mimi_m

Who ISN'T depressed during their teenage years? Seriously. Everyone is, and you may think that you're 'ugly' as hell, but I can assure you, a million other people are in the exact same frame of mind you are. 'ugly' is a state of mind, coz seriously, people will accept you no matter how you look. I hate to sound cliche, but have confidence in yourself. That's what makes all the difference... If you're this little cowering child in the corner of a room, hiding away from everyone else, of course no ones going to notice you! You cant rely on other people to come to you, coz they may be just as affraid as you are. You have to get out there and start chatting people up! MAKE the friends, don't avoid them. And I'm not saying this to sound harsh, but that's reality. You'll come to see most people are pretty cool, just make sure you're contributing in discussions! (but not in the whiny, attention-seeking way... be cool). Don't wait around for your friends to organise going out, YOU organise to go out!It may seem impossible, but I take it you're still in school? Trust me. You'll grow out of the fase. Atleast give it a go... you sound like you're not even trying. Dont be a victim of the world, coz then you WILL become one. So stop making excuses. I know it sounds unfair, but the world doesn't taylor for your specific needs. You have to MAKE it work for you. Then, you'll have mates to go get pissed with, and who knows? You might wake up one morning in a bed full of chicks (although, from a female's perspective, I should be repremanding you for that dirty thought) Hate to be outspoken, but I'm guessing you need to hear this.

And who says 'kiddy' games are a bad thing, huh? lol, I love kiddy games (too cute!). I basically have every sort of gaming console ever made (thanks to my obsessive father and brother), so I've tried em all. And like others have said, they all have their advantanges. But I think I'm going to have to go with PS2. Mainly coz it just has some of THE best games... I dont really care about good graphics or size or whatever... as long as the game's fun! Like I said, there's nothing wrong with Kiddy games, but Game Cube doesnt have too much fun games anymore (...'kiddy' whatever...). What ever happened to good ol' nintendo? super or 64... When I was a kid, I use to spend AGES playing mario or Yoshi or donky kong... man, they were the best. The games dont really sell anymore, unfortunately. And since gamecube has moved away from those games, I cant really say I like it all that much. And theres only one PC game I play. I'm not into the types of PC games there are out there, anyway. They're all too guy-ish. That's why I choose PS2.

Everyone's saying to change the eyebrows... DONT! I LOVE how they look! it adds to the comical effect you were obviously going for. I think its VERY cute. I dont agree with the people who say it doesnt look baby-ish enough... HELLO! Cartooned baby! Dont touch the eyebrows. I say just fix the body a bit to make the outlines stronger, more obvious. It's a cartooned effect, as far as I can see. Dont try to distort that with adding realistic features like shadows instead of plain outlines. its CUTE this way! i love it! and that comming from someone who hates kids... lol. I'm tellin ya, it's the whole 'cartoon' effect. dont try to change that.If anything else, maybe get rid of the gradient in the black of the eyes, I think it'll work better just plain black. It might just be me, but those eerie irises kinda freak me out... lolgood job

Okay I'm a little confused as to why you just didnt use the set-up disk in the first place.

Exactly! I know for a fact that this will make alot of flash users i know happy. Most people start off using Adobe products, rather than macromedia, so when they finally turn to programs like Flash, its really confusing and overwhelming. Alot of people use illustrator and then transfer the files into flash, even though flash has a similar function to illustrator's ever-famous 'pen tool'. Now that Adobe bought macromedia out, they'll improve the tools and settings to resemble more of the typical 'adobe' settings. People will be less intimidated when using it. I, for one, would have liked that to begin with. I think someone said it's merely a scheme for more money... well, yeah. But to get more money, the product needs to become as user-friendly and easy-to-use as possible. They're going to have to put a lot of effort into changing the settings to suit both the adobe AND traditional macromedia styles. It's for the best, I say. And besides, did you know that the very original photoshop wasnt even created by adobe? Yeah. And look what happened, everyone whos even remotely anyone in this industry knows the great 'Photoshop'. It's all Adobe. It's not a devestating drama, people.

Grab yourself theme studio, you can create your own themes for your phone! YAY (im a huge fone freak... I cant survive without it...) You can get it from the Nokia forum website: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Also, try and find the Nokia PC Suit if your phone didnt already come with it... its GREAT (you'll also need to download you're specific phone's driver if you didnt get this suit with your phone). With this, you can easily transfer a ton of tones, games, videos, etc. onto your phone after downloading them from the net. Goodbye $5.00 a minute calls to buy tones! Search the net, you'll find tons of things. Themes for series 60 is pretty common, and you can get midi tones ANYWHERE. A good site is: http://www.midisite.co.uk/ You can find a TON of games to download of limewire... just search series 60 games. And I do mean a TON. They come all in one pack. Pretty good stuff. If you can grab yourself WinAVI or ImTOO 3GP Convertor, you can convert flash videos or even DVDs into a smaller format that fits right on your phone! It's great, try it out. I love my phone!

It's not THAT bad... I mean, sure it slows down your comp a bit... but it's stopping viruses from getting in. Besides, if you're not using the net, you can just disable norton and the comp runs fine! I mean, seriously, you dont need your PC to run at its MAX just when your surfin... and it doesnt interfere with internet speed. Come on, whats the huge problem here?

I heard somewhere that Gmail's privacy policy is so messed up because it's just comming out of it's beta stage and still in 'testing' stages, and they need as much info as they can get to determine the best ways to go about providing their service. If they see that their service is being adversly used for things like warez (they have huge upload size) on a large scale, they'll know that they're going about their service in the wrong ways. I seriously doubt that they'd use our information for spamming and so forth... coz then no one will use gmail! They havnt tried to hide the fact that our personal info is being used, and I seriously doubt that someone out there is going through everyone's individual emails and keeping up-to-date with our affairs and soap-opera lives we discuss in emails. Personally, I like the what it offers and all the little nifty features it has. I'm not doing anything illegal over my email, so I have nothing to worry about.

Wow, it does too! thanks for the great tip!

I discovered Yahoo Launch about a year ago, and I found it to be pretty damn good. You can choose or customize your own radio, with music to suit you. And its little smart recording feature records and adjusts itself to better find and play music that you're more in tune with. All the ads are just a little annoying, but I think it's great.Tell me what you guys think, is there another music site out there that's better?

I dont know why everyone seems so shocked. Seriously, what do you expect from chatrooms? Hasn't school taught us anything?Just stick with MSN people. Stick with the contacts you can trust. Why would you seriously want to go on chat rooms anyway? They're good targets for hackers, perverts and just down right scarey people. If you want to talk games, or whatever, go find forums. They're just as good, if you ask me. And you get answers from genuine people with interests, instead of being susceptible to cyber-freaks. And just on another note, I'm not surprised Yahoo is being sloppy with their chat rooms. They've had major increases over the last few years, and they're extending their options to anything and everything. Don't get me wrong... their original features are great... mail, search, online news coverage and launch. But now, I think, there pushing it a little and it's having an obvious sloppy effect. The chatrooms are just one of many things they are trying to incorporate, and it's obviously not working.

Ok, I know MSN may be in its BETA stages, but it's had quite a few updates by now, and I've been running it for quite a few months without any bumps!As soon as you get version 7, you'll see its just SO much better. I love the winks, nudges (how I survived without them in the past is a mystery to me...), and there is just so much more awesome features.Being able to sign in with your choice of status is a HUGE bonus (it has come quite in handy...), contact cards and blogs (my space) are really fun to mess with; plus you can display all your photos. Icons can be as large as you want (...!) and they are just so much easier to organise and manage with version 7... plus you can steal them with a simple side-click instead of the other person having to send them to you. You get a second title, you get a wider range of setting options, games, etc. Theres a search bar that can come in handy, plus you can share the results with your friends (pretty funny). You can even get your MSN pics to be flash animations and pretty big (these usually come with packs, though... try the fantastic 4 pack). Okay, and the best feature has to be the new mobile features. sending messages to you're contacts mobiles using msn? pretty damn good if you ask me. Saves me 20cents!Okay, there's all the features I can think of right now. I'm sure there's tons more, which is why msn version 7 is way cooler. Download it.If there's any flaws, it would be that alot of MSN downloadable content is for v6.2, but that doesnt entirely bother me too much.Wow, I've ranted enough.

I agree that sites pretty much do need some imagary regardless, but I would say that includes the overall design. And if CSS is used to create the design, then (depending on how well it is designed), that takes care of the whole image issue. Some may disagree, but I say it all depends on the kind of design style you're going for. Not all sites need to follow typical website conventions.... if that were the case, all links would be underlined (yuk). Designs vary, and with it, so do design 'rules'. So unless you're creating a very professional business site for an established, well-off company, I say go by your own design instincts. (now let's just hope you all have some...)Remember, there are ALWAYS exceptions to rules/conventions. Creativity is about creating your own.

Maybe I didn't really make myself clear What I need to do is make an XML page, but format the content using an external XSL page. So I've got all the content written down in the XML page (with the elements and dtd and all), and the main way I'm formatting it, is by using HTML in the XSL page, by using this tag to gather the content data: <xsl:value-of select="element" /> BUT I'm not sure how to add images (or image links) as part of my content, so I can generate it with the rest of the data (by the xsl page). So that's what I need to find out. I hope that makes it a little clearer, if anyone knows what to do, I'd really appreciate a reply... thanx ------------------------------------ Merged by m^e I'm so stoopid, the answer was infront of me the whole time... I just forgot to format the DTD properly. So silly. Anyway, for those of you who are interested, or are like me and are missing something that you cant figure out... (and to think i spent about a week trying to search the net and find out what was wrong... ) ... Here is what you need to generate images with XML and XSL: The XSL code is this: <img> <xsl:attribute name="src"> <xsl:value-of select="image"/> </xsl:attribute> </img> Obviously. And in the XML - again obviously - you need an element that's called <image>. Eg: <vodka name="EffenBlackCherryVodka"> <name>Effen Black Cherry Vodka</name> <producer>Effen Vodka</producer> <country>Netherlands</country> <type>Black Cherry Vodka</type> <size>750ml</size> <abv>35% alc/vol</abv> <image>effen_black.gif</image> <price currency="USD">USD $30.08</price> </vodka> (ignore the rest, I was doing my assignment on Vodka, of all things ) And MAKE SURE U DONT PULL A 'ME' and forget to add the image element to your DTD. Again, heres my example: <!DOCTYPE students [ <!ELEMENT vodkas (vodka+)> <!ELEMENT vodka (name,producer*,country,type,size*,abv*,price?,image*)> <!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT producer (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT country (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT type (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT size (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT abv (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT price (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT image (#PCDATA)> <!ATTLIST vodka name ID #REQUIRED> <!ATTLIST price currency (AUD|USD|EUR) #IMPLIED> ]> And DONE! I can't believe I forgot this part >.< Any way, hope that helps other confused peoples.

Can anyone help me out? I need to implement images into a xml webpage, and I don't know how it's done It's for an assignment, and I have ta do it by a .xml page and a .xsl page (for stylesheets). I'm kinda new to xml, so I just know the basics and stuff. I can't find anything on images, but I've seen it done, so does anyone wanna give me a hand with this? any help is appreciated!

just out of curiosity, what hosts/servers would you guys recommend to use for clients? Any suggestions/tips?

See, that was exactly what i thought the attitude might be, when concerning the public with webdesign coding (not just the pros). But it looks like the majority agree with my lecturer on this one... HmMmMm... interesting... And thanks for the replies, by the way. I realized when i posted the topic that it didnt make as much sense as I thought it had when writting it... oops... but you guys seem to understand what i was getting at

Well it would depend on the website's design, wouldnt it? lol But if you're asking me which I think is better, I prefer white to black. Or, like, the whites/silvers/grays as opposed to the balcks and other dark colors. It's easier on the eyes, i think, and there are so much more colour scheme/design possibilities with lighter colours to dark colors. Black on a white background works for me, i love the classic contrast.

PLEASE, theres no comparison. Photoshop all the way... theres a reason it's industry standard and PSP isn't, you know. Plus theres just so much more you can do with Photoshop. SO much.

Typography is DEFINATELY one of the most important aspects of design. DEFINATELY! It's so simple to create an entire design by simply using typogrphy. Infact, there's an Australian design company that is based around typography (it's called the LetterBox I think). You can totally make or break an entire design simply by font. Alot of people underestimate how powerful a simple element like type can be. DONT. Simplicity is always the key to a good design, and font is the simplist thing you can use while enforcing such amounts of meanings and connotations. Nothing (except color) works as well. Like I said, a font can make or break a design, so I feel it's absolutely necessary to find the right font when designing. I agree with 'Maybe Skate Team' that it's a hassel to go through hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of fonts to look for the perfect one, but it's worth it. I never use comic sans, by the way. I agree that there's something about it... not quite right, lol. I dunno, it's too common and not conservative enough, or something. But you can find some REALLY good fonts out there that work for different designs. (not to sound redundant, but more to emphasize the fact...) Do Not Underestimate the use of Typography! I found a few examples of some of my past web designs and general designs that I really focused on using type in (they're just a few screen caps I took): sceen cap 1 cap 2 cap 3 cap 4 cap 5 cap 6 cap 7 I dont think these designs would have worked as well if i had used comic sans instead...

I don't think using illustrator for rounded corners for a site is a good idea, seeing as how it's a vector-based program and all. I'm going to go with the majority and say that Photoshop is the best. For me, anyway. I don't like to use CSS when I'm creating a site made of graphics (duh). I just create all the graphics on PS, including those little roundered corners, then slice it all up and stick it all together on a webpage by using tables. You can use the rounded rectangle tool or the ellipse tool in PS to create round-ness, and just crop the areas you need; or you can do what i do, and just make the rounded corner yourself by using pixels (I do this especially if I need the outter area of the corner to be transparent). I just use the pencil tool on 1px and draw and mess with the circle shape until it looks good. (Then, just duplicate it and rotate it to suit all four corners). Here's an example I used from a website I created quite a while ago... the border of the site was 5px so i needed to create a corner that would fit: ...It actually looks a little jaggidy here But it looked good when put together with the rest of the site. HmMmMm... maybe I should have used a better example... Any way that's how I do it.

say you created a website, and it was all pretty and everything with a nice colour scheme and all... but after some time, you decide you want your site to look different... and i think THIS is the MAIN advantange of having external stylesheets. All you have to do is open up the stylesheet and change the properties and such, instead of going through EACH of you pages and changing each one seperately, leaving you open to tons of errors and missed areas. I personally use classes and IDs and such for every bit of content in a webpage, coz that way an external stylesheet just makes it SO easy to change the ENTIRE look and style without having to go through each page. It's amazing, and that's why its good to have your stylesheets external. It also makes it easier if you want to add or change little bits of style in your pages, and it just helps keep the overall site neat and organised. Plus, you dont have to keep repeating yourself page after page with the same codes and styles. If you know how to use all the properties and such in a stylesheet, then you'll come to see that you can change the entire LOOK of a page just by messing with external CSS. Easy!

What kind of help are you looking for? coding or progams?

Okay, i know this topic has sort-of been discussed here and there, but i wanted some stable answers... so I'm askin you guys... when designing a website, which way do you prefer to go? HTML and CSS or XML and XSL? My lecturer was saying the other day that XML and XSL are going to take over pretty soon, but I was doubtful. Maybe in cases of professional web designing, but i doubted that the mass public (non-professional web designers and all alike) would make the switch anytime soon. If anything, I would say that Flash would take over general coding, but that's a seprate issue. I know XML and XSL aren't yet as mainstream as HTML and CSS, so you can find combinations of the coding everywhere, and this may be a sign that XML and XSL are, infact, slowly seeping into the mainstream and phasing out good ol' HTML, but tell me what you guys think. I'm really interested in the results of this thread.

I'm going with commercial arts. I did a bit of graphics a while ago, and when you think about it, commercial art can get really awesome, quite creative and original. Plus, they can have great concepts and really clever ideas behind them, making them 'smart' as opposed to 'emotional' which I think fine arts is centered around. emotion, self-expression, all that stuff. I'm not a big fan of fine arts, so i guess my opinion here is a tad biased! But yeh. Commercial arts rock, you can get some really great ones, so CLEVER and thought out and created with high standards. Think about it, you have to be really talented to create good commercial art, seeing as how it makes or breaks careers/businesses/etc. whereas fine arts anyone can do.Again the bias, i really gotta stop doin that lol