Recent Blog Posts
Blogs ยป Archive for November, 2004
Copying Layer Styles in Photoshop
I just learned a new trick!!
I’ll explain my “old way” of doing things first.
Let’s say you have a layer in Photoshop and apply a Layer Style (drop shadow, stroke, bevel, etc…). The Layers palette shows which effects you’ve applied (see picture below). Quite often, I find myself needing to duplicate layer effects on other layers.
Now in the “old days,” I would right-click on the layer and choose “Copy Layer Style,” then right-click on the target layer and choose “Paste Layer Style.”
But those days are gone.
Now, I know that I can simply click on the “Effects” text, drag, and drop it on my target layer (actually, slightly “below” the layer - you’ll see what I mean when you try it) - and the effect will be applied immediately!
I am always ecstatic when I find ways to do things that involve less clicking.
By the way, you can also click-and-drag the individual effects to copy them as well. You just click the “Effects” text if you want to apply the whole lot of them.
More XMLHttpRequest madness: JPSpan 0.4
After renaming this, the next release is finally out.
The release notes explain roughly what’s changed - given the name change took the opportunity to break every API I could find ;) Actually not that bad and should now be less work writing servers.
The newest and “most exciting” example, complete with very dodgy HTML, is the logger which allows you to read and update a log file on the server at the same time. Have tried to explain what the examples are doing here.
Anyway - downloads at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/jpspan/.
Otherwise, a couple more nice examples of XMLHttpRequest in action (not JPSpan BTW) - wordpress calendar plugin (try browsing through the months top right) and LiveWiki (double click in the sandbox…)
Does how you BUY hurt how you SELL?
Had a great conversation with a sales consultant colleague of mine today. He has discovered that lots of professionals hurt how they SELL their services because of the way they BUY goods and services. Check it out….
Suppose you are extremely skeptical and suspicious when you buy. Further suppose you take a long time to make up your mind, and shop around for the best price. You might assume others buy like you do, even though plenty of people buy quickly and don’t shop around for the bottom dollar price. Therefore, you might give more information than people need to make a decision, and even hurt yourself by giving too much information or by not appearing enthusiastic enough to those ready to buy.
On the other hand, suppose you buy on impulse, going on first impressions and not spending time searching for the best bargain. Well, you might get impatient with people who need to be reassured and like lots of facts and figures.
The best way around this potential problem? Get good at assessing your prospects. Don’t read their minds or make assumptions about what they are thinking or how they will buy. Instead, ask open ended questions and find out! Get …
QuirksMode bug reports
Anyone who has done serious work with CSS will tell you that the most frustrating part of the process is dealing with strange browser bugs. Many (if not most) of these have been documented somewhere, but knowing where to look is an art in itself. PPK’s latest venture, Bug Report, is very welcome indeed! The site lists bugs in IE/Mac, IE/Windows, Mozilla, Opera and Safari along with test pages, some workarounds and the ability to comment on existing bugs as well as submitting new ones.
If your bug isn’t listed there, the following sites may be able to help:
- Position is Everything, still the number one place for IE bugs and general tip on dealing with weird CSS behaviour.
- CSS Bugs in IE5.x Mac from Mac Edition.
- The css-discuss wiki (and searchable list archive).
- And if all else fails, you can always hide the offending CSS from the browser in question by applying a filter.
Photoshop Eyedropper Tips
Some helpful tips for using the Photoshop Eyedropper…
First, if you’re using a tool that involves a color (paint brush, paint bucket, vector shape tool, etc.), you can hold down the Alt button (Option for Mac) and the cursor will change into the eyedropper, allowing you to select colors from your document. This is very useful for me as I’m lazy and would rather limit how often I switch tools.
Another tip is that you aren’t limited to the colors in your document when you’re using the eyedropper tool! You can pick colors from other visible documents, from the Photoshop interface - even from other applications as long as you can see them on the screen! As long as you start in your document and click-and-hold with the eyedropper tool, you can then drag outside of the document to anywhere in your window and pick a color.
Finally — if you’re like me (not overly observant or very task-focused), you may have never even noticed the toolbar options area. The “sample size” dropdown allows you to use the eyedropper to gather a “point sample,” a 3×3 average sample, or a 5×5 average sample. This is really useful if you have an image that …
LAMP: the way forward from legacy app servers
Check out the ActiveGrid press release.
ActiveGrid represents a fundamental shift from traditional data center architectures, such as J2EE, by enabling transactional applications to be horizontally scaled across a transaction grid of low-cost computers, as contrasted to the traditional approach of scaling vertically on a small cluster of expensive multi-processor machines that must continually connect to backend systems.
See also J2EE not longer required and Application Servers 2004: A Big Muffin in a Donut World.
John already picked this up along with Adam Bosworth’s ISCOC04 Talk (which is not directly related but still…).
What’s interesting is reading ActiveGrid’s whitepaper (PDF) placing LAMP beyond application servers as the way to scale, pushing all the right “CEO buttons”.
Answer to case study: How to answer a classic objection to value pricing
This blog answers a question posed yesterday:
How does a world-renowned consultant handle a common objection to value-based pricing?
In his case, as you may recall, he charges $100,000 for 6 days of work over a year (proving once again that capitalism is an amazing system).
Sometimes prospects say, “Hey, isn’t $100,000 a lot to pay for only a few hours every month?”
Most of you who posted the responses were correct that the way to approach this is by focusing on value. However, his response is a bit more elegant, and worth remembering:
“Well, I’m happy to spend as much time as you want to get the result, but aren’t you busy with other things to do? Wouldn’t you rather get the result using as little of your time as possible?”
I love that answer! Please file it under your “how to handle objections” file….
60,000 Lines of Javascript
Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah makes some fascinating and insightful remarks on Applications vs. W3C DOM (this goes back to July, 2003 BTW - skip past the ad). Stepping out of the discussion of rich web applications for a moment, what struck a cord was point 8. “Javascript is too Flexible”;
In the 60,000 lines of Javascript I’ve been dealing with, I’ve sometimes found up to 7 ways to solve the same issue in the code; some approaches being incredibly powerful, ’smart’ and idiosyncratic but when it come down to it incomprehensible in the long run.
Part of this problem is specific to Javascript - try searching Google for Javascript and inheritance and compare the advice you get - but think there’s a general issue here which applies to all the dynamic languages. Koranteng calls for an effort by developers to codify best practices.
Over the last year have seen more and more people talking about best practices in PHP which is a very good thing, but at the same time, still seeing new developers making “mistakes” PHP allowed them to make. At the other end of the scale there’s developers who know a language well and can’t resist adding ’smart’ features. That needs to be …
How to handle a classic objection to value pricing
Many of you know that the best way to improve the profits of your Web design/development business is by getting good at value pricing. Value pricing means that you don’t trade time for dollars, but rather explore the value of your solution with the client, and charge on that basis. For more information, check out Million-Dollar Consulting by A. Weiss, SPIN Selling by Rackham, or my manual at itprosuccess.com.
Value pricing is a whole different mindset, and so requires a whole different approach to talking with prospects about what you do. It also means handling a new set of objections.
One of the most common objections you might get is, “Why should I pay so much money when this takes you so little time?”
Let me give you an example from one of the world’s most famous consultants. He shared this story with me when we met for lunch one day.
This consultant has a program where he charges $100,000 to meet once a month for a year with his client, for about half a day per month. The outcome he provides is simple: He will work with his client to change one, and only one, behavior in how that person manages …
Web based XUL Filemanager
How about this file manager? The front end is XUL + Javascript and the back end ASP in this example (recommend Firefox 9.x+ - allow the popups from that site).
The project is hosted at http://filemanager.mozdev.org with source availabe here - there’s a server side PHP implementation as well.
Be very careful before you put this anywhere live. Right now it allows users to create and edit .php files and it may well be a good idea to review the PHP source for security.
That said think this the best example of “remote XUL” I’ve seen since the Mozilla Amazon Browser. It’s certainly more usable than any DHTML equivalent I’ve seen, considering the ability to do things like copy/cut and paste.
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