Pat Howe's Blog

Linking from small places on small devices with InDesign

I thought I would share something that I find useful when creating InDesign documents with links in them for use on mobile devices as they are not always very easy to select. An example is a word in a block of text or a very small image. It is very easy to increase the selection area to more than just the hyperlink item. Here I explain how to do it in a few simple steps so you can still provide a reasonably sized navigation point from a very small place

Streamlining application development requirements

It has been some time but this article follows on from my previous article about breaking an application development project into several phases; introducing phases to an application development project. In this article I will cover how to break the phase or whole project (if it is small enough not to require breaking down into phases), estimating the amount of work and prioritising the order of that work. First up, the project or phase needs to be broken up into tasks that can be described by no more than three

Getting started with HTML5 canvas

A while back I gave an HTML5 overview with the intention of writing more about each of those areas. So this is one of those and is dedicated to the HTML5 canvas. It is quite long as I wanted to cover as many features as I could in the one article. As the canvas relies on JavaScript, I’ll also cover that as well as the basics you need for the HTML5 page structure. The HTML5 canvas allows you to specify a portion of a web page that you can draw

Adding a hyperlink image button to your Outlook signature

I was asked a while back “how to make a graphic in an Outlook signature into a hyperlink button” so I showed the requestor but I wondered if others might find it useful so I thought I would share how to do this here. In preparation you will need a button image and a website or web page address. In this example I am going to add my Linked-in profile, “http://www.linkedin.com/in/howepat” to my signature using a “View My Profile” image (below). If you go to the File tab in Microsoft

Internal linking to text areas within an InDesign document

Yesterday I was asked how to create an internal hyperlink to a piece of text on a page within InDesign from a graphic. I’ve done it many times before but it had completely gone out of my head until I sat down in front of InDesign myself. I figured I would create a short article as a reminder to me but also if anyone else is interested. I’ll use a similar example as I was asked about yesterday. We had a page with a graphic that looked button-like but was

Featured articles and serials throughout 2014

As the year closes I’ve been looking back at the articles that I have written in 2014 and I think there are some that are worth mentioning again. So in this final piece for 2014 I’m going to briefly cover some of the previous content found in other articles. In this way I hope to remind myself where I’m up to in certain article serials that will continue in 2015 and to make others aware of some of the things they may have missed. I won’t cover every article or

Preparing to move your Excel modeller into a web application

Over the years I’ve seen some really great modellers that have been built using Microsoft Excel. I also get told quite often that it would be great if these modellers could be delivered online. Of course you can share them online with other Excel users either by email or by using a download link on a website, but quite often these modellers contain code and users don’t always trust macro-enabled workbooks. What, of course, they really want is to deliver the same Excel experience online and so they have two

Does writing notes help you to remember?

The other day I was thinking about the reason that I always (well mostly) write things down. For example, I have three items to get at the shops and I write them down on a sticky note or a notepad page, put it in my pocket and go to the shops. I hardly ever never need to look at that short shopping list as it is already in my memory. In the past, I’ve maybe though I need to get these three things at the shops and by the time

Latest news on general availability of new domain extensions

Welcome to my latest domain update with separate listings for those domain extensions available to purchase now under general availability (GA) and those that are at an earlier stage where you cannot purchase but may register an interest in them for when they do become available. Some sites call this pre-ordering or pre-registering but there is no guarantee that you will get the domain names that you show an interest in. There are many places where you can buy or attempt to register an interest in the new top level

Introducing phases to an application development project

I wanted to write about some of the ways application development has changed over the years. In this first article, I will cover the phasing of application development against more traditional delivery approaches such as waterfall and agile. It covers the reasons why you and your application development effort should be adopting a phased approach too and I will follow up with more articles on refining this approach. There is nothing actually wrong with the waterfall or agile approaches if you have the right environment to make them work. This

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