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