Macronimous Web Blog

Do you work on CSS and like to know more about what you might have to learn to keep you up in the phase?. This slideshow gives you an intro to make you ready.

View more documents from Andy Budd.

Today I revived few questions from Carl Williams of Odin Jobs for a blog entry. I believe every designer should ask themselves to keep the answers with them always.
1. When and how did you get started in web design?
2. What is the single most important attribute/skill a good web designer must have?
3. What hard and soft skills should a web designer have? Should he/she have a degree or can you be self taught?
4. Your opinions on:
a. Fixed width or Fluid Design?
b. EMS, percentage, pixels or points?
5. What tools are a must have in a good web designer’s arsenal?
6. Any advice to budding and beginning web designers?
I am sure you will find yourself interesting in your job, if you have the right answers.
I welcome your answers as comments.

Following the best four series, this time I have chosen 4 sites to find wonderful and useful Photoshop plugins and filters. Though there are thousands of sites offering free Photoshop plugins and filters, searching through the sites and choosing the ones required could be a tedious affair. Am sure this list would prove to be a quick reckoner for all your Photoshop plugins and filters needs, because I have chosen them after trying them out myself. All these sites offer free downloads of filters and plugins, with a huge variety of options to choose from. 

Filter Factory 

This site has a huge accumulation of filters and plugins as well, that impart varying levels of effects in photographs and images. With more than 350 filters and plugins available, this site definitely contains a vast and excellent collection to its credit. With detailed explanation of what plugins and filters are and how to download them are clearly explained in the site as well.

http://www.photoshop-filters.com/html/filter_factory.htm 

VanDerLee plugins and filters 

A site with both free and paid versions, VanDerLee has an impressive collection of Photoshop filters and plugins. Along with latest news in the field of website designing and releases of various new versions of plugins and filters, the site also has a dedicated Support section that assists with useful FAQs and a list of Compatible applications that work with the site’s plugins.  

http://www.vanderlee.com/plugins.html  

Richard Rosenman filters and plugins 

This site has separate windows for both freeware and commercial collection that can be downloaded at a specified cost. Wonderful, amazing and varied collections of plugins and filters are available in the freeware section as well. A must checkout site for all Photoshop plugins and filters seeking fans!  

http://www.richardrosenman.com/software/downloads 

Mehdi Plugins 

A great site for Photoshop plugins, this site has a colorful and eye pleasing layout in itself! Not only does the site has a large collection of plugins, but it also has clear explanations as to how to use the particular plugin and also how to customize them in order to make it the way you need it. I have used this site for many of my plugin needs as well. Excellent site indeed! 

http://www.mehdiplugins.com

Apart from these four, I also happened to see a site called Virtual Photographer. A very useful site for creating special effects on photos, downloads are available in zip format as well. A site worth checking out for the photographer in you http://www.optikvervelabs.com/default.asp

Wordpress is a simple and handy platform that is highly used in creating blogs and is also one of my favorite blog platforms, Wordpress plugins that are used along with it can create excellence to sites. Out of many Wordpress plugins that are available, I have chosen 4 that are my darlings, from the Multimedia point of view. These plugins are highly useful with regards to creating Multimedia-rich websites and blogs, and I also am of the impression that they are simple to use, without any complications or hassles.

(1) Kaltura Video recording and management – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/kaltura-interactive-video 

This plugin is quite apt to make the videos in your blog more interactive. With facilities like uploading, importing and recording of videos into your blog posts,  modify videos with the help of an online video editor; this plugin is definitely a hit! What I like the best in this is that it this plugin also supports a huge variety of codecs and audio/video file formats along with video sharing options. In short, complete management and administration of videos is possible with this wizard! 

(2) MTR Audio and Podcast Recorder - http://www.podcastingnews.com/2008/09/15/free-podcast-recorder-plugin-for-wordpress
 

I would say a “must-download plugin” for the Podcast freaks; this plugin is called the MTR Podcast recorder that allows all the recordings to be saved in MP3 format. It is saved in the same server as that of Wordpress. The best part that I like in this plugin is that it allows handling the records and musical selection lists from the Wordpress administration itself. This helps in easy playlists management and overall blog site administration. 

(3) NextGEN Photo Gallery – http://alexrabe.boelinger.com/wordpress-plugins/nextgen-gallery

One of my most favorites, this photo gallery plugin is very useful, especially for those interested in creating and sorting their own image collections. This plugin has a tinge of Web 2.0 and jQuery JavaScript library, all packed in one. The users can also upload images that have watermarked text or images. The best thing is that various JavaScript effects like Thickbox, Lightbox and the likes can be used. 

(4) Kimili Embedded Flash – http://kimili.com/plugins/kml_flashembed
 

So you want to embed flash based movies into your blog, then Kimili is the best choice! A very flexible plugin with many features attached to it, the Kimili  also complies with the standards. It is very useful for search engine optimization of blogs, as the plugin itself is search engine friendly. What’s more, this plugin also gels on well with other plugins in its 1.2 version, and hence is definitely the best pick for WordPress.

I have found these plugins to be remarkable and of great use to me. There are many more great plugins from WordPress, and if you feel anyone or more of them have stirred your web designing senses, then do not forget to suggest about them in my comments section.

This post is written based on the requests seen in forums. I still found most of the surfers don’t have clear picture about the “difference between Normal design websites and Web2.0“. So thought of writing a brief note on Web2.0

Hopefully people who try to know Web 2.0 design standards should be knowing about normal design, so not much explaining here to bore

Starting, Web 2.0 websites allow visitors to do more than just retrieve information what we see in normal design. They can build on the interactive facilities, allowing users to run software applications altogether through a browser

Below are the attributes that can be followed for Web2.0 

• Clean & simple style
• Pastell colors
• Center aligned with 2 or 3 columns
• Bigger Logo
• Bigger Buttons
• Bigger font size
• Descriptive HTML (XML style)
• Bold text introductions
• Vibrant colors with gradients
• Visible header
• Content as Feeds
• Rich and interactive user interfaces
• Users active participation
• Video sharing
• Social Networking

Get ready to start furnishing a Web2.0 site

We have developed some Web 2.0 sites, for more clarification you can mail us for website names to get a clear picture