Where to look for a little inspiration

When your mind goes blank, remember that even the greatest of designers will encounter a dry spell where they just can't come up with a fresh design. Or you may just want to see what other great designers are doing. Whatever the case, you can find several examples of the latest and greatest at www.webbyawards.com. There, you'll find great examples of well-designed Web sites broken down into several categories.

Avoid adding too much space between paragraphs (QuarkXPress)

When making paragraph styles in the Paragraph Attributes dialog box to separate paragraphs, you may be tempted to add unwanted space between your paragraphs and not even know it.

2 ways to immediately change your view (Illustrator CS2/CS3/CS4/CS5)

After zooming really close into your Illustrations with the Zoom tool, it's a pain to get back to 100% view. Here's a little trick to avoid repeatedly clicking the zoom tool to view your artwork at 100% again. From any view percentage, just double-click on the Zoom tool in the Tools panel, and without delay you are at 100%. Here's another timesaver: To quickly see your artboard fit in the Window, double-click on the Hand tool. Your work area is instantly centered in your Illustrator window.

Easily generate a new encryption key to replace one that’s been compromised (Microsoft Windows XP/Server 2003)

As you know, the Encrypting File System (EFS) can protect your data from unauthorized access by encrypting it at the file or folder level. You can easily encrypt your files or folders through the Microsoft Windows GUI. Under the hood, however, EFS is a bit more complicated. It’s based on encryption keys that are in turn based on digital certificates. The first time a user attempts to encrypt a file or folder, the system automatically issues an EFS certificate for that user.

Generating Website Thumbnails in PHP

In recent web browser developement, one of the new features is the generation of site thumbnail images displayed in a gallery. In Opera, it has a feature called Speed Dial Thumbnail, in Google Chrome, it has a page that displays thumbnail for Most Visited, Recent Bookmarks and Recently closed tabs, while in Internet Explorer 7, they call this feature as Quick Tabs. This promotes easier recall for users rather than remembering the exact URL address.

Reassign a task that's been declined (Outlook 2003)

Just because you assign a particular task to another person doesn't mean that person is going to accept the task. Maybe the person is leaving his current position, or perhaps he's no longer working on a particular project. In any case, you'll need to reassign the declined task. To do so, open the declined task by double-clicking on it in the Task list. Next, choose Actions | Assign Task from the form's menu bar. Enter the new assignee in the To field of the form, and then click Send. That's all there is to it!

Convert a document page into a master page (InDesign CS2/CS3/CS4/CS5)

Let’s say you just created an awesome layout. It’s so great, in fact, that your boss says he wants every publication to follow the same layout. If only you had set it up as a master page! Not to worry, you still can.

Programmatically determine which named instance you’re connected to (SQL Server 2000/2005)

If you’re using SQL Server named instances, you may wonder how to determine - from inside a stored procedure, for example - which instances you’re connected to at any given time. Actually, there are two ways, and both are quite simple.

Don't re-create the wheel: Utilize a PowerPoint slide in a Word document (Word 2007)

When using multiple Microsoft Office programs, you can easily share information between them. For instance, there's no reason to re-create the information on a Microsoft PowerPoint slide if you want to use it in an existing Word document to illustrate your point. Instead, just embed a copy of the entire slide in your Word document.

Find lost anchor points with the Stray Points command (Illustrator CS2/CS3/CS4/CS5)

As you create a complex drawing using Illustrator, it isn't unusual to have a single anchor point or two floating around on your artboard. This can happen because of an accidental click or if you deleted all but the last anchor point on a path. Most often you never notice stray anchor points until you open a converted, saved file and wonder why there's a lot of white space. Use the Stray Points command to remove these unwanted points. Once you've opened a file in Illustrator, choose Select > Object > Stray Points to display any stray points, which you can then delete.

Manipulate the DOCTYPE to validate subsets of XML documents

A common misconception, especially among some folks with little XML experience, is that once you specify a DOCTYPE for a data set, that is the one you must always use, even if you're working with a subset of the document. This often leads to extracting the subset you want, adding upper level wrappers to match the DOCTYPE, and finagling things to get it to parse. Others will write custom DTDs to handle the subset.

Enhance network security with an IDS/IPS

You have a firewall at the perimeter, so your network is safe, right? Well, not exactly. Firewalls do what they do very well, but what they do is block or allow traffic based on the rules that you configure. A firewall can block certain ports that you don't need to use, preventing hackers from using those ports to get into the network. Firewalls can also block traffic based on IP address or domain, helping to keep out messages from known spammers or preventing Web traffic from known dangerous sites. Application layer filtering firewalls can even examine the contents of packets and block them based on keywords or strings.

System recovery made easy with Vista’s Pre-installation Environment

Recovering from a failed boot or needing to perform other system maintenance functions prior to loading Windows has always been a challenge. But there is good news. With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft now provides its Pre-installation Environment (PE) to all licensed users. Once available only to volume licensing customers, PE provides easy access to several critical tools. For example, you can repair the master boot record, restore Vista to a previous working state, restore the entire PC from a backup image, test memory, and gain access to the command line tools. To access system recovery option, follow these steps:

Show percentages with a little color (Excel 2007/2010)

Percentages interpret your data as smaller parts of a larger piece. This is why pie charts are often a popular way to demonstrate percentages. However, if you want to conserve space and still present an attractive, effective visual of your percentage data, Excel 2007 offers a great alternative.

Take a new direction with your tables (QuarkXPress)

Sometimes you need to convert a horizontal table to a vertical table or vice versa. Rather than deleting cells, adding cells, copying data, pasting data, and deleting the old data after you move it to the new location, there’s an easier way. QuarkXPress has options in the Convert Text To Table dialog box that make switching your table direction a snap.

Displaying all images in PHP

Ever wonder how to list all images in a directory? The following PHP code will generate a listing of all image files in the current directory as well as the Image MIME Type.

Connect two computers with a USB cable, but beware

You can connect two computers via a USB cable in order to share files, but you can’t use standard USB cables. Warning: If you use a standard USB cable, you might damage the USB ports on both systems, or even the respective system boards. Instead, you need to use a special USB cable, known as a USB Bridge cable. A USB Bridge cable reverses both the send and receive signals as well as the power voltage, so that you don’t create a short.