T&S Web Design

Screen captures are extremely helpful in our line of work. We test websites extensively in mutliple browsers and operating systems, but sometimes a problem will still show up on a client’s computer that we don’t see. In those cases, a screen shot is invaluable.

Screen captures are relatively easy in both Windows and Mac’s OS X. Here’s a quick guide to each.

Windows

In Windows, pressing Ctrl and the Print Screen key takes a screen capture and copies it into the clipboard. This means you can then go into your email program and paste it directly into an email for sending to someone, or even open a graphics program, paste it in there, and save the image file.

Windows Vista also includes a utility called Snipping Tool. While I don’t personally have experience with Vista’s Snipping Tool, my understanding is that it is a much more robust tool than the built in options prior to Vista.

Personally, on the rare occasions I need to do a screen capture in Windows, I use a screen capture utility called Cropper. It makes it very easy to capture only the area of the screen you want to, and saves in several different formats.

Mac’s OS X

Unlike most versions of Windows, Mac’s operating system, OS X, comes with a fairly robust screen capture tool. Pressing Command-Shift-3 takes a screen shot of the entire screen. Pressing Command-Shift-4 lets you capture only a specific area. And pressing space after you’ve pressed Command-Shift-4 lets you take a screen shot of a specific window.

The Mac saves the screen shots to the desktop in a lossless PNG format. However, if you also hold down the control button when performing any of the above mentioned screenshots, it will send the screen capture to the desktop instead.

If the Mac’s built-in tool isn’t enough for you, you might consider trying SnapNDrag. It saves in multiple formats, makes it much easier to email the screen shot, and doesn’t make you remember a keyboard combination.

Hopefully this will help if you ever need to show someone else exactly what’s on your screen.

One of the most difficult and annoying things to set up in a small business is email. There are so many different options that it can be frustrating to even attempt to configure email. What’s the difference between IMAP and POP3 anyways? I’ve seen people just type in their email address and it works. Why doesn’t mine work like that? I will attempt to answer some of those questions in this post.

There are three main email retrieval protocols in use:

• Exchange - This is a proprietary mail protocol used by Microsoft to receive email from an Exchange Server. Support for this protocol is heavily integrated into Outlook. It is the easiest to set up. Simply enter your email address and password and Outlook takes care of almost everything else for you. In addition to easy set up, the Exchange protocol allows an Outlook client to be connected constantly to the Exchange Server, so any email received by the server when almost instantly be sent to the user. This means that you will know you have an email the instant it has been received.
• IMAP - IMAP stands for “Internet Message Access Protocol.” It is very similar to the Exchange protocol, with the exception of the set up. It, like the Exchange protocol, allows messages to be retrieved the instant they are received, but it is harder to set up. In addition to email and password, you will need to know the mail server, your username to connect to the server, and whether or not the server uses SSL.
• POP3 - POP3 stands for “Post Office Protocol version 3.” It is very different from the other two. It requires just as much information to set up as IMAP, but it does not maintain an active connection to the server. Meaning that it only checks every few minutes to see if any new mail has been received. Another limitation of POP3 is that it doesn’t allow messages to be marked as read on the server. Meaning that if you check your email with an email client on one computer, read, and delete some email messages and then you check it using a different computer, you will have to go through the same messages you went through before. This is extremely annoying, even more so the more computers you check the email with. The one advantage to this is that every computer will always have every email you received.

The one problem with IMAP is that it every email that you delete is deleted from the server. Most people want to have one copy of every email they have received for reference. The problem is that many mailboxes limit the size of the mailbox so that once it is full they can no longer receive new messages (POP3 doesn’t have to worry about this, since most email clients are set to remove the message from the server after a few days). To get around this we need to have a way to move old email off the server and into a different folder. This can be done in almost every email client using offline folders. I will show you how to do it in Apple Mail.

The first thing you will need to do is create a folder to store the old messages. Click Mailbox -> New Mailbox… and add the mailbox to On My Mac. Once the mailbox has been added, create a rule (Preferences -> Rules -> Add Rule) that will move old mail into it when it was received or sent a certain number of days ago. Under “Perform the following actions” select that you want to move the message to your new folder.

This archiving method allows you to get all the advantages that come with IMAP (not having to delete every junk email from your work computer, home computer, and iPhone, individually) along with the advantages of POP3 (being able to keep all your email messages in case you need to reference them later). It also keeps the number of emails in your inbox way down, depending on how many days you choose to wait before archiving your messages.

So as an aspiring designer in the digital world, I am always looking for ways to increase my knowledge about the programs I use to design, mainly Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash. Personally, I got my footing through school, and then started reading books and looking at tutorials online. All of these have helped me gain knowledge, but recently I found out another excellent source for learning about these programs. Podcasts!!

The other night I was looking through the free podcast directory for some videos for my ipod, when I stumbled upon all sorts of podcasts that had video tutorials for pretty much anything I would ever need! There are hundreds of these video podcasts that have tips and tricks from professionals and they are all free! So if you are ever in need of some Photoshop knowledge in advanced layering on 3D objects or just need to know how to touch up an image, check out the free podcasts!!! Here is a link to get you started with Photoshop, it will open up itunes and send you to the podcast directory (you don’t have to have an itunes account to get podcasts).

If you’re only checking your website in the web browser you use, others may not be seeing the site how you intend them to. After all, chances are pretty low that everyone looking at your site is using the same browser you are.

Here at T&S Web Design, we test on several browsers on Macs and several on Windows. Here’s the breakdown, along with the percentage of usage from w3schools.com, taken June 2008. Obviously the percentages will not be exactly the same on your site, but they shouldn’t be too far off. (Note that Firefox, Safari and Opera have the same percentage on both Mac and Windows, because w3schools.com does not differentiate between operating systems)

• Firefox - Win & Mac - 41.0%
• Internet Explorer 7 - Win - 27.0%
• Internet Explorer 6 - Win - 26.5%
• Safari - Win & Mac - 2.6%
• Opera - Win & Mac - 1.7%

Of course, the best way to check in both Windows and Mac’s OSX is to have a Mac and a Windows computer. Barring that, another viable solution is Browsershots.org. There are tons of browsers available across four different operating systems. Note that they have Opera on Windows, not Mac, but it shouldn’t make a difference.

Being a native Windows user, I really dislike the layout of the keyboard on the MacBooks. In particular, I dislike the lack of delete, home, end, page up, and page down keys. While all of these can still be achieved using key combinations, I would still prefer to hit just one key. Another annoyance is that Mac OS X uses the command key for almost all the same shortcuts that Windows uses the control key. Since I dual boot my MacBook and use both operating systems regularly, my fingers tend to move faster than my brain and hit the wrong key all the time.

Fortunately, there are a couple of tools that have made my life a bit easier. DoubleCommand and SharpKeys are key remapping utilities for Mac OS X and Windows, respectively. They allow you to customize the layout of the keyboard and switch keys around using software. Using them collaboratively, I successfully switched the control and command keys in Windows and mapped the right alt/option/enter key to the delete key. It does not solve all of the annoyances, but now I do have a delete key and do not have to worry about different key combinations for copy and paste in the different operating systems.

Now, if only Apple had two mouse buttons on the MacBook instead of one…

Along with my web design job at T&S, I’m also the Apple Campus Rep at Oklahoma Christian University. I receive some interesting questions from students regarding their computers, with the most recent problem being an ink catastrophe.

Three weeks ago, a student received her brand-spankin’ new, sparkling white MacBook from the OC program, and just other night I get a call as a result of her nephew scribbling black ink all over the base of the laptop.

Her first attempt to clean it: Clorox Wipes. No luck. Second attempt: rubbing alcohol. Still no luck. Third attempt with little hope: Soap and warm water. Unsuccessful.

Trying to keep in mind the worth of the computer and safe cleaning products, I searched online for some possible rescue tips.

The safest route I stumbled upon was, iKlear, which is a cleaning product sold on the Apple website for $19.99 and up. A cheaper route: Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. I gave her both options with a disclaimer about the risk in using the non-computer compatible cleaning product (quite the alliteration): she chose the cheap route.

In all precautions, we made sure she unplugged her laptop from any power source, turned it off, and took out the battery. She wet the Magic Eraser with warm water and wrung out all water possible. She proceeded to barely scrub the surface of the computer followed by a clean wipe with a dry towel. Wa la: it cleared all remaining traces of the pen marks.

Thanks Mr. Clean!

First, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has kept me in his or her thoughts and prayers this past week. I am feeling much better and my facial wounds have healed much quicker than the doctors expected. In fact, my doctor removed the all the external stitches yesterday, because I was healing so well.

Using Apple computers at work has both advantages and disadvantages. One of these disadvantages lies in the small number of side utilities for Mac OS X as opposed to Microsoft Windows or Linux. One thing I have been wanting to test for the past few months is how our sites will load on a slow connection (ie. 56K / dialup). There are many utilities and even some Firefox plugins that exist for this purpose, but only for Windows and Linux.

However, I recently came across the post at Mac OS X Hints which shows how to configure the Darwin firewall to acheive the same effect. I extended this by creating an Automator workflow as shown in the picture and saving it as an application. The script must be executed using AppleScript so that the user will be prompted to type in an administrative password. Otherwise, the script will fail because it does not have proper permissions. Once, the workflow has been exported as an application, it can be added to the dock and executed with a single click.