In the first part in this series you will learn very basic HTML and how to make a simple text-only website. This guide is focused on the absolute beginner, though you should be proficient in general computing tasks such as file and folder creation, navigating, and changing file extensions (on Windows, be sure to show file extensions).

You'll need a text editor to edit HTML with. Notepad or TextEdit will do for now. As you get better you will want a robust IDE such as TSW WebCoder or Adobe Dreamweaver. There are also free HTML editors such as CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor and Notepad++.

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Reducing the file size of the images used in your web design can improve loading speeds, which will keep some visitors from leaving prematurely, and can reduce the load and bandwidth usage on your server. Large reductions in file size can be achieved by selecting the right format and quality, and taking the time to optimize each and every image that your design uses, no matter the size. I'm going to cover how to reduce the file size of both JPG and PNG images, and how you can do it without sacrificing the clarity of your images.

The first step in optimizing your images is to decide which format to use. JPG is generally the best for real-life pictures and complex scenes. It significantly reduces the file size at the expense of introducing artifacts. These artifacts are generally unnoticed in complex scenes or gradients, but can be quite noticeable on hard edges and solid colors.

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Facebook is a complex web application with many settings. Some of these settings can be hard to find, mainly because the path to get to them changes every time Facebook changes their layout. Deleting an app or game used to be more difficult, but now can be accessed fairly easy from the side bar on the home page. However, not all apps are displayed in this side bar. To find a complete list of all of your apps, and be able to delete them or change their settings, follow these steps.

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Having effective and well thought-out text spacing in your web design can increase the readability of the text, make it easier for users to scan through it and find specific points, and improve the look and feel of the design as a whole. Despite this, many designers ignore text spacing or give it considerably less attention than the graphical elements of their design. If your website relies at all on text to convey information, you would be shooting yourself in the foot by ignoring text spacing.

The three key elements to look at when creating effective text spacing are padding, font size, and line height. To demonstrate how these can drastically affect a design, I created a simple blog page with four variations, each with improvements to these key elements. I used Verdana font and a base 14px font size.

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To turn Google Personal Results off permanently, so that you don't have to click "Hide personal results" every time you search, go into your Search settings. This is accessed by clicking on the cog in the upper-right:



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To link to a specific part of a YouTube video, so that upon visiting the URL, you are taken directly to that time, simply add #t=01m10s to the end of the YouTube URL. Replace 01m with the number of minutes into the video, and 10s with the number of seconds.

Example:

You can also use it with the HD link code, like so:


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Chrome has been making some major inroads into the browser market share of both Internet Explorer and Firefox. It is now close to tied with Firefox and the trend seems to favor Chrome. This is no doubt due to Google leveraging its marketing power to push Chrome. The new Chromebooks will certainly help push the name recognition further.

I use both browsers regularly (8+ hours a day, side-by-side on dual monitors) and after a couple years I still find myself using Firefox first. I figured I would try and compile a mostly-objective list of the reasons why I prefer Firefox. This comparison is done for Chrome version 16 and Firefox version 9.

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The Flash Player download from Adobe's main website is not a compete installer. After running it, the installer's first step is to download the rest of itself. This generally isn't a problem, but it is useful to have the full standalone installer if you need to install Flash Player on an offline computer. It can also bypass the Adobe Flash Player Failed to Initialize error that sometimes occurs with the normal installer.

You can find the current version of the full Adobe Flash Player installer for all operating systems at the following link:

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/fp_distribution3.html

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If you've downloaded the Adobe Reader installer from the main Adobe website, you've probably noticed that it is not a complete installer. After running it, the installer's first step is to download the rest of the installer. No, you're not the only one that finds this annoying.

Adobe does have full installers available, though they aren't easy to navigate to from Adobe's website. They are available on Adobe's FTP site, which you probably didn't know existed. The current version of Adobe Reader can be downloaded from the following directory:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/

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By default Google Chrome disables your extensions for Incognito windows. This is in general a good practice since extensions can collect and store private data. But for me, it is particularly irritating to not have Adblock Plus enabled. Opening an Incognito window feels like I'm being transported back in time to 2006 or something. Full-screen popups, flashing banner ads, "fake" links littered throughout a text document, and other horrors.

Luckily, you can easily enable your extensions in Incognito mode by going to Tools -> Extensions, clicking the little arrow to the left of the extension in mind, and then clicking "Allow in incognito":

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