December 2012

Seven Typography Shortcuts for Photoshop [via Viget]

Paragraph Size

(with type tool selected) Option + Click. If you know you need a column of text that is a specific number of pixels wide (or tall), this can be a faster solution than using your guides and rulers.

Paragraph Size

 

Highlight Text in Layer

Double Click Text Layer Icon. This is one I haven’t yet incorporated into my workflow but seems helpful. Double-click the “T” in the layer palette and all the text on that layer will highlight, then make desired changes.

Highlight Text

 

Close Text Box

Command + Return. Close a live text box. This one’s nice because simply hitting return will just add a line break to the text – d’oh! Pressing esc and losing the changes you just made isn’t really helpful either. Hit cmd + return, and then you’re free to jump over to the Move Tool or whatever else you might want. (Props to Ethan for this one – I’m pretty sure he mentioned this one the other week.) *Update: If you’re using an extended keyboard, simply pressing the enter key will also close the text box. Thanks to all the commenters who pointed this out!

Close Text Box

 

All Caps

Command + Shift + K. This can be a quick way to toggle caps for any text. It’s the same thing as hitting the all caps button on the Character panel. Pretty straightforward.

All Caps

 

Text Size

Command + Shift + </>. This can be helpful if you’re just bumping the text down one point size or if you’re wanting to get a feel for the sizing on the fly. Hitting option as well will change the font size by 10pts instead of just 1pt at a time.

Text Size

 

Tracking

(with text highlighted)Option + Left/Right. Increases the spacing between all the letters in the highlighted area.

Tracking

 

Kerning

Option + Left/Right. I’m assuming most people use this one already but a necessity if you’re kerning some headline text.

Kerning

 

Source: Viget

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How to use the WordPress Media Library rather than re-uploading the same image over and over again

WordPress Question: “I’m trying to add one image from my media library to multiple products. Is this possible without uploading the same image from my computer more than 60 times?”

Yes, it’s definitely possible to just upload it only once and use it 60+ times. In fact, if you upload the same image more than once, you’re wasting space on your web hosting account. And if you upload it 60+ times, that’s a whole lot of wasted space! More

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How to write for the Internet [Guest Post by Daphne Gray-Grant]

snail

Just like singers, writers need to learn how to slooooow doooooown like this snail

My son is training to become an opera singer. Last week he had his first term recital — he sang Caro Mio Ben and Sea Fever — and as neurotically proud parents, we were in the third row, applauding and enthusing. After the performance my son had a few words with his voice teacher. The verdict? He’d done really well, but he sang too fast.

As soon as those words were out of the teacher’s mouth, I thought back to my public speaking training. “Speak so slowly you begin to fear you might sound moronic,” was the advice I always received. Not because I’m a particularly fast talker — I’m not — but because everyone speeds up in front of an audience.

It may seem like a stretch, but this music-making, public-speaking advice, also applies to writing for the web. People frequently ask me how they should write for the Internet. I always respond speak slowly so your readers can understand you.

In writing terms, this means focusing on being as easy to read as possible. This is because people read differently at their computers than they do when faced with any printed document.

You may not always be conscious of it but when we’re reading at our computers, a light is shining in our eyes… This is the backlighting from the screen and we usually don’t notice it  – except if we’re sitting on a beach in the sunshine and suddenly discover we can’t read at all.

But there are other challenges with computers. The typefaces we like on paper often don’t work on screen. Each letter is represented by square pixels on a grid rather than by lines of ink on paper. This makes them harder to read. As well, our computers have less control over spacing, hyphenation, justification and column width.

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Avoiding messy Spaghetti Code

Spaghetti

A bowl of spaghetti looks twisted and tangled, which is where the name for spaghetti code comes from.

As a web designer, I often get people asking me about which web design app/program is the best – Dreamweaver, Rapid Weaver, Frontpage (yuck!), and so on. People want a way to create a website without touching any code. But alas, this is a pipe dream. Actually, it’s more like a spaghetti dream. Here’s why.

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