Computers and Technology
kuler – Adobe’s version of Color Scheme Designer
Feb 7th
Kuler is a great tool for all designers. It’s really similar to the Color Scheme Designer in the aspect that it composes several colors for you to use in your design.
It has several other features that make it even BETTER than CSD but there are tons of features missing too. Let’s start with the good stuff
What’s good
- pre-made themes including “random”, “newest”, “most popular”, and “highest rated” categories
- RSS feed for the “highest rated”
- Ability to create theme from an image (upload an image, or choose an image from flickr and select colors)
- community
- Presets for uploading an image (called “moods”)
- Ability to register and sign in to save and share themes
What’s not so good
- there are some reservations about the interface
- rather confusing color picking interface
What’s missing
- export features (you can’t export to PSD, CSS, or HTML as you can in CSD)
- no example sites (CSD allows you to look at example coloring)
- VERY limited color options
- no permalink
“What’s missing” seems not to be such a big deal, but it actually is. The “example site” feature on CSD is amazing and very useful. It can kick-start your imagination and it’s just really cool.
I don’t use the export features but it’s nice to know they’re available. Also, the color options in CSD are virtually LIMITLESS. There are TONS of presets while Kuler does not really have any of those great presets.
Kuler is great if you’re looking for pre-made color schemes and themes but it’s nothing compared to the Color Scheme Designer.
One feature though, that could win me over, is the “Create From An Image” ability that lets you use an image for the scheme. I will definitely try that out and report on it.
When your project fails…
Jan 31st
So, let’s say you’re working on a project. It’s filled with your blood, sweat, and tears. You’ve been working on it through nights, barely sleeping at night, drinking large amounts of coffee during the day to stay up. Putting all into it. But then everything goes wrong.
Well, we’ve all been there, many times. If you’re a web-developer, it’s a natural part of your life. It’s a natural part of mine too. Let me tell you my story.
WP to Twitter Plugin
Jan 25th
WP to Twitter | Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design.
I’ve just discovered the craziest, awesomest plugin for Wordpress. This little fella allows your WP blog to automatically update your Twitter with the the blog title, a shortlink URL (cli.gs or bit.ly), and even an excerpt!
It has a lot of customizable options, so you can do a ton of things with it. You can use the custom fields in your blog (they’re under the posting options when you’re writing your post) and add them there. One great thing is that there’s an option which lets this plugin add all of the tags you add to the post, as hashtags.
For those of you not literate with twitter a hashtag is a sort of tag that you’d normally use on your blog posts, deviantart submissions (for you crazy art people), and other places. It is preceded by a hash (#) and followed by the tag word. Look at the trends, most of them are hashtags. It makes searching twitter much easier.
Anyways, here’s what’s happening. The sample twitter update should read something like this:
New Post: WP to Twitter Plugin (http://bit.ly/whatever) #twitter #web #social #etc
I think that’s reasonable, no? You can, of course customize this! EVEN FOR SEPARATE AUTHORS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE TWITTER ACCOUNTS!
Anyways 
Enjoy!
P.S. It also notifies you if the tweet could not be update and saves all options just in case you want to re-tweet
Wordpress Posts Explained
Jan 24th
Adobe Photoshop Tutorials – HV-Designs.co.uk – Tutorials, Resources and Photoshop Freebies.
This article here is a great intro to all you blogger beginners with Wordpress. It talks about all the different options you can use while posting on your blog. Including, how to manage your categories, how to use “post slugs”, the “Press This” feature (which I am now using!), and many other features.
Look the site over, they have great tutorials and they are very thorough. I recommend you subscribe to them via RSS because every day, they have great and powerful articles to read.
Anyways, look forward to more short articles on other websites and short recommendations!
Mozilla Firefox 3.6
Jan 23rd
Alright, it’s finally out. The famed 3.6 that will have a tremendous CSS3 support and all that other crap If you have it, check out my CSS3 tutorials to see how it works on backgrounds, border and opacity, and other border properties.
I’m running Mozilla 3.6 right now, so let me tell you what I think about it:
The Good Stuff
- Themes have been eliminated and replaced with “personas” that do not require installation. Also, you can preview before committing to the change of design
- neater design: the top of the browser does not take as much space.
- download menu on bottom right. Click and you get a menu of all the items downloading/downloaded plus options
- better CSS3 support and other support
- considerably faster loading (idk how they do THAT)
All that sounds great but…that’s not the whole story.
The Bad Stuff
- Glitches, tons of them. I’m running a W7 Ultimate and I cannot open two windows simultaneously anymore
- Cannot open “Downloads” windows, actually any new window at all (not even java console, and other stuff like that)
- Downloads seem to freeze up and cease to work completely. I cannot even remove them from the drop down (“up?”) menu on the bottom right.
- While “personas” are great, I miss my transparent theme which doesn’t work anymore
That’s about it. It’s really damn annoying though. I hope they come up with a fix soon or I’ll have to start using Chrome more extensively. It might be a W7 64-bit thing, and even if it is, that’s a huge setback for the guys at Mozilla.
I hope you enjoy the new browser!
Creating a Blogging System (Part 2)
Jan 18th
Okay, in my first tutorial, you learned about creating an install script for your blog as well as the entry form that will add your blogs.
In this tutorial, I’ll teach you how to parse the data out for your audience and how to edit your entries.
/* LET'S GET STARTED! */
Creating a Blogging system (part 1)
Jan 13th
Some time ago (a couple weeks), I created my own blogging system. No one told me how to do it and I didn’t read any tutorials on how to do it either so there were a few things I learned the hard way. As you know, Blogs are database-based, they’re all entries in a table.
You have an entry for the id, date, the content, and miscellaneous other information such as tags, and description. In this tutorial, I’d like to teach you how to do all that.
/* LET'S GET STARTED!*/
Speed up on a budget
Jan 12th
So you are reading this article wondering what its gonna be about? Well I am cheap, its January and everybody is broke. Oh yeah and the economy sucks. Supposibly the companies thought that people would stop buying computer parts so they slowed down production, which made some parts prices skyrocket. Example: I have bought 2×2gigs 667MHz laptop ram for 35 bucks shipped, regular price about 2 years ago. Now, it is insanely twice the price, seriously OMG???? Talk about custom built computer getting more expensive by a gig.
Even though the ram is expensive, it is still the easiest hardware and most efficient upgrade out there. You have no idea what ram you have in your PC or Laptop, do you? Well, sometimes neither do I, and it is annoying to open case or laptop to not be sure afterwards anyway. Wouldn’t you like some software/tool that would find that out for you? Yes, there is one! Thanks to crucial, ram manufacturer, you do not have to worry about it anymore. Go to their website, surprise it is crucial.com and then click on the crucial system scanner tool, it will take you to another site. Make sure that you click on the box to agree with stuff and then download the scanner tool or just click run. Either way it will scan your system and tell you what you need and of course try to sell you their ram. You can buy their ram, great company, I have used their ram numerous times myself. Or….. you can check to see the specs of the ram ie. Pc2 5300 etc. to see what you need exactly. They will also tell you what is the maxium amount of ram your motherboard will accept. Since ram is expensive I suggest upgrading as follows: If you have 256 or 512 get a stick of 1GB which should be around 40 bucks tops. FYI the performance boost it will give will be like a night and day (promised). If you have 1Gb and you have Vista or Win7 get a pair of 2×1GB sticks of ram or if wallet permits and motherboard too, get 2×2GB. You ask where at, right? Well I have been very happy customer of newegg.com for years. However, I don’t stick to one name, for me the price is the final verdict, and if you live in NJ, CA and I think TN you will have to pay tax and it might make your deal worse than going to a local shop (doubt it though). There is another website that tracks prices of ram, here is their link http://dealnews.com/memory/
So I hope that this has helped you, BUT BE CAREFUL WITH STATIC ELECTRICITY because it can kill your ram in split second.
Njoy
Mobile Websites (tips)
Jan 11th
I’ve recently started working on some mobile websites. You’ll notice that davepcguy.com has its own mobile alternative as do some other sites. Mobile devices are growing in number and gone are those days when internet was viewed only on the computer screen. WAP is not even used either so that old school coding is gone too.
These days, almost everyone has an iPhone or a BlackBerry, or a Palm device. Some of us even have other devices like PSPs, tablets, and others that require quite a bit different formatting. Here’s how to go about making your mobile website.
Read the rest of this entry »
New Year, new stuff
Jan 4th
Yay! Happy New Year to everyone. We’ve changed some things around here on Dave PC Guy. As you’ll notice, the theme looks a bit different and it’s much cleaner. I don’t know, I like it better this way.
We’ve also added a contact form to our contact page so that you won’t have to e-mail us directly. It’s much better
We will also be launching a new part of Dave PC Guy that will finally offer out PSD to XHTML/CSS conversion services, as well as other designing services. It’s going to be pretty bad-ass.
We’ve reworked some SEO on the site as well so we’ll be getting some more traffic.
Look forward to more updates soon!
