The Science of Web Art, Design and Development

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Tutorial: A category based archive on Wordpress

I followed Lorelle’s advice advice and added a category based archive on Zo’C’s archive page, and now I’m going to tell you how to create yours.

At the end of this post, you’ll find the complete code in a single piece.

Step 1: Create the template file and find the content area

The first thing to do is create a new template page for your theme. The easiest way to do it is by duplicating your default page template which is the file “page.php”. Login via FTP, SSH or your favorite method an copy that file to “category_archive.php” and start editing.

Edit your file so at the very beginning it has the following lines, they are responsible for telling Wordpress this is a template page and its name.

<?php
/*
Template Name: CategoryArchive
*/
?>

The reason why we copied the default page instead of starting from the scratch is that any theme has is peculiarities (footer, sidebar, header, this and that) and we want to preserve them all, we just want to change the content. So, now, you must find the content.

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Animation in Photoshop - Video Tutorial

Zo’C has entered the age of video. It took me a while to get all things right, but better safe than sorry isn’t it?

I intend to periodically share some videos on web design and development things. That can be Photoshop, Illustrator, how to install a tool, CSS tricks and so on. It could just as well be about videoblogging.

For my first tutorial on this new era I’m going to teach you how to create a cool animation in Photoshop like the one on my last post about videoblogging and podcasting and I’ll show you how to export it in several video formats including Flash video, Quicktime .mov and animated Gif’s.

Have a lot of fun!

Oh, and did I mention that you can subscribe via iTunes or any other tool via media feed.

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Podcasting, Videoblogging and Social Screencasting: tools and ideas

Out of Syntony TVThe so called Web 2.0 is the medium where readers are also writers or, in a more general sense, consumers are also producers. Every single comment you leave on a blog is content you produce and use to expose yourself while, hopefully, contributing to the whole online community one crumb at a time.

While probloggers build monetization and authority strategies for blogs and internet media sites, millions of other people just share their pictures in social sites like flickr, videos on youtube and so on.

The curious thing is that, to a certain measure, people are more interested in spontaneity than production. The fact that most people on the internet have access to rather advanced technology, makes it less interesting to see the technology by itself and more interesting to focus on each one’s perspective and enables people to use the technology to share those unique skills and ideas each one has.

Michael Martine would go as far as to say:

Over-analyzing before you begin is the best way to kill something before it even has a chance. Just go for it.

But of course you can’t do anything if you can’t handle this technology, so here is a quick guide of interesting stuff around the web, either if you want to be a web video entrepreneur or if you just want to share videos with your friends

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How to manage all your mail in Gmail: Filters, Labels, multiple Id’s and even Backups

Gmail says “Search, don’t Sort” and by all means this is a good idea and they also tell you not to ever delete a message again, which is interesting, at least for the messages that have any value.

But if you do this you probably have copious amounts of email in a single archive and while sorting is not the solution, Labels and Filters can give you a hand with all this.

If you Manage all your emails accounts in Gmail then for sure you need further help by now to manage you gather-all Gmail account.

In either case, you might find useful to use Labels to organize them as or need a second Gmail account as .

This post will explain

  1. Why search is better than sort
  2. How to set labels
  3. How to use filters
  4. How to use Filters to set Labels as suggested by Peter Cruickshank (See comment)
  5. How to use handle multiple Gmails accounts as suggested by Pramod (see his comment)
  6. As a bonus I even tell you how to deal with server backups sent by mail to you

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Compact digital cameras Vs. DSLR

This is the 6th and final part of a tutorial about photography basics. So far we’ve seen

Finally, we have seen all the necessary elements to build a camera. The black box, the lens, and the shutter.

Traditionally, there were two kinds of film cameras. Cameras with Direct Viewfinder and SLR (Sinlge Lens Reflex, or just Reflex) cameras.

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Mastering the Shutter speed

This is the 5th part of a six-part tutorial about photography basics. So far we’ve seen

By now, we have seen that, by changing the ISO value we can change the amount of light needed for a picture, in exchange for quality. We have also seen that, by changing the aperture value, we can change the amount of light actually entering the camera, in exchange for bigger and smaller depth of field.

But increasing the Aperture value is not the only way to increase the amount of light in a picture.

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The ISO value: Films and CCD sensors

The ISO value: Films and CCD sensors

This is the 4th part of a six-part tutorial about photography basics. So far we’ve seen

We have seen how it is possible to project an image on a surface, but we haven’t seen so far how to transform the projected image, into a photography that can be seen further in time.

In this post, we will see basics of how films and digital sensors work and how to use ISO value on your own advantage.

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The lenses: Zoom, Focus and Aperture

This is the 3rd part of a six-part tutorial about photography basics. So far we’ve seen

We have seen in the previous post, that by isolating rays of light through a tiny hole, we can separate and project images of objects. The smaller the whole, the sharper and darker the image, and vice-versa.

It would be really great if we could find a way to widen the aperture of the camera and correct the rays of light and project all diverging rays of light the same point, isn’t it? That would provide a sharp image that is also very illuminated.

In this post, I’ll show you the lens basics and how to use focus and aperture to your advantage in pictures.

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Some physics background related to photography

This is the 1st part of a six-part tutorial about photography basics.

Visual properties of objects

Every material, has some visual properties like color, brightness and opacity. Visual properties are directly related to what happen to incident rays of light.

Unordered Reflection Say you are on a room with white walls, illuminated by an light bulb. We see the walls because the light that is emitted by the bulb is made of light rays that, as they hit the walls, are reflected. The ability of reflecting the rays is a property of these walls.

But the wall is a rough surface, even a wall that is smooth to the touch has enough ups and downs to be rough to light dimensions. So, any point of it will reflect light like if there was a mirror, tangent to the wall in the very point of the incident ray.

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Understanding Cameras and Photography

SRL camera diagramIn 2001 I was hired by a government sponsored project to teach a photography course with a very peculiar approach. I had to teach High School teachers so they could use photography as a tool in the regular classes like Physics, Chemistry (it wasn’t digital photography back then), History, Art, and so on.

As a part of the course I wrote a tutorial that was quite handy for some people over the years and now, in a time when film photography is almost extinct I thought it was time to refresh the text and make a handy manual on photography in six parts.

Every three days, on August 9th, 12th, 15th, 18th, 21th and 24th I will publish each one of the six parts of the manual, see the list below.

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