dots AND lines

Are you a pro-Firefox? If you are and would like to enjoy the Firefox usage benefits further, check out this link posted in Free PDF Ebooks Download forum.

Seriously, cool stuff to maximise your Firefox capabilities!

Any designers would prefer to be different on their own sake. To be unique. However, at times when it comes to corporate clients, especially when it comes to designing a site, designers just tend to stick to certain cliché ideas without knowing. Results eventually become dull and common.

How to avoid that? Read this article from snap2objects.com. It does not provides a direct guidelines to strengthen your creative skills, but it does give a list of common ideas that poor designs have been using for ages. Worth to read, and sure to make you smile and think twice before you use it again.

There was a time when website development for multi-version of browser can be quite a headache. As for the issue highlighted here, there seem to be mulitiple reasons to cause it. According to various forums I have been through for solution (yes, I had the same problem before), the most likely reason to cause this would have been Javascript. Some even claimed to be their CSS coding! Which I do believe to be highly unlikely.

Anyway, in case you happens to develop an HTML page with forms and with the following javascript, be careful:

<script language="Javascript"> <!– Begin function disableselect(e){ return false } function reEnable(){ return true } document.onselectstart=new Function ("return false&quot if (window.sidebar){ document.onmousedown=disableselect document.onclick=reEnable } // End –> </script>

In details, what the code does is, whenever there is a mousedown event to occur on a document for browsers that support sidebar property, the mouse event will be cancelled. Most of the time, the usage of the coding snippet is to disable users’ basic interface feature like selecting, right-clicking, etc.. However, that, in return, also causes the users to be unabled to fill in the input in forms (generally, the input looks as if locked).

Similar cases can happen to Seamonkey 1.x, NetScape 7.x and 8.x, and any other browsers that supports sidebar.

The fastest solution will be to remove the coding. In my case, only removing the particular coding works fine.

In future, if such errors may occurs again, however, 1 simple suggestion to solve such issue:
0. Stop panicking and do not look at the coding as whole problem cause!
1. Track the codings that you think are the likeliest cause
2. Start disabling the lines of code or the functions (depending on the flow of your coding) 1 by 1 (cut, or comment them)
3. Save and refresh your site
4. If the error still occurs, enable the codings again and disable the next
5. Eventually, you will come to an output where disabling that particular code/line solve your problem.

That is how I solve mine most of the time.

If you are a common Flash user or developer or just any Internet user who likes flash, you should notice whenever you mouse over a Flash element, you will be prompt with message “click to activate and use this control”.

According to FixIt.com, “This is caused by the latest IE updates. Microsoft recently lost a legal battle with a patent holder about the way Internet Explorer displays OBJECTs and EMBEDs in webpages. Microsoft then decided to update its Internet Explorer browser with changes requiring user input to display and activate ActiveX based media.”

Thanks to that, users now have to click on the Flash, QuickTime, RealPlayer, Java, etc. files first to activate its functions.
For new developers, how to solve this small issue? Yes, it is quite minor.

Follow these steps:
1. Below the last in the HTML coding, insert the following Javascript:

2. Create a new javascript file (.js) via Notepad (or any program you prefer). Copy and paste the following code into it:

3. Save this file as IEmatter.js (or any name that you specify in the src for script tag in step 1).

Alternativelt, just visit FixIt.com and download the above file from there. Remember to right-click on top of download and select “Save as…”.

4. Upload both files to your webserver, and the problem should be solved.

If anyone of you was ever interested with non-commercial animated movies with twisted story lines that somehow you must be thinking, “It needs a very artistic mind to understand this story!”, then NEKOJIRU-SO is right for you. An award-winning short animation directed by Tatsuo Sato, the whole story almost feels dream-like with silent scripts and only character actions and expressions to let the viewers understand what is going on.

Here’s a link for on the director’s profile and the reasons for it to win the Silver Award for New York Expo of Short Film (source from www.imdb.com).

If you are an avid Photoshop user, you might have this thought in your mind.

Or, if you think you are an expert in Photoshop (well, maybe you are), think again!

Here is an interesting compilation of Photoshop tips and tricks that might trigger your interest. Proudly compiled by Trevor Morris (his email, tmorris@fundy.net and website, http://user.fundy.net/morris/) for all of our knowledge! (Round of applause for him!) Check out the page! There, you can click to save a copy for yourself as well.

Think about this idea. Having a tool or application that can render your font type to mimic your handwriting whenever you type. Nothing like the usage of normal HANDWRITTEN style fonts, this tools can create a result that have the users strokes in their text differently, same letters be written differently, etc… Furthermore, any user now can create their own typeface out of their handwriting and now fonts do come with colours as well!

This is what FONTSELF is about.

“FONTSELF is a type project about handwriting and drawn writing. It provides the ability to create fonts that preserves the gestures of a given handwriting and the original look of the drawing appliance (ball-point pen, pencil, ink, paper, etc.). FONTSELF proposes intuitive tools to create and edit bitmap font (scanned letters) as well as solutions to use them and exchange them.”

Visit here to learn more and their online demo.

My Illustrator recently gave me a headache when it suddenly does not capture the fonts installed in my PC after I repair my Windows XP Pro. The fonts did appear in top menu but not in the Character pallette. It had me searching few days for solution.

And I found it. It only solves partially though because the Chinese, Japanese and Korean character type are still not in the list. But it still good enough.

Here is the solution. Go install Adobe Reader. It helps. Somehow, it will reinstall/repair some of the necessary Adobe system files into your PC and fixed it as well. I am not sure if installing other Adobe applications will do a better job, but can try.

Else, maybe just format the PC and reinstall Windows follow by Illustrator. Start clean. Haha!

Had bought Wacom recently and manage to test it out by doing a poster for a society. They want it in grayscale and red. Here’s the image. The image is rejected though. *sob!*

I have switched job recently to another company called MOR(F) Dynamics. An Australian-based company who strive for “Fusing Grammer with Geometry”. Well, they are the designers for Artificial Intelligence for commercial applications.

At the moment, we are handling a project, which is extremely cool, MojiKan.com! A project of Intelligent Messenger that comes with virtual pets to chat with you, if you are not already chatting with your friends, online. These pets are built with AI shell to capture and learn our human language, analyse their owner and will eventually become good or bad depending on their owner. “Like father, like son.”

The messenger supports conversation with other IM like Yahoo!, MSN, GTalk and AOL. Frankly speaking, it is still a bit bugy at the moment but as far as I am concern, the IM works just like an IM.

Also around is the website for it, of course, which is proudly designed by me! Click here to visit MojiKan.com! This site, aside from functioning as the marketing purposes of the project, also works like any other online community sites like Friendsters or MySpace. You can also buy stuff here to pamper your pets to love you more using the MojiKan currency, MK$.

To know more of this cool project, do visit the site. We are also going to have launch this August 11th, 2007 at The Street in The Curve. Come and join us!