Grouping Images

Have you ever tried to put a group of images together? Some tools like Adobe will automatically gallery your images. But using HTML gives you more control over how your images are displayed.

Hey, where's the cool part?

Take a look at this month's featured article Grouping Images to see some thumbnail visual trickery.

Domain Names

Some people think all of the good domain names are taken. We think that none of them are. Consider Google, Ebay, or Yahoo. All of the old dictionary words are taken but your creative new domain name isn't in the dictionary yet. Think short and simple. Is your creative domain name taken?

That's the way I like it Still punching the page and have this cowboy to work with and another hired hand who is great so far. And, if they don't work out we have a macaw to drive us crazy . We may end up punching him instead of letting him punch us!

Return of the Favicon Oh, this is so cool! Another free icon maker site Favicon.co.uk has taken up where the old guys left off (the .com site charges now). If you bookmark our site you see next to the bookmark. So what masterpiece can you create with your logo? Take it for a spin. It will take you about 15 - 30 minutes total to do this and it lasts forever...Make your own Favicon Now

Curious about what any site knows about you?

What to do Today? Have you run the CSS Validator today?You can run it on your own style sheet or check another sites style sheet in the validator before you borrow any of STYLE. Here's a quickie - try this
CSS Validator for Mandarin style sheet You can view our entire style sheet and borrow any or all of it. This is a good method for trying out the syles you see at another site!
..

Todays Top Tips

Free:

Cooltext is where you go to make your own quick logo or banner online. And if you already have a logo then take the link popularity check for a spin. It will tell you how popular your site is today.

Do you think that professionals never use Bravenet? We do. We use free tutorials too. Some are better than the paid training or college courses, especially for HTML and JavaScript. Take a look at www.w3schools.com. Go there when you don't have time for a full training course.

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A Few Good Blogs:

We are new to blogging and have found a few good blogs including CaptionMachine.com CSS:
We can't get enough CSS information all in one place but there are a number of good sites like
BlueRobot Layouts and
A List Apart (touted as a site for people who make Web sites). Of course we can't do without the
CSS Validator or the
New York Public Library Style Guide that really is the Miss Manners for XHTML and Stylesheets. And none of us can resist the
Steal These Style Sheets section.


Killing the Pop-ups:

If you have the Gator you likely want to get rid of him. He's a particularly annoying pop-up. Try these instructions to Kill the Gator. There is a killer package that you might want to try on for size. BHO Cop - Put an End to Adware It was a bit too big for us, but they are on the right track, and you might like it.

Are you selling $?

Selling something at your site? Where do you begin? Want to sell the easy way? There's a good comparison article Getting Paid on the Web that will help you decide whether to build your own shopping cart, set up a merchant account, use PayPal, PayDirect or use an e-wallet system.
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Punching the Page

Searching for attitude

It's been a slow day in the Internet world.
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Punching the Page

Searching for attitude

We have the cowboy to help us out and he's a pretty nice guy, but we are still searching for some attitude. We landed at Cooltext where we took a quick spin through the free online logo rendering process. Cooltext hasn't changed much and they still promise to never charge. We weren't too gutsy. Just stepped through their process and ended up with this image

It took about 5 or 10 minutes to make the Punching the Page image. We'll keep Cooltext in mind.

Link Popularity Check

We ran a link popularity check today and saw that Fred links to us in his Thanks page. What a joy it is to meet folks like Fred who lives in a country we will likely never get to visit. The popularity check is like treasure hunting. Who liked our site enough to add a link? Thanks Fred, it is always a pleasure to hear from you and your questions have helped to improve some of our instructions.
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Punching the Page

Inject some attitude into that site!

We rounded up this cowboy to help us punch our page. Yes, we are using clipart. It's free at Bravenet and if we decide to use him professionally we will pay the $3 license for this guy. We might need a few more little helpers to punch our page.
New Architect Magazine Colors - A bit Wimpy?

Just out and about checking colors. Seems everyone has the blues. We talked about the color 708090. Here is another blue that New Architect is using. It looks wimpy of this PC.
dddddd is a nice color	FFCCCC looks very pink here and didn't really notice it used much on the site	c9d0de is their main background BLUE	708090 is not used but we like it so are including it here

The blog is our ever-changing easel and a place to experiment. We are just cruisin for colors today, looking for something wild but what we find is a trend back to basic blues.

Most of the colors at NewArchitectmag.com are in the graphics so they look particularly bad as standalone colors and don't represent what the site really looks like. They do usually have pretty pages if you are into decorating and want to see the new trends. We liked their old look :-)

Punching the Page

Inject some attitude into that site!

Would you wear the same clothes everyday? Or maybe you wear clothes from the Gap or Old Navy, never deviating from that same blend of colors and fabrics. Well, we do that too and are in the process of gathering some new ideas for our site (the wardrobe can be fixed later). Browsing wild and crazy sites are inspiring but we are looking for a few good punches. That smack of lime or ....well, we have promised an article and just aren't there yet. We liked G o o g l e's variation in font colors instead of using images, but it's all done with the FONT tag and we would like to move on to CSS only. The goal is do everything with cheap HTML and CSS. And we don't want to spend much on the bandwidth either. Oh yea, and we want to continue to reach both the IE and Netscape audience with open punch solutions. Stay tuned for article Punching the Page :-)

Moving on...have you checked out the blog sites? Blogs are where the fun begins. Mindless notes and games.


Whaddayamean that's not art! Okay, its paint on paper and it works for me. 瀏覽網站分類 Just figuring out how to put the watercolor on the paper took a month. JAVA coding is easier than art.

If you are in a serious art illustrator mood visit larkworthy.com Dang, if I only had an illustration or two from any artist listed I could build that spiffy site! We purchased our Mandarin Trio, or the online rights to use it, from a very special illustrator :) Stan Glassman (no web site).

G o o g l e's cache of mandarin design
Get the Google Toolbar for your IE browser. It tells you the page rank of every page you visit, allows quick searching, and other amazing things.
Visit Google Zeitgeist for search patterns, trends, and surprises according to Google. For example, the Top 10 Gaining Queries for the week ending April 1st is as follows:
dudley moore
halle berry
jedi knight 2
osterkartent
israel
queen mother
milton berle
irs
billy wilder
holi greetings

Some are obvious, some are odd.
The declining queries for the same time period are oscars
presa canario
marla hanson
gareth gates
champions league
jennifer connelly
hepatitis c
ice age
denque

Okay, so some I get and others are just odd to me.
Kill the Gator
If you have the Gator you probably want to know how to get rid of him. He's a popup that pretends he will help you :). It helps him pop up irritating windows and suggestions about other sites to visit. We provide intructions on how to Kill the Gator. Unfortunately, a lot of hits to this page are coming from those trying to find the cheats for a Playstation game. Heck, I didn't even know there was another Gator that needed to be killed. We don't do Playstation. So, to our accidental tourists we apologize for taking your time.
The best things in life really are free! Check out www.w3schools.com for tutorials on HTML, JavaScript, and more.
CaptionMachine.com is the best blog that we have seen. It's fun, fresh content daily including your captions added to phots they have posted. Or, you can post your own photo. Check it out. This is a must see for creativity. Do it! Art in the Fast Lane is our new upcoming section. Otherwise, there is no news worth reporting today. Yes, we are still tweaking the blog. Maybe we should just select an existing template.... a good one? There are some great CSS only templates out there we can use. Blogging sites look very professional. Some really cool stuff is being created by the bloggers.
Search Engines
Will TEOMA make it?

Computerworlds says that Teoma.com, a new search engine that went live today, should provide a boost to parent company Ask Jeeves Inc. and could provide a serious challenger to Google Inc.'s dominance of the market.

Are we listed in this new search engine? Do we need to submit our site to yet another search engine? Did a quick check on our name and can see that Mandarin Design is there and is listed under various keyword searches.

I don't think the market analysts on on track with this one. It's not an easy name to remember or spell T-E-O-M-A.

Sound Warning...

Oops, turn your Volume down

By popular demand we are demonstrating how to play sound files. You will see the copy and paste code if you scroll down this page. And, if you stay here long enough the music will stop.


We published a new article today Art at Internet Speed and let 1st Page 2000 clobber it in the process. How did that happen? It's a good free editor that doesn't usually get in the way but it does mysterious things sometimes. It actually put the C:\ prefix in the code to be transferred? How? Why? Go figure. There are a number of problems with 1st Page but it will do in a pinch. Intentionally not linking you to it since it may cause more confusion than help at times.