the PageRank of your pages in Google. If you want my opinion, I say don’t believe anyone till you hear it straight from the horse’s mouth in this case, you guess it, ask Google.

Check out Googles Business Solutions there you’ll be asked to create an account, if you don’t already have one don’t worry it’s totally free and there’s no obligation. In particular take a look at “Web Pages – with Google webmaster tools” this nifty little suite of webmaster tools will provide you with a free and easy way to make your site more Google-friendly.

One of these features actually illustrate The PageRank of your pages in Google, while others help you diagnose problems, and let you share info directly with Google to help improve your site’s visibility. In addition Google’s Webmaster’s tools provide up-to-date helpful articles, webmasters guidelines and technical information specifically designed to help you attain, retain and stay current on anything new that may affect the PageRank of your pages.

In sum tuning-up your site’s PR doesn’t need to be that difficult, simply follow the Webmaster guidelines, and keep and eye out for improvement; most major search engine today constantly adjust or make important changes to their search algorithm.

If you liked this post, try Dyfed Lloyd Evan How do you Improve your Google Ranking? for more information.

Continue Reading

PHP cookies above the stateless protocol.

Posted on 15. Nov, 2006 by Dave.

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how fun and simple it is to use cookies to bring interactivity to your Web pages ultimately making you an even more sought-after more confident Web designer.

HTTP is a stateless protocol. Meaning that once the client’s browsers finishes a transactions with the Web server the Web server completely looses all recollection of the transaction. This is, of course, a problem for applications such as a shopping cart in which a state must be maintained. We need a way to send information (such as the data from a shopping cart) and be able to access that data again on all other subsequent request to that server. The most common approach is to use sessions via a combination GET and cookies. So what is a cookie?

Cookies are very small pieces of information (like little Post-Its notes if you will) that server side scripting languages like PHP utilize to store and retrieve information on the client side. Cookies are tied to a path on the server; meaning that only the domain that issued the cookie can have access to this data. All data is stored as a name-value pair. For Windows NT users the most common place to find your cookies is here [code lang="html"]C:\Documents and Settings\your Stuff\Cookies;[/code] you’ll need to replace your Stuff with the name of your own personal directory.

Moving forwards with syntax. Before going any further there are a number of guidelines you will want to remember. Note that you have to put the actual cookies code before any HTML tag; including the head, title, body etc. Cookies are bound to their hierarchical structure meaning any attempts to access a cookie from above its own hierarchy would fail, hence it is best to place the cookie in a file located within the root directory. This will allow you to access the cookie from anywhere on the site. Also, cookies will not become visible until the next loading of the page. Another thing I should mention is cookies can’t exceed 4KB. Doing so just confuses the Web server and forces it to generates a fatal error like the one here.

Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand. Size of a request header field exceeds server limit

Moreover browser can only accept up to 20 cookies per domain (300 cookies in total) if the maximum number of cookies is met the browser will delete the least recently used.

Here’s the code.
[code lang="php"]< ?php setcookie("cookie", "hello world"); ?>[/code]

setcookie is how we define cookies. This function has a number of parameters
[code lang="php"](bool setcookie ( string name [, string value [, int expire [, string path [, string domain [, bool secure]]]]] )).[/code]

I wont go over all of them; however I do think it’s important we discuss the first three.

string name.
[code lang="php"]< ?php setcookie("cookie"); ?>[/code]

The first parameter (name) is a string value; you should name this something relevant.

string value.
[code lang="php"]< ?php setcookie("cookie","hello world"); ?>[/code]

The second parameter (value) is a string value. Pretty self-explanatory, you recall me saying that all data is stored as a name-value pair. Without a value what would be the point anyway?

int expire.
[code lang="php"]
< ?php
setcookie("cookie", "hello world", time() + 3600);
?>[/code]

The third parameter (expire) is an integer value. We can set this by using the time function (int time ( void )). This returns the current time measured in the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch. Once we know what time it is we simply add to this the number of seconds we want for the cookie to live. If the parameter is set the cookie lives up to this date. This is known as a persistent cookie. On the other hand if no expiration date is set a so-called session cookie is generated. Session cookies work just the same only they expire once the browser is closed. Needless to say the current time is the state pertaining to the clients own time settings (you have no control over that). So if the client has the wrong date this cookie might expire prematurely. In our example we simply take the current time and add 3600 seconds more; that is to say the cookie will expire 1 hour from the current time. Once you get the hang of it you can start getting fancier maybe add a little JavaScript to determent the users actual date setting etc, etc.

On the next loading of this page or any other page on the same directory or sub directories we can access the cookie as follows.

[code lang="php"]< ?php echo $_COOKIE['cookie']; ?>[/code]

Cookies are great for storing simple name-value pairs but how do you store multiple variables. A common approach is to simply treat the cookie as an array; unfortunately this technique just isn’t practical given that each element in a cookie array is treated as one cookie which brings us right back to the 20 cookies per domain only rule.

A better solution is…

[code lang="php"]explode (array explode (string separator,string)).[/code]

This function returns an array by splitting a string on boundaries formed by a string separator. Here’s an example.

$airplanes = $fuselage.’,’.$wings.’,’.$cockpit.’,’.$fuel.’,’.$passengers;
setcookie(“modernMarvels”, $airplanes, time() + 3600);

The preceding code assigns five variable values to a cookie in the form of a string. Next explode uses a comma (or any other punctual mark as a string separator) to access each value individually converting string to array. Now all that is left is looping through the array.

[code lang="php"]
< ?php

$myvars = explode(",",$_COOKIE['modernMarvels']);
$foreach($myvars as $value) { echo $value; }

?>[/code]

The final thing is how to delete cookies. One way is to send a cookie with the same name setting its value to an empty string. Intuitively the latter replaces the former however the cookie still subsist; hence a better way is to additionally send a cookie with the same name but with an expiration date that is in the past. Think of this like a little terminator sent from the future back in time to kill itself. Cool hu? For example if you want to delete a cookie called “unstoppableCyborg” here is what you do.

[code lang="php"]< ?php setcookie("unstopableCyborg", "", time() - 3600); ?>[/code]

Well that about wraps it up here. If you wan to see real multiple value cookies in action simply visit our website www.foamerstudios.com and try adding a few Website templates to our favorites list application. Every single template selection you make will be stored on your machine via cookies. To learn more about cookies visit the preliminary specification guide at http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html

Continue Reading

Ready built Website templates usage, beyond what you already know

Posted on 14. Nov, 2006 by Dave.

When it comes to search engine ranking “cute won’t cut it”. While search engines can generate a mind staggering volume of traffic what they feed off specifically is content. Search engines utilize software known as crawlers or spiders. Unfortunately spiders are blind to web design they do not index images or Flash animation. Essentially a spider will visit your website peruse your content and report back to the search engine.

Based on the creepy little crawler findings your site achieves a ranking. The higher the ranking, the more visible your site becomes and a greater number potential customers using search engines will be more likely to find you. Needless to say our goal is to achieve the best possible ranking. So given that beauty is only skin deep and content is king, “Why would you spend thousands of dollars to hire a professional web designer?” What’s worse; drive yourself crazy looking for original concepts, matching appropriate color schemes etc, etc, etc

Nevertheless people are influenced by the esthetic characteristics of your design, and quality web design lends credibility to your brand. While design might not be the most important reason visitors end up finding your site, it is one of the key ways to keep them coming back again and again.

Before you do anything rash, check out the alternative. CSS Website templates are ready-made web designs created to be used as a basis for fast and high-quality website. Each template is unique and completely customizable right out of the box. What is more, most quality template shops will provide you with a free sample template so you can evaluate the quality of the product and try your skills before you buy.

These quality website templates are also perfect for self-taught designer such as myself always hungry for knowledge and looking for inspiration. I can’t count the number of times I have stared desperately at my laptop in search of a new idea or two. Now whenever I’m stuck, one of the things I like to do is browse to one of these template shops. In seconds I’m perusing through hundreds of different Flash animated templates. Once I come across a design that I find particularly intriguing I’ll purchase the template download the complete set of source files and study it. Ultimately I’ll be able to pickup a new masking technique, duplicate a fancy movie clip, advance my knowledge of Cascading Style Sheets or simply find simpler solutions to old remedies.

In sum you have a couple of options available depending on what skill you posses. If you feel comfortable around html and you have time to do it yourself remember you’ll always be able to get online help in a hurry. Check out the template help center knowledgebase or speak to a website template specialists about your problem. Also many good quality template shops will customize your website template for you and even integrate many useful script add-ons such as contact forms and the like, all for a small fraction of the cost of going through a conventional developer.

Continue Reading

CSS in Flash the return of Crisp and Legible Text

Posted on 14. Nov, 2006 by Dave.

In Flash MX and earlier versions fonts were by default anti-aliased, meaning that the edges of the text are smoothed. This is good when dealing with large type but it causes small text to appear blurry. Earlier versions of Flash also had other issues. For instance if one were to realign textfields around other objects fonts might come out of focus (because of positioning), and getting it right could take several tries.

More recently with the advent of Flash MX 2004 came the “alias text” option but, more importantly the TextField.StyleSheet() class. What is the TexFiled.StyleSheet() class? I’ll get to that but first let me tell you about this new “alias text” feature. The latter hides the anti-aliasing to make small text sharper and more legible yada, yada, yada. However, most often than not, fonts appear overly pixilated and cracked. In my opinion “alias text ” is nothing more than a little ransom note generator making every character appear as if it had been cut out of a magazine. Adding insult to injury if you are publishing for the Flash 6 player or earlier versions on Flash MX 2004 the “alias text” feature does not work on dynamic and or input textfields.

Moving forward with stylesheets. If you don’t already know something about CSS don’t fret the small stuff. Get to your favorite search engine and key in CSS (short for Cascading Style Sheets), and in seconds flat you will find hundreds of articles on CSS benefits, syntax, usage and whatnots. Very quickly, CSS is the language of style on the web and as opposed to other languages CSS is much easier to read and write. One of the reasons for this is you can pretty much read everything just as you would plain English, another is the ability to write everything in lowercase, something you could never getaway with in JavaScript.

CSS in ActionScript is relatively simple. The first thing we want to do is open the Action panel and create an empty style sheet object. Basically the idea is to load our style sheet information in there (font size, weigh, color etc.), and then assign that information to some text. Not only will you have more crisp and legible fonts but more importantly, this means you can change details about your font in an entire Flash template site by simply editing one file. Pretty powerful stuff huh?

Very handy when clients decided they don’t like red anymore or call to tell you that the font is too small. In the past such changes could be very time consuming, requiring developers to go through the whole movie editing textfield after texfield one at a time; providing that the client was happy with the changes you’d might get lucky and only need to run around that track once.

In my line of work I convert pre-designed web sites (web templates) into a unique Internet project (web sites), in other words I work with pre-made website templates. The whole basis for using a website template is to develop fast and high-quality website in half the time that it would normally take a regular design studio to do the same. Utilizing style sheets with my Flash templates enables me to keep my production time at a minimum and ultimately the time I save will benefit my clients. For detail instruction on how to create a style sheet object in Flash MX 2004 simply open the help panel and search under the keywords “cascading style sheets”.

In all fairness I must also mention something about Pixel fonts. Pixel what? Pixel fonts are fonts specially designed so that every part of every character falls exactly on the monitor’s pixel. Pixel fonts are incredible at getting fonts at small sizes looking crisp and legible at any resolution. If you are wondering if Pixel fonts would display correctly on the end user’s computer or some other platforms that does not have these fonts already installed. The answer is yes, but Pixel fonts must be embedded to ensure they are displayed correctly on every computer. The downside here is that embedding these fonts means an increase in file size which in turn causes an increase in bandwidth needless to say bandwidth determines the rate at which information is sent.

Nevertheless if you want to use fonts that look crisp even at small sizes without the use of CSS, Pixel fonts are right for you. To buy and or read more about Pixel fonts checkout these website www.FontsForFlash.com and www.ductype.com.

In sum the choice is your, on smaller projects I would actually prefer Pixel fonts over Cascading Style Sheets, I mean why bring a gun to the snipe hunt when all you need is my gunnysack. On the other hand you can do without a lot of unnecessary frustration going with CSS when working on larger projects.

Continue Reading

PHP server to client with no refresh.

Posted on 13. Nov, 2006 by Dave.

Although most of our companies work is template based design, the end result is always unique and adapts to each client’s individual needs. The process of merging a client’s content and style with our templates creates an opportunity to challenge ourselves and once again put our web design skills to the test. Recently, I found myself in a situation where it was necessary to pass information in the form of GET data from a simple Flash button to a server side scripting language- all without reloading the current page. A client was running several different Flash animated banners ads via XML layer popup, underlining some of her most popular website products and online services. She needed a simple way to track the overall efficiency of her small ad campaign. Specifically, she needed to know which banners were being clicked on and which banners were simply annoying or inconsequential to her client base. She also needed to know which were the most popular browsers accessing these pages.

I’ll try to describe what needed to happen with out getting too techie.

An XML layer popup would pop up, offering the end user with a two options. In option A, one could click on the popup. This would take them to wherever the popup was designed to take them. Option B was for the end user to close the popup, and that would simply hide the XML layer’s visibility property. At first, it sounded easy. However, beyond the obvious functionality of options A and B, each option needed to open, write, and save to an external file all without refreshing the current page. After all, the last thing anyone wants to see after closing a popup is another page pop up.

Nevertheless server side scripting languages, like PHP, require a refresh of the page to pass information. Unlike JavaScript which handles its business on the client side of a client server system via your browser (the client), PHP scripts are server-side because they operate solely on the server; data is sent to via POST or GET The script is then parsed, and the new data is sent back to the browser if necessary.

Here’s the solution. I created the following In-line Frame.
[code lang="html"]

Continue Reading