Like many other web designers and web developer I frequently disable cache so I’m sure my updates on a website are showing and don’t have to command+shift refresh to make sure my changes did or did not work correctly. It probably took a few days but that was when I had the epiphany of how Firebug probably pulled the CSS, rather than downloading the CSS each time it probably pulled from the most recently cached version.

Therefore, with the web developers disable cache function it was effectively disabling my ability to pull and edit the CSS live. Turning off that feature fixed my problem with Firebug and made me wonder how many others had following the other advice I had found and gone to the trouble of uninstalling their Firefox and starting over.

Anyway, posting this to hopefully save someone else the trouble. I missed my Firebug.

Comments

You’re familiar with macros, a set of instructions that you input to applications to make common tasks, procedures, or functions go faster. iMacro takes the macro concept and puts it into Firefox. It is most helpful for doing those tasks that you find yourself doing repeatedly. Perhaps it would include those procedures that take several keystrokes, clicks, or logins. iMacros own blurb claims that “whatever you do with Firefox, iMacros can automate it.”

With four and a half-million downloads in less than two months of existence, it is evidently doing something right. The concept is simple, the macro reader saves each macro in simple txt files, with no need for advanced programming skills to edit, tweak, or fine-tune.

Here are some suggestions as to how you can use iMacros for speeding up the tedious.

Filling out forms

If you are anything like me, you find yourself filling out forms on a daily basis—those forms that have the typical fields like address, name, company name, telephone number, etc. Rather than waste precious time mindlessly entering in the data from rote memory, iMacro will execute the entirety of the form with flawless accuracy—saving you time and ensuring accuracy. One SEO professional uses iMacros form-filling prowess to perform dozens of registrations to social sites, saving him hours of time.

Password Memorization

The average computer user has more than 50 passwords to keep track of. That’s a lot of passwords. Some estimate that number may be as high as 100. If you make your living on the Internet, that number may be much higher still. We all have our favored ways of dealing with the passwords that slip dangerously out of our mind at the most inopportune moments, but no method is as foolproof or safe as iMacros. With secure encryption, iMacros takes all of your passwords and melts them into one master password which unlocks everything. Obviously, the seconds gained in multiple password entries a day really adds up. The greatest benefit, though, are the minutes (or hours) saved that you would otherwise lose by forgetting a password and having to navigate the painful “forgot password” option.

Testing

For those who engage in the testing of web apps, iMacro has distinguished itself as a positive tool. It contains simple commands that can accomplish rote testing tasks.

In addition, users enjoy macros like these:

• Automatically downloading or uploading CSV files, PDFs, images, stock quote, etc.

• Export of data to CSV files, extracting information, comparing prices, etc.

• Getting response time for online store purchases

The list grows exponentially once one realizes the power that iMacros has. It is helpful for the average web surfer, but it is especially powerful for the in-depth intensive web worker.

iMacros is also available for Internet Explorer users.

Two of the most common problems relate to lighting – underexposure and overexposure. There are filters you can buy that will correct these issues just by moving a slider though Photoshop offers a quick solution too.

Underexposed shots tend to be the ones suffering from noisy appearances. As s result, too much manipulation in Photoshop can worsen the problem. The amount of noise can increase where the dark areas are being lightened so care is needed when manipulating the image.

If underexposed, these steps will correct the problem:

1. Open the photo and right click the background layer, select duplicate layer.
2. Right click the duplicate layer and set the blend mode to Screen.
3. Go to Image, adjustments and levels and adjust the output levels slider by moving the black arrow further to the right until the photo is at your desired brightness level – this should only need a small adjustment.
4. Depending on the amount of exposure needed, you may need to repeat 2 and 3. Take care with backgrounds beyond windows or direct sunlight; these areas can end up being burnt out.
5. Now you can save it.

Similarly, if the image is overexposed, manipulating the image needs to be done carefully. Though, it can be a quick task:

1. Once again, duplicate the layer.
2. Change the blend mode to Multiply.
3. Repeat duplicating the layers until you have the desired darkened effect.
4. Compensate with Levels again if needed by sliding the output levels slider to the left.
5. Another way to compensate is to adjust the opacity of the duplicate layers until you have the correct amount of exposure. It may be sufficient to have just one duplicate layer that need its opacity reduced. It depends on the amount of overexposure.

So don’t worry I f your favorite memories are suffering from exposure issues, a few changes in Photoshop will correct the issue.

If you’re a Firefox user (and you should be), you need to know about a now-refined Labs tool from Mozilla that makes Firefox web browsing essentially more human. Mozilla calls it “an experiment into connected the Web with language,” and we think that sounds so boring and platonic. Although it is nascent, labeled by the Labs as an “alpha 0.1 prototype, community-based experiment,” it is nonetheless helpful and…what we all love…intuitive.

It’s called “ubiquity.” Its goal is to use normal, everyday-language commands to put helpful and common mashups without the hassle. Users will type in a command, and a JavaScript or Python converter translates the commands into mashups like map insertions, on-page translations, code highlights, and more.

After installing Ubiquity, get started by enabling it with ctrl + space (Windows) or option + space (Mac) keyboard shortcut. Immediately, a command box pops up in the upper left-hand corner of your browser, right underneath the leftmost tab. There, you can type in your normal language command. Ubiquity will recognize it, and you have effectively saved time, eliminated frustration, and accomplished a crucial task—all with utter ease.

Here are some examples.

E-mail Mashups

You’ve done it before: put a map link into an e-mail. And, unlike the old-school routine of going to Google maps in a second tab, finding the location, tweaking the map, copying the link, pasting it into your e-mail, ad infinitum, Ubiquity requires a mere command “map it” plus a few clicks to actually insert the very map into your e-mail. So much for the time-wasting rigmarole of the old method. Want to include a review the restaurant you just mapped? A couple more clicks. Put it in your calendar? Type click, done. Your friend’s calendar? Same deal. Unbelievably simple.

Map Craigslist Stuff

You’re looking for a new home on Craigslist. Good idea. The agonizing problem is that you have to individually and painstakingly map each one of those entries, opening tons of tabs and getting thoroughly frustrated in the process. Ubiquity steps in and with a mere “map these” commands, and instantly you’re immediately presented with a polished map, complete with those little lettered balloons with all of the locations staring you in the face. You don’t know what to do with the time you just saved.

Do more stuff

Translate stuff really easily by just asking Ubiquity to translate a section of a German magazine. Pull up a map of an unknown location that you want to find. Intrigued by a point that the article made? Put it on Facebook. Don’t know the definition of a word in the article? Pull up an instant dictionary.com definition. While you can normally do all these things by opening extra tabs (and you may even be really good at it), Ubiquity makes it so simple, renders the opening of extra tabs passé, and shocks you with its intuitive natural language interface.

To install Ubiquity, simply click the link here, and start experimenting. You may also want to learn more to effectively maximize the tool.

Mac users should install Growl, a notification system, which is the system extension program that Ubiquity will use to talk with you, the user.

I have recently been evaluating the latest SEO plug-ins for sites and I believe this is a list of plug-ins that should be added. Why? They have already helped blogs to rank higher on the search engines.

There are probably more plug-ins available for Wordpress though this latest list is an effective move forward for your blogs. If Wordpress blogs are your forte then this nice collection from their site will help you achieve top SERP (Search Engine Report Page) listings.

1. All in One SEO Pack

Optimizing your blog so that it appears high in the SERP lists is what it’s all about when you are marketing information on the web. The features of this plug-in more than encompass all the SEO features needed. It’s a quick and easy solution allowing you to create Meta tags, unique titles and keywords. It also optimizes your page titles – the prominent important part of a SERP listing.

2. Google XML Sitemaps

This helps you to create sitemaps that can instruct Google on which pages to crawl and which ones to avoid. This provides you with the crawl progress actions that you also get from Google webmaster tools.

3. Google Analytics for WordPress

Along with the above tools, this is like having Google’s webmaster tools wizardry plugged into your Wordpress blogs functioning on auto-pilot once set up. This adds your tracing code to your blog sites. It’s easy to install. You simply enter the account code into your Google Analytics section and the code is then placed on each page attached to your blog. This is great as you now have analytics covering the whole site and all you did was insert code – it took me a few seconds.

4. Broken Link Checker

This is a very useful addition like a real SEO handyman. This checks for broken links in your pages and provides a full report. It monitors the internal links and sends a report of any broken ones to your admin dashboard.

If you run into any trouble with the above plug-ins, post here and I will help. I did run into one problem with the Google Analytics plug-in but it turned out it was my folly and was simple to fix. If you need SEO plugged into your blogs, use this list of plug-ins.

Adobe Premiere is also a good choice as there is a Vortex plug-in for the software. Though, the manual process is a quick task in Photoshop. What we want is a swirl of color towards the center of the screen, a fluid effect that appears to follow fluid dynamics as a flat image.

Let’s create the effect.

1. Create a new window 400px by 300px.

2. Set the foreground color to #2563AF, and the background color to white (#FFFFFF).

3. Go to filter, render, and select ‘difference clouds’

   
   

4. Go to Image, then adjustments, levels, and set the channel to RGB and input levels to: 0, 0.61, and 66 as shown below.

   
   

5. Go to filter, blur, and then radial blur; set the amount to 79, and blur methods to zoom as below.

   
   

6. You should see a blurry zoom like this image.

   
   

7. Go to filter, distort then ‘twirl’, and set the amount to 400.

   
   

8. Go to Image, adjustments, color balance, and set the midtones to the RGB levels shown below.

   
   

9. Go to filter, lighting effects, select the ‘crossing down’ style and select ‘spotlight’. Now, expand the lighting effect slightly, just enough to lighten up the colors for the below result.

   
   

10. Now duplicate the layer, and expand it to fill the width and height of the first layer. Rotate the layer by 90 degrees CW. Now set the transparency of the second layer to 50%.

    
    

11. The result should now resemble the image above. Duplicate the first layer again, rotate the layer 90 degrees CCW this time, and enlarge it to fit the window. Set the transparency to 60%.

    
    

12. You have a vortex!

You can adjust the twirl and transparency values more if desired. You can also try different colors; good results occur with shades of green and orange. I also found mixing green with blue allowed for a more colorful effect.

Sometime referred to as back shading or halo effects, what we will do is apply a background color shading to a line of text. For this example, it’s branding for an art gallery. We shall call the art gallery the ‘Wonder Wall’ (why not?).

So, for the effect; this can be done in versions 5 to CS4.

1. Create a new window, 300px by 100px.

   

2. Click the text type tool and enter the text into the window. I used the studio font as it presents that crisp arty effect sought by the theme:

   

3. Control and click the text to select all the text:

   

4. Now create a new layer and place it below the text layer in the Layers panel.

   

5. Go to edit, then fill, choose a darker color but a similar shade.

   

6. With the second layer selected using control and click, go to Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur. Set the Blur radius to 4.0 or 5.0.

   

7. Now you have a nice effective soft shadow effect. You can expand the shadow a little more if desired using edit, then transform, but I like the soft effect produced as it now appears.

8. To intensify the shadow, you could right click the layer 1, select blending options, and then click drop shadow.

This is better than applying text effects to the text layer and so having to go through with rasterizing the text. You can alter the text this way and change the soft shadow colors as per your web site color set.

Simple effects can make a profound difference when applied to certain page elements. Logos and headings can catch the eye with a basic effect such as this one.

Here is the PSD file for you if you want just the result.

Many projects can have dozens of PHP scripts. If the code in those scripts has not been optimized, slower behavior will be noticed and reported. Database applications are prone to PHP slowdowns. Also timeouts can cause havoc in a commercial environment if the PHP code has not been optimized.

Here are 10 good tips on optimization:

1. Be careful with concatenation as using it too much can cause a reduction in speed. Use echo properly as opposed to concatenation with the dot operator, use echo like this:

echo ‘Hello from ‘,$name,’string’;

2. You may be used to writing absolute paths into hyperlinks and it’s a good idea to keep writing full paths inside your include statements. This cuts the time spent resolving the file path.

3. When adding your data structures, you may wish to use classes as this is usually the one thing in PHP scripts that helps organize the script. Though, look at the number of structures you have, can some of them be written as arrays?

4. Specify the key type when accessing array elements from an echo statement like this:

echo $array[‘key’];

5. Look through your scripts for large declared arrays. These can become quite large in some instances so unset the variables used in these arrays to free up memory for other operations.

6. Any static methods in your code? Are they declared as being static? If not, declare them as static as this will improve the script loading speed.

7. An apache module called mod_gzip can compress your data so that it transfers to and from database tables much quicker.

8. This may seem obvious to any programmers so apologies if so – are you closing your database connections once finished with those connections?

9. How many ‘multi if’ and ‘else if’ statements are you using? Use ‘select’ in various places as this helps to optimize performance.

10. On the subject of copious numbers of PHP scripts, it becomes too easy to just write the PHP page. You can end up with so many PHP scripts where a HTML static page can be done instead. Remember, PHP scripts run at slower speeds than HTML pages. This is a function of Apache.

Hope this list helps to optimize your PHP coding life.

Firstly, there is no need to worry if PHP is not your strong point; the simple installation takes just a few minutes then you can set up your first pages. PHP editing is minimal for those whom want to add new variables to the pages, and no PHP editing is required if the standard installation is ok – and this suits most projects.

Useful applications of the script lend themselves to those whom want content driven directories attached to professional web sites. Content is king on the web and article directories allow you to establish yourself as an expert in your niche by displaying content that attracts and retains visitors.

ArticleMS at is a content system that allows you to create this type of site easily. You can set up users manually or allow visitors to register an account and submit content. There is complete control on permissions. You can:

• Approve or decline new registrations

• Approve or decline articles submitted if not of sufficient quality

• Set permissions that enable or disable a user’s ability to access articles

This works a treat as you get to control the submission process rather like EzineArticles. You can set user accounts to be requiring manual enablement so that you can check their work to see if that user is of an ethical nature. This is really important on the web where plagiarism finds its way into so much content.

You can set up the script to be tested in a test environment like a separate machine (many do this first) or operate in the live environment. Settings can be edited in the CMS without touching the PHP. One of its functions is to disable the site if needed, so you can edit live, and turn the site off until the live date. If you choose this method, it’s a good idea not to optimize the site too much. Where SEO is concerned, the CMS allows you to add keywords.

ArticleMS allows you to design a web site content publishing service that is fully customizable, you can:

• Edit the default template using HTML

• Add your own templates

• Update the content using a WYSIWYG editor without any HTML coding

• Send out emails to users using templates such as welcome emails, why an article was declined, etc

• Allow other users to edit your site

• Prevent directory submitters from submitting content with the use of a manual CAPTCHA image verification box.

ArticleMS is great for building a directory of content in a multi-user environment aimed at your niche areas. It allows a collaborative environment to become involved in the content development process.

Here is a quick button style that looks prominent on a web page and you can add text to it quite quickly. It can be useful for ‘download now’ and ‘start’ buttons. This can suit ‘action’ buttons that require the user to click the button to get started on a task or a campaign, etc.

For this example, I chose a circular button. In Photoshop, create a circle about 300 by 300 pixels. I chose #406EF1 for the color; you decide what’s best for you. I will show the progress.

Right click the layer, and select blending options. Select gradient overlay, and set the blend mode to Overlay.

Select drop shadow, inner shadow, bevel and emboss, and outer glow.

Right click inner glow, and select global light. Move the crosshair to the center.

Right click blending options again, and change the gradient overlay color to orange and yellow (or a color of your choice), and change the style to radial.

xperiment with the colors for the type of color style that suits best. This is a basic circular button that can be created very quickly. I have used it below in place of standard bullets to illustrate how it can suit a list. I recommend these free online services for creating buttons as they allow you to craft various types of buttons in no time at all.

Button Maker at http://tools.blogflux.com/buttonmaker/ produces the colors and text styles of your button choice in seconds.

Buttonator at http://www.buttonator.com/ creates web buttons in a range of styles from classical to more abstract styles.

Cool Text at http://cooltext.com/Buttons offers effects such as 3D, Gel and Glass as well as quickly applying your chosen fonts and background colors.

Where standalone applications are concerned, you cannot beat Photoshop for its expansive list of effects and layering attributes that have kept designers well fed with tools for years. Sometimes it works to combine a free tool with Photoshop to advance the button design development time. You could use the tools mentioned and then add the finishing touches in Photoshop later.