Finally FIFA World Cup 2010 has come. This may be the biggest event in sports entertainment. Every designer should celebrate this time by theming their dextop and twitter profile with the brand new World Cup wallpaper. We have managed some great list of World Cup inspired wallpaper, background and data chart that will help you enjoy this season more greatly.

Google Chrome plugin for all purpose

Google chrome was immediately acquired 1% of visitor when it was first introduced in September, 2008. Now it’s dealing with 9.5% of web surfers. The reasons behind this popularity are the choice of theme and have a vast of extension available. If you are thinking about to switch chrome from IE or Firefox for its simplicity and fast browsing, we recommend to use the following extension according to your need. We have managed to showcase the most popular Chrome extension according to your need e.g. Web Developer, Home Browser, Security etc.

For Web Developers:

Web Developer

Web Developer

The Web Developer extension adds a toolbar button to the browser with various web developer tools. This is the official port of the popular Web Developer extension for Firefox written by Chris Pedrick.

Chrome SEO

Chrome SEO

The Google Chrome SEO Extension provides easy access to Search Engine Optimization Tools that can help you with Competitive Analysis, Keyword Research, Backlink Checks, PageRank Checks and other daily SEO tasks.

IE Tab

IE Tab

Use Internet Explorer to display web pages in a Chrome tab. Some sites can only be displayed using IE, and with this extension you can now see those sites without leaving Chrome. Great for web developers who want to test the IE rendering engine, users who use sites with ActiveX controls, and users who want to use the explorer view for local files (i.e. file:// URLs).

Color Pick

Color Pick

This is a simple color picker tool that pick the color from a website and give you the HEX value and RGB value of the selected color.

BuiltWith Technology Profiler

BuiltWith Technology Profiler

BuiltWith is a web site profiler tool. Upon looking up a page, BuiltWith returns all the technologies it can find on the page. BuiltWith’s goal is to help developers, researchers and designers find out what technologies pages are using which may help them to decide what technologies to implement themselves.

L(ink)y URL Shortener

It is a simple URL shortener based on http://bit.ly (http://j.mp). Just one click! The short link is ready for sharing.

L(ink)y URL Shortener

Aviary Screen Capture

Aviary Screen Capture

Take a screenshot of any webpage and edit it directly in your browser with Aviary.com applications. Plus convenient access to the Aviary website and tools.

This quick screen capture addon is a must-have for bloggers and designers alike! It will perform a screen capture of the visible portion of any webpage and then open the capture INSTANTLY in a basic image editor where you can do markup (draw arrows and rectangles), edit (crop, rotate and resize) and get the exact pixel colors of the image. A perfect companion tool for designers and bloggers!

For Home Users:

AdBlock

AdBlock

AdBlock for Chrome! Blocks ads all over the web. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars by our users!

Google Mail Checker

Google Mail Checker

Displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox. You can also click the button to open your inbox.

Google Translate

Google Translate

This extension adds a button to your browser toolbar. Click the translate icon whenever you want to translate the page you’re visiting.

The extension also automatically detects if the language of a page you’re on is different from the language you’re using for your Google Chrome interface. If it is, a banner appears at the top of the page. Click the Translate button in the banner to have all the text on the page appear in the new language.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon helps you discover great websites that match your interests. Simply click the Stumble button and see the best websites. There are over 500 topics to choose from, and, the more you use it, the better your recommendations beco

TooManyTabs for Chrome

TooManyTabs for Chrome

TooManyTabs is a must-have extension that manages your tabs, reduces your tab overflow, and saves your sanity!

For security:

WOT

WOT

Web of Trust is a safe browsing tool, which warns you about risky sites that cheat customers, deliver malware or send spam.

LastPass

LastPass

LastPass is a free online password manager and Form Filler that makes your web browsing easier and more secure.

Proxy Switchy!

Proxy Switchy!

Proxy Switchy! is an advanced proxy manager for Google Chrome, it allows users to manage and switch between multiple proxy profiles quickly and easily.

Click&Clean

Click&Clean

Deletes your browsing history, typed URLs, Flash cookies, all traces of your online activity to protect your privacy.

Autocomplete = on

Autocomplete = on

Changes ‘autocomplete=off’ to ‘autocomplete=on’ in web pages, so your passwords will be remembered.

Overview:

If you are a googler then you must know about the Google advertising program. Google has two types of advertising program AdWords and AdSense accordingly. With this article we will go through the overview of this advertising program explain some of the advertising term like Web Traffic, CTR, eCPM etc. and give you some tips and tricks to earn the maximize revenue from Google AdSense. First we should know what this AdSense and AdWords means.

1. AdWords:

   AdWords let advertisers to promote their product or website through Google or other AdSense integrated website. When you search in Google with a keyword you may find some links highlighted under the search box and the sidebar and a text ‘sponsored Links’ will be found under the box. This links are sent through AdWords. That means some of the advertiser paid Google to show the links in its site. AdWords are most preferable for advertisers as they have option for geo-targeting, Contextual ads and show the ads on the most relevant content.

2. AdSense:

   AdSense is an opportunity for the publishers to earn money from the Google Advertising program. Your web portal will be advertised with relevant ads through AdSense and the ads will come from the advertisers on AdWords. AdSense is preferred by both publishers and users as they are less disturbing and annoying compared to loud and flashy banners. After you make a registration, a Mediabot will crawl through your website and find some appropriate keywords so that your website can host the most relevant advertisement.

Requirements:

Before we can start through AdSense program, we should know the minimum requirements to earn.

1. Your own website ( you have to access the source code of your website to incorporate the AdSense code into your website, so the website must be your own as anybody will not let you to place AdSense code into his website).
2. A computer with internet access.
3. Basic web-design knowledge to make a good website.

Relate yourself with some advertising terms:

• Web Traffic:

  Web Traffic determined by the number of visitors visits your site.

• Backlinking:

  Determined by number of website linking back to your website. More backlink is the more opportunity to gain more traffic.

• CPC:

  Acronym of Cost-Per-Click. As the name suggest, you will be paid from AdSense only when anyone click the hosted ad in your web portal.

• CPM:

  Acronym of Cost-Per-Mille. This advertisement will pay you when it gets thousand impressions from your site, impression means how many time the ads has been shown up in your website.

• CTR:

  Acronym of Click-Through-Rate. This measure what percentage of your website-visitor had click on your ads. As an example you got 100 visitors in a day and 5 of them clicked on ads after visiting your site. So your Click-Through-Rate will be 5%.

Getting Started:

You may relate yourself with basic advertising terms now. Getting started with AdSense program is very easy. After you apply your website for Google AdSense program a mediabot will crawl through your site and find the relevant keyword from your site. Before you apply your site in AdSense program you have to ensure that you are generating good web traffic in your web portal. You will get a notification from AdSense to let you know whether your site has been approved in AdSense networking or not. Google AdSense has a strict guideline on how the Ads should be displayed in your site. If mediabot will unable to crawl through your site, it will not display sponsored advertisement in your site. Please check if your website meets the requirement of Google Program policy and Terms & Condition before applying. If you site has been approved you have to create an ad campaign to select the size, look and feel of your adslot. A JavaScript code will be sent to you. You need to incorporate that code into the source code of your website to start host ads.

Types of AdSense:

• AdSense for content:

  This is the general and mostly used AdSense type. You can place ad box on your web page with this program.

• AdSense for feeds:

  If you have an atom RSS feeds for your blog that can be advertised through this program.

• AdSense for Mobile:

  It will show ads if somebody navigates to your site through mobile or PDA devices.

• AdSense for search:

  A companion to the regular AdSense program, AdSense for search, allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their websites. When a user searches the Internet or the website with the search box, Google shares any advertising revenue it makes from those searches with the website owner.

Optimizing your site to earn maximize revenue:

The principal of having a good CTR in your site is to attract more people to your ad slot. You can reach this goal in many ways by optimizing ad placement, dimension of ad box, choosing the best color pallets to fit your site etc. We will go through all this optimizing tips now. A good CTR for your website is 5%, below 3% means mediocre and below 2% indicated you that you have to do more with your ad placement and colors.

• Optimizing Placement:

  Optimizing the best placement for your AdSense ad box is very easy. You have to determinate where the people attract most in your website. That may be in a important article in your website or that can be determined by the way a visitor will browse his eyes in your website.

Google has produces a heat map based on with ad placement had earned more revenue. The Color had fade from dark orange (Strongest performance) from light yellow (Weakest performance).

Google AdSense Heatmap

But if you are maintain a blog then the image below would be the map for the best placement for your ads.

Google AdSense Heatmap for Blogger

The image below is the image for forum ad optimization…

Google AdSense Heatmap for Forum

The image below is a reference from EyeTrack III. This image shows how a man browse his eyes on the homepage of a website.

Eye Track III

This is a heat map image produces by EyeTrack III.

Eye Track III HeatMap

According to Google’s research, if positioned well then a 336x280px large rectangle, 300x250px medium rectangle, 160x600px Wide Skyscraper medium rectangle will help you to earn most revenue from Google AdSense.

• Optimizing Ad Color Palettes:

  There are three types of color palettes available for optimizing your AdSense AdSlot. They are Blend, Complement, and Contrast.

  • Blend:

    This type’s color palettes should designed with the same border and background color with the background where you are placing ads. This types of color palettes should be used where the background color is very light.

  • Complement:

    Use the color already used in your site but should not be same as the background color. You can use this types of palettes both in light and dark background.

  • Contrast:

    Choose a color that strictly against your background. Use it only in dark background.

Below is the reference of three types of color palettes from Google.

Blend Color Palette

Complement Color Palette

Contrast Color Palettes

• Optimizing revenue from ad review center: Go to your AdSense account > AdSense Setup Tab > Ad Review Center. You will find ‘Category Filters’ there. This will help you to block specific category of ads from showing on your website. Just block the categories which are against your website. That will help you to earn more revenue from AdSense.

Google AdSense Category Filtering

Video Screenplay:

Still under confusion? Then watch this video below. This is a official video from Google demonstrating the optimiztion of AdSense through a screenplay. I am sure that this video will help you as a beginner level AdSense optimization. So Happy earning!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpPX4A78jqg

This is the second time we are introducing a twitter template PSD file as a freebie for our readers. Twitter is just doing very well with their micro blogging service. We have seen most of the twitter user using their customized background template to change the look and feel of their personal twitter page. These customized backgrounds also help their followers to know what his following people twit about. Now we are create this template exclusively for web designer and digital artist. But we have included the PSD file so anyone use this by changing some logos. You will find a widget like box at the left side of the template where you can give the link of your entire social network. We have created this template giving Apple® like look and feel as this is craze now after release of iPad. You can also find all our others freebies in our official DeviantART group http://www.metamags.deviantart.com. You can also submit your personal artwork at here which you want to share with our friends. Have a great twitting.

metamags Twitter PSD Template

50+ iPad wallpapers to personalize your iPad

More than 600K iPads sold till now. Everyone is very eager to get the latest little magic from apple. If you already owner of one now, so it’s the time to personalize your iPad with wallpapers and application. When we were browse for wallpaper, we found most of them as a crop version some dextop wallpaper. We have managed to showcase 50+ iPad best wallpapers available to express your creativity through the iPad.

1. Orange Metal – Modern iPad Wallpaper

Orange Metal – Modern iPad Wallpaper

2. Electro Blue – iPad Wallpaper

Electro Blue – iPad Wallpaper

3. Wood iPad Wallpaper

Wood iPad Wallpaper

4. iPad Nature Wallpaper

iPad Nature Wallpaper

5. Fantasticus Apple Wallpaper

Fantasticus Apple Wallpaper

6. Fire Apple ipad Wallpaper

Fire Apple ipad Wallpaper

7. Colorful Apple Logo Wallpaper

Colorful Apple Logo Wallpaper

8. Colors Apple Logo Wallpaper

Colors Apple Logo Wallpaper

9. iPad official wallpaper

iPad official wallpaper

10. Broken screen

Broken screen

11. Apple Splash

Apple Splash

12. Dark Blue

Dark Blue

13. Colored Smoke

Colored Smoke

14. Planetrise

Planetrise

15. Colored Circles

Colored Circles

16. Galactic

Galactic

17. Pump up the volume

Pump up the volume

18. Wings iPad

Wings iPad

19. Miniature chairs

Miniature chairs

20. Heavenly clouds

Heavenly clouds

21. Colorful space

Colorful space

22. Apple leather

Apple leather

23. Apple retro wallpaper

Apple retro wallpaper

24. Apple Leather

Apple Leather

25. iPad Electric

iPad Electric

26. iPad Ink

iPad Ink

27. iPad Vertigo

iPad Vertigo

28. iPad Paint

iPad Paint

29. Spectrum for iPad

Spectrum for iPad

30. Bluestream Three for iPad

Bluestream Three for iPad

31. Ice Tracks for iPad

Ice Tracks for iPad

32. Color background

Color background

33. Star Wallpaper

Star Wallpaper

34. Ocean of spot lights

Ocean of spot lights

35. Water optic

Water optic

36. iPad Wallpaper Wooden Style

iPad Wallpaper Wooden Style

37. Dawn Tree

Dawn Tree

38. Bamboo iPad Wallpaper

Bamboo iPad Wallpaper

39. Retro Futuristic Wallpaper 3

Retro Futuristic Wallpaper 3

40. wall 50

wall 50

41. Green Lizard

Green Lizard

42. The firm

The firm

43. The Road

The Road

44. Dandelion

Dandelion

45. Farmers Field

Farmers Field

46. Grassy Field

Grassy Field

47. Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon

48. Paradise

Paradise

49. Grassy Field II

Grassy Field II

50. Nature Salsa

Nature Salsa

25 WordPress Plugin You Should Use in Your Blog

If you are not literally living in a den, you must here about the wordpress blogging system. It’s the most widely used blogging platform available in the industry. The reason behind this popularity is extensive list of plugin and themes available. Let’s take a look on the 25 wordpress plugin that you should use in your blog to start your blog with a bang.

1. Akismet

Akismet

Akismet is a popular spam-fighting service that is different from other spam filter. It checks the content of the comment anonymously with an online server, to determine whether it is spam or not and it pretty good at separating spam and reliable comments.

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet

Plugin Site: http://akismet.com

2. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.

Google XML Sitemaps

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator

Plugin Site: http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home

3. Google Analytics for WordPress

The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It also allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, track image search queries and it will even work together with Urchin.

Google Analytics for WordPress

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress

Plugin Site: http://yoast.com/wordpress/analytics

4. WP Super Cache

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache

Plugin Site: http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache

5. Sociable

The Sociable plugin is packed full of social bookmarking sites, allowing you to instantly add various buttons through one simple plugin file.

Sociable

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable

Plugin Site: http://blogplay.com/plugin

6. cForms II

cforms is a feature rich plugin for WordPress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page. It’s versatile and can be customized to your preferred design and feel.

cForms II

WordPress Location: http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin

7. WP Cumulus

WP-Cumulus allows you to display your site’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but is more visually exciting. Clicking the tags can be a little hard (depending on your speed setting) but does take you to the appropriate page.

WP Cumulus

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cumulus

Plugin Site: http://www.roytanck.com/2008/03/15/wp-cumulus-released

8. All In One SEO Pack

Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

All In One SEO Pack

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack

Plugin Site: http://semperfiwebdesign.com

9. WP PageNavi

WP-PageNavi adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress site.

WP PageNavi

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi

10. FeedBurner FeedSmith

This plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well.

FeedBurner FeedSmith

Plugin Site: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/static/feedburner_feedsmith_plugin_2.3.zip

11. WordPress Automatic upgrade

WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the WordPress installation to the latest one provided by WordPress.org using the 5 steps provided in the WordPress upgrade instructions. It automatically does the backups and provides links for downloading.

WordPress Automatic upgrade

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade

Plugin Site: http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-12-release.html

12. WP-DB-Backup

WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.

WP-DB-Backup

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup

Plugin Site: http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup

13. Simple Tags

Simple Tags is the perfect tool to manage perfectly your WordPress tags.

Simple Tags

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-tags

Plugin Site: http://redmine.beapi.fr/projects/show/simple-tags

14. WP Poll

WP-Poll is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls run the way you wanted. It now also supports multiple selections of answers.

WP Poll

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-polls

Plugin Site: http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php

15. WPtouch iPhone Theme

A plugin which formats your site with a mobile theme for the Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Palm Pre and other touch-based smartphones.

WPtouch iPhone Theme

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch

Plugin Site: http://bravenewcode.com/products/wptouch

16. TweetMeme Retweet Button

Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.

TweetMeme Retweet Button

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme

Plugin Site: http://tweetmeme.com/about/plugins

17. Smart Youtube

Smart Youtube is a WordPress Youtube plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos/playlists into your post, comments and in your RSS feed. The plugin is designed to be small and fast and not use any external resources.

Smart Youtube

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smart-youtube

Plugin Site: http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/smart-youtube

18. SexyBookmarks

SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.

SexyBookmarks

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks

Plugin Site: http://shareaholic.com/sexybookmarks

19. Twitter Follow Me Box

This plugin will generate a follow me box of the twitter in your site.

Twitter Follow Me Box

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-follow-me-box

Plugin Site: http://www.geniusdeveloper.com.br/plugins-2/twitter-follow-me-box/?lang=en

20. Advertising Manager

This plugin will manage and rotate your Google Adsense and other ads on your WordPress blog. It automatically recognises many ad networks including Google Adsense, AdBrite, Adify, AdGridWork, Adpinion, Adroll, Chitika, Commission Junction, CrispAds, OpenX, ShoppingAds, Yahoo!PN, and WidgetBucks. Other ad networks can be used as well.

­­­­­

Advertising Manager

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advertising-manager

Plugin Site: http://code.openx.org/projects/show/advertising-manager

21. Advanced User Agent Displayer

This wordpress plugin adds user agent information to your blog comments by adding browser and platform icons and lets visitors know the user agent of every one who comment on your blog. You can also view the user agent of the commenters in the admin’s comment page. Settings can be customized within the admin menu.

Advanced User Agent Displayer

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-user-agent-displayer

Plugin Site: http://www.moallemi.ir/en/blog/2009/09/20/advanced-user-agent-displayer

22. Global Translator

Automatically translates a blog in 48 different languages by wrapping four different online translation engines (Google Translation Engine, Babelfish Translation Engine, FreeTranslations.com, Promt).

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/global-translator

Plugin Site: http://www.n2h.it/wp-plugins/wordpress-global-translator-plugin

23. Separate Comments & Pings

Removes all pings & trackbacks from comments and puts them into $pings.

Plugin Site: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/separate-comment-pings

24. Smilies Themer

Smilies Themer allows you to use smilies (emoticons) themes (or packs) to replace the wordpress default ones.

Smilies Themer

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smilies-themer

Plugin Site: http://rick.jinlabs.com/code/smilies-themer

25. jQuery Comment Preview

jQuery Comment Preview WordPress Plugin allows the live comment preview without page reboot. It works on jQuery.

WordPress Location: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jquery-comment-preview

Plugin Site: http://articlesss.com/jquery-comment-preview-wordpress-plugin

• Adobe Flash Pro CS5

Where all is talking about the end of flash after the debut of HTML 5 in web standards, flash has make us sure that flash is a never ending platform and it will make the web platform more vibrant by shaking hands with HTML5. With the pre-release video demo of flash cs5, we have come to know that now flash content can be play without a flash player. Flash will export a FXG format of file which is a playback element of canvas tag introduces in HTML5.

Adobe has progressed towards a better integration between products in the Flash Platform. Flash Builder and Adobe Flash® CS5 will have a better work-flow, with greater integration starting Flash Builder 4 (which just recently released). We are also expecting, that the newest member of the Flash family - Adobe Flash Catalyst will also be unveiled as part of the CS5.

Now Flash Pro CS5 can create iPhone app with targeting the iPhone system. Basically iPhone does not have the support of flash. So you cannot play flash games and animation cannot be played in iPhone. Now Flash CS5 has an ability to compile flash content into a native iPhone app. These apps can be distributed through the Apple App Store.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpEUNqfk4rw

• Flash Catalyst

Flash Catalyst is Adobe’s attempt to bridge the gap between Flash developers and designers. This is something like Fireworks® terminology. This software is both for designers and developers. You can shuffle between the designers view and code view as you might do in Dreamweaver®. You can add some gradient with the code and have some button with hover and click state. In Catalyst, a designer can use the UI created in Illustrator, Photoshop, or any other tool which can generate FXG, and turn it into a live interactive application in a short amount of time.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEEN9CrPDes

• Dreamweaver CS5

Now Dreamweaver® CS5 comes with some new eye catching feature, one of them is SmartPaste. With this you can directly copy one image and paste into your web design. Dreamweaver will create a FXG file and create a canvas tag for it with the new JavaScript rendering. Now as I say the canvas tag, you might guess that the new Dreamweaver will have HTML5 and CSS3 support and yes it is. FXG file will keep the original information from your illustrator file. That means your artwork will be crispier on the web. You can also create a chart with external information with the SmartPaste function. You have to select the dataset and the artwork to represent your data.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhjLlPegA8I

As we all know that Photoshop® is a very promising photo editing software. And it’s most popular among us for its eye catching features that make photo retouching in a minute. Recently Adobe has announced their hot new version of creative suite which they named as CS5. New version, Adobe Photoshop CS5 will be released on Monday, April 12, 2010 at 8am PDT / 11am EDT / 4pm GMT. CS5 has promised for lot of new features and improvements. For more news on its lunch, please log on to http://cs5launch.adobe.com/?PID=3387991 and reserve your seat now. Now we have taken a sneak peak on its most crowded product Photoshop®CS5 before its launch.

• Content aware fill

It’s a very handy tool that help a lot in photo retouching that introduces in Phtoshop®CS5. You can say it’s an upgraded version of ‘Spot Healing Tool’. Spot Healing Tool was used to remove a unwanted particle from the image or fill a blank space with surrounding patterns. Now this tool was good but very time consuming as you have to select the surrounding patterns by pressing Alt key so the blank spaces can be filled with same patterns. Now Photoshop® CS5 has introduced a fully automated patching tool. What you have to do is to select the unwanted part of the image or the blank space that you want to fill with the same pattern and Voila! You are done. This tool will automatically fill the space with surrounding patterns and make the image realistic. In the demo video by a product manager of Photoshop® team, he used to remove some trash from the field, remove lance flair and a big tree just with some of click. He vanish a road situated in the desert and feel them with tree with easy. Last but not the least he fix a problem of misshaped edge in panorama photos. If you are wondering how could he done all this, Please check out the video below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyxDBRnuL3s

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X58evj9A8lg

• Wet paint

Photoshop® is claiming that this new tool will enhance your performance and I think it so. Now you can mix two or more colors with brush as you might do in real world. Another enhancement with brush behavior is brush prototypes. You can change the tip of the brush from the available flat brush, pointed brush, angle brush and fan brush. A small window will show you how the brush pretzels  changes when you are dragging your brush pointer over and image.

• Brush Stroke effect

You will get a life like brush strokes when you are converting your image to a hand drawn painting as you might do with the artistic filter.

• Patchmatch

This is mostly like a bone tool used in Maya, 3Ds Max and other 3D image editing software. Just place some control point in the image and move a particular part of the image without disturbing the rest. You can say this is an upgraded version warp tool in transformation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BShE_jS8jLE

• Better edge detection & masking results

Newer version has better and more precise edge detection. It can detect and identify complex borders in any image. In the demo below the manager has mask a photo of a hairy cat. This was a very complex edge but the enhanced Photoshop® masking to done that precisely.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNR0n_IK7MM

• 3D enhancements

Now it’s time to forget use 3ds max, maya, xara 3D and any other 3D modeling tool to create a 3D object and import that design into your photoshop design. Because photoshop has integrated the 3D rendering tool . Now you can create any 3D object within photoshop. You can change width, height, depth and texture of a 3D modeling

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhzs8O1b-HA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY9aRB_HOzU

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hr0l35KGG0

• Dueling Paint

Adobe Photoshop CS5 provides an alternative to either use a special tool to interpret a photograph into a painting or to use a “from scratch” tool and create absolutely new objects. You can convert your photo into a hand drawn painting with much more realistic results. And Wet paint is a new Photoshop CS5 feature that lets you mix up colors with brush in the same way you do it in a real world, ‘wet’ paints can be smudged, smeared and blended. The new brush tools aim to match that found within Corel’s Painter application.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oHogFHZdxQ

• Small but effective enhancement

Now you can choose your default layer option. Just click on ‘make default’ button after creating a custom layer style and this will be your default layer style. Whenever you are changing a layer option in future, layer style will start from your default value. Another option is default closing dialogue box action. You can choose whether to save the file or not and you can make the same action to all the opened files by checking a box in dialogue box.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGlSIbhaGKM

Another great improvement is on screen color picker. No more dialogue boxes to choose Hue, Saturation or color. With the new eye dropper tool, you can compare between the foreground colors with the color you are picking with a rounded color selecting pointer. Now you can change the size of your brush with the horizontal movements and the softness with vertical movements of your mouse. In the same way you can change your page size with the magnifying tool.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8sEGVoTW9Q

Think you have a photo taken angularly and you want to straighten the image. Just go to skew and draw a horizon line, press Straighten button and your photo will be straight according to your line. Now you can select more than one layer and change the layer opacity and fill for the all selected layers simultaneously with the one click.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUF3cJjcHdY

Opera 10.51: The fastest phantom on the earth

Opera is all time favorite browser for the ubber geek for is cutting edge user-interface, thumbnail tab preview, mouse gesture, opera turbo, Unite, Opera links and many other unique feature that other cannot deliver. But unfortunately 2-3% of user use opera while browsing. You may think why least number of people use Opera though it has so many promising feature. It’s little bit confusing for m also, I think this is for slow page loading but this is my all time favorite browser.. Opera runs out its newest phantom 10.51 in this month with reducing its cluttering option.

• No more irritating pop-ups asking for saving password. This has integrated under the address bar.

Password Manager in Opera 10.51

• Title bars are no more in 10.51 as it replaced by the tabs, a Chrome rip-off.

Tabs in Opera 10.51

• Well-organized address bar and search bar to give people a comfort while browsing.

Well Organized Address Bar

• Shading the page and well highlighted search terms.

Search in Opera 10.51

• Visual Tabs: Just place your pointer under the tab and drag it down to have a thumbnail like screenshot of opened webpages instead of tabs.

Visual Tabs in Opera 10.51

• HTML5 and CSS3 support.
• Carakan JavaScript engine which is 7x faster than Opera 10.1.
• Vega is the new software based graphic engine which feature hardware-acceleration.
• Aero effect and Jump List to easily integrate it with new Windows™ 7.

Windows Aero and Jump Lists

Statistics shows:

Browsers:

• Opera 10.51
• Firefox 3.7 alpha 3
• Safari 4.0.5
• Google Chrome 5.0.356.2

System:

• AMD 64×2 2.4 GHz
• 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• NVDIA 8400 GS Graphics card
• Windows 7 64-bit

SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark Results (smaller is better)

SunSpiser JavaScript Test

• Opera Wins

Acid 3 Test Result (higher is better)

Acid3 Test

• Opera, Safari, Chrome wins

V8 Benchmark Test Result (higher is better)

V8 Benchmark Test

• Chrome Wins

DOM Test Result (higher is better)

DOM Test Result

• Chrome wins

Peacekeeper Browser Benchmark Test Result (higher is better)

Peacekeeper Test Result

• Opera wins

Sputnik JavaScript Conformance Test Result (number of failed script, lower is better)

Sputnik Test Result

• Opera wins

CSS3 Selectors Test Result (number of pass, higher is better)

CSS3 Selectors Test

• All passed except IE 8

*Results may differ in other computer as this depends on system configuration and internet speed.

So we can see Opera has wins in most of the test with making a great difference with others. Opera has joined the race with main browsers. We will not shock if we see opera as the leading browsers after a few month, if they keep up the good work.

Use right typeface for your documents

When you make conversation with somebody, your body languages, and words plays a big role in your mood and makes the conversation richer. Like that the typeface you used in your document irrespective in printing media or online publishing, construct the mood of reader. So when you are writing your next document doesn’t ignore this stuff. Only choosing the right font is not the only way to construct the mood of reader. Size, color, underline, style have a strong impact on reader. Now go through this article to know how to use the right typography for your document.

Understanding the difference: Typeface and Fonts

I have experienced that most of the people take this two term typeface and typography as same. But technically they don’t carry the same meaning. Font is just a font-family of a character. i.e. Verdana or Arial is determined as typography whereas typeface is the font-family is the details about font-family. i.e.  “Verdana, Italic, 15pt” is constitute as font-face. So a font face describes the state of your font. Most of the people choose the font from two major font-families namely Serif, Sans-serif. You can use Decorative font in your design.

Understanding the difference: Serif & Sans-Serif fonts

Serif fonts have a short stroke at the start and end of every letter. These strokes are called serif. Serif fonts are broadly used in legal documents, letter, newsletter and all other printing documents as it has the better readability.

‘Sans’ is a French word that means ’without’. That means sans-serif font don’t have the decorative strokes at the start and end of a letter. This font-family has a very smooth and eye catching font that mostly used in web (online) publishing and in the header of an article.

Serif fonts have a short decorative strokes at the begining and end of every letter

Decorative strokes are missing in Sans-Serif fonts

Some Popular fonts of Serif families listed below:

• Book Antiqua: Popularly used in the body text of multi-page report as it has a very great readability even in small font size.
• Courier New: This font falls under moonscape font-family. It’s widely used in technological writing, scripting, examples and illustrations.
• Garamond: This font is mostly used in email communication, notice and circulars.
• Times: Times and Times New Roman has a little kerning difference. The character come closer in the Times font.
• Times New Roman: This was the default font for the old Microsoft products. Since the printing media has offered a higher resolution print, this font doesn’t appear hazy or blur.

Some Popular of Sans-serif families listed below:

• Arial: It’s the most classic Sans-serif font. Used in most of web design and this is the default font for most of the browsers.
• Arial Black: You can say it’s the bolder version of Arial font. It’s mostly used in web heading but not in body text.
• Calibri: This is the default font for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Office 2007 and 2010. This is a very smooth font can be read online. But it need some negative kerning for better readability.
• Helvetica: Very Clear, Ideal for numbers. It’s an alternative to Arial.
• Microsoft Sans Serif: Excellent for body text of a web page.
• Verdana: Mostly Used in email communication. It’s a great font that can be used anywhere irrespective body or heading text of a web page.

Font Viewer:

fontviewer screenshot

To choose the right font you need to type some text and check that with every font available in your system. But this process is very a time wasting. But you can do the same thing with font viewing software. Font viewing software makes it easy to choose the right font for your occasion. Now we are taking a look on the FONT VIEWER software. You can download this software from http://www.fontviewer.net . And in the ‘text to display box’ type the text that you want to check with every available font. Change the foreground, background color and the size to exactly see how the text will look in your document. Click on the go button and you will see the text is displaying in a table with every available font in your system with Bold, Italic, Bold & Italic view.

Tips for using the right font:

• Don’t use more than three fonts in your document.
• Don’t use larger than 18pt size in heading.
• Use smaller than 12pt size for body text.
• Use Sans-Serif fonts for body text and Serif fonts for Heading.
• Try To use contrast color in heading to attract reader.
• Use Italic style for some word that shouldn’t be overlooked, Use Bold for mediocre important words and use bold and words for high sensitive words in your document.
• Adjust the kerning option for better readability.