Is it worth to get certified?

Many professional get certified, but many of them still hesitate to make that step. In this article we reveal you value of IT certification and offer you a few arguments that may convince you to pursue your certification.

Selectively output content using the descendent axis in XSLT

You can select content to output from a data set by using the XSLT descendent axis to key on a component in available tagging. For example, a drug manufacturer may want to output only information about drugs that have listed drug interactions. Each drug topic has an upper-level element called <drug>; drug interactions information is tagged <interactions>.

Mishandling your USB drive could cost you your presentation

The USB flash drive is a wonderful invention that lets you store a big hunk of data on a little trinket the size of a key or pen. These drives are often called data thumbs, thumb drives,pen drives, or USB sticks. As you’ve found, properly saving files to them, or any other USB file-storage device, such as a camera or digital music player, can get tricky. In our experience, there are no actual save issues with these devices and PPT files; rather, the danger most often lies in the save process itself.

Flow text in a perfect spiral (InDesign)

InDesign doesn’t have a tool for drawing spirals, but it does have a cool Type On A Path tool that allows you to type text on paths. So, how do you create cool text effects, Let’s just say, it takes two.

Save time using the PSD Import to adjust image tints

Do you want to eliminate the time-consuming task of going from QuarkXPress to Photoshop, and back to QuarkXPress to re-import the image? Instead, adjust the tint right in QuarkXPress. You can adjust the overall tint setting of a selected channel, such as a spot ink channel in a Photoshop duotone, using the PSD Import XTension.

Jump to another location in your workbook with a mouse click (Excel 2003/2007/2010)

When you think of worksheet hyperlinks, you probably think of website links. There’s another great use for hyperlinks in your workbook that you might not use to its full potential: internal links. You can create a hyperlink that takes you to another location within the same workbook when you click on it.

Internal DTD subset: Add character entity definitions to your well-formed XML instance

If you use special character entities in a well-formed (e.g., no DTD/Schema) XML instance, the document will no longer be well-formed, because the parser won’t know how to resolve the entity. You must add the entity definitions to the instance in order for the data to parse again.

Flow text in a perfect spiral (InDesign)

InDesign doesn’t have a tool for drawing spirals, but it does have a cool Type On A Path tool that allows you to type text on paths. So, how do you create cool text effects, Let’s just say, it takes two.

Need a new line, but no bullet? No problem! (PowerPoint 2007/2010)

PowerPoint bullets are great for lists, but there are times when you just want to move to a new line and skip the bullet all together. To do so, just place your cursor at the end of any line and press [Shift][Enter]. This inserts a soft return, or a return that moves your cursor to the next line, but doesn’t start a new paragraph. Careful though, any paragraph style you apply to the line above is applied to the soft return line as well.

For more understandable error reporting, use the JavaScript console in Gecko-based browsers

When you encounter JavaScript errors in Internet Explorer, they'll be in your face (as long as you select the Display A Notification About Every Script Error check box which is located in the Browsing section on the Advanced tab under Tools | Internet Options). That's good for catching them in the first place (in Netscape, you might never notice the errors). However, when it comes to figuring out what the error is, Netscape beats IE in spades. Case in point: IE gives you messages such as "Expected identifier" and "Object expected." So, what's wrong with the code? How do you fix it? Who knows?

Automate date formatting tasks with a macro (Microsoft Word 2003/2007/2010)

If you have to reformat dates frequently, you might wish to have at your fingertips a macro to accomplish the task in a flash. We will show you here how to change dates from a dd-mm-yy format to mm-dd-yy format (example: 6th June 1944 to June 6, 1944). Choose Tools | Macro | Record New Macro and give a name to the macro in the Macro Name text box (use the Developer tab in Word 2007/2010). If you choose the default entry, All Documents (Normal.dot), in the dropdown box, you’ll be able to access the macro from anywhere inside Word.

Selectively output content using the descendent axis in XSLT

You can select content to output from a data set by using the XSLT descendent axis to key on a component in available tagging. For example, a drug manufacturer may want to output only information about drugs that have listed drug interactions. Each drug topic has an upper-level element called <drug>; drug interactions information is tagged <interactions>.

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Save a tree: Print two pages on one sheet of paper (Excel 2003/2007/2010)

Sometimes your Excel worksheets don’t take up an entire sheet of paper. And if your workbook contains 10 worksheets that you want to print, all taking up only half a sheet of paper, that’s a lot of wasted space. Duplex (double-sided) printing will help, but not everyone’s printer has duplexing capabilities.

Dynamically adjust the Transform effect (Adobe Illustrator)

The Transform effect allows you to do a number of effects to an object at once, including duplicating, scaling, rotating, and moving. You can create nice designs like the curve of flowers. When you need to make any changes to a transformed design, you need to click on the Transform effect in the Appearance palette and make the necessary adjustments in the Transform dialog box.

Use your PageMaker user dictionary in InDesign

You can’t use PageMaker’s user dictionary in InDesign, but there’s a way to add your exceptions to the InDesign user dictionary. It’s still a fairly slow process, but it beats starting from scratch, especially if you have quite a few exceptions to add. Just follow this two-part process.

Access special folders without legacy COM references (Visual Basic)

One of the tasks that you’ve probably had to do once or twice is access files in special folders like Desktop, Favorites, and My Documents. The problem with accessing these folders is that they are user and operating system dependent, so you can’t just hardcode a path. For example, the folder may be at C:\Documents and Settings\user1 for one user and H:\Documents and Settings\user2 for another.

Quickly access the Save As dialog box in Microsoft Office XP applications

If you haven't yet saved a new document, the Save As dialog box automatically appears when you click the Save button. However, once you've saved your new Excel workbook, PowerPoint presentation, or Word document, clicking the Save button no longer opens the Save As dialog box; instead, it saves your document in its current location using its current filename. If you want to access the Save As dialog box to save your document in a different location or to a different filename, you can choose File | Save As from the menu bar, as you already know. If you want to spare yourself a few mouse clicks, however, simply press the [F12] shortcut key instead.

Find creative alternatives to oversized dropdown lists (CSS)

Typically, to provide users with a list of valid responses for an HTML form, you might create a dropdown list, using the <select> and <option> tags. This method works beautifully for short, static lists with average-length selection values. It's easy to code, easy to use, and allows you to supply multiple options for the user without excess clutter or unnecessary reloading of the page.

Don’t let Windows ignore your copy and paste commands! Make it play nice with this simple fix (Microsoft XP)

Each time you copy text, a file, a folder, or an image, it’s added to the Windows clipboard. Sometimes the clipboard becomes corrupted and won’t function properly. Fortunately, you can resolve the problem quickly by clearing the clipboard of corrupted clips using ClipBook Viewer.

Dynamically adjust the Transform effect (Adobe Illustrator)

The Transform effect allows you to do a number of effects to an object at once, including duplicating, scaling, rotating, and moving. You can create nice designs like the curve of flowers. When you need to make any changes to a transformed design, you need to click on the Transform effect in the Appearance palette and make the necessary adjustments in the Transform dialog box.

Ready for the scripting route? (web)

If you think you're ready for a little CGI and PHP scripting work to augment your design skills, you might want to start of by adding a PHP search engine to your site. Each of the following scripts is powerful and easy to install and configure—even for the scripting novice. And, they'll all run on both UNIX and Windows servers.