Outlook email newsletters and the AutoPreview pane
Cranking out email newsletters for Microsoft Outlook can be a pain, but if you are in the web business you may have to crank out the occasional email newsletter, and of course Outlook has a major market share. If you use Outlook you may know of the AutoPreview feature. This is a preview pane below the actual title that gives you the first few lines of content within the email. In many email newsletters you will get something like “View the online version of our newsletter”. This is probably not what you want to show up in the Outlook AutoPreview, and the way around it is quite simple. It’s also another chance to entice your audience into opening your email newsletter.
Creating OFT templates for Outlook 2010
I wrote an article a few years ago on creating OFT files for Outlook. This was written for Outlook 2007, and since then, Outlook 2010 has been released and things have changed. The ability to view web pages within Outlook 2010 has been removed and the UI has also been redone, but fear not, the ability to make OFT files still exists, although it’s not as straight forward as it used to be.
14 killer web design and development tools for the Mac
Here are 14 must have web design and development tools for the Mac that I use on a daily bases. Many of these applications are also available on windows, and the ones that are not have alternatives. These tools can make your life easier and optimize your workflow. Unless the word “demo” is included in the download link, most of these apps are Open Source or just plain free.
Email newsletters in Lotus Notes and table width
Lotus Notes, or Locust Notes as some of my colleagues like to call it is probably the hardest email client in wide use to code for. Depending on which version you are trying to support, you may be in for a real nightmare. I recently marked up a very basic email newsletter that had to work in Lotus Notes 6.5 and I still had a lot of trouble getting it to work. The same rules apply to Lotus as that of Outlook 2007, build your emails with a slew of tables and spacer gifs and use as little CSS as possible, this is especially true for older versions of Lotus notes. I wanted to share one particularly nasty bug that I squashed, and that is how Lotus deals with table widths.
Blurry Guides in Photoshop CS5
I just started using Adobe’s CS5 this week at work. When ever I install a new version of any software I usually run into a lot of bug and configuration issues, and Photoshop is no exception. If you are a web designer and use Photoshop then pixel perfect precision is a must. When you first use CS5 on your next web mockup you may notice that the guides you set up are blurry. They are about 2 pixels wide and pretty much useless for web layouts.
Using Twitter for instant social news
This may sound obvious for some, but I am still surprised by how many people have underlooked or forgotten a major feature in Twitter, the Twitter search engine. Twitter search is also built into many clients and the search engine has become an invaluable tool for sharing instant news. The great thing is you don’t even need a Twitter account to benefit from social news.
Doing JavaScript pop-up windows the right way
Some would argue there is no right way to do a JavaScript pop-up since it disrupts the natural flow and usability of the web. I would tend to agree, but like all things web, there are exceptions to this rule and it may not be your choice anyway. That said there definitely is a very wrong way to do a JavaScript pop-up, and unfortunately there are literally hundreds of tutorials showing you how to do it the wrong way and even more websites implementing it wrong.
How to write super clean CSS
Everyone who works with (X)HTML probably knows how to use CSS to some degree, but not as many know how to write clean CSS. Cascading Style Sheets are probably one of the most powerful tools a web designer/developer can master. It’s hard to find a site today that doesn’t benefit from the capabilities of CSS, and with the slow arrival of CSS3 that is unlikely to change. That said I still constantly come across style sheets that could be cleaner, more optimized, and more elegant.
iMac OS X wifi issues finally solved
I had been facing brutally slow Internet speeds lately on my iMac. It’s a 27 inch 2009 iMac9,1 model, but a quick search shows many people are having wifi issues with a range of iMacs made in this time frame. The first year was alright, but then slowly I began losing connectivity and getting degrading speeds followed by exceptionally high ping speeds and major packet loss. The tipping point forcing me into all out research mode to find a fix for this issue was when Star Craft 2 starting lagging. I mean I can handle slow downloads, but slowing down while conquering the Zerg? That’s where I draw the line.
Moving your Drupal site and breaking all the links
This is a quick tip for anyone moving their Drupal site. I recently moved a development site to a live site and have done this on several occasions only to be left sitting their scratching my head wondering why only the home page of my Drupal site works. Each time after a few minutes it hits me that the .htaccess file is the culprit and that I did not move it. Often if you upload your files via some ftp programs you may not actually be able to see the .htaccess file to upload it. To see it on a Linux/UNIX box type ls -la and it will show up. FileZilla is an open source FTP program that will also do the trick.
So remember after you upload the files to your new server, import your database data and change your database credentials to also bring along your .htaccess file or just grab it from a Drupal package. Hope this saves some of you some head scratching.
