pmlmedia

Helvetireader – A minimal, anti-social theme for Google Reader

Peter Moore — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:04:11 +0000

I can’t get my head round Google Reader but Helvetireader certainly helps. This stylesheet can be installed as a chrome extension or a Firefox add-in and gets rid of all the junk and just serves you the headlines in a nice, legible skin. Made by Hicksdesign by the way…

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Create a URL button in flash AS3

Peter Moore — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 09:46:18 +0000

If you need a banner to have a button that when clicked takes you to another webpage when you click the flash button this is how you do it. You need to create a button (in this case a transparent rectangle on top of a web banner animation), add an event listener(a mouse event/click) and create a function (in this case the function is to request a URL and navigate to it).

1/ Press F8 to convert a rectangle into a symbol, create button and name it myButton.
2/ Click on the button in the main timeline and press F9 to open the actions window.
3/ Use this code to create an event listener and a function for after the click event.
You can use…
“_blank” or “top” to open in a new tab
“_parent” or “_self” open in the same tab



myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, myButtonFunction);

function myButtonFunction(event: MouseEvent) {

var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://www.pmlmedia.co.uk");

navigateToURL(request, "_self");

}

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Add a Google Map into your web page

Peter Moore — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 23:16:28 +0000

1/ Use Google maps to find the longitude and latitude of the address you want to map – when the map pin is in the middle of the screen, paste this code into your browser…

javascript: void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

2/ generate a google maps API key. If you’ve got more than one map in your site, don’t just genereate a key for your domain name, use the full location of the directory e.g. pmlmedia.co.uk/testwebsites/newsite1/

3/ Edit this code with your newly generated API key, longitude and lattitude, and address (for when someone clicks on your map pin) then paste the edited code into the head of your webpage.

<script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=REPLACETHISTEXTWITHYOURAPIKEY&sensor=true" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
/* <![CDATA[ */

    function initialize() {
        if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {

            var a = REPLACETHISTEXTWITHYOURLONGITUDE;
            var b = REPLACETHISTEXTWITHYOURLATITIDE;
            var zoom = 16;
            var html = '

<div class="htmlwindow">
REPLACEWITHNAMEOFBUSINESS
REPLACEWITH1STLINEOFADDRESS
REPLACEWITH2NDLINEOFADDRESS<'+'/div>';

            var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map_canvas"));
            map.setCenter(new GLatLng((a+0.001), b), zoom);
			map.addControl(new GSmallMapControl());
			//map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl());
 			map.enableScrollWheelZoom();

            var marker = new GMarker(new GLatLng(a, b));
            GEvent.addListener(marker, "click", function() { marker.openInfoWindowHtml(html); });
            map.addOverlay(marker);
            //GEvent.trigger(marker, "click");
        }
    }
    /*  */
// ]]></script>

4/ Paste these event functions into your opening body tag…

<body onload="initialize()" onunload="GUnload()">

…and create a DIV wherever you want your map to appear and set the width and height for your map.

 <div id="map_canvas" style="width: 529px; height: 300px"></div>

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SO YOU NEED A TYPEFACE

Peter Moore — Sun, 30 May 2010 18:04:42 +0000

A cracking idea by 22 year old graphic designer and student Julian Hansen. When things get a bit serious, ridiculously complicated infographics always lighten the mood.

Face choices are based on the top 50 from http://www.100besteschriften.de/

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Create a blur mask in Photoshop [Part 1]

Peter Moore — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:02:01 +0000

Quick and dirty way of adding depth of field to an image is by creating a gradient blur effect using a blur mask, levels and the gradient tool…

1] Duplicate the image layer you want to add the blur to

2] Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels… to create a levels adjustment layer

3] Press ‘G’ to select the gradient tool. Choose the Black to White gradient from the gradient select panel

4] Click with the Gradient Tool in the area you want to remain in focus and drag to where you want it to be out of focus. Use a shallow gradient for a more dramatic blur effect

5] Control click and hold on the layer mask thumbnail to load the gradient as a selection

6] Click the Background layer and select Filter > Blur > Lens Blur (not Gaussian)

7] Drag the slider to adjust the amount of blur and click OK

8] Ctrl+D to deselect the area.

Finished effect should look like this…

…from this original image…

If you want more realistic depth of field effect or perhaps to recreate extremely shallow focal depth on an area of your image (like with a macro lense) , then you should use the lens blur tool again and choose the reflect gradient type. Will post this, along with the reason why you should use lens blur rather than Gaussian in part 2 of this hint.

PDF to Word Convertor

Peter Moore — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:37:40 +0000

Want to convert a password protected PDF to a word document?
This great little app. does exactly what it says on the tin!

It’s free to register at the moment…

http://www.anypdftools.com/pdf-to-word.html

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How to force download a PDF file instead of view in the browser

Peter Moore — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:46:56 +0000

Been having problems with my work computer when viewing PDFs in the browser - takes far too long to start up Adobe Reader on my machine. I found this snippet of code to force download the PDF instead.
Upload the file you want to make available for download to your Web server. For example, huge_document.pdf
Edit a new PHP file and name it the same as your file to be downloaded, only with the extension .php. For example: huge_document.php
Your PHP file should look like this:

header(‘Content-disposition: attachment; filename=huge_document.pdf’);
header(‘Content-type: application/pdf’);
readfile(‘huge_document.pdf’);
?>

Link to your PHP file as a download link. For example:

Download my huge document (PDF)

To change the MIME type of the file you want to download, edit line 3

header(‘Content-type: application/pdf’);

Periodic Table of Typefaces

Peter Moore — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:13:20 +0000

http://www.squidspot.com/Periodic_Table_of_Typefaces/Periodic_Table_of_Typefaces_large.jpg

Typefaces set out in a periodic table showing some of the more popular typefaces at the top. there’s also a periodic table of the internet, and a periodic table of visulisations but it’s getting a bit silly now.

Created by squidspot.com

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Create a robots.txt file for your website

Peter Moore — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:07:14 +0000

After you’ve created an xml sitemap, create a new text file in notepad and add the following to guide the google bot to your sitmap. this robots file also disallows the indexing of paths to the pdf and word docs on your site as well – this helps stop out of date links appearing in Google.

User-agent: *
disallow: /*.pdf$

disallow: /*.DOC$

User-agent: Googlebot

disallow: /*.pdf$

disallow: /*.DOC$

SITEMAP: http://www.domainname.co.uk/sitemap.xml

Create a knockout gradient layer in Photoshop CS3

Peter Moore — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:36:50 +0000

You might want to create a fade to transparency effect on one part of your image like this….

Easiest way to do this is to use the Advanced Blending options on a layer placed directly above the image you want to knock-out.

1/ Place you image on a new layer or double click on the background layer to turn it into a proper layer

2/ Insert a new blank layer above your image -(you can just click the ‘create a new layer’ icon next to the dustbin at the foot of the layers pallet) and rename it ‘knock out gradient’. keep the knockout gradient layer selected

3/ Select the gradient tool, if necessary click the linear gradient button and select the default foreground and background colours(to set foreground to black and background to white)

4/ Click the arrow to the right of the gradient display in the options bar to open the gradient picker, then choose the ‘foreground to transparent’ gradient (by default, this is usually the second gradient in the gradient pallet)

5/ Click, shift and drag from the bottom of the image to the mid point, to create a gradient to go from black at the bottom of the image to transparent at the top.

6/ In the layers pallet, click Layers style ‘Fx’ option and choose blending options (double clicking the layer also brings up the layer style options)

7/ In the advanced blending panel, drag the ‘fill opacity’ slider to zero percent. Change the knockout drop down from ‘none’ to ‘deep’. (note: ‘deep’ knocks out to the background, choose ‘shallow’ to knock out just the layer below

8/ click OK to apply the blending options

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