Posts Tagged computer tips

Hands-on Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Training Software

Nov 26

Learning Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 is definitely a good investiment of your time. If web design is your profession or hobby, having the proper hands-on training can mean the difference between successfully learning how to use your chosen software and struggling to discover the way that it works. Books are terrific for teaching ancient History and Literature, but when faced with the brave new world of web development, a new way of learning is in order. So, if you need to learn to use Adobe Dreamweaver, interactive training software makes a lot of sense. Rather than simply reading how things should work, you can actually see how they work by following along with training videos, tutors, and interactive tutorials.

Guided hands-on training is much more effective for learning programs like Adobe Dreamweaver, because you need to actually see how the program functions in order to fully understand it. Learning web design software can be confusing, but once you master a program like Adobe Dreamweaver, you will actually start to enjoy designing web pages, whether for business or pleasure and the learning experience can also be a breeze, as long as you find the right training method and don’t rely too much on books. Cast you mind back to when you were a kid. Your mom may very well have told you that the fire was hot, but you didn’t really fully understand that concept until you actually touched the fire for yourself.

Learning web design software works the same way. You could read or hear about Adobe Dreamweaver and how it works, but you won’t fully appreciate that information until you can see the program in action. That’s why interactive training, including videos, tutorials, and walkthroughs, is a much better way to learn how to use computer programs than a traditional textbook or lecture setting. Getting trained with the right software will allow you to jumpstart your web design, and you’ll be making great websites in no time at all.

Your brain finds it easier to relate to things that it can see. It’s more of a “show me” than a “tell me” animal. What this means is that you could read ten books on using Adobe Dreamweaver, but unless you actually get a hands-on training experience, you might never understand what that the program can do for you and your web pages.

It doesn’t matter if you’re designing a site for school, work, or fun, knowing how to use Dreamweaver properly before you start will make your web designs much better, and will make the design process much simpler than if you just read a book or tried to learn it on your own.

Need to learn Adobe Dreamweaver CS4? We offer Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 training classes in London and all over the UK.

Tags: adobe, computer tips, computers, dreamweaver, web

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Making Selections In Adobe Photoshop CS4

Sep 20

Posted by trafficblog in computers

Unlike vector images which consist of discrete objects each of which can be selected and manipulated independently of the rest of the drawing, a bitmapped image is one continuous whole consisting of a matrix of pixels. Making selections in a bitmapped image like Photoshop is therefore much more complex and difficult than simply clicking on an object as you would do in a vector drawing. In fact, selections are such a big deal in Photoshop that there is a whole menu dedicated to selection options and techniques: the Select menu.

There are a good many reasons why we may need to make selections in an image. Perhaps we want to cut out a product or person and place them on a different background. Perhaps we want to blur part of an image to add emphasis to the remainder.

Selections are an essential component within Photoshop and can be manipulated independently of the pixels they include. Selections almost make you forget the absence of objects within bitmapped images. Once part of an image is selected, it can be targeted and manipulated in such a way that the pixels inside the selection can almost be treated as an object.

On our Adobe Photoshop courses, we always show users how Photoshop allows you to build selections gradually and contains a number of sophisticated tools for modifying them. One of the simplest techniques is to add to or subtract from an existing selection. This can be done either by using modifier keys (hold down Shift to add or Alt to subtract) or by clicking on icons to enter Add or Subtract mode. Any selection made using one of these methods will take into account the pixels that are already selected.

Photoshop also allows you to transform selections in a manner not dissimilar to the way that objects are transformed in the vector environment. One key thing to remember is that in order for this transformation to work, one of the selection tools has to be active. If the Move tool is active, the pixels inside the selection will also be transformed.

The most fundamental transformation is probably movement. This can be done either by placing the cursor inside the selection and dragging or by using one of the cursor keys on the keyboard. Each time a cursor key is pressed, the selection will move one pixel in the direction specified. If the Shift key is held down while a cursor key is pressed, the selection will move 10 pixels in the given direction.

For other forms of transformation, choose Transform Selection from the Select menu. A bounding rectangle will then be displayed around the selection with handles similar to those found in vector drawing programs. You can drag the handles to resize the selection or drag just outside the handles to rotate. You can even hold down the Control key and drag the handles to distort your selection.

The writer of this article runs training courses for an independent computer training company offering Adobe Photoshop CS4 tuition in London and all over the UK.

Tags: adobe, computer tips, computers, photoshop, software

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Using Speaker Note Options In Microsoft PowerPoint 2007

Jul 11

Posted by trafficblog in computers

PowerPoint is a key component of the Microsoft Office suite and is very widely used for giving business presentations. If you want your Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 presentation to go smoothly, it is important that the speaker knows what to say when each slide appears. One of the tools that can be used to help speakers achieve this is speaker notes. Speaker notes are simply paragraphs of text which can be entered for each slide in the presentation. Although their principal use is to act as a reminder and prompt for the speaker while giving the presentation, they can be used for a variety of purposes.

For one thing they can be used as an alternative to audience handouts. Naturally, this is only possible where the notes contain a summary of the information relevant to each slide rather than personal prompts such as “Remember to tell anecdote.” Secondly, they can be used during the development process to add reminders relevant to each slide. Before finalising the presentation, the creator(s) can then check the entries in the speaker notes to make sure that they have completed everything.

When speaker notes are being used for their intended purpose, they can of course be printed out and referred to as necessary. However, a more subtle approach is use a two-screen setup. Display the presentation on a large monitor while on your own computer, you can view the speaker notes.

There are two modes in which notes can be added and edited within PowerPoint. Firstly, in normal view, the speaker notes pane is displayed below the slide preview on the right of your screen. Simply click to position the cursor in the speaker notes pane and edited the notes as required. You can also drag the resize bar at the bottom of the workspace to increase the size of the speaker notes pane.

If you wish to focus on the notes themselves, in the View tab of the PowerPoint ribbon, click on the Notes Page View icon. This gives you a print preview of what your notes will look like when printed and allows you to edit the notes at the same time.

Finally, to control the appearance of the speaker notes when printed, you can customise the Notes Master. Masters are a feature of PowerPoint which allows you to customise the format of elements within a presentation by modifying a single master element. By default, the notes master features a miniature of the slide at the top of the page and the notes area at the bottom. It also features a header and footer, the date and page number. You can drag and resize these elements as you see fit. For example, you might make the slide smaller and increase the size of the notes text block or you might move the notes text above the slide.

The author is a trainer and computer consultant with Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 training courses in London and throughout the UK.

Tags: computer tips, computer tutorials, computers, microsoft, PowerPoint

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Setting Up Audience Handouts In PowerPoint

Jul 9

Posted by trafficblog in computers

Audience handouts are a way of giving the attendees of your MS PowerPoint presentations something to remember you by. They normally consist of printouts of the presentation; one, two, three, four six or nine slides to a page. Naturally, however, whether or not the essence of your presentation can be captured by this kind of printout depends on the nature of the presentation.

To customise the appearance of handouts, click on the View tab of the PowerPoint ribbon and then click on the Handout Master button. In PowerPoint, masters allow you to determine the format of the three main elements within a presentation; slides, speaker notes and handouts. When you are in handout master mode, the Handout Master contextual tab appears. It contains a Page Setup section which allows you to choose the orientation of both the page as a whole and of the individual slide miniatures. It also contains buttons for activating or deactivating the header, footer, date and page number as well as for formatting the background of the slide.

Since PowerPoint can produce three separate elements (slides, speaker notes and handouts), when the print command is used, you need to specify which of these elements you wish to print. This is done by choosing an option from the Print What drop-down menu. In addition to the three elements mentioned above, you can also print the outline of the presentation.

For presentations containing a fair amount of important detail, it may be more useful to print out the slide outline and distribute it to the audience in place of PowerPoint’s usual handouts. Better still, you can export your presentation into Microsoft Word and then customise it for your audience. To export an outline, from the Office button, choose Publish and then Create Handouts in Microsoft Word.

When you use this command, you will be presented with a dialogue box which allows you to choose one of five page layout options. Firstly, you can have speaker notes next to slides. This will create a two column layout with a slide miniature in column one and speaker notes next to it in column two. If you have used the speaker notes feature in your presentation, this may be a useful solution. The second option is Blank Lines Next to Slides: this produces the same two column layout as the first option but the right hand column is blank, so that you can enter notes next to each slide.

The first two options don’t offer you much room for text. If you have made or wish to make extensive notes on each slide, options three and four (Notes below Slides and Blank lines below Slides) provide a layout with the text below the slide miniature and leaves approximately 60 percent of the page free for notes.

If you simply wish your audience to have a summary of the content of the presentation, you can choose the final option: Outline Only. This simply exports the text on each slide into Microsoft Word.

As is usually the case when transferring information from one MS Office 2007 application to another, you have the option of activating the Paste Link feature. This will create a link between the exported file and the original PowerPoint presentation, such that, if the presentation is modified, the exported Word file will also be updated.

The author is a trainer and IT consultant with Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 training classes in London and throughout the UK.
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Tags: computer tips, computer tutorials, computers, microsoft, PowerPoint

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