Archive for March, 2011

Firefox 4 leads Mac browsers in battery life

Firefox 4 leads Mac browsers in battery life

Web browser effects on battery life

Firefox 4 is the best battery life browser for Mac users

Microsoft has released a fairly extensive study of browser use on laptop computers and the effects on battery life. Not surprisingly, IE 9 comes out in the lead overall. As far as Mac browsers go, Firefox 4 takes the crown, followed by Chrome and Safari. Opera brings up the rear in the study.

I’m not sure about the usefulness of the information, as your use of the browser is only one aspect in terms of how long your MacBook’s battery lasts. And how many people use enough Watts of power just surfing the web? But the information provided is interesting nonetheless.

03/31/2011 Read More
Don’t fear the white lines in your PDFs created by InDesign

Don’t fear the white lines in your PDFs created by InDesign

InDesign CS5You’re working on a brochure under a tight deadline, and upon opening the PDF you just exported from Adobe InDesign, you notice thin white lines around certain objects. Don’t miss your deadline spending too much time troubleshooting the InDesign file. More often than not, those white lines are simply a display glitch in the PDF caused by transparency flattening in the export process.

If you’re concerned, you can check your file in two ways. The first method is to simply open the PDF and zoom in and out – if the thin white line disappears when you zoom in and out, it’s just a display glitch.

The second method is to just run InDesign‘s Package command (Command + Option + Shift + P); when the report dialog appears, make sure you have no RGB images in use. When RGB images overlay CMYK images, transparency flattening problems can occur. If this is the case, then you definitely should convert those RGB images to CMYK before exporting your file as PDF.

03/30/2011 Read More
Quickly check or uncheck items in your iTunes playlists

Quickly check or uncheck items in your iTunes playlists

iTunes playlist shortcut

A quick shortcut to check and uncheck all items in your playlists

If you have a lot of items in a music playlist and you want to check or uncheck them all, you can save yourself the time and trouble of doing it one-by-one simply by clicking the checkbox of any song in the playlist while holding the Command key down. Doing so will check or uncheck all the items in the playlist at once.

03/29/2011 Read More
Create a 3D rocket ship in Adobe Illustrator CS5

Create a 3D rocket ship in Adobe Illustrator CS5

Adobe Illustrator 3D tutorial

Create some great 3D effects using Adobe Illustrator CS5

When you think of 3D applications, you rarely think of Adobe Illustrator CS5, but the fact is that Illustrator has some decent tools to create simple 3D vector art. VectorTuts has a great Illustrator 3D tutorial to introduce you to the tools and help you create some neat effects like you see in the image above.

03/28/2011 Read More
Quark to ship XPress 9.0 next month

Quark to ship XPress 9.0 next month

Announcing Quark XPress 9

Quark announces XPress 9, featuring tools to create eBooks and iPad apps

Quark recently announced that Quark XPress 9.0 will ship sometime in late April. The upgrade will feature a few nice features for designers creating flyers, brochures, posters and books like an improved links palette, import of images into a grid, and an integrated story editor. But the biggest new thing with XPress 9 is the interactive tools. XPress users can create and publish richly designed, interactive content for the web, eBooks, smartphones, the iPad, and more.

If you upgrade to ($299) or purchase a full version of ($799) Quark XPress 8 now, you’ll get the upgrade to version 9 for free.

03/25/2011 Read More
Web developers and designers: How fast does your page load?

Web developers and designers: How fast does your page load?

loads.in

loads.in is a great site to test your web page load speed

In a day and age where a good majority of web surfers have high-speed Internet, web developers and designers still must concern themselves with page loading speed. Javascript, JQuery, Java, Flash, and large images can slow the load time of any given page. The best way to test the speed of your web pages is to use an off-site app to test it.

Loads.in is a great site to do just that. You simply type in the URL of your web page and wait a few seconds for the test to run. Once completed, a display of average load times is provided. From there, you can select cities in various countries from a list and retest your page. Additionally, you can choose to use IE, Safari, Chrome, or Firefox to run the test.

03/24/2011 Read More
Run Windows on your Mac – save $30!

Run Windows on your Mac – save $30!

If you need to run that one or two Windows apps, there’s no need to buy a separate PC to do it. True, Apple has made it possible to boot into Windows natively, but the process is cumbersome and not very flexible – especially in a cross-platform workflow.

Parallels on sale for $50, and get 10 other great apps as a bonus

Parallels on sale for $50, and get 10 other great apps as a bonus

Parallels allows you to run Windows right inside the comfort of Mac OS X, and it does so extremely well – allowing you to Drag-and-drop files between Windows and Mac applications, launch Windows applications from your Mac dock, and do so with a great amount of speed and control.

Parallels normally sells for $79.99, but you can get Parallels 6 for $49.99 for the next few days via the MacUpdate Bundle – which includes 10 other great apps like 1Password, TechTool Pro 5, Civilization IV, and A Better Finder Rename.

If you do choose to purchase the bundle, I appreciate you using the affiliate link I’ve provided!

03/23/2011 Read More
Is your favorite app compatible with Mac OS X (10.7) Lion?

Is your favorite app compatible with Mac OS X (10.7) Lion?

Mac OS X Lion app compatibility

Mac OS X Lion app compatibility chart

RoaringApps has put together a fairly extensive, and constantly updated, list of current applications that reveal their compatibility status with Apple’s next big OS update, OS X 10.7 Lion. You can view the collection in list format, or as an icon grid as seen in the screenshot above.

As far as graphic designers concerned with Adobe apps, it appears that most do run under Lion, but with some issues. I’m sure Adobe will be providing updates shortly after Lion’s release.

03/22/2011 Read More
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