With about a dozen major releases ( and another on the way in a few short months) Photoshop has become one of, if not THE most important tool in any graphic and Web designers arsenal. As a photoshop user since version 5.0 (circa 1998…), the webdesingerdepot.com article is a short walk down memory lane, listing some of the major changes between each release. A little strange thinking back on how we used Photoshop WITHOUT some of the great tools used today – can’t even imagine working in Photoshop without layers or “Save for Web”! The article also includes an interview with John Knoll who (along with his brother) created Photoshop.

While I’ve come across some designers who swear by Fireworks (especially for web stuff), I can’t imagine using anything other than Photoshop. Easily the most important design tool I have. Many thanks to the Knolls for creating such a great product (and continually making it better).

Here is a rundown of the topics covered, and although each one is discussed only briefly, it still offers a good amount of information:

1. Padding vs. Margin
2. Floats
3. Center Alignment
4. Ordered vs. Unordered Lists
5. Styling Headings
6. Overflow
7. Position
8. Background Images
9. Image Enahancement

The article ends with a nice list of tutorials on how to slice up PSDs to XHTML.

While it did take me longer than I had hoped to complete, I actually found it easier to do than the first round. I’ve picked up on CSS a lot more in the past 15 months, and have become more familiar with WordPress, which I used for the blog portion of the site. With the first version, I thought it would be easier to pick up an existing WordPress theme, and just modify to fit my site. While I was happy with the way that site turned out, I decided that I would try creating a custom template from scratch (well, actually from a stripped down WP them called Starkers Theme by Elliot Jay Stocks), and found this to be MUCH easier. The build went much more smoothly, and I was much more comfortable with adjusting the code and moving things around. There was still a bit of trial and error with the WP items, as I am still learning WP, but I found myself getting around eaiser and easier.

I have to say, I’m pretty happy with the site as a whole. While I’ve done a few other sites in WordPress, and have used the Starkers Theme for those, I think this site is the most appealing site I’ve done with WP. It’s been a while since I posted, and I’m hoping now that the site redesign is complete, I’ll be able to find more time to add posts more regularly.

I’m also looking forward to work on www.gotoandlearnflash.com again. Not only hoping to add more tutorials, but to give that site an overhaul as well. It’s been an extremely busy few months, and while things are still pretty busy, I think I have to make a commitment to myself to get re-motivated to work on some personal projects.

Take a look around the site, and let me know what you think!

This year, hundreds of thousands of people will hear the words “You have cancer,” and there’s a good chance that some of them will be people we know and love. Most of us have been touched by cancer in some way… and we all have the power to make a difference. That’s why I have chosen to fight back right here in my own community by participating in the American Cancer Society Relay For Life®.

My girlfriend Maria is an employee at the Wilton, CT branch of the American Cancer Society, and has been actively involved in Relay for Life (and other cancer awareness programs) for over 5 years. Last summer her and I volunteered at several local relays, and were participants in another by forming a team of family and friends. It’s a night full of fun, hope, and remembrance. It’s a great event and one that should be experienced by any one who has been touched by this horrible disease.

Relay For Life is the American Cancer Society’s signature activity. It offers everyone in a community an opportunity to participate in the fight against cancer. Teams of people camp out at a local high school, park, or fairground and take turns walking or running around a track or path. Each team is asked to have a representative on the track at all times during the event. Relays are an overnight event, up to 24 hours in length.

The American Cancer Society sponsors Relay events across the country and chances are there is an event in your own town or nearby community. I encourage everyone to Find Your Nearest Event and get involved. While donations are always appreciated, these are free events, so even if you just choose to go and walk a few laps to show your support, Relay for Life is a wonderful event.

If you would like more information or help with forming your own team, please contact Maria DeCarlo at maria.decarlo@cancer.org or visit her Team Page for the Monroe, CT relay. Maria will be happy to help you find your closest relay and get you started as a team captain.

From Maria:

I Relay because cancer has touched too many people in my life… so I decided to do something about it. I formed a team (for the Monroe, CT Relay) last year, just to get family and friends to come and see what it was all about. To my surprise, we raised close to $2,000.00, and had the best time doing it. So, we’re back for a second season. If you’d like to check out my team page, make a donation or get involved, click here or email maria.decarlo@cancer.org

Thanks for reading, and I encourage everyone to get involved in your local Relay For Life event!

Some of the ones that I’ve used include:

kuler Create is a nice tool to from Adobe that helps create color themes. You can select your own colors and see what are complimentary colors, or you can create custom themes (and browse user submitted custom themes) to see how colors look when used together. Neat little tool.

FontStruct is a neat little tool by font retailer FontShop for creating, editing and sharing fonts. While the tool is very user intuitive and pretty powerful for a free access application, creating a full font family is still a long, tedious job. But, if you have a nice font style in mind that you want to create, a great tool to allow you to do it.

Dummy Text Generator is an extremely useful tool (especially when doing print mockups or proof of concepts) that creates dummy text (i.e. “lorem ipsum plorem”) for placement in mockups. It allows you to select a number of words or characters as well as the number of paragraphs to create a simple block of copy. Great for comping jobs when you don’t have final writing. It also allows you to go back to a writer with information about how much copy is needed for a job.

I’ll have to explore some of the other listed resources when I have more time, but I’ve found some great stuff from on SixRevisions.com, so I trust that this is another great list.

Lot’s of great info here for all levels of CSS. I’ll be honest, I haven’t read all of these, I’m putting some faith in the guys at toxel that this list is legit, but I do visit a lot of the sources sited here (Smashing Magazine, Noupe, NetTuts among others) and have always found some great information.

Hope you all find this info helpful!

Some of them on the list I use as my first stop when trying to get logo ideas (LogoPond, LogoSauce, LogoLounge) and others I’ve come across before, but not overly familiar with (LogoLog, SpoonFed, SpeckyBoy) but most are new to me, so definitely a lot of stuff here to check out.

A really great thing about these logo galleries is that they contain user submitted logos that are sometimes still in the design process, which other designers comment give feedback on. It’s a great way to get objective opinions from other professionals on logos you are working on to know if you are heading in the right direction. Even if you don’t submit your own logos, reading the comments on others can really teach you how to look at ALL logos.

Of course, not everyone gets through these tutorials without problems. I understand, it’s expected. I don’t fell that my tutorials are bad because some people have problems, and I don’t think people who have difficulties with the tutorial don’t know what they are doing. People learn differently and comprehend things differently, so not everyone gets through these tutorials without a hitch.

I get plenty of questions and comments when people are having problems with any of my Flash tutorials. And I absolutely welcome all questions and comments (good or bad). I try very hard to help users and answer any questions they may have. I’ve had several back and forth emails with different readers who have had questions, and hopefully have helped them solve the problems. Unfortunately, I’m not always able to answer questions for several reasons… sometimes I just don’t have the time, sometimes the reader didn’t provide enough info, sometimes the question is well beyond the scope of the tutorial… but no matter whether I can answer the question or not, I appreciate people asking. It let’s me know that people are reading them, which is very gratifying.

Recently, a reader was trying to apply one of my tutorials to a real world project, and was struggling to get it to do exactly what she needed. We’ve been communicating through email for several weeks now, and while we haven’t quite gotten to the desired result just yet, I think we will. As appreciation for my help, she has made a monetary donation to the site. While it wasn’t expected, and no dollar value was asked of her, it was very appreciated. She simply gave an amount that she thought was right, and I happily accepted. So, for that I would like to publicly say “thank you K (aka Lou in the comment string).”

Her donation will help keep this site running so that more tutorials can be written and hopefully help others learn Flash. I know it’s been a while since I’ve written a new Flash tutorial, but the readers have actually given me several new ideas, I just need to find the time to write them. Keep those questions and comments coming, and I’ll try my best to keep writing new tutorials.

The goal of gotoAndLearnFlash is to have users find the Flash tutorials they want, and write their own reviews to let future readers of this site know whether the tutorial was really helpful or not. While my goal here is to find the best free online Flash tutorials the net has to offer, I simply don’t have the time to review each and every tutorial I come across. That is why I encourage users to check out the tutorials, come back and rate or review them for future readers.

Currently, there are only a few tutorials listed, but I try to add more and more when I can. The biggest hurdle is I really would like to review any tutorials that I post, but I simply don’t have the time. So, I’ve been posting some Flash tutorials without an editorial review in hopes that users will add their own reviews in the comments section. Better than a rating system, I believe a user review will help gauge whether the tutorial is really worth checking out. If you enjoy my tutorials, check out www.gotoandlearn.com to find more Flash tutorials from other authors that I found helpful.

If you haven’t visited psdtuts.com (and it’s sister site nettuts.com) I recommend you check it out. They always have some great, high-quality tutorials on Photoshop (while nettuts.com is focused on Web development tutorials).