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The random image generator is a free tool that will generate placeholder or dummy images in your specific dimensions. The images are randomly generated abstracts.
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Dynamic Dummy Image Generator
Sometimes you just need a placeholder image right at your finger tips. Just enter the width + x + height at the end of this URL and off you go!
Example: http://dummyimage.com/640×480
FAQWhat is this?
This is a simple tool for generating dummy/filler images on the fly at whatever size you want.
How do I use it?
Simply add the width, an 'x', and the height (example) of the image you want and my script will spit out a gray box to the size you want with the image dimensions in black Arial text centered in the middle of the box.
Can I use a dummy image url as an image source?
Yup, that was what it was designed for. Try this: <img src="http://dummyimage.com/325×123" alt="A Dummy Image">
How many images can I generate?
As many as you want until my server collapses. If you would like to run this script on your own server, here are the PHP files and instructions for doing so. Update: Someone made a Ruby version of this script called fakeimage, -
Gmail is set to become Google’s next major push into social media. According to The Wall Street Journal, the popular webmail service will soon launch a new feature for sharing content and status updates with friends. [Update: We think Google might announce these features on Tuesday]
As WSJ points out, Gmail users can already update their statuses — sort of — through Gmail’s chat feature. Currently, this feature is more akin to the traditional IM “away message.” However, with this new social push, Gmail will offer a timeline-view of your friends’ status updates, just like on Facebook and Twitter.
Those updates might come from both Gmail and third-party services. According to WSJ, Google-owned YouTube and Picasa will be integrated into the stream. The huge question then is whether or not the new feature will include updates from Twitter and Facebook.
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PageRank Backlink Generator software make it easier for you to explore the appropriate backlink to your site theme, was quite easy to use and capable of automating the comments you have previously set…
just download the software PageRank Backlink Generator directly here
and this is Video Tutorial to use this software, download here
PS: Please don’t SPAM with this utility…
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We’ve compiled six useful tips for all you web designers and developers out there. They cover various topics including: accessibility, SQL, web developer plugins for Firefox, HTML emails, design and jQuery.
Feel free to disagree or add your own in the comments below. If you’d like to submit a tip to be considered for future articles, just head over to Tipster and add your own.
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From the director of the upcoming Captain America movie:
The costume is a flag, but the way we’re getting around that is we have Steve Rogers forced into the USO circuit. After he’s made into this super-soldier, they decide they can’t send him into combat and risk him getting killed. He’s the only one and they can’t make more. So they say, ‘You’re going to be in this USO show’ and they give him a flag suit. He can’t wait to get out of it… So he’s up on stage doing songs and dances with chorus girls and he can’t wait to get out and really fight.
(Emphasis mine.)They make a super-soldier and then refuse to let him fight, and the captain himself hates his costume. This is incredibly telling, and shows us exactly how the writer feels about the idea of Captain America.
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links for 2010-02-08
links for 2010-02-06
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Twitter is used more and more for finding a job. Don’t know where to begin? Use these lucky (cuz we did all the work) links from our collection on delicious to get started. Link Friday is a regular feature. Do you have another one to recommend? Add a comment and let us know.
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Email signatures are so easy to do well, that it’s really a shame how often they’re done poorly. Many people want their signature to reflect their personality, provide pertinent information and more, but they can easily go overboard. Why are email signatures important? They may be boring and the last item on your list of things to get right, but they affect the tone of every email you write.
Email signatures contain alternative contact details, pertinent job titles and company names, which help the recipient get in touch when emails are not responded to. Sometimes, they give the recipient an idea of who wrote the email in case it has been a while since they have been in touch. They are also professional: like a letterhead, they show that you run a business (in some countries, you’re required to do so). Here are some tips on how to create a tasteful signature that works.
links for 2010-02-05
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Congregated here are quotes found through an extensive research process outlined as follows. Throughout any regular day, while browsing the internet for whatever reason, one may stumble upon a good quote and say "wow, that's profound." Those I find worthwhile or funny are posted here.
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Minimal Star Wars Galaxy Posters
links for 2010-02-04
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These wonderful posters are by an artist called Jamie Bolton. They sum up each of the films in an amazing minimalist style. I would love to have them all on my wall.
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By following a few simple guidelines, you can maintain your computer and keep it running smoothly. This article discusses how to use the tools available in Windows 7, Vista, and XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) to more efficiently maintain your computer and safeguard your privacy when you're online.
1. Free up disk spaceThe Disk Cleanup tool helps you free up space on your hard disk to improve the performance of your computer. The tool identifies files that you can safely delete, and then enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files.
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You will find lots of useful guitar lessons and information here – it works on an "honour system". If you can afford to pay for the lessons then please donate for what you use – imagine it was a pay site. If you can't afford to donate it is no problem at all – the site is free for you
. Updates and new material is pretty much donation dependant. Donations give me more time away from paid work to develop this site and make new lessons and features. BIG THANKS in advance ..
Donations keep the site free for those that can't afford to donate!
Click here for details on how to donate or contribute to the site. Thanks. J
Please register in the space on the left, I only send out newsletters once a month and the emails will come from me, I won't pass your email address on to anyone else – and you can unsubscribe automatically at the bottom of any email I send you.
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Despite the glamorous reputation, freelance design is no walk in the park. It takes an incredible work ethic, significant entrepreneurial prowess, and a little bit of insanity to pull it off effectively. This article will discuss how to effectively make a living as a freelancer (designer or otherwise). Since we are in fact a design blog, I’ll scatter in some well-designed freelancer sites along the way for inspiration.
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Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a "lossless" tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality. After Smush.it runs on a web page it reports how many bytes would be saved by optimizing the page's images and provides a downloadable zip file with the minimized image files.
Do not link to the smushed images on Smushit.com since they will only be available there temporarily. Instead, download the zip file containing the smushed images for your web page and replace your image files with those files.
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Ever wonder how to super style your blog’s post date? I am going to show you how to do this using CSS sprites in about 18 minutes.
Editorial Note: This post is geared toward theme designers. Prior knowledge of CSS and WordPress is recommended.
What you will need:
* A graphics program (I use Adobe Photoshop CS4)
* A simple text editorWhat you will accomplish in this tutorial:
* The dates on your blog’s posts will be super styled using CSS Sprites
Let’s get started…
Step #1Fire up your graphics program. You can download a PSD or PNG template to help with the layout of all of the dates in our Sprite.
links for 2010-02-03
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We like free stuff. That’s why we posted links to download and play 365 free games so you could have a decent game to play for every day of the year, free of charge. Unfortunately, GamesRadar has yet to wrestle the most formidable type of free games into submission so that they can be preserved in their proper list form for eternity. We’re talking about the free games that were good enough to sell, important enough to review, and memorable enough to warrant a second play through years later.
Luckily, we’ve somehow managed to sort through over a hundred previously-for-sale titles that you can now play for free, and synthesized our list down to just the essential games you’d still want to play. Most of them look dated, for sure, but whether you’re looking for some decent side-scrolling action, nostalgic hits from the golden age of adventure, classic titles of interest, or even MMORPGs, you’re bound to find something in the following pages.
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Check out these great online resources on creating liquid/fluid and elastic layouts, including sources for design inspiration, downloadable templates, frameworks, articles and tutorials.
I often get asked for my recommendations of resources to learn how to create liquid/fluid and elastic layouts. My first answer is, of course, my own book Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS. Hey, is it so bad to be proud of your work? It’s the only book out there entirely devoted to designing and building flexible web sites, and the dozens of layout techniques it covers can also be applied to fixed-width design. But I’ll shut up about my book now; if you’re not the book-buying type, here are over 70 online resources to get you started creating attractive and robust flexible web pages.
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If you’re a web developer, you’re almost certainly constantly looking for ways to improve your skills, expand your technology arsenal, and keep on top of the latest trends in development and design. Whether you need to pick up a new coding language, get informed about new standards, brush up on best practices, or simply get inspired by great examples from your peers, we’ve collated a number of great resources to help you stay at the top of your game.
Have a look at some of the online repositories for great development information and inspiration below, and be sure to tell us about any other trusted sources we haven’t included in the list that other developers should check out.
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The field of web design is constantly changing and growing.
Getting in a rut is often the result of not staying up to date with the latest trends and technologies in the industry. Even if we do stay up to date, many of us at one time or another feel anxious about whether we’re advancing.
If you’re at a firm, you may be working towards a raise or promotion, or perhaps you’re thinking of jumping ship to a bigger and better company.
For the freelancers out there, we of course determine our own destiny; but far too often our careers feel stagnant, too.
This article goes over some ways to reignite your growth as a web designer.
links for 2010-02-01
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CSS3 is coming. Although the browser support of CSS 3 is still very limited, many designers across the globe experiment with new powerful features of the language, using graceful degradation for users with older browsers and using the new possibilites of CSS3 for users with modern browsers. That’s a reasonable solution — after all it doesn’t make sense to avoid learning CSS3 (that will be heavily used in the future) only because these features are not supported yet. The point of this article is to give you a glimpse of what will be possible soon and what you will be using soon and provide you with an opportunity to learn about new CSS3 techniques and features.
In this post we present 50 useful and powerful CSS3/jQuery-techniques that can strongly improve user experience, improve designer’s workflow and replace dirty old workarounds that we used in Internet Explorer 6 & Co. Please notice that most techniques presented below are experimental, and many of them are not pure CSS3-technique
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Like many other web developers, I definitely hate Internet Explorer, especially the version 6. At a time where new and powerful techniques as such as HTML5 and CSS3 are emerging, it’s not surprising that IE can’t handle them correctly. Luckily, a few tricks can make your life easier.
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On January 26th, 2274 Mars days into the mission, NASA declared Spirit a 'stationary research station', expected to stay operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown.
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This update covers tutorials, tips and techniques that you should have read in January 2010. Featured publications include: A List Apart, Perishable Press, DevSnippets, Webdesigner Depot, Nettuts+, Inspiring Pixel, Gaya Design, PV.M Garage, Line25, Woork Up, Six Revisions, Tutorialzine, Papermashup, WPWebHost, TechPortal, Yehuda Katz, Codrops, NuRelm, Queness, PHP Web and IT Stuff, DLOCC, WebM.ag, Jon Galloway, DevMoose, CSSKarma, AEXT, Viral Patel, and JankoAtwarpSpeed.
Featured authors include: Lam Nguyen, Tuhin Kumar, Chris Spooner, Jason Schuller, Louis Lazaris, Dan Wellman, Martin Angelov, Siddharth, Ashley Ford, Navjot Singh, Gaya Kessler, Burak Guzel, Piervincenzo Madeo, Peter Verhage, Yehuda Katz, Jeff Starr, Mary Lou, Chris Taylor, Kevin Liew, James Padolsey, Noura Yehia, Jason Cranford Teague, Devin Walker, Bill Peña, McBonio, Jon Galloway, Jean-Paul Bernadina, Tim Wright, Viral Patel, Shelley Powers, Janko Jovanovic,
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If you consider yourself a geek, or aspire to the honor of geekhood, here’s an essential checklist of must-have geek skills.
The term ‘geek’, once used to label a circus freak, has morphed in meaning over the years. What was once an unusual profession transferred into a word indicating social awkwardness. As time has gone on, the word has yet again morphed to indicate a new type of individual: someone who is obsessive over one (or more) particular subjects, whether it be science, photography, electronics, computers, media, or any other field. A geek is one who isn’t satisfied knowing only the surface facts, but instead has a visceral desire to learn everything possible about a particular subject.
A techie geek is usually one who knows a little about everything, and is thus the person family and friends turn to whenever they have a question. If you’re that type of person and are looking for a few extra skills to pick up, or if you’re a newbie aiming to get a handhold on the honor that
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We all know some of the famous on-liners from the movies, but some of them are so commonplace that you may not even know that it’s a quote from a movie or from which movie it originated. But there are some quotes from movies that everyone should know. Some of them have really stood the test of time and are very old. Ironically, these are sometimes the ones that we know the best.
Here’s a list of one-liners that everyone should know and also which movie it came from and who in the movie said it. I’ve started with the earlier movies and have continued to go in chronological order.
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The World Wide Web is a privileged channel for spreading good ideas and, in this time of crisis, it could be very useful to improve a business. Internet provides many possibilities to enhance, in different ways, our activities and one of this surely is the electronic commerce.
Here the first words on Wikipedia to describe the electronic commerce:
“Electronic commerce consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.”
Issues Behind An E-Commerce WebsiteThe main goals for an e-commerce website are to sell and promo
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It’s time to solve a mystery. (A boring technical coding mystery.)
It’s been bothering me for years: Why does my site go down when I get linked on Reddit or Stumbleupon? It shouldn’t. I use Hosting Matters, and they host blogs that are far larger than mine without difficulty. Usually my site will just vanish for a few hours, and after the fact I’ll be able to sort out what happened by looking at the incoming traffic.
links for 2010-01-31
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Earlier in the week I released a new HTML template called Jamba which is a single page resume and CV template. In this post I’d like to show you how I designed the template in Photoshop (check out the Jamba features page and the live demo).
Before we get started though, let’s quickly cover what needs to be included in an online resume and CV design. There are a number of details that are obviously required such as your name, contact details (email and contact number), and ideally a warm and friendly photo of yourself.
It’s also important to include other key areas such as the work experience you have, your academic background, any specific skills you’ve developed, and details of any other related achievements. You may want to include other things as well, but most resumes and CVs will include these sorts of details.
Given that potential employers are likely to be very busy they’ll probably only have time to scan the page – so, to avoid irritating them, it’s important that the essent
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The free bolt on e-Commerce Plugin is WordPress framework designed to help you sell online. We make setting up shop incredibly easy. Plus we've had over 500,000 downloads!
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Freelancing isn't something you should just jump into, but it makes sense for a good number of workers. If you're looking into, or getting started with, working on your own, here are 10 resources we think every freelancer can learn from.
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The Microsoft LifeCam VX-5000 – Featuring Windows Live compatibility, World Class VGA Optics, superior low-light performance and a fun flexible design. Share more experiences with family and friends.
links for 2010-01-30
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It is a little hard to talk hard numbers here since this will vary wildly from agency to agency, firm to firm, freelancer to freelancer. But let’s just throw some out there just for fun. $75 / hour. That’s a fair rate, I think, for a reasonably skillful freelance web designer.
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Personal computing — having a computer in your house (or your pocket) — as a whole is young. As we know it today, it’s less than a half-century old. It’s younger than TV, younger than radio, younger than cars and airplanes, younger than quite a few living people in fact.
links for 2010-01-27
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In the autumn of 1971 Don McLean's elegiac American Pie entered the collective consciousness, and over thirty years later remains one of the most discussed, dissected and debated songs that popular music has ever produced. A cultural event at the peak of its popularity in 1972, it reached the top of the Billboard 100 charts in a matter of weeks, selling more than 3 million copies; and at eight and a half minutes long, this was no mean feat. But this was no ordinary song, either: boldly original and thematically ambitious, what set American Pie apart had a lot to do with the way we weren't entirely sure what the song was about, provoking endless debates over its epic cast of characters. And these controversies remain with us to this day. But however open to interpretation the lyrics may have been, the song's emotional resonance was unmistakable: McLean was clearly relating a defining moment in the American experience—something had been lost, and we knew it. Opening with the death of sin
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Over the past few years with the influence of premium themes, High quality free Wordpress Themes have become harder and harder to find. Designers and developers are selling their themes, which is right for their awesome effort and work, the free wordpress themes are not coming in the flow as they were used to some time.
Nevertheless, we have went through many sources and are presenting a showcase of beautiful, but rather lesser known themes you might have missed. Here are 31 High Quality Free Wordpress Themes.