swfIR

There's a fnacy new(ish) technique out called swfIR that does the same for Images as sIFR does for fonts, and then some. Theoretically a client could upload it's own image via CMS and swfIR would apply rotation, drop shadow, you name it. Check it out here www.swfir.com

Google changes gear

Last week Google released Google Gears (Beta), an application that lets web sites store their data on your local computer using only your web browser. Google Reader is already supported - read your feeds on the train! - and word on the street is that Gmail and Google Docs is to come.

Install instructions and a bit more info here

http://lifehacker.com/software/launch/access-your-google-reader-feeds-offline-with-google-gears-264682.php

Screen Casting Fun

Have played with a free screencasting software the other night - very easy to use and might be a good feature to add to sites - e.g. how to use CMS etc etc. or even front end stuff

The software I've used is http://www.camstudio.org/ more info here: http://www.screencast.be/

It does audio too (not tested) and can export to Flash or avi.

There is an example here (use Internet Explorer I think there is a trivial bug in the auto generated embed script for Firefox)

The example is clearly a bit long and the file size is too big but serves as an illustration.

Anyone played with any other screen casting software?

Visual Studio Woes (pt 1)

Had a bit of a nightmate this morning trying to open a web project I haven't accessed for a while. The error VS was giving was a "The http redirect request failed.". Yes.. Very useful VS!!

After doing a little googling, the only advice that was give was to clear out the contents of the bin directory of the project you are trying to open.

Did that, and it worked .. so passing this on to everyone in case you also have a similar experience in the future!

Handy list of countries in CSV format

Great for when you need that dropdown list of countries on your website or registration form. Also has lots of other potentially useful columns like currency, capital and TLD's.

Download from here

Multiple versions of IE

In our quest to ensure consistency and compatibility in different versions of IE, most of us havae gone to the lengths to install Microsoft Virtual Machine with the sole intention of running IE6. There is a standalone version of IE6 that has been knocking around, however it doesn't have cookie support - so that cripples its usage.

I've found this little package:

http://tredosoft.com/files/multi-ie/multiple-ie-setup.exe

This contains multiple versions of IE. The version of IE6 that is contained within the installer will support cookies, so no longer any need to run Virtual Machine and cripple the performance of your system!

Enjoy!

Educating your stakeholders

Another good article from A List Apart:

http://alistapart.com/articles/educatingstakeholders

Who decides what's best for a website? Highly skilled professionals who work with the site's users and serve as their advocates? Or schmucks with money? Most often, it's the latter. That's why a web designer's first job is to educate the people who hold the purse strings.