A HattersWorkshop Blog – Technology, The Web, and Everything
The Value of Feeling Appreciated as an Employee in... Whether you’re a new employee or the vice president of the company, everyone wants to feel valued, even appreciated, in the workplace. Not only does it improve morale and make the workplace a more pleasant...
The difference between classic and motion tweens in... Here it is: If you're used to doing things "the cs3 way" then you can continue to do so with the classic tween tool. It works the same way as you remember, using key frames as normal, but you cannot...
PHP: If (equal to AND not equal) - eliminate form spam... Just learned a great function of PHP thats already made my forms a lot better. A while back I wrote an article about eliminating form spam without captchas by using css to hide a text input box for bots...
Drop Downs, Fly Outs, and Accordion Site Navigation: This last week I was in a meeting discussing a client site. It was a typical business meeting that was going into overtime on a Friday afternoon, and then things turned for the worst... someone suggested...
May
07
2009
Category : Art & Design, Great Tutorials, Slick Code
Great archive of different show/hide effects using JQuery, which I gotta say is quickly becoming the new “Flash” of the internet. You dont need a special player for JQuery and it interacts (and even plays nice) with other non JQuery elements, something Flash can never do.
http://devsnippets.com/article/10-transition-effects-the-art-of-showinghiding-content.html
Check out whats possible and then start learning JQuery.
Apr
11
2009
More than 3 years after the chain closed all their doors they are back open again. About 30 stores have reopened with the theme of “retail-2.0″. Modeled after the every so successful website mash ups in the 2.0 revolution CompUSA and their parent company (owner of TigerDirect) seem to think that if they connect every computer to the net and let their customers do their independent research in store, people might be more informed and because they linger for a longer period of time looking at reviews they just might buy more too.
This has never been tried before. Kudos to CompUSA for trying something new in the old world of retail. Rather than dealing with some pimpled 14 year old at Best-Buy who trys to hustle me a service plan before checking inventory (one of their favorite tricks) I can see the inventory of the story Im in from any screen in the store. This is really handy and I hope it manifests into sales for the “new” company.
Apr
09
2009
Category : Around The Office, Around West Hartford, Cool Web Programs
This is a neat concept. You enter a location and it displays a list of blogs that are published in that area. You can also cue the blogs into a single feed and get all the selected posts from a given area.
I can see this as having a professional use for journalists, politically minded people, law enforcement, marketing/PR peopl, and anyone who wants to keep tabs on the pulse of a geographic community. The main drawback being that some people simply wont post their blog because they enjoy the curtain of privacy the internet provides.
On the otherhand, if I was going on vacation in Tokyo and wanted to find some really cool clubs, I could do a survey of blogs in Tokyo and see what the people are saying without ever going there. As an added plus, Id avoid the “top 10″ clubs in the city and hopefully find a comfy dive within walking distance of my hotel.
Apr
07
2009
Just discovered a new tutorial site while doing research for my class tonight. Layers Magazine is chuck full of animation tips and great videos about flash. Great articles and I gotta say I really enjoyed the guys teaching style and overall tone.
This tutorial is on using CS4 Kinematics tools. Here I was thinking flash was almost dead and then CS4 comes out to change everything… fantastic work Adobe. The ease of this changes everything.
http://www.layersmagazine.com/flash-cs4-animating-puppets.html
Flash CS4’s new inverse kinematics tools allow users to create and arrange symbols in a collection called an Armature. These armatures contain bones that have relationships with other elements which can be animated. Users can create and control their won dancing puppet.
Mar
18
2009
Dropbox is a new easy to use program to help share out and store your files online. DropBox has a lot of similarities to MS Mesh, which I reviewed about six months ago, allowing you to drag and drop files into folders on your desktop which automatically sync out to other computers linked to your account.
Contunue Reading
Mar
12
2009
Category : Cool Websites
Need to get inspired by others in a hurry? Do you need a muse?
Check out www.debutart.com. Browse new works of art by artist or tag and view decently high resolution images of their work. No more clicking though google images to find pictures that would be great if only they weren’t taken with a cell phone.
Mar
05
2009
Below are a few really good videos I saw over the weekend of the a photo being fully retouched. The main thing that people don’t realize about photo retouching is that you change everything… being incredibly through and idealizing everything to the point that the picture is almost no longer of the subject anymore. The trick is to not over do it or it becomes too noticeable and that breaks the illusion.
I see people in life looking at magazines and ogling at the “people” on the cover. I use the term “people” loosely because as previously stated and as the video examples below will show: no one looks this good ever – let alone all the time. To believe that these cover shots are real is akin to believing that Grim’s Fairy Tales is a historical text!
Reading a fictional book is fun, as is staring at a retouched photo of Hillary Duff. The difference is that we all know that the book is fiction, yet because our eyes can see it we decided at some point that the photograph is real.
As people view more produced events, whether it be an ad, a movie, or the Music Awards their attitude towards reality shifts so that the perfected reality as the norm, and anyone who is having a “normal day” is ugly by comparison. Such is the case when you see a person “untouched”. By comparison anyone without an army of stylists and photoshop artists is a second rate beauty at best.
Watch and learn.
I’ll post some tutorials soon. These guys all fly through their work.
Mar
05
2009
Category : Great Tutorials, Photoshop, Typography
In what is sure to be a hugely trafficked and bookmarked post, 50 Stunning Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials. I’m delighted that Smashing Magazine took the time to explain basic typography FIRST. While not a complete history or explanation of everything type this might be the most complete, yet concise, summary of what you need to know before you go gallivanting off with an army of text effects.
This post is not just a heaping pile of knowledge. This is SEM success on an SEO goldmine. Better yet, Smashing Magazine will shine for this and in the process we can only hope that their younger readers this will pause and learn something from the first half (the typography section) before stampeding towards the tutorials.
Yes, the effects are cool, but using an interesting effect on poorly is still an utter failure while good type can stand on its own without any effects what so ever. I also hope that readers understand that you should never use an effect gratuitously. Use the right effect to further your message; not to use an effect.
