About Web Development by Activo

Google Chrome is new (still in beta) and I went a head and installed it on one of our VMs. It seems like a lot of the functionality from the popular Firefox extension ‘FireBug’ is built in. Here are the screen shots:

Google Chrome Screenshot 1: Main Page

Google Chrome Screenshot 2: Search right from the address bar

Google Chrome Screenshot 3: Browsing History

Google Chrome Screenshot 4: Incognito Browsing

Google Chrome Screenshot 5: Right Clicking a Link Uses Google Gears

Google Chrome Screenshot 6: Inspecting Page Elements a-la Firebug

Google Chrome Screenshot 7: View Source

Written by Kimberly Elam, Web Design by Design made me think twice before running to draft the next web site design with our designer. This same minimalistic approach of almost too little but just enough to make a clear point approach is great because it begs for more. As Kimberly puts it, the user remains hungry for more information. And guess what they will probably do? call or email for more information!

This article highlites the a similar line of thought for successful web firms: they target what their clients need not what they can do with technology or design. Hence this comes to remind us that websites, in any aspect: design or web development, are here to serve the business. A website is just a tool not the goal.

This comes accross with our line of though at Activo: each one of our proposals begin with what are the goals in this project. In other words, what will we achieve by the following web development project?

Once in a blue moon, a web developer will need to format or re-work the favicon for the website they are working on. What are the alternatives? Download a shareware from download.com. Any of those applications will need installation. Most people start complaining within a month or even a week if they haven’t purchased a license. I always try to avoid such ad-hoc installations, because you never know what else you might be installing on your machine. In other words, it’s not safe or stable.

A nice, free, and open source alternative is the open source file format plugin for Photoshop. This little plug-in works on Mac, PC, and even VISTA platforms. It supports Photoshop versions up to CS2. If you have Photoshop installed on your machine, all you have to do is download the zip, and copy the plugin (1 file) into the right folder. On my laptop the path to the folder was:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins\File Formats

Reopen your Photoshop and you are done! drag and drop the ico file or save your image as (use “Save As…”) and choose the ICO file format.

If editing icons were a bit easier than playing with pixels. On a side note, what happened to the transparency with icons? That’s a question for another day..