Resources
Convert Microsoft Publisher Documents to Adobe InDesign - PUB2ID
Markzware’s InDesign plugin is an easy to use tool designed to easy convert Microsoft Publisher Documents to Adobe InDesign.
Available for both Windows and Mac, PUB2ID converts Publisher 2002 through 2007 documents to InDesign CS2 and CS3 formats. The plugin offers conversion for the page size, positioning, color models, fonts and styles, text attributes and tables, layers, word wrap, linked text boxes, as well as automatic extraction of images embedded in the Publisher file.
For the moment there is no trial version, but you may upload a document to the Markzware website for free conversion.
Find more information on the Markzware website
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Alien Skin Software Releases Image Doctor 2 Plugin
The new version of Image Doctor offers improvements in rendering speed and quality, plus a new range of skin retouching capabilities.
Image Doctor offers a series of image-retouching filters for Photoshop and other similar applications that allow the user to easily restore old photos, retouch photos, remove unwanted objects and repair low quality images.
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Here’s an example of what it can do :
Image Doctor renders seamless removals of unsightly blemishes and objects. It enables photo editors to de-clutter bad photographic compositions with just a few clicks of a mouse. Web designers, service bureaus, and hobbyists can restore and repurpose badly compressed JPEGs, including cell phone photos. Portrait photographers can use Image Doctor as digital makeup, removing pimples, moles, scars, and tattoos in one click. Photographers can then soften skin areas where these blemishes were or fix oily patches of skin. Hobbyists and professionals can use Image Doctor to restore old photos by removing dust and scratches.
Image Doctor 2 offers a number of improvements to the original release. Chief among these improvements is Image Doctor 2’s rendering speed and quality.
Image Doctor 2 now offers more seamless integration of replacement pixels with the existing background so that the edges of repaired areas now more smoothly blend with the balance of the photo. The software also is improved in its ability to match the patterns of the existing background. Image Doctor 2’s JPEG Repair offers higher quality fixes of JPEG compression.
Find out more on the Alien Skin website.
Flash Components | Flashloaded review
Every respectable designer needs good resources in order to produce great results. Flash Components does exactly that, provide you with the best Flash resources possible. Their Flash components are easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and accessible.
The website offers innovative and affordable Flash components, Flash templates, movies, video loops and sound loops. Apart from these Flash Components offers a bunch of Flash freebies for download.
The Flash components are organized by category, including CMS, Menus, Navigation, Sound and Video, Charts and Various. Some of their best examples are the Flash Guestbook, the designersPoll, the flipNavigation and the beautiful 3D menu.
The Flash Guestbook uses PHP and MySQL to record feedback and comments from visitors and displays them via the Flash interface. Moderation is possible via the backend admin panel.
DesignersPoll offers a beautiful, simple, elegant and fully skinnable voting solution based on a XML file database.
The flipNavigation component offers the possibility to create entire websites, banners, widgets and slideshows with flip transitions using images, SWFs and movie clips, with no coding.
The 3D menu is a superb navigation solution for a modern website. It can also be modified to create a 3D photo gallery.
The Flash Movies and Video Loops section offers a wide variety of animations and movies organized by categories so you’ll be likely to find what you are looking for. Even the Sound Loops section includes a huge number of sounds you can use on your website, button or banner designs.
As a conclusion this is a great solution for any designer in need of Flash Components, Movies, Video or Sound Loops. This website contains only the best resources suitable for any need.
URL : http://www.flashloaded.com/
This is a sponsored post and reflects exactly how we feel about the Flashloaded website and the products they offer.
Sunday Design Resource - Issue 2
For the second issue of the Sunday Design Resource, we’ll be pointing out some HTML Tutorial websites. These websites cover all aspects of web design, beginning with the basics and going through hints, tricks and optimizing your code to make it W3C Compliant.
W3C Website. Probably the first, most complete and up-to-date HTML tutorials website. W3C is the abbreviation to World Wide Web Consortium, and it’s an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C’s goal is :
To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.
On this website you’ll find everything you need to know about HTML, and not only HTML. There are extensive resources about CSS, also. The downside is accessing that information. The site’s navigation is pretty basic, being organized just like the contents of a book (organized by chapters). Getting to the HTML part requires some dose of intuition, but once you get there all your questions will be answered. The information database is vast containing everything you need to know about HTML, including the latest developments in this field (HTML5). As a conclusion, navigation aside this is the website you wanna visit if you want to learn all about HTML.
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W3Schools is a website containing information about all aspects of web development, from basic HTML training to advanced .NET tutorials.
The website’s navigation is very good and intuitive, consisting of a left column with the topic you want to learn about (HTML, XHTML, CSS, PHP, ASP etc). The HTML part is excellently organized using the same navigation style as stated before. It’s divided into 2 main chapters (Basic and Advanced). After reading the basic and advanced tutorials you have the opportunity to check you knowledges by taking a quiz, or even by taking an exam (for about 60$) which will grant you the title of Certified HTML Developer at the end. What we liked about this website were the HTML examples. The example database is quite extensive and covers all the aspects of HTML. As a conclusion W3Schools in an excellent website with tons of information, but a bit hard to read because each page is a bit too “loaded”.
HTML Code Tutorial. This website is not as complete as the other two. It’s build as a beginners guide to HTML and CSS.
Although not as complex as W3C and W3Schools, the website has an excellent navigation system. The content is organized by topics. An interesting thing is that the website offers a Popular Articles Section. A big minus is the site’s search system. It’s not self implemented, it’s a Google Search Box. What we really loved about this website is the forum. It’s pretty big, with lots of helpful users and topics. You find here answers to any problem you may have. Concluding, HTML Code Tutorial is a good website with a decent amount of information, an excellent navigation system (needed as the search function is pretty basic) a great forum with lots of helpful members, but with a bit too much advertising.
Additional HTML resources :
Cool CSS animated menu - MacOS style
Ever wondered how they made that cool MacOS bottom menu, with icons that become larger when the cursor is on top of them? Well .. with some neat tricks.
This CSS Animated Menu does exactly that. It’s based on JQuery Java script library and Fisheye component from Interface. It’s 100% compatible with IE 6, IE 7, Opera 9, Firefox 2, and Safari 2. You may see a demo here and you can download and find out how to implement it in your HTML page here.
