When creating your own navigation system for your web site, Spry is a remarkable tool that organizes and breaks down the entire structure simply and easily. The Spry system makes it so easy to go back and change the structure and layout of different navigation elements with a system of menus and submenus, so that you don’t have to mess with a ton of code. Sometimes, it is easier for us to work visually to create our designs, and Dreamweaver, along with the Spry system, helps us to do that.

For the example, we are going to create and edit a menu that has submenus that go 3 deep. This makes it easy to organize a lot of information quickly, and categorize your topics in the structure of a tree’s branches. We will talk more about that later.

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For those of you that love good plugins, Knoll light factory is a very cool time saving addition to After Effects. The new edition works with CS5, and has a few new features as well. if you own an older version, you can upgrade for a reasonable price of $99, but if you are a first-time buyer, the price tag is $399.

The reason that Knoll Light Factory is so popular is that it renders light realistically, interacting with your view like a real light source would with a camera lens. John Knoll, the co-creator of Photoshop and the guy that brought you some of the most amazing effects in Start Wars, created these plugins to save you time and give you dimension to your projects.

The new features you will find in this edition are:

New Lens … Read More »

I got this question yesterday, and thought that it would be a good topic for the day. If you want to fit text to a certain shape, you have a couple of options.

The first option is to do what is called an envelope distort. First, you make your shape, and then take the type tool and type out whatever your message is. Select the shape and make sure it is in front by selecting Object> Arrange> Bring to Front. Then, choose Object> Envelope Distort> Make with Top Object. As you can see, your typeface has now become distorted in order to fit the contour of your shape. This would be used more for funky and wild type, as in a title, etc. This option will remain editable as well, so if you need to change the word or phrase, simply … Read More »

This is a neat trick that will give you some really interesting and extremely colorful results. To start off, create a new document. It can be any dimension that you want, and click ok. Mine is set at 1024 x 768. Then, create a new layer and grab the gradient tool. Go up to the gradient preset and choose the yellow, violet, orange, and blue gradient. The key to this trick is to set the blend mode of the gradient itself to difference.

With your gradient tool still selected, click and drag multiple times across your canvas. Be leery of creating obvious bands of colors, but if it starts to get that way, just change the directions in which you are clicking and dragging. In other … Read More »