Promotional Html Email Application (FREE)

Hi Gang,

I'm looking to send out promotional emails for my company. Does anyone know of a "free" product. I love the html formatted emails you get from Apple, Boarders and Starbucks. However, I have no idea how they do that. Any suggestions or help for application software that does it would be greatly appreciated.

Cornelius presenting at the Adobe User's Group (free)

Brought to our attention by Cheryl:
http://ammug.nhive.com/
Austin Adobe Users Group Meeting
Friday, October 9, 2009.

Back by popular demand, Cornelius Chopin presents:

"Image Placement With CSS"

Way to go, MJ!

Hey, everybody!
The site Mary Jane built for her friend is live. Check it out here:
www.corevt.com

Classes at Channel Austin

Here's the class schedule (updated every month):
http://facil.channelaustin.org/channelAustintraining.htm

Here's the course descriptions:
http://www.channelaustin.org/training/coursedescriptions

Consulting Solutions.Net (CSN) covers you for 3 classes:

• Orientation (the class is free, but Michael pays for the Producer's ID)
  
• Basic Cam
• TV101

Orientation must be taken first so you can get your Producer ID. The other 2 classes may be taken in any order.

nothing much to say here

So, did everyone enjoy their first free Saturday in 4 months?

More user manuals are uploaded to Rich Media Creative Services. All launch, though not all are available for download yet. If you get the chance, give Cornelius feedback on these or others you'd like to see.

Those funny little boxes

So, you've seen those "little squares" in IE (especially when visiting foriegn language sites), right? You've also seen those little boxes with a 2x2 array of characters in Firefox. What are they? Just missing fonts/characters? But wait, you don't have any special characters that visitors to your site would need additional fonts to view. What gives?

Those boxes indicate that the browser was unable to find a character, and so looked for the character in a different font set. Sometimes, it finds a match. When it doesn't, you get the "little boxes" (more detailed explaination here)

Those numbers within the box (in firefox) indicate the unicode for the missing character.

Here's a good site for searching unicode:
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/search.htm

So, per that search,  (0 0 0 backwards E in a box in firefox) = control key

Acrobat "Paid" stamp

The blog author says:
"I have no plans on writing a tutorial...After wasting over an hour looking though worthless tutorials on how to write javascript for Acrobat Forms, I came up with paidstamp1.pdf. Feel free to use it for yourself."
http://www.naterkane.com/blog/a-dynamic-paid-stamp-for-acrobat/

And if you want to know how to do it, here's an actual tutorial:
http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/2006/08/creating_custom.html

More Free Tutorials

More from Cornelius (thanks, Teach)!

Cartoonsmart:
www.cartoonsmart.com

Gomedia (tutorials, photoshop presets, etc)
gomediazine.com

There's some tutorials buried among the memes:
www.newgrounds.com

for Mac Users:
www.freeway.com

Webassist (mostly paid tutorials, but some free)
http://www.webassist.com/
http://www.webassist.com/solutions/dreamweaver-templates/ (free templates, but give credit to Web Assist)

Recommended Reading

Here are some of the titles Cornelius recommends:

CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
by Andy Budd, Cameron Moll, and Simon Collison
ISBN-13: 978-59059-614-2 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4302-0123-6 (electronic)
at Amazon

Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide, Second Edition
by Charles Wyke-Smith
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-52556-7
ISBN-10: 0-321-52556-6
at Amazon

Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS4
by Stephanie Sullivan and Greg Rewis
ISBN-13: 978-0321605030
ISBN-10: 0321605039
at Amazon

Photoshop CS4 Down & Dirty Tricks
by Scott Kelby
ISBN-13: 978-0321563170
ISBN-10: 0321563174
at Amazon

More Saturday Links

From Ann J:
http://script.aculo.us/ (javascript library for developing web 2.0 effects)

From Cornelius:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ (tutorials)

Creating a website in Fireworks CS4

I wish I could have attended MamiSerwaa's presentation today. Sounds like it was very helpful!

Here's some info I found on the web that may provide further review / study on Fireworks. The first link has an easy-to-follow video tutorial demonstrating the generation of CSS and import into Dreamweaver. Other than going a little "class-crazy," it sounds like Fireworks generates nice code.

http://www.layersmagazine.com/fireworks-cs4-css-export.html

http://www.entheosweb.com/fireworks/CS4/design_layout.asp

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/standards_compliant_design.html

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/export_css_images.html

IT'S HERE!!!

The USER MANUALS section of Rich Media Creative Services is live!
http://www.richmediacs.com/user_manuals/

"COOLNESS!!!!"

Altogether now..."OHHH! AHHH!"

More tutorials

Free Tutorials from Layers Magazine:
http://www.layersmagazine.com/category/tutorials

CSS Zen Garden:
http://www.csszengarden.com/
(quick & dirty notes will be forthcoming after some clean-up)

For those who liked the worn/torn edges & smudged containers on the "Walk in the Garden" design at CSS Zen Garden, here is a page FULL of links to various brushes & tutorials: http://tutorialblog.org/grunge-photoshop-tutorials/

Lorem Ipsum Generator

For all your generic text needs: http://www.lipsum.com/

You can generate paragraphs, individual words, etc.

Training sites retrospective

Per Mami Serwaa, the "tip of the day" from Layers magazine have not been worth subscribing to of late.

And (to recap) some of our favorite tutorial sites:

*****PAID SUBSCRIPTION (some have free trailers)*****
http://www.lynda.com/
http://www.totaltraining.com/
http://www.vtc.com/
http://www.photoshopuser.com/ (National Association of Photoshop Professionals)

*****FREE*****
http://www.planetphotoshop.com/
http://www.gotoandlearn.com/
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/ (the Resources page also has links to other free tutorials)
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/
http://www.luv2help.com/catergories.php
saving the best for last...
http://www.richmediacs.com/user_manuals (Coolness)

The Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Enter the page URL & see a timeline of that site (1996 and later). Dates with astericks indicate a date the site was updated/changed.

Also, what NOT to do:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Use discretion - nothing naughty at these sites, but depending on how cautious/paranoid you or your employer are, you may not want to view these at work - i.e., photoshop disasters may have disasters showing ads for swimsuits or lingerie, webpagesthatsuck had that link to the toliet company whose nav bar was a bunch of rear ends (though that was not in the thumbnail & the link was helpfully tagged NSFW).

Free 3D models

The site discussed in class: archive3d.net

Saturday recap

Here's the addresses that were mentioned on Saturday.

em/pixel conversion: http://www.convertunits.com/from/em/to/point

lessons at Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/css.html
(specifically, the 2 under the heading "From table-based to tableless web design with CSS")

Adobe Photoshop CS4 - Classroom in a Book

Team,

For those of you who were looking for a tools panel overview, our Adobe Photoshop C4 "Classroom in a Book" meets that need. Yes, it's good for something. Pages 40 - 44 explain and provide a before and after picture for tool usage. This should make which tool to use for the results you want clearer.

A Couple of Resources

All,

Here's a link to the Firefox CSS Viewer Plugin. It allows you to see the CSS code of any website you're viewing.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2104

Also, for some inspiration, here's a link to a website about web development.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

This information is compliments of my neighbor friend, Matthew Villalobos. He's a web designer at UT and a wealth of information!

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Swap

Team,

I have a request. I have an iMac at home and would like to develop on the Mac platform. However, I got the PC version. Would anyone be interested in swapping copies to load the PC version on their PC? If so, could you bring it to class.

Experience with creating Adobe CS4 Photoshop Extended Design Mark-up Pages

Team,

Does anyone on the team have experience with creating Adobe CS4 Photoshop Extended markup website pages? I'm also looking for FREE "how-t0" tutorials on it as well.

Adobe CS4 Photoshop Keeps Crashing

Team,

I have been having a annoying recurring issue upon my attempts to work in Adobe CS4 Photoshop Extended. No matter what I've been working on, the application mysteriously crashes for no apparent reason. It has become frustrating to say the least. I "Googled" the problem and got a possible solution. Here are the links:

• Helpful Photoshop website forum called Photoshop Gurus Forum.
• Here is the actual Adobe article with the problem/solution. The article covers various O/S solutions.
  

It appears that their are know graphic driver issues with the current CS4 Photoshop version that could cause this behavior. My laptop configuration consist of:

• O/S: XP Home Edition
• SP: 3
• Graphic Card: Intel 915GM/GMS.910GML Exprss Chipset
• Graphics Card Memory: 128 MB

Needless to say, I updated my video driver adaptor. Since then, I've had no more Adobe Photoshop crashes. My version appears to be stable for now.

Free Illustrator Webinar / Free Flash Webinar

From the same gents at CreativeTechs who are presenting the Free InDesign Webinar:

http://creativetechs.com/training/training-tips.php

Child-rearing advice from someone who really knows

...And that someone is not myself. As I mentioned in class, my friend is a teacher and a mom. She recommends the Love and Logic series of about 10 books that focus on principles of discipline by natural consequences. Best of luck to all you brave parents out there! 

We are counting on you to raise the next generation of taxpayers who will support our social security system, if it still exists when we get up there in our golden years. No pressure!

Transform Adobe Photoshop Layout to Dreamweaver

Hi Team,

Image via Wikipedia

Adobe Fireworks is a great tool to help along in the transition process from comp page to website. If you laid out your website concept in Adobe Photoshop, you can import it into Fireworks to prep it for Adobe Dreamweaver. The best thing about Fireworks is it allows you to slice up your Photoshop layout into HTML and CSS. Yeah, I know. How sweet is that. In other words, it gives you jump start into creating that stellar website concept you are preparing for your client.

This no nonsense "how-to" video session is clean, short and direct. There's no way you can go wrong with video. I know we currently don't have the software yet. However, this video would be a feather in your web design arsen to use as a reference for when the class or you get there.

Interactive Indesign PDF & SWF

I know we haven't explored Adobe InDesign ,as of yet, in our Multimedia Design journey. However, this tidbit of information I had to share with the team.

If anyone is interested in adding a slick page curl to your website design, check out this visual treasure. The best thing about this technique is there's no coding. That's right! You can create an action without coding. It's a nice break from all the Adobe Action Script coding we've been doing. InDesign takes care of the coding for you. Also, you can save your InDesign creation as a PDF or SWF.

From Comp Page to Sample Website

Do you have an Adobe Photoshop concept page or idea scribbled out on paper for a website design? I know that's were I'm going to start for my class website project. Don't tell Mr. C. I still haven't gotten started yet...heehee. My excuse is. I still am waiting on the CS4 Software Suite, mainly because my Adobe Dreamweaver trial has expired and Adobe Flash Pro is about to give up the expiration trial ghost too.

Here's a great video's to help the website designer slacker, jump start their creativity. If you want to create a concept website for your client or yourself, you can use Adobe Fireworks and Photoshop to generate it. I found the how-to video helpful for doing just that. However, it has a lot of information to take in on one sitting.

Action Script 3 Basics

Here's a great 30 min. video to give you a quick 101 course in how to create action script 3 code.

Server Side Technology Tip

For those of us, like myself, that haven't started working on your website. Even if you have this is still a good tip if you didn't know it. Of course the first step to setting up a fabulous website is to have a layout. The next step is to go through the painless process of Dreamweaver's site definition. If you have been blessed with ownership of one of the sexy Mac laptops/Desktops, you have a few SWEET built-in features that enhance your web design. Mac has a built-in web server, PHP web server and MySQL. That's right folks! Mac developers get a development environment that comes out the box at no charge to you. Unlike the PC camp, we have to pay for those extra's to develop on a PC platform. Unless you're feeling like MacGyver and you desire to install and configure those server side technologies on a PC platform, you gotta pay to play. Maybe Mr. C will share his server side technology (Coldfusion server) with us who are developing on a PC platform...heehee

So, now it makes me wish I ordered the Mac CS4 version...ggggrrrr.

CSS Webinars

On this page you will find info about CSS (parts I and II) webinars on May 28 and June 25:

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/demos/webinars.aspx

Adding A Google Search Box To Your Website

Team,

I found a great website that explains and provides cut and paste code for a Google search that you can add to your website. It can be designed to have the user search the web or your site only. Here is the link to the article by Dave Taylor.


Enjoy.

Object Based Tweening Model - CS4 Flash Pro

Team,

Monday's animation tween process was a comprehensive mess for me. I thought it was an awful lot of clicks and frame pointer postioning to create an animation. Instead I prefer to use the new Object Based Tweening Model in CS4 Flash Pro. I think it makes it quicker, cleaner and comprehensively simple to preform on an object.

Here are the steps:

1. Create/draw your object on the canvas
2. Ctrl click the object and select "create motion tween"
3. Drag the object on the canvas to were you want the motion to end
4. Done

If you want to adjust the path, just drag and drop the path guide. Or if you want to adjust the animation path at a different point during the animation path, you can click on the object and drag and drop to a different path.

As an additional aid, you can check out the tv.adobe "how-to" video below.

Free InDesign Webinar

Join this free, 10-week class:
http://creativetechs.com/tipsblog/free-10-week-indesign-course/

Prior to this class, the same presenters will do a free, one-session intro to Flash webinar.

Registration is required for both.

For those of you who will be incorporating Adobe Flash video on your websites, how about the ability to have your speech translated into different languages. Here is the website that translates your video. Registration is free. Not to mention, this site had a great library of samples for you to review code too. I like the shadow box that fills your browser content window to show the video.

http://dotsub.com/

Enjoy

Free Flash Tutorials

Group,

Here are two links for learning CS4 Flash. These tutorials are video driven. I found them to be of value. The adobe site allows you to filter your content to taste. On the "gotoandlearn.com" site, there's a Flash basics series that's easy to follow.

tv.adobe.com
www.gotoandlearn.com/

Enjoy.

How to view another websites code

Hi Everyone,

Say, how can I view the code of another website? I know that this has been talked about in class before and I thought that I wrote it down in my notes but I am not finding it. Thanks in advance! MJ

CSS Styles - Dreamweaver Preference

For those of us who like to have our CSS attributes on one line in the CSS window/code view, make sure your Dreamweaver preferences are set appropriately.

1. Ctrl+U
2. Select "CSS Styles
3. Check mark all "Use shorthand for:"
4. Click "OK"

Helpful XHTML and CSS Links

My boyfriend, Roy, is a web developer and highly recommends these resources. My comments are in CAPS:

You can experiment on this site with different HTML and CSS and see the results instantly (THIS IS "COOLNESS!")

http://htmlplayground.com/#tag_div

40 example sites setup by CSS, which can be used as templates

http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/

Beautiful, simple, and practical use of CSS for sites (THIS IS A RESOURCE CORNELIUS ALREADY SHARED WITH THE CLASS)

http://www.csszengarden.com/

One of many sites that can help you use color combinations for the web that work well together (I HAVEN'T FIGURED OUT HOW THIS SITE WORKS YET. IF ANY OF YOU CAN UNLEASH THE MAGIC GENIE OF THIS RESOURCE, PLEASE SHARE)
http://www.colorcombos.com/

Welcome to Cornelius' Multimedia Class!

Hi to James ("007") and Ann(ie) Cushman! Thanks for joining this blog!

Last month, Star and I decided to retake the Multimedia class at CSN. We have a wonderful new instructor (Cornelius Chopin) and a big class - more than 10 - and growing. Let's just say our class room is very cozy!

I hope this blog will be a good resource as we develop our skills. I'm not crazy about filing e-mails and the like. Maybe this blog can serve as a central repository.

Thank you to everyone for participating!

Welcome Everyone

Hello Everyone,

I look forward to be contributing factor to this blog. Thanks for the design website template to use. I was wondering when to use them (i.e. Liquid, Elastic, Fixed...etc). I was just wondering, which type of menu bar style do you prefer: vertical, horizontal or combo?

What screen size to design for?

In general, it's more difficult to build "fluid" websites that scale automatically to the person's computer's screen size when there are a lot of graphics on the page. That's because, unless all the graphics that are on each page are flash/vector graphics, the graphics themselves will not automatically resize. (Although it is true that you can specify the height and width of any graphic, and even use percentages ... when you are showing those graphics at anything other than their original size, you run the risk of them looking really crappy. )

If the site is primarily text and just a few scattered graphics, "fluid" sometimes works nicely, though it's still a little bit tricky to do.

If the site has quite a few graphics, then use "fixed" screen widths.

At work, we design for 1024 x 768 screens.

As you can see from the attached graphics, so does CNN and APPLE. (Although you can see that the CNN screen, when viewed on a 1280x800 screen, actually makes their header at the top fluid, so it fills all the way across. but they specifically -don't- do that for the rest of the site below the header.

I would say, design for a 1024x768 screen, keeping in mind that when you do that, you don't actually have 1024 dots wide to work with, you have less, because some of the screen is taken up by the border of the browser (the scrollbar area on the right, and a few pixels on the left).

Here are a couple of useful links when considering screen size:

Statistics on most common screen sizes:

http://www.zdnetasia.com/techguide/webdev/0,39044903,39370548,00.htm

Why you should design for "browser" size and not screen size:

http://justaddwater.dk/2006/08/17/design-for-browser-size-not-screen-size/


Hope that info helps!

Comparing DW Code

Subject: Re: utility for compaing DW code across versions
Two very common version control systems used widely are SVN and CVS.

We use Tortoise SVN for version control of our files at work, and I use it for my websites too.

SVN is a rather generic form of version control utilized heavily throughout the internet. Tortoise SVN is a specific vendors implementation of SVN for a windows based computer. Tortoise costs nothing, but for it to be able to track revisions, you have to have an SVN "host" set up. I think it is possible to do that on your computer so that you can track revisions on your computer alone. We have SVN set up on work machines so that we can see the differences and track revision history for any changes any of us programmers make to the main "live" site.

SVN is most useful in a collaborative environment where you have several people that may be updating or working on the same files. It allows you to "undo" ("revert" is the technical name) changes that might have caused problems. It also allows you to go back several revisions, or to stage groups of files together in a sort of "release" called a "Tag", so that you can revert a whole bunch of changes on a bunch of files all at once. There are lots of other capabilities too.

Note: this is not a particularly easy or intuitive program to use, but it is one of the most widely used, and if you ever intend to work collaboratively with others on websites, this is the one I would recommend learning.

Info on Website Development - including templates

Hi All,

Here's more info from Roy:

Here's the link to the collection of stylesheet / html templates:

http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/page_layouts/

and another site, with not only multi-column setups,but complete color schemes, etc.

http://www.freecsstemplates.org/css-templates/

And here are a couple of links that are indespensible for general website development:

I use this ALL of the time, it keeps me from carrying around about 10 different books: http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp

This is also a great resource: http://www.webmonkey.com/

Our first job?

So what do you guys think about Micheal's proposal?

Pact Info from Michael

Multi Media Students,

I hope everyone is doing well.

I had given this to one of your fellow students who was supposed to coordinate this with you. Feel free to schedule this class together so that you can take the class together.

Call me after you schedule it...I do not know what fits your schedule........go ahead set it up and let me know what the bill is. I will pay the bill for the group with my credit card.

You will need to attend three classes:
1)Orientation: Monday
2)TV101
3)Basic Cam

http://www.channelaustin.org/getinvolved/producer

We will obtain a producers license for you for six months also.

Please call Maria at Channel Austin formerly Pact at 512.478.8600 x10 to schedule
Respectfully,

Michael A. Brown, PMP, ChE Director of Operations
www.ConsultingSolutions.Net 1016 La Posada Suite #280
Austin, Texas 78752(512) 502.9990
(877) 249.1231 Toll Free/Fax

Welcome to the Austin Multimedia Group!

This blog was created by students of Thomas Benner. We are now taking a WIA (Workforce Investment Act) class that covers Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Flash, and more in less than 4 months. Our minds are sometimes ready to explode!