Reading: July 2008



Longest every earthquake rocks felt

Just a few minutes ago, there is an earthquake at Dhaka, and parts of Bangladesh.

At my experience, it was longest time ever I felt an earthquake. It was more then 1(one) minute long. I was working on my lappy and felt that my back is shaking. I was annoyed and  felt that the monitor screen and the door is shaking. I saw all over my room and got that, everything is shaking.

It was more then one minute long. I got scared once and try to sit down on the sofa.



Reading: June 2008

Articles

Tools

  • Phiculator
    Phiculator is a simple tool which, given any number, will calculate the corresponding number according to the golden ratio. The free tool is available for both Win and Mac.


Reading: May 2008



aesthetic principles of design

I came across this great article. And I want to share it with you. I got it from http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/courses/arts350/aesthetics.html

What makes for good design? Here are a list of aesthetic principles to consider when creating or evaluating design:

1.) Heirarchy -setting priorities.
What’s the most important thing, visually, in this layout? Is it the most important, most attractive or most convincing part of the message? What’s next? What’s last?

2.) Emphasis and focus -the visual expression of heirarchy.
Once you know what’s most important, use visual emphasis to focus attention through size, position, value, and color.

3.) Contrast -big/little, crowded/open, orange/blue.
Contrast is the tool of emphasis, which helps you set that heirarchy, focus attention and create drama.

4.) Tension -throwing things off a little.
You create tension by manipulating relative position. Place things a little too close together, or set up a little too much contrast in their visual weights. Tension helps make the design aesthetic.

5.) Balance -creating a gravitational axis.
Balance doesn’t have to be symmetry. By opposing dense detail with open space, or heavy elements with lighter ones, balance can be asymmetric and, again, athletic.

6.) Rhythm -variety and pattern.
Variety relieves the eye, and pattern helps the mind make sense of it. In multipage works, rhythm creates pacing across the whole.

7.) Flow -leading the eye across the surface.
This should happen in a desired sequence.

8.) Depth -leading the eye beyond the surface, or making things jump out from the surface.
Depth is the most inherently contradictory illusion of 2D design, and therfore, one of the most compelling.

9.) Scale -the illusion of size.
The size of elements relative to one another is important, of course, but the size of things in relation to the format and the size of the format itself are also worth considering.

10.) Movement -the illusion of physical interaction among elements.
Usually figurative -with elements angled or poised like bodies in motion -movement can also be created with such optical effects as linear repetition, visual vortexes and the like. Used deliberately, suggested movement can have a marked emotional and physical impact on a viewer.

11.) Unity -that which holds the piece together.
Color can unify a design, as can a grid, visuals that represent related subjects or a consistant style of imagery. In an age of over-stimulation and cacophony, unity is often underrated.



Notable Points #1

I read several articles every day. And so do others. We just read and forget big articles. But we remember the key points of the article or at least try to memorize them. But now a day, time is important for real work. So there is no room to read every article line by line. For them (myself also) I will note out the points of the article and jot them here, in this title. So it will be easier for future reference. At the bottom of the points, I have added the list of the articles from where the points are taken. Anyone interested to know more, just click and go to the read article. Cheer up…

  • Gather as much evidence as possible while work freelance. It’s wise to gather them project wise.
  • Be-friend, don’t use. You should actively seek to find a genuine, personal connection and, if you still can’t find one, then either be transparent about your motives or move on. Nobody likes to be used.
  • Push Yourself and Get Good. You need to be pretty good. I like to think that there is an 80/20 rule lot more effort (and/or talent).
  • Be Likeable, Excited and Enthusiastic.
  • Be Referable! A large number of jobs for most freelancers come from referred clients. Do a good job for one person and they tell others for you.
  • Reliability is one of the most prized characteristics for a freelancer. Focus on the characteristics that make people want to work with you, and be reliable, very reliable.
  • Design the portfolio you think your clients want to see
  • Focus on Clients and Be Flexible
  • If you want to make things to please yourself, go be an artist.
  • Get a High Profile
  • The “stick to what works” mentality can sometimes work, and other times make you a dinosaur.
  • The function of design is to make the product more usable and improve the usability of the product’s function.
  • The simpler and better the design can be, the more enjoyable and easier it makes our lives.
  • Even though the cookie-cutter designs work for a while, the truly good designs are the original and fresh concepts that change the way we look at things.

Where I’ve got them?
A lesson to all freelancers (part 1)
How to optimize your networking energy
The Secret to Getting a Lot of Web Design Work
Is good design just a formula?



What is Web Design?

Jeffrey Zeldman publishes A List Apart and The Daily Report, runs Happy Cog Studios, wrote Designing With Web Standards 2nd Ed., and cofounded An Event Apart with Eric Meyer. Wikipedia and Happy Cog have bios.

Recently he published an article on “Understanding Web Design”. He tried to show the various use of web design with different medium. At a point he defined what the web design is?

“Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.”

Read the whole article at A List Apart



How to move MS Words table row up & down

You have table full of data on Microsoft Word.

And you need to move 2nd row to 5th row.

Select to whole row, press shift + alt and prss on Up or Down key. The row will go down or up as you press.

You can select multiple rows of data and same shortcut to replace them together.



To view all shared folders at Windows

Sometimes you may want to know how many shared folder did your pc contains. To view go to Start menu. and then Run.

Type fsmgmt.msc and then press ok.

It will open an window like this.

shared folders

Now you can stop sharing any folder by right clicking and click on stop share

You can do new file share right from here.

There are more options available, you just need to explore.



IE hover bug SOLVED!

“In the page listed below, a two part horizontal menu is displayed, indented
from the left. The first part of the menu is left justified and the second
part is right justified. It looks correct in both IE6 and FireFox…. until
you move your mouse over one of the left hand links. Then, in IE6, the
change in background color causes a reflow. This causes the NavContainer div
to expand, pushing the right hand menu item off the page. Refreshing or
resizing the page gets it redrawn correctly.

I’ve read about various hover bugs in IE, but I could do with some pointers
as to which may be causing my problem and if there is a workaround.”

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN”
“http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd”>
<html>
<head>
<style type=’text/css’ media=’all’>
#MainBody
{
position:relative;
border: solid 1px white;
margin: 0 1em 0 2em;
}

#NavContainer
{
position:absolute;
width:100%;
background-color:grey;
}

#SecondaryNav
{
position:absolute;
top:0;
right:0.5em;
}

#PrimaryNav ul, #SecondaryNav ul
{
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

#PrimaryNav li, #SecondaryNav li
{
list-style: none;
margin: 0;
display: inline;
}

#PrimaryNav li a, #SecondaryNav li a
{
border: solid 1px #036;
}

#PrimaryNav li a:hover, #SecondaryNav li a:hover
{
background-color: #036;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id=’MainBody’>
<div id=’NavContainer’>
<div id=’PrimaryNav’>
<ul>
<li><a href=”>Link 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”>Link 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”>Link 3</a></li>
<li id=’Current’><a href=”>Link 4</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id=’SecondaryNav’>
<ul>
<li><a href=”>Link 4</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

This is the result of my search term “IE hover bug”. I got thousands like them. But no where the answer to solve the problem. And I really needed a quick solutions. The clients need it As Soon As Possible. The reporters were waiting for the release and the the release was waiting for the solve of this bug.

I found a quick & tiny solution for the problem.

Just add “width:80%;” at MainBody ID. ( the % of width may be 1-100)

It solves the hover problem at IE. It also looks cool at Firefox.

There is another way to solve the problem at IE only. But causes the menu items bring left together at Firefox.

Just add “float:left;” at MainBody ID insted of “width:80%”.