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Copyright ©
<?php // automatically update the copyright date each year
      ini_set('date.timezone', 'America/New_York');
     $startYear = 2000;
     $thisYear = date('Y');
 echo "{$startYear} - {$thisYear}";
?> all rights reserved

You can get a list of timezones from the PHP manual.

Design is a suite of web-design and development assistive tools which can be utilised on any web-page. Encompassing utilities for grid layout, measurement and alignment, Design is a uniquely powerful JavaScript bookmarklet.

Below are some screenshots of the bookmarklet in action.

Grid: Overlays a highly configurable layout grid over a web-page. Grid can be set to match any set of dimensions, allowing easy development of CSS layouts in the web-browser.

Ruler: Displays rulers on a page, with all the expected features of the rulers found in a desktop design application, including guides which snap to block display elements and origin location control.

Unit: Allows measurements to be made between any two points on a web-page, giving basic information about each of the points clicked on, and drawing a line on the page for the measurement.

Crosshair: Draws a crosshair cursor on the page to assist in layout alignment. Cursor information is also presented in a tooltip.

Download it today!

John seems to use every trick in the book to monetize his web sites and what’s good about his blog is that he shares his tips and tricks, helping you too become a “Dot Com Mogul.” Whether or not he shares all of his tips remains unknown but the advice he does offer is quite useful. Just today he posted about gaming Technorati and it makes me wonder how many people will now begin employing the same tactics. With his recent Technorati gaming exercise his ranking now stands at 258. Some may not want to employ his tactics but there are many others out there that will. In return many of the blogs he links to noticed an increase in their Technorati standings as well. It’s a shame I didn’t finish writing this review sooner I suppose.

Though I apply none of his tips to my own design blog it’s good to know some of the things he writes about because you may have a client that is interested in doing this sort of thing—and any information you can provide a client, the better chance of a referral or repeat business you’ll have. I also find it useful to read blogs that don’t necessarily apply to your exact line of business. Of course, I like to learn as much as possible about as many things as I can just ’cause I like to learn stuff.

Maybe you’d like to open a new Finder window from a sidebar item—just “Command+Click” on the folder name in the sidebar.

Using a Mac laptop? To delete items to the right of your cursor, “Function+Delete” does the trick.

<FeedFlareUnit>
<Catalog>
<Title>Title for Flare Item</Title>
<Description>Description for Flare Item</Description>
</Catalog>
<FeedFlare>
<Text>Text that will appear in your feed</Text>
<Link href="http://www.yourlinkhere.com/"/>
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>

Save the above as a XML file in your favorite text editor, upload to your Feedburner FeedFlare page and voilà—a custom link in your RSS feeds. There are many more things you can do with it that I don’t understand but maybe you will! Have fun!

To enable “Smart Guides” navigate to “View > Show > Smart Guides.” Once you’ve done that move something around in your file and you will see a fuschia line following it about. It’s almost like magic. Enjoy.

What I saw at the top of Roger’s stylesheet, for me anyway, was one of those things that make you smack your forehead and think, “Now why the hell didn’t I think of that?” After just having that moment I thought I’d share this epiphany with everyone else and officially state for the record, I’m using his idea from here on out. That said, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, I don’t know how many times I’ve gone searching through a stylesheet to get the hexadecimal value of a color for a link or a heading or any other major color element in a site.

Below is what Roger has in place and to me it’s just ingenious really.

/*
Colours

Dark green headings (Main articles): 8A8E27
Light green headings (Home page sections): 828368
Green headings (Secondary): 578A1C
Green border colour: b6c8b0
Links: AE4F0C
Link hover: D03900
Heading link border: cfcfa0
Beige background colour: f1efe7
Light green background colour: f4f6e0

*/

Just for good measure, I’m smacking my forehead once more.

The only thing you have to watch out for with this site, are folks who you need to seek permission from to use their photos in public works otherwise, the best (that I’ve found) free stock photo site out there.

Morgue File
A place to keep post production materials for use of reference, an inactive job file. This morgue file contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.

Morgue File tends to be more “snap-shotty” than Stock.XCHNG but you can still find some very usable images there.

Deviant Art
This place can be hard to navigate and even harder to find what you’re really looking for but it’s a great source for stock photos, especially textures.

iStockPhoto
iStockphoto® is the world’s preeminent collection of member-generated royalty-free images, at the world’s best prices. There are no subscription fees or extra costs. Just the best Stock Photography, Vector illustrations, and Flash files online, at prices for everyone.

iStockPhoto works with credits, you don’t need to pay a subscription fee, just a per image fee, which is nice if you need one or two images for a project but don’t want to pay $80-$200 per image.

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<input type="text" name="text_field" size=50 value="Fill in this text field! " onClick="this.value=''"/>

Stu Hall adds:

You can use:

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onfocus="if(this.value=='Fill in this text field!')this.value='';" 
onblur="if(this.value=='')this.value='Fill in this text field!';"

…to put the text back in when you click out of it as well rather than leaving it blank. Just another one for posterity!