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Posts with tag layout

Filed under: Design, Text, Productivity

Lorem2: for the discerning lorem ipsum aficionado

Designers know the words "lorem ipsum" all too well. If you've mocked up a layout for anything with chunks of text in it, you've probably run across the infamous Latin paragraphs that commonly show up as filler. Where do you get your lorem ipsum, though, and how do you make sure it's the right fit for your design? Lorem2 is one great way to do it.

Lorem2 is a nicely laid-out collection of lorem ipsum paragraphs and bullet points, both short and long. If you're the kind of person who keeps a text file full of this stuff, you might be better off filling it up with the whole contents of Lorem2. You'll never have to give a second thought to avoiding repeated text that detracts from your layouts, because the solution will be close at hand.

Filed under: Design, Fun

See the web without words

Some web designers have an uncanny ability to look past all the text and advertising on a webpage, directly at the structure of its design. Now one of them is letting you do it for yourself. Paul Armstrong's project "Web Without Words" started as a bare-bones blueprint of CNN, but is now an ongoing experiment. You can even submit your own site to be considered for the Web Without Words treatment.

Replacing all the words and images with plain blocks is interesting all by itself, but Armstrong's analysis make the site fun to read, too. He refers to Yahoo.com as "a Starbucks-drinking, Gap-or-Talbot's shopping, trend watching fellow," and calls CNN.com "the know-it-all of news sites." Whether you agree or not, it's at least thought-provoking, and at best could inspire you to take a hard look at your own site design.

Filed under: Design, Utilities, Productivity

PlanningWiz: plan and share room layouts

Planning Wiz
If you're moving to a new place or just want to reorganize furniture in your current living space, PlanningWiz may be helpful by letting you plan and lay out objects in your rooms. Set your room dimensions (you can choose Imperial or Metric system, but for some reason you can't choose Imperial on the first step) and start selecting furniture pieces to begin experimenting.

You can choose furniture from categories like "child's bedroom," "bathroom," and "kitchen," and you can drag-to-resize the furniture objects to match the dimensions of your existing (or future) objects. PlanningWiz also lets you customize the design with color, text, and dimension guides.

The plan can have a custom scale from 1":1' down to 3/32":1'. Plans can be saved to your free account space, printed, or shared via e-mail.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Icon Restore: Save and restore your Windows desktop layout


Ever change your Windows desktop resolution, only to find that all of your program shortcuts, image thumbnails, and other desktop icons have shifted? Changing back to your original resolution doesn't help either. But Icon Restore might.

This handy little freeware application lets you create a snapshot of your desktop layout. Once it's installed, you'll find two new options in your right-click menu for My Computer. One lets you save your desktop icon layout, while the other lets you restore your layout to your most recently saved settings.

There is currently no way to uninstall Icon Restore using Windows' Add/Remove dialog. Instead, you have to download a standalone uninstaller application from the developer's site.

[via gHacks]

Filed under: Design, Developer, Fun, Internet, Web services, Microsoft, Yahoo!, P2P, Beta

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista Preview is live

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista

We broke the news the beginning of this year that Yahoo! was busy preparing a complete rebuild of Messenger made exclusively for Windows Vista users. The ground up rebuild has taken quite a long time (11 months), but it's finally here.

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista is officially available as a preview download starting today. There are some important features that are missing in this build, but the significant additions might make up for the lack of features. The changes in Yahoo! Messenger include a complete change of layout, skin chooser, filter-as-you-type for easy searching, spell checker and a convenient tabbed conversation window that controls your desktop clutter. The rebuild also incorporates sidebar graphics that have the ability to show favorite contacts separated from conversation windows. Graphical elements in the new IM take Microsoft's graphic subsystem into play for vector based interfaces and enhanced emoticons. IM's can now be conveniently sent to both Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger contacts, complete with up to 2GB worth of files.

There are a few features that have been left out of this build that are scheduled for a later date. They are big ones that people do expect to have, be it a beta build or any release and include voice, webcam, chat rooms, text messaging to mobile devices, photo sharing and conferencing. To grab a copy of the new Yahoo! Messenger for Vista preview release, visit http://messenger.yahoo.com/windowsvista.php We will have more on this application as we put it through the DLS wringer.

Check out some screenshots of Yahoo! Messenger for Vista Preview in the gallery.

Filed under: Design, Developer, Fun, Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

MC Hammer customizes his MySpace with Snap Layout

MC Hammer customizes his MySpace with Snap Layout

Tired of poorly designed MySpace pages? Spread the word about SnapLayout.

This handy MySpace layout editor allows users -- even MC Hammer -- who have no idea what HTML is the chance to create something special with their MySpace accounts. This is just the beginning of a long and arduous journey to rid the web of bad layouts, but SnapLayout is definitely on the right track.

With the online tool, users can easily change colors and layouts using a drag and drop style interface. Color palette's can be chosen so that proper color theory is adhered to, text styles can be implemented and page layouts with backgrounds can be set. Widgets like YouTube, Google Video, Pictures and other embedded codes can easily be inserted by dragging and dropping into their desired areas on the page. Sections in user's layouts can also be dragged and dropped to new areas within the design as well.

When your design is complete, click publish and voila, one less bad MySpace layout. Sweet!

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Utilities, Blogging, E-mail, Web services, Social Software

Desktoptwo web desktop

desktoptwo web desktopHaving access from your computer desktop anywhere there is a connection and a computer is a dream for some, and a reality for some early beta testers of Desktoptwo.

Created by Sapotek, Desktoptwo is a free web based service that allows complete access of your desktop wherever you are. It has a web instant messenger using the Jabber platform, email, search, MP3 player, address book, WYSIWYG web editor, blog publishing platform, rss feed, layout templates, and 1 GB of free storage.

Subscribers of the tool will find out that Desktoptwo could be very valuable and useful if you're moving from computer to computer. If anyone has experience in using this tool, please let us know how it worked out for you.

[Via TechCrunch]

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, Web services, Google

Google Accessible Search

Google Accessible Search

Google has released a new Labs experiment called Google Accessible Search. Billed as a tool that prioritizes the typical Google search results by their usability, Accessible Search sorts results based on the simplicity of their page layouts and how gracefully the page degrades (such has removing ads and turning off images).

This tool isn't just for those who are tired of blinking Flash ads, or minimal, one-column design enthusiasts. T.V. Raman, who posted this on the Google Blog, can't see, and is a research scientist who is working on this project at Google. While Accessible Search is still in its early experimental stages, it definitely looks like Google is making good progress on an important tool for allowing even more people benefit from the World Wide Web.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

View more Time Wasters

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