Interactive, cross-browser previews in Adobe Dreamweaver CS5

When using Live View, you can hit the F6 key to "freeze" JavaScript-pausing drop-down menus in place, Ajax data in a particular state of display, tabs in a particular open/closed configuration, etc. With integration with the new Adobe BrowserLab cross-browser testing service, you can then send that local "state" of your page right to BrowserLab to view it in all of the available browsers across operating systems.

Put mathematical equations at your fingertips (2007/2010)

When you're dealing with complicated mathematical equations, trying to duplicate them in any Office program is a challenge. Excel is no exception. The symbols used in mathematical equations can often make it difficult to include them in a spreadsheet.

Fortunately, Excel offers a few common equations at the click of a button. These equations don't produce results the way that a traditional Excel formula does (they're just text boxes), but they allow you to display a mathematical equation correctly in a worksheet without spending hours hunting for symbols.

To insert a mathematical equation in your spreadsheet:
Open your workbook and go to the Insert tab.
In the Symbols group, click on the Equation button's dropdown arrow to view the dropdown palette of available common mathematical equations.
Select an equation from the palette to place a text box containing the equation in your worksheet.

If the equation you want to create isn't in the Equation button's dropdown palette, you can click the Equation button itself and open the Equation Editor. You'll see a contextual tab that allows you to quickly insert symbols and create structures (brackets, operators, fractions, etc).

Recover unsaved workbooks (2010)

We've all done it before—either you forget to save a workbook, you accidentally save it when you should have saved it as a different name, or maybe you lose work because of that rare power outage. Whatever the cause, there's no need to panic when you think you've lost your work in Excel 2010. You can quickly and easily recover older (unsaved) versions of your workbook.

Mind the Gap in Adobe InDesign CS5

The new Gap tool (U) works on the "white space" between frames. Position the mouse between two items, click-and-drag to adjust the position of the gap, and the frames on either side of the gap will adjust at the same time-the uniform gap width will be maintained! Hold down the Shift key to only adjust the two closest items relative to the gap. Hold down the Command (PC: Ctrl) key to resize the gap instead of moving it.

To spring or not to spring in Adobe Flash Professional CS5

In Flash Professional CS5 you can now add springiness to any IK Bone in an armature. The Strength (stiffness of the spring) and Damping (rate of decay of the spring effect) properties of bones give real physical movement by integrating dynamic physics into the IK Bones system. However, it may be desirable to turn off Spring for bones without having to set both values to zero on every bone. To do this, select the Timeline layer that the armature is in to reveal an Enable checkbox for Springs in the Properties panel.

De-Runt Your Paragraphs With a GREP Style

Although you can control quite a few widow and orphan settings with InDesign's Keep Option settings, one problem remains: a too-short last line (sometimes called a "runt"). Let's assume you have a style rule that states the last line of a paragraph must contain at least 10 characters. The following GREP Style trick helps you follow that style.

1. Start by creating a Character Style called "no break" that only has the No Break option enabled.
2. Next, add a new GREP Style to your paragraph style, set the Apply Style pop-up menu to the "no break" character style you created earlier, then enter the following regular expression in the To Text field:

.{10}$ (That's a dot-curly-ten-curly-dollar sign.)

Now any 10 last characters of the paragraph will never be broken.

Removing Lines in Photoshop

Phone and power lines are the bane of a retoucher's existence. The new Content-Aware Spot Healing in CS5 has fixed this. Here's how: Using the Pen tool (P), add a path to the line; choose the Spot Healing Brush (J) with Content-Aware selected in the Options Bar; change the brush size to two times the width of the wire; and in the Paths panel (Window>Paths), select the path and click the Stroke Path with Brush icon-done!

18 Helpful Time Management Tips for Designers

Some people claim that 24 hours is not enough for them to finish all their tasks for the day. Indeed, most of us are running after time trying to befriend it. Time is very vital for us. Time management is said to be the most important element of professionalism which includes balancing and managing both professional and personal life well. Ironically, time management is also the biggest problems of graphic designers. Freelance designers have various projects that come just anytime, so you need to be good at time management. Since you are working on your own, you have to handle everything on your own. This is vital in order to finish all your projects before your client’s deadline. Every task requires a lot of time especially that you have to work on it always with the best of your ability.

Reasons Why you Can Keep Both your Day Job and Freelancing

Some people choose to work for multiple types of job and they have mastered the art of multi-tasking. They could be working for a day job and also do freelance at the same time. If you come to think of it, it is quite hard, isn’t it? But for some, it is already their way of living and losing the other makes them feel incomplete. There are actually advantages that one can get from keeping both jobs. We will take a look these advantages today.

Benefits Freelancers Can Get from Having Self-Confidence

When you are into business or you are occupied working, you need self-confidence since you will harvest many advantages if you are confident. Self-confidence is an important thing for everyone. It is related to one’s self-assuredness in his own decisions and actions. When a person is confident, he believes in his self and also ends up giving value to himself which can also lead to self-care. But being confident isn’t merely about one’s self but it can also affect those people that surrounds a confident person.

Independently place video and audio in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5

To drag the video and audio portions of a clip to specific tracks, drag the clip from the Source Monitor or Project panel into the Timeline. When the video portion of the clip lies above the desired video track, press-and-hold Shift, then drag downward past the bar separating video and audio tracks. When the audio portion of the clip lies above the desired audio track, release the mouse, and release Shift.

Give OpenGL rendering more memory to work - Adobe After Effects CS5

Increase the texture memory used for OpenGL rendering to 80% of the installed video RAM (VRAM) on your video card. The default of 200 MB is quite small for modern video cards; values in the 400-800 MB range are appropriate for modern cards with 512-1GB of VRAM. Choose After Effects (PC: Edit)>Preferences>Previews, click OpenGL Information, and enter a new value for Texture Memory.

Anchoring Graphics Between Paragraphs in InDesign

To add a graphic separator between paragraphs (such as ornamental
dots), anchor the graphic as the first character in the second paragraph, select it, choose Object > Anchored Object > Options, and choose the Above Line option.

In CS5.5 and later you can use the Anchored Object Control (the little blue square that appears on an object when it is selected) to anchor an object and set the options. To anchor an object, simply drag the blue square to the point in the text where you want the anchor to be located. To anchor an object and open the options dialog box at the same time, hold Option/Alt as you drag and release the blue square.

Select layers without using the Layers panel

Select layers without using the Layers panel (CS2/CS3/CS4/CS5)

Panels have their purpose, but they can also obstruct the view of your Photoshop canvas. Oftentimes, though, you don't actually need to show a panel in order to use it. You can select normal layers, for example, without ever touching the Layers panel.

As you probably know, layers enable you to organize and selectively manipulate content. But, before you can edit an item in a multilayered document, you must first select its layer.

To select an item's layer:

• Select the Move tool in the Tools panel.
• Click the Auto Select Layer check box on the tool options bar.
• Click on the area you want to edit to automatically select its layer.

Alternately, you can skip the step that switches you to the Move tool, and simply [command][control]-click ([Ctrl]-right-click in Windows) on the object. Then, choose its layer from the resulting context menu.

Shortcuts for scrolling in Excel's print preview

Excel's Print Preview is helpful for checking the layout of a document before you print, but scrolling through it can be annoying. Depending on the length of the document, you may find it easier to navigate the Print Preview window using shortcut keys. You probably know that you can use the [Page Up], [Page Down], and the direction arrows to move around the current page when a document is zoomed in. However, you can also hold down the [Ctrl] key while using the direction arrows to jump to the edge of the document that corresponds to the direction arrow. Holding down [Ctrl] while using [Page Up] and [Page Down] lets you horizontally scroll in increments. When the worksheet preview is zoomed out, [Ctrl][Left Arrow] and [Ctrl][Up Arrow] cause the preview to jump to the first page of the document, while [Ctrl][Right Arrow] and [Ctrl][Down Arrow] move you to the last page.

Learning InDesign

Basic Tips for Learning InDesign

• Based-On Master Pages are a terrific time saver; learn them and save tons of time when you have to change your master pages.
• Careful set up and use of both Paragraph and Character styles saves time and creates a consistent look—especially with multiple users.
• Use the Book feature to link long documents. Break the files into logical sections or chapters; avoid building one long (and large) file.
• In most cases, place native Adobe Illustrator files rather than pasting them. This creates a link to the original file and makes for easier management and updating.
• Adjust your Color Settings and set all your Adobe programs to the same settings. If you don’t know how, ask your printer or, at very least, use the appropriate Prepress Defaults.
• Create Swatches before applying colors. This makes for easy changes to colors later on. Use the Color palette only to create tints of true spot-color swatches.
• If you are having trouble printing your files to older printers or RIPs, adjust your Transparency Flattener (Print>Advanced). Always use the High Resolution setting for high-end output devices (unless the printer supplies custom settings).
• Test a sample file with your printer for correct separations. Make sure the sample is representative of your final layout and do this BEFORE your deadline is looming.
• Turn on the Layout>Layout Adjustment option before applying new master pages, especially if you are not using Master Text Frames for flowing text.
• Learn to use your Layers for multi-language or complex documents. If using any transparency features, put your text on the top layer whenever possible.

Design a stunning typeface with just six shapes

A modular typeface is an alphabet constructed out of a limited number of shapes or modules. The design we’re making here uses just six different modules that can be transformed subtly, by rotating, flipping and so on, to create an entire alphabet.



We’ll work with the Pen tool, and make basic use of the Pathfinder and Transform commands. Using Illustrator’s Snap To Grid option I’ll also demonstrate some simple rules that will help you draw well-proportioned and attractive curves.

Grid Place for multipage documents in InDesign

It's now possible to place pages from a multipage PDF, INDD, Illustrator file, etc. as a grid. In the Place dialog (File>Place), enable the checkboxes for Show Import Options and Create Static Captions, and then navigate to your multipage file. Choose the range of pages you want to place in the next dialog and click OK. With the loaded Place cursor, drag out an area for your grid, subdivide the area into columns and rows using the arrow keys, and then release the mouse button to place the pages.

Experimental CSS design in Dreamweaver

In Dreamweaver CS5, experimenting with CSS-based layouts is even easier. Hover over the left margin of your current rule selection in the CSS Styles panel to see the new CSS Enable/Disable feature. Click the "no" icon to disable a particular rule, and again to enable it. Aren't happy with the results? Right-click the rule and choose Enable All Disabled in Selected Rule to get everything back to where you started. Things looking great? Go ahead and Right-click the rule and choose Delete All Disabled in Selected Rule to clean up those comments in your code.

Align your layers to composition features in After Effect

To align selected layers to the center or edge of a composition, choose Composition in the Align Layers To drop-down menu in the Align panel (Window>Align), and then click the icon corresponding to the desired type of alignment