

Design Considerations For Animated Web Sites
Bandwidth, which is the transfer rate of internet data for the user’s browser, has hindered the creation of websites with multiple media effects and enhancements.
Many techniques and option is available to help to keep website graphics and animation download time for it to a nominal amount and can include the usage of tables, colour reduction and optimization of graphics, use of thumbnails, reuse of images, optimal placements of scripts, and collection of fast loading type of web browsers including Firefox.
Several online web software tools are offered to perform various tests on your sites, like internet site garage, sites can survey, pehtoori (HTML validation service), link alarm, and site inspector.
Bandwidth Issues
It has not been in the past that this norm was the 56K modem. Today, many users (appr 55%) still utilize the 56K modems for surfing, so bandwidth must be a problem for website designers. However, with technological advances like fast cable modems, TI lines, etc, bandwidth can become less of a problem later on. However, today you have to still design websites with bandwidth in mind.
Many techniques and choices offered to assist in keeping website graphics and animation download times to a nominal amount. The following tips will help you create websites that load as fast as possible:
Use tables for putting graphics together to cut back the size of gif animation. Depending on what your animation is much like, tables will help reduce its overall file size. For example, you could have a picture you need to animate, but only a small part of the image will actually function as the animation. You can manually chop up the image into different pieces employing a program like photoshop, or automatically, using a special utility like Ulead SmartSaver Pro. If you use photoshop, you should place the resulting graphics back together again within your HTML editor using table cells. Programs like SmartSaver create the HTML file while using graphics already within the table cells. By slicing increase image into sections, the small part with the image that animates can be in a table cell on its own. The rest from the image inside other table cells won’t end up part of the actual animation itself, thus reducing file size.
Reduce the colour palette of one’s gif animation. You can decrease how big your gif animation by reducing the number of colours in the colour pattern. For example, when you have a 256 colour image and decrease its colour’s to 64, how big the animation is going to be significantly smaller. However, an excessive amount of colour reduction could possibly have an effect on image quality. Obviously, some complexities exist for animated gif creation. Fortunately, several software option is available that assist with palette and overall gif animation optimization, such as Equilibrium’s Debabilizer, Digital Frontier’s HVC ColorGif, Ulead’s gif animator, as well as online gif optimizing services, like gif wizard, and gif cruncher.
Reuse images in a website. Reusing images, whenever possible, is an additional way to decrease download time because of the browser downloads and places the images within the pc’s cache. For example, the use of an image on your webpage then use the same images on four other pages from the website, the style has got to download just once. Thus, download time is kept to the very least since one image downloads as opposed to five separate images.
Specify Height and Width with your web coding on your animated gif images. You should always specify height and width within your HTML page to your animated gif images. If you do not specify height and width inside your HTML page, then your browser will wait for the graphic to load before loading the text. You should also remember that setting the height and width with your HTML page with a size less space-consuming than the graphic will not reduce download time since the style’s file size will remain just like it absolutely was before.
Specify a decreased-res image to display as a high res image loads. You can create a minimal -res variation of a jpg or gif image to appear while expecting the high definition image to complete downloading. When you try this, the page appears to be load faster towards the user. In reality, the additional image actually adds to the total download time. To add a low-res variation, simply add an attribute for the image tag like the following:
IMG src=”” lowsrc=””>
Be guaranteed to use jpgs for colorful photographic images. While you could compress your photographic images as gif images, jpeg compresses colourful images with generally better results, since jpg images offer 24-bit colour in comparison with gif images’ 256 colours.
Substitute thumbnails for larger images over a webpage.
Use interlaced jpg and gif images. You can save your images as interlaced jpg and gif images that can display a preview with the images because they load.
Alright, now go and CREATE!

6 Secrets to Photoshop Mastery
The excitement that comes from downloading your digital photos can dissipate quickly as you discover the shots you took were not so great after all. But then, that’s what Photoshop is for.
But if you haven’t mastered this powerful digital image editing software yet, you’re in for a bumpy, if not totally frustrating ride ahead. With so many options to choose from in Photoshop and procedures that require you to follow “the rules”, it’s easy to get lost. It’s easy to spend hours tweaking and re-tweaking your photo only to find you have to scrap the whole project anyway because you just can’t figure out how to do what you want to do.
So where can you turn for help?
I think at this point in time, Google is everyone’s first choice when they want to find information. Simply type into their search box whatever you are trying to do, for example: “photoshop how to remove red-eye”. I just tried that phrase and got 380,000 possible ways to remove red-eye and it only took .22 seconds. The only problem with that is, I will spend the next hour clicking on and trying different methods. One sure thing about Photoshop, if you ask 10 people HOW to do something, you’ll likely get 10 different answers.
YouTube
The greatest thing about YouTube is you get to see someone actually do what you want to do. They have a search engine there, so again I type in, “photoshop how to remove red-eye”. This time I get 51 possible choices. 51 videos to watch and learn and try for me. Again, the same problem as the original Google search only with fewer options to try. With all the different versions of Photoshop and all the different skill levels displayed on YouTube, I know I can succeed in removing the red-eye, but it could still take quite a while to watch 51, 5-minute videos.
Online Courses
Many online “gurus” are offering programs to teach you Photoshop. You buy their books on PDF, follow along with their videos, or receive their CD or DVD in the mail. While it beats sitting through an adult learning course at your local school, you’ll still be investing a lot of time and money in learning “stuff” you may never use. Why endure the expense and time required to learn a lot, when you can get just what you want more simply? Ultimately, without good notes, you still won’t find the information you need, when you need it, although you know you have it somewhere.
Local Library
Your local library will no doubt contain several books on mastering Photoshop. Only trouble is, you’ll have to read and return the book. Photoshop is one of those things where if you don’t use it, you lose it. It’s hard to remember all the steps and procedures if you only use them infrequently. You could buy the book at the bookstore, but really, how many times do we open a book these days for reference? See #1.
Forums
There are millions of photographers on this planet. One thing for certain is they all want to know what everyone else is doing. We’re constant learners, always looking for that next great tip to make our shots easier or more creative. A quick Google search of “photoshop forums” nets me 494,000 possible forums to look at for answers to previously asked questions. While I might meet a group of photogs I’d like to hang with long-term, it’s likely there are better places for getting my photo fixed before bedtime tonight.
Tip Cards
Tip cards are my favorite resource when it comes to getting fast results. For hundreds of years, folks have used recipe cards to turn a bunch of kitchen ingredients into a delicious finished product. Isn’t that essentially what we’re trying to do with Photoshop? Aren’t we trying to take a bunch of computer commands and turn them into a great finished photograph? Yes, we are! The great thing about these tip cards, or “photoshop recipe cards” is they sit right beside your computer for easy reference. You know what you want to do, you pull that cards from the deck and get to work. In just minutes you’re finished. You can find a lot of TIP CARDS on our website!
Nothing beats the feeling you have when you finally rescue your hum-drum photograph from Dullsville and turn it into something great. Having the right Photoshop tools and tips at your disposal can make all the difference between photographs that proudly hang on your wall, or pictures that never get printed at all.

Planning A Web Site Design
The Denver website design company I work for, Fusionbox, almost always has clients who call with rush jobs. Sometimes we lose out on jobs because we insist on how the project can’t be done right in a certain timeline. What we have realized is that you could do it quickly, or you can undertake it right.
Seventy-five percent of your successful project is planning. That means beginning from measurable goals and objectives. Your goals and objectives would be wise to tie back into your company’s mission. So, if your company’s mission will be the market industry leader in widgets, your website’s purpose ought to be to make it happen. It’s also important to set measurable goals. This will prove that committing to your internet site, makes sense. Plus, it’ll make you appear good for a boss.
Once the goals are set, your planning remains not even close to done. You’ll want to examine your target market or audiences and obtain inside their heads. This means finding out who they really are and why these are on your site. Then, you will have to make sure you are fulfilling their needs. Identify what actions each target market will need on the spot. If it’s someone buying a widget, make widgets readily available from the homepage. Research reveals that people that buy on the web need to see products right away plus they are interested in images and prices. Put your widgets on your homepage using a small image, title, description, price (users hate to drill down to get pricing), along with a “Buy Now” link.
The alternative is always to determine the specifications of the functionality. It sounds scary, but it’s not. Most developers could work having a set of statements like, “I desire a user in order to rate products on the scale of 1 through five.” Write down all you want the web page to perform as well as include what you might want it to complete. For example, “An administrator can log in a content management area and put in a press release.” You get the idea. Along with your specs, you’ll need to will include a database discovery. This means determining every one of the possible fields for precisely what could possibly be stored and served in a database. For example, an item may have a graphic, a title, an account, an amount, an item number, etc
After you’ve got determined your information architecture, it is time to create wireframes. Wireframes are similar to a blueprint of your online site. You’ll want to identify all of the content which will be represented on each page including navigation, logos, images, and content. This is an extremely important step since it takes every one of the guess workout for the designer, and you will perform a usability gut check-in your key user paths as well as the flow of the site itself. You can even build a test site in line with the wireframes and run a usability test.
The next step would be to get your site content together. A start has a content strategy. What are you wanting to accomplish with your posts? Don’t forget to will include a search engine strategy that defines what your key phrases are and exactly how you will leverage them in your site content. Is all of one’s content working toward your goals and objectives? Too often I see meaningless stock images like the ubiquitous handshake. Web users are jaded and images like these just distract an individual using their mission. Do yourself along with your users the following favor by leaving against each other. Instead, use images that might be meaningful and I’m not speaking about the butterfly that signifies growth.
Only once all the above steps are taken should you even start to take into account design. So many web design companies lead with design. Then the client winds up which has a site that could be gorgeous but doesn’t support goals and objectives. It is also of the utmost importance to style around content in lieu of making a design after which stuffing this content in it. Your design should support your brand and be the wrapping paper towards the gift. And again, ensure the design supports those key user paths; the initial question your web designer should ask you is, “What’s the very first thing you need users to perform once they come to your site. Don’t forget to integrate the look and feel of one’s site with your offline materials– unless you, you’ll just end up diluting your brand along with your marketing efforts.
Your planning is still not done. The last bit would be to plan the particular work–who is going to complete what when. Who should give approval for what when? Throw in some milestones, stakeholders, and deliverables, and you are done. In other words, produce a project plan. And by all means, plan the launch of the site. Make it deliberate, not an incomplete, rushed event because someone has it inside their head that just has to be done before the end of the year, if not Create some buzz and PR to the launch of your new gorgeous and effective site. Remember, you merely have one possibility to gain or lose users; if your new user concerns your website and doesn’t see what they’re trying to find, they’re gone, forever, and you’ve just lost a potential new lifetime customer.
By planning, and doing it right instead of quickly, you will have an end result that’s not only effective but in addition matches everyone’s expectations– your manager, your sales team, your marketing people, and more importantly your users plus your net profit.

Website Design Suggestions For Newbies
I lately got excited about these designs after seeing a Youtube tutorial about them. Maybe I can discover a college that gives an online bachelor’s diploma in graphic design and see if I can take it since I’m not too occupied at the moment. If you don’t nail the feel, your design might feel busy or overwhelming—and that’s never what you’re going for.
Our followers felt that designers should have an agency grasp of such information, so we’re dropping them in right here at the end so that they don’t slip underneath your radar. Don’t underestimate or forgo the recommendation of outsiders—those useful people who find themselves not necessarily associated with the project however may provide invaluable perception and recommendations for improvement. An outsider’s perspective won’t be mired in all the small print we designers get caught up in.
Visual hierarchy is an ability that comes straightforward for some individuals however for others, it must be discovered. Our weblog has a great article that will assist you to perceive visible hierarchy better. Learn the basics of designing custom shapes, lines, and brushes, and likewise learn how to use and manipulate text, and work via creating customized logomarks and icons. You’ll also be taught sneaky secrets and techniques for creating beautiful color palettes, gradients, and patterns.
Below, you can see that the image being saved will take approximately 2 seconds to obtain on a DSL Internet connection at its present settings. If you’re choosing between PNG and GIF, it’s often a good suggestion to choose PNG unless the image is to be animated. The PNG picture format is nice for images that have to be rendered with transparency.
At the very least, it is a useful supplemental useful resource. The article is broken down into useful subtopics such as design principles, history of design, and how to put collectively a design portfolio. Each section supplies a list of useful assets including design books, academic blogs, job boards for finding design jobs, and websites the place you’ll find a way to promote your work. In this document, you will discover a complete yet easy introduction to the history and nuances of typography.
If you may be already working in an artistic or graphic design subject, take into consideration the belongings you already know you could apply to website design as properly. The rules that make something visually appealing don’t change based on medium and all that design principles will turn out to be useful within the digital area as nicely. So you need to become an online designer, but you do not have any concept of the place to begin out. It’s not as exhausting as it seems, though it requires effort and time to be taught.
Try to make use of pictures and graphics solely where it makes sense. Keep your web graphics related to the content being presented on each particular page of your website. Use them when a visual clarification or demonstration will assist your viewers corresponding to when you are presenting a tutorial or when you want to show the fantastic particulars of an object. With a commitment to the quality content material for the design community.
Last, of all, we add our cube to the scene, then call our draw() perform to begin off the animation. We first create a cube international variable so we are in a position to access our cube from any place within the code. To start with, make a neighborhood copy of index.html in a model-new folder, then save a replica of metal003.png in the same folder.
I don’t care if there is something original left in this world or there isn’t. I’ll hold doing what’s proper for me and pursue progress and success. But artists should not feel guilty to make a fortune from their artwork. You aren’t promoting out as an outcome of you’re making money–artists still need to eat, after all.

10 Time-Saving Photoshop Shortcuts
- Adjust brush size. With the Brush Tool activated, rather than accessing the dropdown menu on top of the screen, press the best bracket key, ], to increase how big the brush along with the left bracket key, [, to decrease.
- Adjust brush hardness. Along with size, brush hardness frequently has to be adjusted. Holding shift + ] (right bracket key) increases the hardness with the brush while holding shift + [ (left bracket key) will reduce the hardness. Now you can maintain the brush tip where it belongs, in the heart of your image, instead of making frequent trips up to the properties bar.
- Copy to a new layer. Again, keep the pointer around the artboard. Duplicating a layer is actually pressing CTRL + J (PC) or Cmd + J (Mac). This will build a copy with the active layer within the layers palette. It will also copy an engaged selection onto a brand new layer, leaving the existing layer intact. Also, pressing CTRL+ Shift + J (PC) or Cmd + Shift + J (Mac) will cut the actual active selection from the active layer and paste it onto a brand new layer. If you name your entire layers, simply adding the ALT (PC) or Option (Mac) critical for either of such combinations will open the New Layer dialog box so you can name the new layer for the fly. You can also adjust the opacity and blend mode of the new layer right within the New Layer dialog box, saving you an additional vacation to the Layers Palette.
- Fill the layer or selection with color. Press CTRL + Backspace (PC) or Cmd + delete (Mac) to fill the layer with the present foreground color. Press ALT + Backspace (PC) or Option + delete (Mac) to fill the layer with the present background color. These same commands may also be used to fill some. Bonus: To change the foreground and background colors time for the default colors (black for your foreground and white for the background) simply press the D key.
- Undo. No need to look at the History palette. CTRL + Z (PC) or Cmd + Z (Mac) will undo a stride. Pressing this combination again will redo (or rather, enable you to get time prior to undoing). Need to go back further than the last step? Simply hold CTRL + Alt (PC) or Cmd + Option (Mac) and press Z. Every time you press the Z key, you are going to move backward one more step.
- The Hand Tool. Forget the scroll bars with the edges with the document window. To quickly navigate across the image, hold around the spacebar to temporarily activate the Hand Tool. Click and drag with all the Hand Tool to advance the document. To deactivate the Hand Tool, release the area bar.
- Favorite Tools. Learn the keyboard shortcuts to your favorite tools. For example B = Brush Tool, V = Move, J = Spot Healing Brush. As you become familiar with these, you may notice that teams of tools all share a similar shortcut key. For example, the Spot Healing Brush, the Healing Brush, the Patch Tool as well as the Red Eye Tool all share the identical shortcut key – the letter J. By pressing J, you’ll activate the last used tool in the group. To cycle, although other tools inside the group, hold Shift + the letter for that group of tools, along with the active tool will cycle to another tool within the group.
If you’re continually using a command that does not possess a keyboard shortcut, you can easily assign one. Go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts. Find the command on the list and assign the true secret combination you desire to use. If you try to assign a previously used combination, Photoshop asks if you want to reassign that key combination. This dialog box is also a good spot to learn what keyboard shortcuts are allotted to all commands.
- Layer Opacity. To quickly change the opacity in the current layer, simply press a number key. Pressing 5 = 50% opacity, press 3 = 30%, etc. To narrow the opacity to some percentage more specific when compared to a multiple of 10, press both numbers quickly. For example, pressing 5, 5 in quick succession set the opacity to 55%. (To get returning to 100%, quickly press 1, 0, 0.) Please note, this shortcut won’t work if one with the tools inside the second group is active.
- Zoom in and out. To zoom into a graphic, press CTRL and + or Cmd and +, and also to zoom out press CTRL and – (PC) or Cmd and – (Mac).
- Scrubby sliders. Most settings in Photoshop give you a slider to adjust to your liking.
Click and drag on the name of the setting to activate the Scrubby Slider. Sliding to the left or right will adjust the setting value up or down without needing to open the slider. You will know that a Scrubby Slider can be acquired whenever your cursor turns into a little pointing finger with arrows left and right.
Unfortunately, there is not any shortcut once and for all, old fashioned practice, but once you’ve memorized these shortcuts, you will be on the right path to finishing projects in record time! As anybody who sells their stock photos knows, you need to get the maximum revenue in each and every way possible.