When I installed Vista on my laptop, I did so as an upgrade from Windows XP. Soon my computer became almost unusably slow and I was experiencing random crashes. One of our programmers had installed Vista from scratch and he had no such problems. So I did what I used to do every six months or so with Windows XP, a complete re-install.
(more…)
The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a good methodology to keep your projects in order. This guideline is meant to be complete; however, not all items will apply to your project. The first step should be a quick review of the entire process with respect to your project and eliminate all unnecessary steps.
(more…)
As a consultant/webmaster, I have conducted many needs analysis sessions. I find that a needs analysis session is critical if you want to provide an accurate proposal. Following is the essential information you need.
(more…)
Whether I’m creating a small 10 page web site or just some documentation for myself, templates save me time. I suggest that you create your own templates based on the resources below and integrate them into your workflow.
When you are in the design phase, you may find that while your layout and flow is perfect, the colors still need to be tweaked.. and often. To help make that process easier, I’ve taken the Web 2.0 color swatches I created for Photoshop and Gimp and created a Web 2.0 colors CSS Template. Download it here (web20_colors.css) and feel free to use it as you need. Make sure to delete non-used colors when you go into production.
Web graphics designers running GNU/Linux seem to use the Gimp, Inkscape or Photoshop in a virtual environment. I have found the feature rich Xara Xtreme to be a good alternative for web graphics creation and editing. It is open source and you can download it here. Following is a short tutorial on how to create web 2.0 buttons using Xara Xtreme.
(more…)
If you are practicing a RAD methodology, you should be able to iterate quickly. While during the early stages of prototyping the “looks” are not so important, it can help if you can already have some extra design flavor in your initial prototypes.
One way to make that happen is through Adobe Photoshop actions. For the uninitiated, actions are macros that capture a series of steps that can be played back recreating some effect.
Following are some resources that will save you lots of time on your next mockup.
Day 2. I must admit, I am having some Dreamweaver withdrawals. I can see how they can ‘vendor-lock’ you in when they perfect the basic programming tasks. Improving your productivity is an investment, it is a continuous learning experience. You can’t settle with just having the basic tools available at your disposal, you want tools that will make your life easier!
What would you prefer? Manually edit 1,000 files that need updating, or create a script with a regular expression to do the editing for you? That is the beauty of learning, you can apply what you learn to help reduce your workload.
From a static html page to creating a Content Management System from scratch, there are certain tools that increase productivity geometrically. Here I present the tools that have greatly enhanced my own productivity and our team.
Day One – What I have set up…
I am a little overwhelmed with the amount of features in Eclipse! This is undoubtedly a great thing! I was particularly impressed with the number of features that worked right out of the box… Let me go over quickly some of the features I loved. Please keep in mind that I am developing under Windows Vista, you may or may not be experiencing these problems I am. I did encounter a few problems, and I do offer solutions to my problems here.