Integrating AJAX into the website has become one of the latest trend in web technology. Not everyone knows how to write the code. However, there’s a site that help you to ‘include’ AJAX into your website, especially for web designers with a little knowledge of web programming. Check out this site: http://miniajax.com/.

There are several simple and nice looking AJAX code for download. Click on the image and go to respective sites to read more on each AJAX code.

Flash 8 has this issue when working in Windows Vista. It is freaking slow if you zoom in while doing the editing, with an animated marque that took forever to open. So, try the solution below:

1. Find the “flash 8.exe” file
2. Right Click & go to properties
3. Set the compatability to win xp SP2
4. “Disable desktop composition”

This should do the trick! ;)

Flash designer always need to do a lot of tweening animation or effect, whether using the frame or using actionscripts. Try this: http://laco.wz.cz/tween/. It saves a lot of time! It simplifies the way we write the actionscripts to animate the movie clips.

First you need to download and install the .mxp file from http://laco.wz.cz/tween/?page=download.

#include “lmc_tween.as” for ActionScript 2.0 (runs fine on Flash Player 6) or #include “lmc_tween_as1.as” for ActionScript 1.0. After which, you can use following methods for every MovieClip, fast and easy to use:

MovieClip.tween()
MovieClip.stopTween()
MovieClip.isTweening()
MovieClip.getTweens()
MovieClip.lockTween()
MovieClip.unlockTween()
MovieClip.isTweenLocked()
MovieClip.alphaTo()
MovieClip.brightnessTo()
MovieClip.brightOffsetTo()
MovieClip.colorTo()
MovieClip.colorTransformTo()
MovieClip.contrastTo()
MovieClip.frameTo()
MovieClip.scaleTo()
MovieClip.slideTo()
MovieClip.rotateTo()

Go back to the site, http://laco.wz.cz/tween/, to read the online documentation for further explanation on how to use the functions. There are examples, http://laco.wz.cz/tween/?page=examples, too to show you how to write the code.

“Lorem Ipsum” is simply the most popular dummy text used in design industry. Instead of waiting for the content prepared by client, which may take “centuries”, insert this dummy text to preview the design. Where to get this? Go to http://www.lipsum.com  and generate as many paragraph of dummy text as you like. Yes, it’s free and just copy and paste.

Here’s a quick tips for designers who use Adobe Illustrator.

Before we send our art work for the printer to print it out, we’ll need to outline all of the text objects, to avoid they see it and print it differently. To quickly select all of the text objects in the art work, just go to Select > Object > Text Objects. Then right click on the selection, choose Create Outlines. One thing to remember, unlock all of the layers and objects before doing this. :)

After some time messing around with Photoshop, we couldn’t recall what is the original setting and we’ll want to reset everything. There is a pretty simple way to reset the Photoshop preference to its factory setting.

1. Hold all three buttons: ctrl + alt + shift
2. With all these three buttons held, open the Photoshop program
3. It will prompt you “delete the Photoshop setting file”, press Yes.

Now you get everything reset to its original setting!

Photoshop brushes is a very convenient tool. It helps to create cool visual effects without taking much of your time.

There’s a great resources of photoshop brushes in deviantART. Follow the link here to enjoy this resource: http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/applications/psbrushes/.

You can also create your own brushes. Here’s one of the way to make it:

You can actually create the brush with almost anything. First of all, create a new file in Photoshop, set a size, say 500px by 500px, Grayscale color mode.

Copy the image over to your new photoshop file.

Adjust the image before it is brush-worthy, use the Level, Curves, Brightness/Contrast.

Make a selection around the area you want to make it a brush.

Next, go to Edit > Define Brush Preset and give a name to the brush, and TADAA! The brush is created.

Now, you can choose the Brush tool, right click on the new photoshop page, choose the newly created brush, select a color (foreground color), and click on any space as many times you like to “re-use” the graphic!

Having 1GB of RAM doesn’t mean the Adobe Photoshop will use it fully. Check the Memory usage by clicking the Edit > Preference > Memory & Image Cache.

Under “Memory Usage”, the “Available RAM” is the amount of RAM installed in your computer. Adjust the percentage so it will increase the memory for your Photoshop usage. Anyway, do not use up 100% of your RAM for Photoshop. Reserve some memory for other programs as well.

If you think the Photoshop still doesn’t run as smooth, install an extra RAM to your computer or purchase a better graphic card.

Here are the steps to export your flash animation into .avi file:

1. Open your flash movie
2. Go to File > Export > Export Movie
3. Choose a location then enter a file name
4. Choose .avi as file type
5. Now enter the size. For example 720 x 576.
6. Video Format: 24 bit color
7. Tick “compress video”
8. Choose a Compressor. DivX is quite popular, can export the flash to avi with very good quality but file size isn’t too big.

Try to play around with the setting after step 5, choose different compressor to see the result.

Ever faced this problem? You have an Illustrator file (.ai) that works fine, you open it, modify your work, and save it as usual. Suddenly you can’t open it, though there wasn’t any problem when saving it previously. You can try the solution below:

• Open the file in Adobe Acrobat (not Adobe Reader).
• Select one of the text or any graphic.
• Move it by pressing any of the arrow key, move one step is enough.
• Save it as eps or pdf.
• Try open it again in Adobe Illustrator
• Now it can be opened! Weird huh?

It works, but not for every single case. Well, at least give it a try before recreating your illustration or vector graphic.