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» Monday “A” News

 

It’s Monday and here are the news, a lot of A-companies today:

• Adobe late last week announced that the official release of Camera Raw 4.6 is here. This is probably also going to be the last update before CS4 — which is due to start shipping on Wednesday 15th. Download Here: Windows | Macintosh
   
• Tomorrow it’s time for Apple’s special event, "The Spotlight turns to Notebook" where they’re bound to release new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops. Rumors has it today that we also might get to see new versions of iLife and iWork. You’ll be able to follow my metaliveblog from the event, right here on the site, starting 15 minutes before the event tomorrow, at 11a.m Pacific (7p.m CET). The metaliveblog post will be up in the morning!
   
• With the release of CS4, I plan to post the new CS4 features in tutorials and cover them and mix them to get some interesting workflow based improvements and to give some suggestions on how to improve it. If there is anything special you want me to cover in terms of CS4, shoot me a comment or a mail.
   
• More about Apple. In a recent poll. Apple shows off to be the most environmentally-friendly tech company as seen by the general public, which is pretty interesting considering that they’ve gotten a lot of critique about the production process from a few places.
   
• What more can I do but to send you off to my buddy Jason Andersons blog today (being influenced by all the "A"’s used in this post I have to end with one as well), he runs a great blog called Canonblogger and he just announced the continuation of his podcasts from today and on!

» Saturday Morning News

 

Here are Saturday Mornings News, replacing the Friday news this week because of busy-ness.

• Apple has confirmed that there will be an event coming up now on October 14th. Their slogan for this time is "The spotlight turns to notebooks" which really does confirm all rumors on new MacBook and MacBook Pro versions. I’ll be metalivebloggning the entire event right here on the blog. Stay tuned!
   
• Agile has released a new version of their 1Password application, bringing it to version 2.9. The most major thing in this release is the addition of the Agile Keychain which replaces the Apple default keychain (which they felt were lacking) with their own. The update is free to current license holders whereas if you are a new user, a single-user-license will run you $39.95.
• If you are doing any type of live coverage or a live hosted chat, you might want to take a look at CoverItLive, a great and free service that lets you host your own live events or liveblogs. I’m using them for all my live coverage because it’s just awesome!

That’s these short saturday morning news!

» Beginners Guide to PHP Includes

A lot of beginners to websites do the mistake to include all page elements on all the pages, making is hard to edit and very time consuming. Usually though, it’s because you don’t know what to do else. I remember the same when I first started out. So I’m going to go through how to divide a coded site into good sections using PHP includes, to ease everything for you later!

First lets describe the basic principle of PHP Includes, a principle that is pretty easy. Basically you put some content into one “reference” page (say we call it “sidebar.php”) and then using a simple code snippet, reference that page into another page; basically include the contents of that sidebar.php into your other file. When you need to update something in the sidebar, all you need to do is update that one PHP file, and the sidebar will update throughout the site.

Now, before we go into the code, I shall mention the only requirements here, and that’s that you have a server that will run PHP 4 or PHP 5 on it, otherwise this method is not going to work.

First off, we need to create a sample reference page. Let’s say that we want to include a sidebar into our index page. So we would need to create a page that I suggest you call “sidebar.php” and put in a folder called “includes”. That way you keep track on everything you include. In this page, you’ll use normal HTML formatting to outline your sidebar as you’d want it to look. Then on the page where you wish to include your sidebar, just type in the following code:

<?php include(“includes/sidebar.php”); ?>

If we break it down, it’s first opening the PHP tags, then opening an include function. After that we are telling it to find the file “sidebar.php” that is in the directory called “includes”.

NOTE: You could have any file ending really on the included page including regular .html extensions.

Remember to now save this page where we typed in the include as pagename.php. It’s very important that you use the .php extension or else the file will not parse the php include code on the page.

Taking it a step further: As I’m sure you’ve realized, this is not only good for sidebars, but headers, footers and every site element that will always be repeated on a page without changes that are page specific.

This include system is useful for certain elements. If you have on the other hand a lot of pages there is another system that could be more useful, that will prevent the need to include these elements on all pages. We’ll take a look at that in another tutorial. Basically, use this system to include any repeating objects that aren’t page specific, like sidebars, footers and headers. If you have a lot of content, use the other system!
 

» Thursday Morning News

It’s a semi-early Thursday morning here and I’m yawning my way through work before it’s time to get up. Here are the news:

• A couple of days ago a very cool application called Fring was released in the App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch. What makes it remarkable is that it’s the first one to allow Skype calls (while on WiFi). It doesn’t only work as a normal skype ID client, but it works with skype out and skype in numbers alike! Get it in the App Store, for free!
   
• Microsoft has decided to extend its support for Windows XP through July 31, 2009 which is a full six months more than they originally planned! Good news for all still on XP who don’t want to move over to Vista.
   
• If you’re looking for a good provider of online training classes (and I mean 1+ hour ones) then go and check out the Kelby Training website where they offer some really great classes for only 19.95 a month. Also if you like seminars then go over to the Adobe seminar page where you can sign up for city tour events but more interestingly for eSeminars. If you don’t have the time to be available for an eSeminar, take a look at their long list of OnDemand Seminars that you can just load up and watch!
   
• CS4 is coming closer to being released by every day. Just a reminder, if you recently purchased a version of any of their programs that will update in CS4, contact them and check your eligibility for a post-announce upgrade (free upgrade) to CS4!

» My 10 Favorite Applications that I use Daily

My daily workflow is hardly shaped by the tools I use and without some of them; it would be really hard to do what I do (in the way I do it). Here are my favorite XX applications, that I use every day (purposely leaving a mail application out of the list).

Adobe Creative Suite + Lightroom

For me, these are the given applications to start with—and I do group them into the suite. I use most of the programs in the Creative Suite in my daily workflow not just to write tutorials and recording learning materials but of course in my work as a web designer and photographer (latter using Lightroom as well). Without the Creative Suite, things would be a whole lot harder.

iCal

For me it is iCal, but the most important thing here is that it is a calendar program. iCal for me is a good program that can handle what I do with it. When trying to do many things in a day, planning in a calendar is really good to do—plus it syncs with my iPhone. I couldn’t be without a calendar at all.

Billings

When it comes to tracking time—which is a very important thing in the creative industry—you really do need a solid time tracking program. This is where I’ve taken a great liking to Billings. It makes it easy for me to keep track of projects and time. When a project is complete, it makes sending out invoices a real breeze!

Address Book

As with iCal, the important thing here isn’t that I’m using the Mac address book, but really any address book. It’s sufficient for my needs. What can I say about it? You must really have a way to keep track of all your contacts and their information, thus making the address book a must.

NetNewsWire

I subscribe to a big load of RSS Feeds to keep up with the happenings. I really like the NetNewsWire interface, which is why I’m using it a lot. Plus the interaction is pretty good between their desktop and iPhone version, making me able to read when I’m not at home.