Adobe Photoshop plug-ins are sweet. This one lets you create icons for windows, webpages( the FAVICON.ICO that shows up in your browser window and bookmark links), or whatever. This plug-in works for both Photoshop cs and cs2 and Paint Shop Pro v9. You can download this plug-in for free @ http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/#icoformat

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To install on Window XP

1. Copy the “ICOFormat.8bi” file into the “File Formats” folder
inside your Photoshop Plugins folder. (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Plug-Ins\File Formats OR C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins\File Formats)
2. Quit and relaunch Photoshop if it’s already running. Now when you choose to Save As the ICO format will be an option. Note you cannot save an ICO under CMYK mode.

How to put the favicon on your website:

1. Create a 16×16 pixel file and save it as favicon.ico in the sites root folder.

2. FTP into your webhost and Copy favicon.ico into the root folder
3. in your index.html paste these items into your head

<link rel=”icon” xhref=”favicon.ico” mce_href=”favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon” />
<link rel=”shortcut icon” xhref=”favicon.ico” mce_href=”favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon” />

Google provides some nice tools they don’t brag about. Here are three.

Google Site Submission Site submission is the easiest way to get googlebot crawling your site.

Google Sitemaps Google sitemaps is a hidden gem. Basically you submit generated sitemaps in XML format to google. When googlebot comes around again it use the sitemap, rather then the just the site index. Google sitemap also provides some sweet stats. One useful stat is the most common keywords that google sees in your content. When your ready to submit a site map there is an awesome sitemap generator called GSitemap Generator.

Google Analytics Google Analytics, the gem. Unfortunately you need both an account and an invitation; these invitations aren’t like gmails classic invitations either. One must put in a request to google for an invitations and wait… Signing up is worth a shot, google analytics is like awstats on crack. Just imagine if google wrote awstats… Sign up.

I’ve become very accustomed to my mac’s apple command location for copy paste operations etc. I’m back and forth between windows and os x and a few times an hour. Windows has something called Scancode keys built in (but not really); this will let you switch the positioning of your alt and ctrl key to act like an apple layout.

Warning!! This is not for novices. DCE is not responsible for you screwing up your registry. Modify your setting at your own risk.

That being sad, it’t not that difficult, just protecting my ass. From the start menu open run and type regedit and hit enter. When you’re inside regedit goto

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout

When your in Keyboard Layout make sure your not in Keyboard Layouts (notice the s for plural). Right click within keyboard layout and create a new Binary Value. (see the image for example) Name your REG_BINARY value to Scancode Map and right click to modify binary data.

For value data you need to input each code individually, no copying and pasting. Enter 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 1D 00 38 00 38 00 1D 00 00 00 00 This will swap the alt with the ctrl key. See the image for an example. Click OK and restart windows.

If done correctly you will be ctrl tabbing through your programs or alt tabbing …. Some good advice is to stop looking at your keyboard or the Key Labeled CTRL functioning as ALT will mess with your brain.

If you hate the way this works just go back into regedit and remove that Scancode Map key, restart, and back to normal.

Here are the resources DCE used if your interested in modding your keyboard more or want to know why this works:

• Scan Code Mapper
• Key Support (download scan code translation table)

Why Microsoft doesn’t automatically have cleartype installed and running on their operating system blows my mind. OS X has been cleaning up type for years and Microsoft only offers it to genuine customers if they dare to look at the power toys Microsoft offers. Get cleartype now Get Clear type here

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