Dare to Think | Web Design, Blog Development, Hosting and Print and Print made Simple » Tips and Advice

10 FREE Mac apps you can’t do without

alan — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:55:41 +0000

I won’t list the obvious such as Illustrator, Photoshop, MS Word etc but more those little apps that you’ve probably not even heard of. There’s absolutely loads of them – yes, even for us Mac users – but which ones should you download. I’ve chosen 10 here that I use on a daily basis – I’m sure there’s others out there and I’d be interested to know what little hidden gems you know of that you think other should use… Remember it has to be FREE!

Unread Mail Count

Mail unread menu sits in your menu bar and lets you know, at-a-glance, how many unread emails you have in Apple Mail. You can also configure the app to exclude mailboxes so only notifying you of your important emails.

Search bookmarks from any browser

Allbookmarks sits in your menu bar and acts as a little search tool for all the web browsers you have on your Mac. If you’re anything like me I chop and change between Safari, Firefox and Camino and add bookmarks to each of them. From the menu

Follow up previously sent emails

How many times have you sent an email and then realised you’d forgotten to say something… It happens to me all the time. Mailfollowup adds another button in Apple Mail so when you select your previously sent email you can choose to Follow Up that message which is basically like a Reply function but sends to the recipient and not you. One of my used little apps

Force empty your trashcan (that’s a bin to us British folk!)

Every now and again there’s something in your trash that you can’t delete – don’t ask me why it can’t be deleted! Anyway, by running Force Empty Trash your trashcan will be all clean and empty once more.

Alternative Music and Video Player

iTunes and Quicktime player are great but there’s times when you have a folder full of music that you want to play without having to add it to iTunes and I do find that some DivX movies play a lot better in VLC Player with better audio sync and correct aspect ratios. Simply drag anything to it’s window and click Play – it will then play it in the order it appears.

BitTorrent Client

I’ve used pretty much all the torrent apps out there and always come back to Transmission. It only has a small window and really is very basic.

Twitter

It seems the entire universe is into Twitter at the moment and whether it’s just another passing fad or whether it’s here to stay we all need a Twitter client that sits on our desktop informing of us of Stephen Fry’s latest twhirl is a lovely little Twitter app, allowing multiple accounts, notifications of new messages, shorten long urls, and lots of search functionality

Notepad

I don’t like the way Apple have incorporated their Notes app into Mail. I just don’t think it works and because of that I never use it. Instead xPad is a great alternative, allowing you to add new notes within a single window. It’s an incredibly simple app but that’s what actually makes it great.

Video and Voice calls

If you haven’t already got Skype then where have you been? Skype allows you to communicate with other Skype users for free via video and/or voice. It also offers very cheap calls to most countries.

Files and Folder sizes

Ever wonder just what is taking up all that space on your Mac? Well, it can help if you can see everything in one clear and concise window so you can then decide what to move or delete to free up valuable some space. Whatsize does this fantastically well… It’s free for measuring up to 20gb of space or $12.95 to measure anything. Don’t just go and delete stuff willy-nilly as it might be vital for the functionality of your Mac – best to check first before you do.

And finally… One to get that’s not free but you should get

All I want from a task list is something very simple. On most of the task managers you end up taking more time adding tasks than it actually takes to perform them! I never need due dates, times, notifications etc etc etc so if you want something easy, quick and simple then look no further than Taskpaper. It’s actually so simple I’ve started to use it as a notes app as well… You can go ahead and download it before choosing to purchase it but I think you should as you’ll love it’s simplicity.

10 Tips to Clean, Optimize and Speed up your Wordpress Site

alan — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:30:43 +0000

If you find your Wordpress Site is struggling speed-wise or you’ve been given your marching orders from your web hosts (due to high CPU usage) then read on and hopefully these few tips will help sort out and speed up your Wordpress Blog.

Before doing any of the following it’ll be a good idea to back up your database. You can do this via phpMyAdmin (if you know what your’re doing) or there’s a handy little plugin called WP-DBManager which will do it for you and lots lots more. Whilst we’re on that note, please remember to back up your database every now and again, just in case!

1. Remove any plugins that you simply don’t use

Visit your Wordpress Admin site and click on Plugins > Inactive to find out which will be safe to remove. You should also take a look at your Active plugins as there might be some in there to delete as well (be careful though as they may be used somewhere on your site.

2. Update Wordpress to the latest version

You should see a warning at the top of Wordpress Admin page if you need to upgrade to the latest version. It’s a wise idea for security reasons to keep up to date. Here’s a handy guide to upgrading Wordpress.

3. Upgrade any out of date plugins

If there’re are newer versions of plugins available then you will see a little number next to “Plugins” in your Wordpress Admin page.

4. Find orphan options in your database

Luckily there’s a plugin for this, as hunting through a MySQL database – if you don’t know what you’re doing – can be a daunting task. So install Clean Options and select “Find Orphaned Options”. You’ll more than likely be presented with a huge list. Now, take your time and look at these carefully. If there’s any that are obvious then select them and delete. There’s also a useful search option where you can search for that option in Google – there you might be able to find out what it is and whether it’s safe to delete. Just because it’s an orphan file it doesn’t mean that it’s not being used by one of your plugins. So, really, just take your time with this.

5. Optimize your database

Download WP-Optimize and remove all post revisions, clean marked spam comments, clean unapproved comments and optimize database tables. A great tool that can save a lot of space in your database. I got one site down from 16mb to 10mb.

6. Cache your pages and posts

Every time somebody views a post on your blog there are numerous scripts that have to be run each and every time. This can be very processor intensive and your web hosts won’t like you for it. So download WP Super Cache and use it. It will then only have to run a load of scripts once – then everybody else will see the cached version of the page. Don’t worry if you update it or somebody adds a new comment – it’s clever enough to then generate a new page.

7. Cache your Wordpress Widgets

Widgets work in a different way and so you’ll need another plugin for this called WP Widget Cache. Now, I was a bit confused as to where the options were for this plugin but they are actually on the Widgets Admin page, above your widget.

8. Reduce the amount of Tags you use

Now, I think and I’m in the process of testing this but, I think that tags are a major problem with CPU usage and so I think you really need to reduce the amount you use. Don’t 20 or 30 tags for every article you publish – stick to a handful.

9. There isn’t really a ninth or tenth tip but 10 Top Tips sounds better than 8!

10. Keep your Wordpress site up to date

Upgade plugins when required, backup your database, backup your files every now and again, clean and optimize your database. If you do these things then everything should run smoothly.

I hope you’ve found this useful if so, then remember to retweet it or share it below. Also, be sure to check out another useful Wordpress post: How to Secure your Wordpress Blog

10 Useful Sites for Web Developers

alan — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:43:25 +0000

There’s about a billion websites in the World (I don’t know the exact figure) so it can be really tricky finding ones that are useful in your day to day work. As a web designer and developer here’s some I use frequently and I think you’ll find them useful too. I’m sure there’s other useful sites out there so if you know of any then please add a comment for everyone else to benefit from. (I’ve actually added 11 to the list but that doesn’t sound as good in the title!)

Arctic Tracker
Arctic is a bug and issue tracker. This allows the client to go through what you’ve produced and then provide feedback on bugs, issues and also support requests. It’s free for one project and then only $99 for a full license. You will need to download and install on your own webspace but it’s straight-forward. Very useful for both you and your client to keep track of everything.

COLOURlovers
A resource site that gives you a bit of inspiration for colour themes and palettes. Very useful if your client has a base colour but then you’re a little unsure of what colours would be compliment.

dafont.com
A font library with lots of user created fonts, with most available for free.

Google Analytics
A free and comprehensive online web stats program from Google with lots of useful features. All you need to do is add some tracking code to your clients site for the stats to show up in Analytics

iStockphoto
Useful for both inspiration and also fantastic quality photos, illustrations, audio and video. Credits start at around a pound and you really don’t have to spend a great deal to get some fantastic imagery on your clients sites. Gone are the days of those expensive Royalty Free Discs from Getty (even though Getty own iStock!)

Lorem Ipsum
It’s unusual for your client to have all the copy ready when you start designing their site. For those pages where they don’t then simply use some Latin copy which, unless they can understand Latin, is ideal for dummy copy.

Size Puppy
See what your website looks at different browser sizes.

TYPETESTER
A great way to see how different sized and coloured fonts will appear online. Simply type in the font, colour, leading, tracking etc etc and you can compare up to 3 fonts alongside each other.

W3Schools
A fantastic resource for anything and everything web development. Very useful stats on browsers, platforms and OS’s as well.

W3C Validation Tools
It’s always useful if your sites are W3C validated – this ensures your code is pristine and that Google and all the other major Search Engines will crawl your clients sites with no errors. You can check there’s no broken links, validate your page source code and also validate your CSS.

Web fonts for Mac and PC
You’re not restricted to using Arial or Verdana on your site. Check this site on both Mac and PC to see how fonts will look on both platforms – you’ll be surprised at what you can use.

3 FREE Apps to protect your PC

alan — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:45:47 +0000

Luckily I own a Mac and one of the major benefits is that I don’t have to worry about viruses and all other kinds of dirty things infecting my system. But, I do have Parallels Desktop which acts as a Virtual PC on my Mac. So, I do need to protect this partition and you’ll be surprised that you don’t have to shell out even more money to protect your system – here’s 3 great, and FREE apps that you should install.

Ad-Aware Free
Offers real-time protection against malicious processes and infected programs that try to start or run on your system.

AVG Free Antivirus
This protects your PC from viruses, spyware, adware and trojens. They also offer 2 paid versions of the application which furthers your security but the basic FREE version will do just fine.

Spybot Search and Destroy
Detects and removes spyware from your system. Spyware silently tracks your behaviour such as keystrokes and then sends it to evil people so they can then sell on to advertising companies or worse still use those details to login to sites you regularly visit.

Now, you may wonder why I’ve listed three apps when AVG seems to do everything – well, I’m just being overprotective and when it comes to PC’s you need to be. New viruses, trojens and suchlike pop up on a daily basis so it’s better that three apps are protecting your system as they’ll be far higher chance you’ll stay fully protected.

A point to remember: Make sure you you keep everything up to date with all three of these applications. Yes, it may be a little annoying when they want to keep downloading updates and virus definitions but you’ll thank them when something nasty is spotted and eliminated at the root.

Centre DIV Horizontally and Vertically using CSS

alan — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:04:32 +0000

Here’s a quick guide on how to centre a DIV, both vertically and horizontally, in your web browser window. The main thing to remember is give your container div an absolute position and then the content div within a relative position.

Here’s what it looks like:

I always find it’s easier to download a page and play around with it in your own leisure so click here to download single html file containing HTML and CSS of the Centered DIV.

Here’s the code for those that don’t want to download:

CSS:

#container
{
position: absolute;
top: 50%;
left: 50%;
border: 3px solid black;
width: 400px;
height: 300px;
margin-left: -200px;
margin-top: -150px;
}

#content
{
font-size: 0.8em;
font-family: sans-serif;
background-color: #ccc;
position: relative;
left: 50%;
top: 50%;
width: 240px;
height: 50px;
margin-left: -120px;
margin-top: -25px;
}

HTML:

This content div is centered within it’s containing div

Create an HTML Signature for Apple Mail

alan — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:54:45 +0000

Apple Mail is great, such a pleasant email client to use for work and play but there’s one frustrating thing and that’s that there’s no obvious way of creating an html signature. So you’re stuck with just having text.

Now with that said, when you do create your HTML signature don’t go over the top and create one with loads of images that will take a day to load. Email clients often ask the user whether it’s safe to download the images – so your signature may not be seen in all the glory you wanted.

So here’s how:

1. Create your HTML signature using an html editor such as TextWrangler (FREE), Adobe Dreamweaver or similar. If you’re using CSS to style your elements then you’ll need to do this inline as some email clients, notably Gmail, don’t display internal stylesheets.

2. View your HTML page in Safari and choose File > Save and make sure the Format is set to Web Archive. You can call it whatever you like as we’ll be renaming the file anyway.

3. Okay, in Apple Mail create a new Signature by going to File > Preferences and select the Signatures tab. Add anything to your signature – we’ll be changing it to your new one anyway. When done close the Preferences Window and Quit Mail.

4. Now go to your Desktop and navigate to User > Library > Mail > Signatures and locate the signature you’ve just created (you’ll have to look at the Modified Date because the file name is a bit long and doesn’t relate to what you’ve created. Copy the entire name of that file.

5. Locate the file you saved in Step 2 and rename it with that you’ve just copied.

6. Drag the renamed file into your Signatures folder and choose Replace when prompted.

Now, when you open up Mail and view your Signatures you’ll see your new version there. It’s worth testing it by sending to various email clients such as Hotmail, Gmail and Outlook just to see if it looks the same.

DIV align bottom right (or left!)

alan — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:28:20 +0000

This was always one of those problems that I had with CSS – getting the content to align to the bottom of it’s containing DIV, be it left or right align. So here’s how to do it.

The key is to use to the “position” property. Give your containing DIV a relative position and the content an absolute position.

I find these things easier if you can just take an example page and play with it in your own time so download this single HTML page and play away.

For those that like the code here it is:

CSS

#container
{
width: 300px;
height: 200px;
border: solid 1px #000;
position: relative;
}

#bottom-right
{
right: 0;
bottom: 0;
position: absolute;
}

#bottom-left
{
left: 0;
bottom: 0;
position: absolute;
}

HTML

bottom right

bottom left

IE6 Div Height Problem

alan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:03:35 +0000

We all know IE6 is the web developers nightmare and today that continued when I was unable to make a 5px high div appear that height in IE6. Wow, the amount of time I spend on IE6 when developing sites is quite astonishing and I can’t wait for the day when we see the death of IE6. Anyhow back to the problem: IE6 kept wanting to show the 5px high div as 20px! After a bit of playing and hunting around the web here’s how I overcame the problem.

For example you have:

#small-div {
width: 100px;
height: 5px
background-color: red;
}

#offers-bt {

width: 378px;

float: left;

font-size: 0px;

}

So this will appear in most browsers as a 5px div. But in IE6 it appears higher. So to overcome that issue simply add a zero font size to the CSS e.g:

#small-div {
width: 100px;
height: 5px
background-color: red;
font-size: 0px;
}

Now, if you have text in that div, you obviously don’t want to set the font size as zero so you can also try setting the overflow:hidden element which can also do the trick.

Remove attachments from Apple Mail emails

alan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:55:39 +0000

Attachments can be pretty big and more often than not once you receive an email you’ll have saved that attachment to your Mac for safekeeping. Before you know it you’ll have hundreds of megabytes of emails on your Mac and wondering how on earth to make them smaller.

I need to refer back to emails so I really do need to keep them safe but I no longer need the large attachments so if you didn’t know you can simply click on the message in question and go to Message > Remove Attachments. Simple as that!

Remove the shadow from Mac Screen Grabs

alan — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:31:01 +0000

When you take a screenshot in OSX Leopard (Apple Shift 4 or Apple Shift 4 SpaceBar) you get a large outer shadow appear when you then view that image in Preview or Photoshop. It can be really useful to remove that shadow when you want to take screengrabs for presentations.

To remove it open Terminal (Applications/Utilities) and copy and paste this code:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

followed by this:

killall SystemUIServer

To get the shadow back copy and paste this:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false

followed by:

killall SystemUIServer