|
|
|
|
||
        |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Connecting... Welcome to Connect, our column for reader email! We want to hear your thoughts and opinions about things you've read in Mac OS Journal, about Apple, your computer, Mac OS X, and so on. So let us have it people! Send email to connect@macosjournal.com. This month, many of these letters were written to me while at MacOS monthly, however, many of them still apply here.
A Downloadable Version... Is there a way to download it as before? Russ Ginns, serving with the Navy Hi! Anyway! My Greetings for you not already changed to PC, because the Mac spirit in Apple Wizards is gone!!!! ;( Bye! Carlos Virgílio Hi there Russ. Hi there again Carlos, Hope it's not that bad. None of us have changed to the PC. In the middle of June, I found myself on a rather remote Caribbean Island (Saba, pop 1200, if you're interested, and we're moving there in the Fall because my wife has got a job there), and I was paying by the minute for the phone call and by the minute again for net access. So I do have a personal interest in this matter. Knowing that our June issue was appearing while I was there, I did some experiments before I left. I used our May issue; the format has changed quite a bit since then, but everything will still work. You know, there are various ways to capture web publications like ours very quickly, without staying online to read every page. Maybe the easiest is to get the new Version 5 of Internet Explorer for the Mac from Microsoft. This new browser has a Scrapbook feature. Just hit the "Add to Scrapbook" button in the toolbar, and the page is saved on your drive, so you can visit it offline. Then navigate to the next article (maybe using the arrow at the bottom of each of Mac OS Journal's pages), and hit "Add to Scrapbook" again. When I tried this, I noticed that the total time online was about a quarter of what it would have taken me to download the PDF. The Internet Explorer Scrapbook captures everything on the page: graphics, active links, the lot. Apart from the fact that everything moves a lot faster, it's just like being online. And if you don't want to do that, there are other applications you can get that let you go online and suck a whole site onto your hard drive, or as much of it as you feel like doing. Amongst these are: Web Devil from http://www.chaoticsoftware.com Just make sure you set up these apps not to download pages from sites other than the ones you intend, and only to go one level deep for downloading links - it's easy to begin to download the whole internet if you're not careful. Start from our Contents page, and you're up and running. Again, I found that the download took quite a bit less time than the PDFs did - mostly because the PDFs contain lots of overhead, like embedded fonts. Personally, I liked the Scrapbook method best. I found it by far the quickest, and I liked getting a sneak preview of the pages while I was downloading them and saving them. I could also choose not to download pages that I wasn't interested in - that wouldn't apply to Mac OS Journal, of course, but to other sites it might. Hope you try one of these ways of getting our e-mag. It's worth it. Of course, we still have plans on continuing with a downloadable option. The new system is still in the works. - Dennis Field
SanDisk and Erik's Review (in MacOS monthly) I also loved the uncluttered, clean look. P.S. I have had the Imagemate by Sandisk for a year now, and agree with your reviewer [Erik J Barzeski] -it works flawlessly. I only wish the cards were less expensive. Don LeaversMe too. As well as using them in the camera, I've also used the tiny and cute USB reader and the even tinier disks like disks and floppies to transfer files from one machine to another. Incidentally, my SmartMedia reader is the Lexar - pretty good too. The only problem is that you have to drag the card's desktop icon to the trash before you actually remove it from the reader. Counterintuitive (because nothing actually happens at the device itself) but do it or say goodbye to all the information on the disk. Guess how I know that - and nobody has more than one fiftieth birthday party. Reviewer Erik tells me that the Sandisk doesn't present this problem - at least not with the latest software. As long as the disk isn't being written to or read from, everything stays intact. And thanks for the plaudits. Hope nobody thinks we don't appreciate them. Due to circumstances out of our control, we've had another reincarnation and that's meant another makeover - not so drastic this time because we all liked the new look too. Mark spent quite a lot of time on the changes; we hope you think they're worthwhile. Thanks for the plaudits. - Dennis Field
Shrinking JPEGs: My Unforgivable Omission  Hi
Dennis
I just read you response [in the June issue of MacOS monthly] to a reader about jpegs and gifs and wondered why you didn't mention GraphicConverter? You can set it up to do what she wants and so much more. It is relatively inexpensive too. Mark Gallo
ProJPEG: $50 program from BoxTop Software (http://www.boxtopsoft.com) specifically designed to reduce image sizes for web display. GraphicConverter (how could you miss this one?): $35 shareware program from Lemke Software (http://www.lemkesoft.com) can handle nearly every computer graphics format, allows you to convert among them, and can shrink JPEGs and GIFs with ease. GIFConverter: $30 shareware program from Kamit (Kevin A. Mitchell http://www.kamit.com/gifconverter/) can also convert between many formats (including JPEG/JFIF) and quality settings (image sizes). BigPicture: $20 shareware program from John Montbriand (http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/tinyjohn/BigPicture.html) can reduce an image's size by changing colors from millions down to as few as 16. There are lots of others. Just visit TUCOWS Macintosh software archive. Sincerely, I stand corrected, or at least updated (though actually that sounds worse). I don't have GIFConverter or BigPicture, but I did use GraphicConverter at one time. Checking, you're right. GraphicConverter can indeed optimize GIFs and JPEGs. It's all hidden under the File Menu, in the Save As dialog box. I never did find this feature when I used GraphicConverter, and if I'd known it was there, maybe I wouldn't have gone the PhotoShop/ImageReady route. For those who don't know it, GraphicConverter is a shareware classic, constantly updated, and extremely powerful. Get it from TUCOWS (http://www.tucows.com), http://www.macdownload.com, or he INFOMAC Hyperarchive, http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive. Better still, look a the author's site at http://www.lemkesoft.com. Registration costs $35 - worth every penny. - Dennis Field
Ferazel's Wand Liked
your article [published in the June MacOS monthly]. Others' articles, though,
have indicated that the second half of this game is close to impossible,
and there are no easy or hard settings.
Could you provide a walkthrough, since it's not obvious to know where to go? Marc Venot Tough game, huh? Even our own Marc (Editor Marc Messer - what is it about you Marcs that get you off on these crazy games?) found it challenging. Fortunately, we have a resident guru, Erica, who begins her Ferazel's Wand Secrets Guide this month. Also, a reprint of the orignial Ferazel's Wand review can be found here. - Dennis Field
Making Web Logos and Navbars
Nor me. But just look at these:
I'm sure this is the kind of thing you mean. 42 years after my last Art course in High School, I made the logo and the Navigation Button all by myself. Total time: maybe two minutes. Total expenditure: zero. "How?", you ask. Well, it wasn't really me at all. It was a wonderful website in Switzerland, http://www.webgfx.ch. Logos, Buttons, navigation bars complete with html coding, clip art, 3D stuff, entire web page templates, and all for you to put your own text into. It all makes you wonder why anyone ever tears open that pesky sticky shrinkwrap. The one drawback: PC users can have the stuff just the same: it's all rendered right there on the site for any kind of machine to download. Try WebGFX: you'll love it. If you're really determined to put out some bucks, though, you might find it worthwhile to visit typestyler.com on the web. TypeStyler (version 3.5.8 at last count) has so many bells and whistles that it's hard to see that any of the PC apps can be more versatile. Unlike web-based solutions, it can be set up for printed work as well as screen designs. Excellent interface too. Download a generous two-month trial, and odds on you'll buy it. - Dennis Field
Send your rants and raves, questions and comments, compliments and criticisms to connect@macosjournal.com.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
