Everything Digital

discoveries of a technogeek wannabe

How to Create an Animated Favicon

January 17th, 2010

Jojo Agot

A favicon is an image or icon that you can see at the left side of the address bar of your browser. It is used by most webmasters for instant brand recognition and to give a website a professional look.

A favicon is usually a 16×16 pixels graphic uploaded in the root directory of your server. It is stored in favicon.ico format and recently, you have the option to use animated favicons. The following are the steps to create a favicon.

1. Create an image file using any image editing program that allows you to save the file in .ico format like the GIMP. If you don’t have it, just use any program like Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw etc. You can save it in any format but make sure it’s square like 125 x 125, 50 x 50.

The Death of American Idol?

January 12th, 2010

Jojo Agot

Simon Cowell is leaving American Idol after the ninth season. Good news or bad news?

Might be good news for those who hated his sharp tongue but what is Idol without him? Shari Anne Brill of Carat USA said in an interview:

“I think it’s that brand of sarcasm combined with professional know-how that makes Simon the audience magnet that he is… I really believe the show revolves around him. He’s the linchpin of the show’s success. He has tremendous influence on how the audience votes. He’s interesting to listen to. He’s brutally honest.”

Samsung’s Transparent Laptop

January 10th, 2010

Jojo Agot

Engadget recently reported this new contraption in the making from South Korea: Samsung Mobile Display’s prototype 14-inch notebook – the world’s first and largest transparent OLED prototype.Yes, you read it right, it’s a laptop with a transparent screen. When the machine is off, the panel is up to 40% transparent. No specific details are released by Samsung but one thing is sure- computers are going to get more exciting than before. Watch this video and pray it will be released in the market soon.

Eye Dropper, Firebug and Hex Color Generators

January 10th, 2010

Jojo Agot

My previous post about using Adobe Photoshop’s Eye Dropper Tool raises one question for most of us: What if I don’t have Adobe Photoshop?

Well, don’t worry, we still have other ways to work around that. The reason why I wrote about Photoshop is because along with the Hex Color Code Generator, I almost always use Photoshop every time I do some tweaks in my Wordpress themes. Let me explain these two tools further.

I use the Hex Color Code Generator mainly when I look at my CSS and have no idea what a certain HTML color code is. For example, I would encounter values like #7E8AA2. The first thing that comes to my mind is, “What the heck is #7E8AA2?” “Is it blue, green or pink?” I then turn to the code generator to find out for myself and look what other colors would look great with it.(In case you’re wondering, it’s a light shade of blue.)

How to “Steal” Other People’s Color Combination

January 9th, 2010

Jojo Agot

Or maybe borrow, or get inspiration from, if stealing colors offends you.

The point is that in designing websites or customizing Wordpress themes, most people are stalled when it comes to choosing colors. In my previous post, I mentioned Hex Color Code Generator but that tool is useful only when you already have an idea on what colors to use and you simply needed the codes. But what if you’re still figuring out what colors to use?

Think of it this way: you were browsing the web and you found this one site that you really like. You did a little digging and you found out it’s a paid Wordpress theme but you don’t have the budget to buy that theme for yourself. What do you do? Aside from saving enough money to buy a professional theme, there is one trick you can resort to.