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Posts Tagged ‘computer software’

With so many companies these days relying on the internet as an electronic storefront for selling their wares, web page design has become a fast-growing occupation. However, there is still a lot of argument as to the best approach to designing a web page; with those having a background in graphic arts opting for a website that has visually appeal and those with a more technical background preferring web page design to incorporate elements that are appealing to internet search engines. These two approaches will often be at odds regarding the site’s structure, but the common goal is surely to drive more traffic to the website in question.

These two different angles, if combined, can very often deliver the best of both worlds and not only help visitors to the site find the information they are looking for, but also make it easy for users to find the site. Design-oriented web developers may be forced to rely on advertising, such as Google Adwords, to bring visitors to their site. Developers who are more technically aware may not create sites with a strong visual appeal. However, they may end up attracting more search engine traffic.

Regardless of the approach, the important aspects of a website will always be the same: content, usability and design are the three most important elements to web page design and pages that are strong in all these three areas have a better chance of attracting an audience and being successful.

While some attractive websites may have an initial aesthetic appeal, if they are laden down with graphics, audio, Flash or video files, they may be slow to load. This can frustrate potential visitors and can lead to less traffic than would otherwise be the case. Each page in a website should take just a few seconds to download.

Content is also immensely important. Both search engines and humans are attracted to good content. If your site has original content which is not available elsewhere on the web, it stands to reason it will get visitors. If users visit a site and it does not contain the information they want, they will simply leave in search of better information.

When planning and designing your website, a useful exercise is to try to place yourself in your visitors’ shoes. What are they looking for? How much of it can you offer them? How can you make your version of it more attractive than what’s on offer from your competitors?

To create a chart in Microsoft Excel 2007, begin by selecting the data that you wish to plot including any headings. You then have the choice of creating either a stand-alone chart or an embedded chart. To create a stand-alone chart, simply right-click on one of your worksheet tabs and choose Insert. Next, click on the chart icon and click OK. Excel creates a chart using the default chart type.

Having just created a chart, you will notice that Excel displays three contextual tabs headed “Chart Tools”. The contextual tabs consist of Design, Layout and Format. The Design contextual tab enables you to change the chart type and the basic information about the chart such as the underlying data.

The Layout tab offers you a more intricate level of control over the various elements within your chart. For example, by default, Excel adds a legend to each new chart. If a chart has only one series of data, we don’t need a legend to tell us what the chart colours mean. We can therefore click on the Legend drop-down menu and choose None.

The Format contextual tab gives us the most primitive control over the chart elements. It is here that we are able to click on individual elements and change them at the object level. In other words, we are working on these elements purely as drawing objects rather than as elements of the chart. However, even at this primitive level, Excel still shows us the relationship between the chart elements and the underlying data. Thus, for example, when an individual data point is highlighted, Excel displays the corresponding worksheet address in the formula bar.

When creating standalone charts, you are not given the option of choosing the chart type during the chart creation process. If you want to change the chart type, you must do so at a later stage by choosing a Chart Type option in the Design contextual menu.

As regards the chart sheet which contains the chart, it behaves in much the same way as Excel worksheets. For example, it can be renamed or deleted by right-clicking the sheet tab and choosing Rename or Delete from the context menu.

Tables

A table is the container used by Microsoft Access to store information. Each Access table resembles an Excel worksheet and consists of rows and columns. In a really simple database, only one table may be required but, more typically, a database will contain several related tables. For databases to work efficiently, each table should store only one type of information. For example, in a typical database, you might have one table for storing client information, another for storing information about products, and so forth.

Fields (Columns)

Each column in a table is referred to as a field. When designing tables, it is important to define a field for each piece of information you will need to store and not to lump separate pieces of information together in a single column. As a general rule, having more fields gives you more flexibility in data retrieval. Thus, for example, if you define three fields called “Title”, “FirstName” and “LastName” rather than a single field called “Name”, you will be able to combine them either to form a salutation or a full name.

Records (Rows)

Each row in a table is called a record. A record represents a single piece of information on a given topic. Thus, if the table holds student grades, each record will constitute the grade achieved by a particular student in a particular exam. In a client table, each record will contain details about an individual client, and so forth.

Primary Key Fields

In order for the information stored in a database to be useful and accurate, it is important to avoid duplication of information since this will tend to increase the occurrence of errors. Each record in a database should be uniquely identifiable. Thus, for example, if we have a table containing student information and there are two students with the name “John Smith” living at the same address, we need to be able to distinguish between them. The recommended technique is to define a field within each table which will always contain a unique value. This field is often called the primary key. So, in our student table example, we would create a “StudentID” field and assign each student a unique student ID. When designing tables in Microsoft Access, the unique value is usually achieved by setting the field type to “AutoNumber”, enabling Access to automatically generate a unique value for each new record created in the table.

Relationships

Although the information within a database is held in separate tables, the complete system which this information represents is a unified whole and there are associations between the information in all the various tables. Microsoft Access is called a relational database management system because it allows users to create relationships between the various tables. Relationships lend efficiency to databases by preventing the creation of redundant data. For example, in a client database, the table containing client information would be related to the table(s) holding client invoices. When creating the invoice, information from all the related tables can therefore be included.

Most Microsoft Windows computers have problems with their registries. These problems can lead to frequent restarting and crashes, as well as to slow performance, slow startup and slow shutdown.

To fix these registry problems, you can use Microsoft registry fix programs. These programs allow you to automatically scan & fix registry problems. This allows you to fix any of the errors that are caused by these registry problems. But, what are the causes of these registry problems, and what can you do about them? In the rest of this article, I will answer these questions.

When you first get you PC, it will almost never crash, and you will rarely experience any application errors. But, as you install and uninstall hardware and software on your computer, your computer will start getting slower and slower. You will also start to experience more and more crashes and application lockups.

The primary reasons for these registry problems is that, when you uninstall applications using the Microsoft Windows installer, it leaves behind lots of traces of the application in your registry. These traces, called invalid or missing registry entries, cause the Windows registry to become clogged with unnecessary information.

This inefficiency of the Windows installer leads many experts to recommend that you reinstall Windows at least once yearly. But, if you regularly maintain your Windows registry using registry fix tools, this is unnecessary.

How do you maintain your Windows registry, you might ask?

In this section I will discuss a 2 step process which will enable you to scan & fix registry problems that you currently have, and also to enable you to keep your Windows registry in tiptop shape going forward:

1. The first step to scan & fix registry problems is to scan your registry for errors using any of the freely available registry scanning tools you can find online. Just keep in mind that some disreputable companies artificially inflate these numbers to get you to buy their software. Thus, be sure to use a registry scan tool from a reputable company.

2. After you have done a registry scan, research and buy a reputable registry cleaner. You should be able to find one for a reasonable price (between $20 – $30).

The minimum requirements that any Microsoft registry fix tool should have are:

* The registry repair tool should allow you to make backups before you scan & fix registry problems

* You should be able to do full registry scans using the Microsoft registry fix tool

* Finally, the most important feature is that it should allow you to repair all of the errors that it has found

* Another thing to look out for is if the registry cleaner allows you to setup a regular registry scan & fix schedule, which will allow you to set up the registry scanning schedule once and then forget about it

Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a technology closely related to XML which is used to transform XML data. XML file are used to set out the ground-rules for a given body of data and to describe the data itself. XSL allows us to take the original XML data and convert it into information which can be displayed in a web browser window or opened with a text editor. XSL can also be used to create an XML file which is a modified version of an original XML file.

When displaying elements in a browser window, the XSL elements which enable looping through an XML tree and decision-making really come into their own. One of the key methods used in XSL for looping through XML elements is the “For-each” element. This uses the “select” attribute to specify which element is to be targeted in the loop. The “For-each” element has both an opening and a closing tag and any lines of code placed between the opening and closing tags will be repeated each time the element specified in the “select” attribute is encountered in the XML file.

For example, let’s say we have an input XML file containing a list of companies and the addresses of their websites. Let’s also say that the element which we will be targeting in the XSL “For-each” statement is called “company” and that, for each company element, we have a “name”, “telephone” and “website” element. Before beginning our “For-each” loop, we could output the opening tag of an HTML “ul” element (an unordered or bulleted list).

Inside the “For-each” loop, we could then output an HTML “li” element and, between the opening and closing “li” tags, output the contents of the “name” and “telephone” elements from the XML file. The data in the “website” could then be used to convert the “name” into a clickable link.

As for the appearance of the data in the resulting HTML output, this would be controlled by a linked CSS file. CSS can be used to format the output in any way we like, so our bulleted list can take on pretty much any appearance we desire.

When formatting text within an Excel worksheet, you have the choice of working at the cell level or at the text level. If you wish to work at the cell level you simply highlight one or more cells and choose your format settings. Any formatting that you choose will then apply to all text within the cell or cells.

For example, to change the font size of your data in Microsoft Excel, you can of course use the drop-down menu next to the font name and choose one of the preset sizes. Another way of changing the size is to use the Grow Fond and Shrink Font buttons located on the right of the font size. These two buttons simply take you up and down the same preset sizes available on the preset size drop-down. You can also use the cursor keys on your keyboard to move through different sizes. Yet another option is to enter a particular size then press the enter key. When doing so, you are permitted to enter decimals, such as 10.5.

In a similar way, when you want to choose a font, you can highlight the current name and start to type the name of font you have in mind, for example Times new Roman. Once you have typed enough to let Excel know which font you mean, the font name will be displayed and you simply press the Enter key.

Colour can be applied in two ways in your worksheets either as a background to the cell or to the text inside the cell. Because background colour applies to the cell it can’t be applied at the text level. With the advent of Themes in Excel 2007, Microsoft have made it very easy to come up with colour combinations which look good together.

To work at the text level, you need to be in Edit mode. You can enter Edit mode in two ways: the first is to double-click on any cell; the second is to click once on the cell and then click anywhere in the formula bar. You can tell when you’re in Edit mode by the presence of the Cancel and Enter buttons on the left of the formula bar.

When working in Edit mode, it becomes possible to highlight individual characters and change their attributes. For example, say a cell contains the text “Google”; you could highlight each letter individually and change it to the colour used in the Google logo.

The facility of having different formats within the same cell is very useful for headings. It is less useful for the rest of the data in your worksheets since it slows down data entry and makes editing difficult.

The alignment section of the Home Tab of the Excel 2007 ribbon is home to a number of options relating to the way in which your data is position within the cell. The most familiar and most frequently used icons in this section are the three relating to the horizontal position your data: left, centre and right. However you’ll notice that when you activate the cells of an unformatted worksheet, none of the three alignment icons is highlighted. This indicates that none of them is the default. The reason for this is that Excel treats data alignment differently depending on the data type.

If you type text in a cell, your text is aligned on the left; if you type a number, the number is aligned on the right; if you type a date, it is also aligned on the right. To set the horizontal alignment, you can either select a range of cells or click on a column letter to highlight the entire column then click on one of the alignment icons.

Haven chosen one type of horizontal alignment, you can change it in two ways. You can either click on a different form of alignment or click again on the already selected alignment. For example, if your text is centred and you click on the Centre button a second time, this deactivates centre alignment and returns you to the default alignment which, for text, is left. Thus we have, effectively, four types of horizontal alignment: left, centre, right and unspecified (or default), which is the alignment that applies when none of the alignment buttons is highlighted.

Microsoft Excel also allows you to specify the vertical alignment of your text. This setting becomes apparent when you increase the height of the cell and there is a definite default; text is normally aligned at the bottom of the cell. This default vertical alignment applies to text, dates and numbers alike.

To set the vertical alignment, either make a selection or click on the row number to select the entire row then click on one of the buttons to make the change: align middle, align top and so forth.

The alignment option also includes the ability to change the orientation of text within the cell. This is particularly useful in those situations where the headings are wider than the data within the cells. To change the vertical orientation of your text, you simply select the cells in question and then choose the appropriate orientation in the Alignment dialogue.

Having changed the orientation of the headings, you can probably make the columns much narrower. Excel offers a very useful way of doing this: simply select all the columns that contain data then in the Cell group of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon, choose Format and then AutoFit Columns. This option makes each of the highlighted columns no wider than it needs to be to display all the data it contains.

Before you can edit or format your text, you need to highlight it. Highlighting your text is a way of telling Microsoft Word that you want to work with a certain piece of text. (Highlighting is also referred to as selecting.)

The simplest way of selecting text is to position the cursor where you want to start highlighting, click and hold the mouse button down and drag to the spot where you want to end the highlight. It is not essential that you drag across every single line that you want to highlight. It is sufficient to drag in a straight line from the start to the finish.

To deselect your text and remove any highlight, click somewhere in your text. You will then see the flashing cursor appear at the point where you click.

Another easy way of highlighting text is to select the whole document. This is done using the “Select All” command. In Microsoft Word 2007, the “Select All” command can be found in the “Editing” group of the “Home” Tab. Click to display the “Select” drop-down menu then choose “Select All”.

The “Select All” command is found in lots of programs and lots of environments. It can also be accessed via the keyboard using Control-A: that is to say, hold down the Control key while typing “A”.

As well as highlighting character by character, Word also allows you to select complete lines. To do this, move the cursor into the left margin and you’ll notice that it changes to an arrow pointing to the right. When the cursor changes, simply click to highlight a single line or click and drag to highlight several lines.

Another way of highlighting text is to click multiple times. To highlight a word, double click on the word; to highlight an entire paragraph, click three times on the paragraph.

It is also possible to select text via the keyboard. Most of these techniques involve using the Shift key. One popular technique is click followed by Shift-click. First, click to set the start of the area that needs to be selected; next hold down the Shift key and click to set the point where you want the selection to end. All the text between the two clicks will then be selected.

To select text without the mouse, use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the cursor to the point where you want your selection. Next, press the Shift key together with one of the arrow keys. To select character by character, use the right or left arrow depending on the direction in which you want to move. To select line by line press the down or up arrow.

The Shift key can also be used in conjunction with Control. For example, if you hold down the Control and Shift keys and press the right arrow, you will select word by word instead of character by character. In a similar way, if you hold down Shift and Control and press the down arrow, you will select paragraph by paragraph.

The Home and End keys can also be utilised in this context. For example, if the cursor is in the middle of a line, pressing Shift and Home will select from the cursor position to the start of the line while pressing Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the current line. Holding down Control and Shift and pressing the right cursor key will select from the cursor position to the start of the document. Control, Shift and End will select from the current position to the end of the document.

One of the many uses of PDF files is to offer a way for people to gather information via an interactive form. Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional has some nifty features for creating such forms, distributing them and tracking responses.

Most interactive forms are encountered on the web. However, there are benefits to using PDFs instead. For one thing, the format of the original form is always preserved in a PDF whereas web forms can display differently in different browsers.

When it comes to delivering PDF forms, there are more options than with a web-based form. You can email the form to your audience or perhaps include it on a CD or DVD.

The ability to create forms has long been a feature of Adobe Acrobat. However, Acrobat 8 Professional takes form creation to a new level in terms of ease and sophistication.

Forms can be now be created from scratch in Acrobat. Just choose Create New Forms from the Forms menu and choose one of the built-in templates. The form is then created using a utility called Adobe Life Cycle Designer then saved as a PDF file.

As before, you can use forms made in other software such as Word or QuarkXPress. However, now Acrobat has a feature for automatically recognising where fields need to be inserted and creating them for you.

If you wish to use some of your printed forms as starting points for your interactive PDF form, then Acrobat’s Scan From Paper option will offer just what you need.

After you have created the basic form and perhaps had Acrobat automatically generate your text fields, you can add all the usual form controls, such as check-boxes, radio buttons and combo boxes. Then, to complete the form, you can add a submit button.

Traditionally, only a full version of Acrobat would allow you to fill out a PDF form and then save the form data to disk. With Acrobat 8 professional, if you click on the “Advanced” menu and choose “Enable Usage Rights in Acrobat Reader”, people filling out your form with Acrobat Reader will be able to save their form data and email it back to you.

Acrobat 8 Professional will allow you to distribute the form to a number of recipients via email. This of requires that you have an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook set up on your machine.

Completed forms are emailed back to you when the user clicks on the submit button. When you open each returned form Acrobat prompts you to add it to what is termed a dataset, a repository of form data.

To complete your project, after you have received back all the forms you distributed, you simply open the Acrobat dataset and click on the export button to save it as a .csv file. You can then import this file into Microsoft Excel or Access for storage and/or analysis.

PowerPoint presentations are a great way of communicating and influencing your clients, work colleagues or audience. One of the most important components within presentations are images. This article will show you how to take a group of images and turn them, as if by magic, into a PowerPoint presentation.

You can use the techniques described in this article whenever you have a group of images whose content are at the core of the presentation you need to create. One example might be giving a presentation to introduce a new range of products based around a series of product photos.

Creating a presentation in this way makes use of a PowerPoint feature called Photo Album. To access this feature, click on New in the File menu. Next, in the New Presentation task pane which appears on the right of your screen, click on Photo Album.

When the Photo Album window appears, you begin identifying the images you want included in the presentation. You can click on the button marked File/Disk to browse for the images or you can import them straight from your digital camera or scanner.

The imported images are ordered alphabetically, so you will almost certainly want to reorder them to coincide with the narrative of your presentation. This is achieved by selecting one or more images and clicking on the arrow icons to move them up or down in the order. You can also highlight one or more images and click Remove to delete them from the presentation.

Is the orientation of any of our images not quite right for this presentation? No problem. Just highlight the image then click on the rotate icon to change it. Not happy with the tonal qualities of an image? No problem. Click on the appropriate button to increase or decrease the contrast or brightness levels.

In addition to the images, you will almost certainly want to add some text on each of the slides. From the drop-down menu marked Picture Layout, you can indicate your preferred slide setup: one, two or four images; with or without a title. There is also a check-box for you to choose whether your titles should be above or below the images.

Next, there is the shape of the image. In the drop-down menu labelled Frame Shape, you can choose rounded rectangle, bevelled, oval, corner tabs, square tabs and plaque tabs. If you don’t want anything fancy, just leave the shape set to the default value of rectangle.

Finally, click OK to create the presentation. To finish it off, you just need to click in the title box of each slide and add your text. And that’s it, a bona fide PowerPoint presentation automatically created from a bunch of images!