Having trouble getting UPC numbers to show up properly in Microsoft Excel? Excel may format a UPC strangely if the cell is formatted as Text (e.g. 8.08282E+11) or may remove leading 0's if the cell is formatted as a Number. Some solutions involve using a function or adding a single-quote to the beginning of each UPC, but those don't work well with bulk UPCs. The better solution is to use a Custom format for the UPC cells...

In Windows 7, numbered file names are sorted based on numerical value:

By default, both Windows XP and Windows 7 hide the extensions for common files, such as .jpg, .pdf, .html, and .doc. I recommend changing this behavior, so that you can more easily change the file extension and determine the file type of a file. To do this, you need to uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types" in Folder Options. Follow the below instructions for your operating system...

Want to change a keyboard shortcut for something in Photoshop? Annoyed that Brightness/Contrast doesn't have a keyboard shortcut by default? It is easy to assign a keyboard shortcut in Photoshop, just be wary that most keyboard shortcuts are already in use, so chances are you'll have to remove a shortcut from something else first. There's plenty of things you probably don't use (like shortcuts to specific Filters), so that shouldn't be a problem...

These are the Photoshop shortcuts that have improved my efficiency when designing websites the most. Some are basic; some are a little more obscure. I thought I would share them.

Note that these are focused on web designers and may not be the most important shortcuts for people that actually use Photoshop to, you know, work on photos. Oh, and these are Windows shortcuts, though other platforms should be similar...

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With CS3, Adobe incorporated features from ImageReady into Photoshop, so you can now create animated gifs completely inside Photoshop. Here's how:

Step 1. Create a new document. I made mine 60 x 60 pixels, but you can make yours whatever size you would like for your animation...

I tend to visit manufacturers' websites often to gather facts about their cars and such. Most of the time I am using my work computer, which has a low-end business DSL Internet connection. Some sites load fast while others load like slugs. I decided I would quantify this by timing each manufacturer's website load time. I used Internet Explorer 7 and deleted the cache between each timing. I repeated the timing at least twice for the major manufacturers. There was generally little variation in the retests, and I took the average of the times.

The first number is the time it takes before the vehicle selector is available, since this is the most important part of the website. All the images do not need to be loaded, just as long as an adequately loaded list of vehicles is available and clickable. The second time is the time for the site to finish loading all its major components. In some cases there may be an extra script running in the background (maybe a tracking script), and I did not include the time it took for those to complete in the overall time...

What is so special about these programs that makes them take what seems like ages to install or uninstall? I'm sitting here uninstalling a trial version of Dreamweaver CS3 on my work PC, and it has taken over 10 minutes. Now it's asking for a restart. That's ridiculous. On my home PC, which is no slouch, it is no different. Installing or uninstalling the Adobe suite (usually Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Premiere) usually takes more than 15 minutes. It's the same on XP, Vista, and 7. I install these programs often as I install Windows fairly often. I'm always trying out new things and I help a lot of friends with their PC's (if you're wondering)...