Eclecticana Tips and Tricks

Use fonts without permanently installing them.
When you double click on a TrueType font, causing the default NT/2K viewer FONTVIEW.EXE to display its characters and some sample text, that font is temporarily installed until you close the FONTVIEW window. This means that you can minimize FONTVIEW, go to any other font-enabled program, and use that font in your document. Rather than install a lot of fonts permanently, you can go to a backup font folder, doubleclick on the ones you want to use, then close the FONTVIEW windows, which automatically uninstalls those fonts again. This is ideal for those rarely used fonts that you do want to keep around and use occasionally.

Protect your web site visitors from unnecessary jumps.
Rather than let your web site visitors click away only to find an unfinished page, consider marking the links on the home page or menu page in some way that indicates that the link will lead to a page under construction. I placed my home page links in a table and darkened the background color temporarily in cells that led to unfinished areas. A note above the table warned the user that the darkened links were for unfinished areas. The links were still live, but led to a special page that indicated the area was under construction and offered a link back to the home page, in case the user clicked those links anyway. The user avoids chasing down unfinished links, and you can simply reset the link and the background color when construction is finished.
Minimize “jaggies” in transparent GIFs.
When making transparent GIFs of 3D Fonts in Xara3D, choose a background color that is as close as possible to the background on which you will be displaying the GIF (or import an actual textured background). Even though the exported transparent GIF will not contain that background color, you should find that any black “jaggies” around the edge will disappear or be minimized. This tip is courtesy of David Matthewman at Xara Ltd, who advised me how to improve my rotating logo against the marble backdrop.

Tips & Tricks