Posted on Friday, January 2, 2009, in Technology, The Web, Software | Add a comment
On a lot of windows systems, fonts can look very pixelated and display fonts poorly. I have had experiences as mentioned above, on my old XP laptop. All fonts looked the same and were very pixelated; even on websites. That is when I discovered ClearType.
What is ClearType?
ClearType is a type of technology developed by Microsoft that improves the display of text on LCD screens that can be found on a variety of devices. Examples of such devices are laptops, pocket PCs and flat panel monitors.
Though you may not know it ClearType comes built into Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. ClearType is automaticly turned on in the windows Vista operating system.
How Do I use it?
As mentioned above ClearType is already turned on in Windows Vista. To turn it on in xp you need to:
- Right click on the desktop and select ‘Properties’
- Select the ‘Appearance’ tab and press the ‘Effects…’ button
- Check the box for ‘Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts’, then select ‘ClearType’ in the dropdown list
- Close the Effects dialog by clicking ‘OK’ and click ‘Apply’ to complete the process
Tuning ClearType
You may want to tweak your ClearType settings. To do this Microsoft have provided a web Tuner (requires windows Internet Explorer) that allows you to change your settings from there website. Microsoft also provides ‘Power Toy‘;a piece of software that allows you to to tweak your settings. For more information on ClearType visit the ClearType website.
Posted on Sunday, December 28, 2008, in Technology, The Web | Add a comment
Considering that there are so many web applications and software using the smarty template engine; and that one of those pieces of software is FlatPress, I thought it would be a good idea to write a bit about smarty.
What is it?
The clue is in the name; it’s a template engine. What this means is that smarty is used to display the output of processed data and does not do the processing itself; even thought Smarty is able to do a small amount of processing.
Smarty divides the structure of a web application cleanly into two phases; Processing and output. This is how the application would be divided.
PHP SCRPIT (PROCESSING) > TPL FILE (THE DESIGN) > OUTPUT HTML (WHAT THE BROWSER SEES)
[Read More…]
Posted on Monday, December 8, 2008, in Technology, The Web | Add a comment
SkyDrive?
SkyDrive is an online storage solution developed by Microsoft. I t allows users to store documents, music, videos, photos etc..
What’s this about an Update!
Recently Microsoft updated ‘SkyDrive’, there file hosting solution. The update consisted of a few small upgrades such as giving the user the ability to download entire folders as Zip files, adding a slide show capability for users photos and making the service available in more countries, in more languages. The biggest upgrade to the service is that the storage capacity jumped from an average 5GB to a huge 25GB storage capacity. 25GB may not be enough to store all files from your hard drive but you have to admit, it a lot of storage for a free service.
What’s the catch?
Yes, as always there is a catch. Though the service is free and has a storage capacity of 25GB; the maximum size of a file or folder can only 50MB. This seems a bit odd doesn’t it? 25GB of storage but users can only upload a 50MB folder. I no next to nothing about business but I have a theory. I think this is where Microsoft is going to make their money from this service. Give a huge amount of capacity space away for free but only allow the user to upload a 50MB file and if they want to upload bigger file sizes then charge them extra.
Any Good?
Though I just started using SkyDrive, I can say that it has a better user interface than say, media fire (another online storage solution). It’s not plastered in ads like media fire and because it’s Microsoft I know that they won’t loose my files (like media Fire did). I wouldn’t use SkyDrive to distribute software or media files but as a personal storage solution I think it’s a great service from Microsoft. Now that’s a rare thing.
Posted on Friday, December 5, 2008, in Technology | Add a comment
Recently I picked up the 360 controller and started to give Burnout Paradise another go.
The story of Burnout out paradise follows the traditional Burnout model, meaning it is completely non existent; this doesn’t detract from the game whatsoever. It would have to be a really stupid story line to explain why some many cars are racing around, destroying the terrain and making a genuine nuisance of themselves without any cops trying to put an end to it.
The game play is very easy to get to grips with; basically drive as fast as you can without trying to crash. The vehicles are very responsive to your commands though depending on the vehicle it can get better or worse. The AI works very well up to a point; there are times when I have taken out another vehicle, as always a short scene of the crash is shown and when the player gets control of the vehicle back from the AI, it crashes into a wall. This made me want to throw my control at the television a few times; but it only happens once in a while so I suppose it’s not as bad as it could be.
[Read More…]
Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2008, in Technology, The Web | Add a comment
I’ve been using FlatPress for almost a year now and have discovered that there are things that can be done with it that aren’t documented (very well). So here is where I will have a compilation of tips, tricks, tutorials and general banter about the wonderful world of FlatPress blogging.
What is it?
So what is FlatPress? Well FlatPress is a flat file blogging system (runs using text files) that only requires access to a php server. It is designed to be the go-to blogging platform for those that don’t have access to a database. FlatPress features:
- Standard-compliant (XHTML valid)
- Plugin support
- Widget system
- Easy to customize with themes (powered by Smarty)
Sounds good but usually these types of projects are unsupported or dead (no longer being developed). Well yes that maybe true with a lot of these projects but I assure you now that FlatPress is not unsupported because the main developers answer almost every question thrown at them. The project is far from dead; the last update was 25/09/08 and the next iteration is constantly being worked on.
Cool, how much does it cost?
How much is it!? It’s free! Did I forget to mention that the project is open source. So what reason do you have for not trying it? Check out the projects site or if you want to give it a test run try it on opensourcecms.com
Need help with the installation? Take a look at this article. Still confused? Then take a look at this article and accompanying video
