Cool Firefox extensions

Hello,

on my browsing time, which is a lot lately, I’m used to a few very handy add-ons for firefox. I’ve found me some time-saving, eye-catching, fun tools that help me browse so much easier. There are also a few extensions for the web-developers among us…

PicLens : an amazing photo-album add-on. 1. Visit one of the PicLens enabled sites listed above, and then mouseover any image. A special PicLens icon will then appear on top of that image. Click on it and u’ll be amazed…

Download status bar: A nifty solution for the annoying download window in firefox.

Colorzilla: A handy tool for webdevelopers comes with ColorZilla. You can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page.

Screen grabber: Be able to make a screenshot of your entire webpage including the part that isn’t visible… I’ve used it several times’till now.

Webdevelopment toolbar: When I’m creating websites, this toolbar is used so much that I can’t live without it anymore. Just like Firebug, which I posted here earlier.

Mouse gestures: The most used add-on for me. It simplifies browsing so much that I hate Internet explorer for not having this nifty tool. A new tab is easily created by moving your mouse up, holding the right mouse button, and so on…

Undo Closed tab buttons: no need to say more…

Del.icio.us: A nice shortcut to your delicious page. Also tagging a page with one click on the button.

Boost up your vocabulary !!

After being amazed of my brilliant idea, to make a website where you can find 1 word a day to use in some context during the day at your job, with your ‘homies’, with your family, I searched the internet for the existency of such a website. And what did I see… OFF COURSE, it was once again a DOT NL website which comprimized my brilliant idea .

It was in dutch of course, so hurray for the dutch and flemish people. => visit…

So for the flemish and dutch underneath us. Visit this site and amaze your friends and collegues with the most tidy words for the most casual things or verbs.

1 product a day shop-website

Yeah,

u are still reading very well.

A Belgian shop that sells 1 product a day. A product in promotion with a very special price.

At 0:00h, a new product is available and the product of the day becomes unavailable.

A while ago: A Nintendo Wii for only 199 euro’s in stead of 250 !!

Go and check it out =====> http://www.ibood.be

Firebug, Great tool !!

Firebug, a very handy tool for developing your websites. You can edit and adjust your website while browsing. The possibility to debug and check your css, html and javascripts live in the visited website is soooooooooooo handy !! Give it a try !

Get firebug !

Experimenting with Ajax

In the last weeks I was surfing around and I tought it was time to step into the domain of AJAX, a area where I’ve only been introduced at school very basicly. But I hear from different sides that you can do amazing stuf with it, so I became curiously what Ajax could offer me.

Well, I have put some Ajax applications on various different webpages in this post below. I’ve added a title everytime so you can read in 1 sentence what the ‘project’-webpage is about.

Very handsome tooltips that adjust their positions to the borders of the browser.
Tooltips

Ever wanted to have a new and nifty method to show you’re photo’s or images? I’ve found a very beautifull customizable ajax method. And again it’s easy to use.

Picture viewer

The same scripts can be used to display a window with information.

Html information box

Photoshopping an image is very cool, but what if you could add some effects to your website images with a little piece of code… Let’s see how you can add a reflextion to an image.(not working proparly in IE)

Add a reflection on an image

Propositie_inleiding

We leven in een tijdperk waarin alles kleiner en vernuftiger wordt. Op alle gebieden worden media heruitgevonden zodat het gebruiksgemak ervan vergoot zou moeten worden. Men heeft bijvoorbeeld respectievelijk de fotografie, video en tv uitgebracht op basis van de schilderkunst. 

Ook is er een tendens gearriveerd om dingen te gaan mobiliseren. Men wil alles ‘portable’ hebben, muziek, film, data, het geschreven woord,… Zo zijn er de laptops gekomen om de pc draagbaar te maken, de draagbare spelcomputers zoals de PSP en de gameboy in opvolging van de gewone spelcomputers (die je op je tv aansluit) met je mee te kunnen nemen. 

Ook het papier zoals wij het allemaal kennen wordt stilaan vervangen.

Men schrijft, als men in een vergadering zit, tegenwoordig op tablet pc’s in plaats van op papier.

Cursussen op school worden vaak niet meer afgeprint maar worden rechtstreeks vanaf de laptop of vaste pc thuis geleerd en gelezen. Zo is men nu ook op zoek om het digitale papier te introduceren. Men wil alle digitale documenten stilaan ook op andere manieren weergeven in plaats van ze gewoon uit te printen en dan te lezen. 

Zo is men bij Philips Technology Campus Leuven bezig aan een onderzoek dat een oplossing zou moeten bieden om deze documenten draagbaar te maken zodat men ze overal kan lezen en met zich meedragen. Ze hebben hiervoor al een product ontwikkelt dat hiervoor instaat zou kunnen zijn. Dit apparaat lijkt wel de grote broer van de ‘PDA’, die iedereen ondertussen wel al kent.

Het heeft ongeveer hetzelfde uiterlijk maar het dient eigenlijk alleen om documenten te lezen en eventueel notities bij te maken.

My thesis

After a little chat with one of my instructing teachers @ school, I have been boosted into the subject again. He showedme some angles onmy subject that I wasn’t thinking about yet.

With this new source of idea’s I’m trembling to start with my thesis for this year. I hope I can do all the things I’m planning to do.

A brief introduction on my thesis can you find when you follow this link: Introduction

Visiting the experience Design congress

Some artefacts are more than merely a design, they awaken an experience. Undoubtedly also you remember cases in which not the ownership of the product, but its experience is what attracts you and keeps doing so over and over again. It could have been hiding in the story you heared about the object or the desire you felt when seeing it for the first time. Or maybe it was all about that feeling when you opened the packaging or started using it for the first time. And probably you still use that design today, because of the pleasant experience of its many functionalities, its beauty or its efficiency.

Experience is increasingly becoming the guiding factor for many designers today. Products and services are being designed from the ground up with user experience in mind. In fact, in many cases it is the experience itself that becomes the designed element. This approach is known as Experience Design and goes beyond the purely aesthetic or functional dimensions of design Experience Design is to be experienced. Therefore the Media & Design Academy looks forward to welcome you on the 29th of September 2006 on the C-Mine site in Genk, Belgium. Several international speakers, such as Experience Strategist Nathan Shedroff, have been invited. As part of a fascinating full-day programme, they will be your guides into the many aspects of experience design, its characteristics, its applications and its potential … also for you. For the Media & Design Academy this conference signifies the start of a new research platform in Experience Design. The platform will be part of the C-MINE project where together with the City of Genk a futuristic business & research park is under development.

Additional Speakers:
Fiona Raby (Royal College of Art London)
François Jegou (Solutioning Design & Domus Academy)
Ralf Beuker (Zollverein Essen Heritage)
Wim Dries (Schepen Stad Genk)
Jan-Christoph Zoels (Experientia & ex-IVREA)
Luca Marchetti (Mosign)
Jan Kriekels (Jaga Radiator Factory)
Nik Baerten (Pantopicon)
Mark Vanderbeeken (Experientia)
Jan Boelen (Z33 Limburg)
Jef Gabriëls (Burgemeester Stad Genk)

I’m curious…

Cheat sheets

During my internship I have met some very handy A4-sheets that have helped me very fast when programming.
It were sheets that contained a summerized list of the most common/frequently functions of a certain web-language.

I printed some of these pages and they are always in the neighbourhood when I’m programming.
I printed the sheet of MYSQL – CSS – PHP – JAVASCRIPT but there are a few more sheets to use.

have fun with these handy gadgets why didn’t we come up with this ourselves

Icons

Are u tired of using those text links on you’re websites like ‘delete’, ‘back’ and ‘new page’?

Well, I know a very impressive website with licence-free, handy, beautifull fresh icons for everybody 2 use.

http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/

Here you find a whole lot of free to use icons for colouring up your web-projects.