How to fix overtype mode:

There are two options to remedy this:

1. Go to Tools > Options > Edit > Overtype Mode

And uncheck the Overtype mode box.

OR

2. Kill the Insert Key:
1. Start Word
2. Click on the Tools menu
3. Click Customize
4. Click the Options tab
5. Click Keyboard
6. Under the Categories dropdown box, select All Commands
7. Under the Commands dropdown box, select Overtype
8. Under the Current keys downdown box, select Insert
9. Click Remove
10. Click Close until the dialog windows close.

Thanks to the guys at tech-recipes.com, where I discovered this information after years of using method 1! this guy deserves a medal!

My teacher told me something thing that really stuck, and it continues to be a good way of kick starting the creative process when I find myself staring aimlessly into space.

The rule is called KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.

The “stupid” part is a reflection of how many of us tend to act out of instinct – so many ideas are floating around that we want to do everything and anything. When a designer sits down and scribbles down how the design will work, perhaps only one person can make sense of it – can you guess who? The user is not stupid, the designer is stupid for expecting others to realise their vision.

Can you think of a top site that does not follow the rule of KISS? Look at Google’s phenomenal growth; once upon a time there was no Google Tools, Google Maps or Google Earth. Despite these tools being generally easy to use, what could be easier than the original Google search design that has barely changed in years? One logo, one search box, one submit button, and a few links at the bottom.

What the other major search engines failed / fail to notice, was that this very simple idea worked. This very simple idea kept people coming back over and over again to something that delivered… Read more

Google has cleverly devised this set of tools, knowing the high probability that the website owner / marketer is probably going to use Google Adwords which coincidentally links in beautifully with the rest of the software.

The cornerstone to understanding a websites success is to measure its performance on a goal based level. For an E-Commerce site, the most important goal is usually a sale. Other sites may consider new members, contact from the visitor, number of blog comments, or even whether certain pages are viewed or not.

Enter Google Analytics: The most comprehensive, free website reporting software I have ever seen. It gives you all the basics such as number of visits, where the traffic is coming from, and traffic over time which are all standard features in the majority of web statistic programs. But the real strength of Google Analytics is the comprehensiveness of information even on the very basic levels;

• How does my traffic changed over time?
• How much traffic do I get from a certain continent, country, state or even city? And more importantly how important is this target group to my campaign?
• How long do visitors spend on my site?
• How often do visitors return to my site after the first visit?
• Visually, how do people navigate my site?
• How often do people abandon the steps to my shopping cart, instead of completing the transaction?

And so it goes on, and on, and on. Even by answering these basic questions, Google Analytics lets you drill down, compare two… Read more

With so much time invested by individuals and businesses in establishing themselves with a programming language, bias is inevitable, and you don’t have to dig deep to find someone criticising PHP. But then, the same goes for any language. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages.

What remains a fact is that PHP has been popular in the past, is popular now, and will continue to be popular well into the future.

Some of PHP’s advantages include:

• Considered easy to learn as far as programming languages go, meaning it is very well known in the web development community
• Hosting is more common and cheaper than for any other language
• Large range of turnkey php applications available, some free, some not. Examples include WordPress, (the software this forum is running on), phpBB and wikipedia.
• Abundance of free online resources

Here is a classic usage for PHP;
Situation - A shop owner wishes to supplement their traditional shop with an online shop, in the form of a 500 product website.
Solution A: Build a static website, and make 500 separate pages to accommodate each and every product.
Solution B: Build a dynamic website, create 1 product page and create 500 database entries

So what is the difference? In any case, the shop owner / web developer is going to have to process 500 products. Sure this sucks, at least initially.

PHP starts flexing its muscle when we get to the ongoing management side of things. The… Read more

Consider the navigation at the top of every page on this website. At time of writing there is 7 unique pages on thomasmultimedia.com.au, excluding this blog. If I were to add a new page to my site, would I not have to update each and every page to show the new link?

What a horrible sounding job — what if I had to make 2 or 3 changes to each and every one of those pages? In the context of 7 pages this might take say 10-15 minutes to open, change, save and upload 7 files. But what about if I have 20, 50, or 1000 different pages? This could take a day, if not a week!

What a horrible way to spend a week… and yet i’m sure someone, somewhere, in a deep, dark dungeon has slaved away at this menial task for hours on end.

All bow to King server side include!

A Server Side Include is a fairly ordinary file that is created for a website. It can contain any kind of web friendly content, but the most common usage is to display the same things over and over on different pages. So utilising this fantastic technology I have 1 file that contains my main navigation. If I want to rename, add, delete… or make any change under the sun, a server side include is my friend. I change the file once, and like magic every instance of the file is now reflecting the changes. Cool huh?

For any web people who have just read this post, don’t worry, I won’t leave you in the dark about how to do it – my favourite method is php.

For Dreamweaver users, use brackets –… Read more