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It was a pleasant surprise to know about the release of new WordPress 2.6 today, almost the month ahead of schedule. WordPress is one of the most popular and most powerful free CMSes (content management systems) which allows tracking changes to every post and page and easy posting from wherever you are on the web. There are a lot of great new features in WordPress 2.6. Among them are:

- wiki-like tracking of edits

- revamped Press This! posting bookmarklet

- speeding up admin interface by means of Google Gears

- theme previews

- image captions and revamped image control

- multiple plugins management

- word count and many more.

Watch this brief video tour of version 2.6 created by WordPress team and download your WordPress 2.6 here.

Creating calendar grids... Do you think it's something boring? Or that all calendar grids are almost identical? No, they aren't. Each of them has its own face and character. Calendar grid can be strict or merry, dull or bright, plain or refined - just like people around you. How to create a calendar with its own vivid face? Try Calendar Wizard - a professional utility for creating printable calendar grids, calendar templates, and grids for inserting into the documents of various formats. It allows creating any type of calendar grid you need: horizontal or vertical grid, multilingual grids, calendar grids with or without week numbering, monthly and yearly calendars, grids with empty places for your notes - and many more. You can create personalized calendars in a matter of minutes and save them in 9 different formats. Try Calendar Wizard for free or buy this helpful calendar creator right now.

Having installed my newest Firefox 3.0, the first thing to do for me was finding and installing all my favorite Firefox add-ons compatible with version 3.0. I've made a list of my top 10 Firefox 3.0 add-ons. These extensions are the essential part of my everyday web surfing and I wanna thank Mozilla team for the fast add-ons upgrade - almost every of my favorite add-ons already are FF 3.0 compatible. I tried to be honest and show both advantages and disadvantages of each plug-in, so that you may choose the best ones for you. So, read my list and let me know what add-ons you use, I'll appreciate your comments.

Downloads

Video DownloadHelper add-on

+ An easy and user-friendly download helper for embedded video. Great for downloading web videos from YouTube-like sites. It works for YouTube, MySpace, Google videos, Porkolt, Break.com, DreamHost, iFilm, DailyMotion and hundreds of other websites. It helps in downloading video, audio, image and swf files. While surfing the Web, you'll see the DownloadHelper's icon become animated. It means that the plug-in has found downloadable files on web page. Just click an item in the menu and the desired file is downloaded.

- The inactive and active buttons have different sizes. This changes the toolbar height and is distracting. DownloadHelper can't work with a download accelerator, for example DownThemAll - the next of my favorite Firefox add-ons.

You can download Video DownloadHelper here

DownThemAll! add-on

+ Download manager and accelerator which increases download speed up to 400%. It's a perfect extension for multiple downloads because it allows downloading all the links contained in a web page. Allows to pause downloads, close Firefox and resume downloads when needed. To get exactly what you need, you can set the criteria of links to be downloaded.

- The feature to download everything on a web page is both advantage of this add-on and its imperfection. Looking at the huge list of all the links, pictures, text boxes, etc. from the page, you hardly understand what you really need. There is no auto-resume feature, so you have to resume downloads yourself. Duplicate downloads is not detected by this plug-in.

You can download DownThemAll! here

Uploads

Firefox Universal Uploader (fireuploader) add-on

+ This Firefox extension allows you to upload files, photos, videos to Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Box.net(1GB of free space), Facebook, Webshots, OmniDrive, SME Storage and Google Docs. It lets to upload multiple files even to websites with upload limitations. Files with one extension can be uploaded to multiple websites using a single interface. You see both local folders and remote folders (like in FTP-client) and can upload files with one mouse click. Also, you can work with multiple accounts independently.

- When too much files are uploaded, some of them can be dropped. But it's easily mended by clearing finished uploads and retrying to upload dropped files.

You can download Firefox Universal Uploader here

Tabs

Undo Closed Tabs Button add-on

+ This Firefox plug-in allows you to undo closed tabs via a toolbar, tab bar button, the right-click context menu or keyboard shortcut (CTRL+SHIFT+Z) without going to History -> Recently Closed Tabs.
Clicking the image one time restores the last closed tab, two times - the last two closed tabs and so on. Clicking the drop down arrow brings up the list of last previously closed tabs where you can select which one you need to undo.

- Ctrl+shift+z hotkey in the last version is not very handy for me. Alt+z (as in the previous versions) was much handier.

You can download Undo Closed Tabs Button here

ColorfulTabs add-on

+ This Firefox extension colors every tab in a different color. Your tabs become easier to distinguish and more visually appealing. This add-on is great for everybody who hates boring interface.

- The last version doesn't allow to customize colors to a particular URL and set the desired color for the active tab. Sometimes it's quite difficult to recognize the active tab among the other colorful tabs. Also, you can't change text color.

You can download ColorfulTabs here

Privacy & Security

Adblock Plus add-on

+ I'm always very surprised hearing about online ads and banners. I have forgotten what they are, thanks to Adblock. This plug-in really helps to make all commercial communication disappear. It comes with a predefined huge collection of filters and if the url to be loaded matches any of that, it does not let the browser make a request for it. You can block the particular banner (right-click it and choose Adblock from the menu), block all the similar banners (using star symbols instead of parts of the banner address) or use one of predefined filters.

- The only problem I have is that some flash files don't load and look like blank spots.

You can download Adblock Plus here

Bookmarks

Taboo add-on

+ As I always have tons of tabs opened and not always have time to read them all before shutting down, this Firefox extension is one of my favorite bookmark managers. It allows saving tabs I want to return to later. It also saves session state information, thus I return to the exact scroll location of the page where I left off and have form fields I have been filling in saved too. Saved tabs are displayed as snaphots and can be viewed in a grid format or on a calendar. Taboo has two buttons - one to mark tabs and another to view snapshots of saved tabs.

You can download Taboo here

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer add-on

+ Excellent Firefox plug-in for keeping track of bookmarks on multiple computers. Install Foxmarks on each computer to have all your bookmarks synchronized. To use Foxmarks from any computer and manage your bookmarks everywhere, log in to my.foxmarks.com.

- Foxmarks doesn't support Firefox profiles

You can download Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer here

Web development

Firebug add-on

+ Must have Firefox add-on for every web developer (and not only web developer) which lets to edit, debug and monitor CSS, HTML and JavaScript in any web page. It's a great tool for web page analysis and development. Firebug monitors network activity, finds the errors and gives your complete information about them.

- The last version hasn't one button disableenable feature.

You can download Firebug here

IE Tab add-on

+ Useful Firefox plug-in for embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. This is a great tool for web developers because it allows to display pages in IE without switching browsers. Even though I love Firefox, I have to acknowledge the fact that some web pages are displayed in IE better than in FF. This extension lets me to have all sites displayed correctly without opening IE.

- Flashblock add-on incompatibility

You can download IE Tab here

What is a flash chart or flash graph?

Chart or graph is data represented in a pictorial form. Flash chart is usually created to be published to the web – that’s why it’s also called web chart. Web chart is data represented in a form of flash “movie” (.swf file) that allows not only representing data as a drawing but also adding various animation effects, interactivity and other functions. Swf file format is ideal for flash graphing because it’s intended to be small enough for publishing to the web and it allows graph animation.

When do you need to use flash charts or flash graphs?

When you have a large amount of numeric data to publish to the web, chart in flash is perfect for its representation. When you need to enhance your site with an eye candy and give some information at the same time, bright animated flash chart is exactly what you need. When your data is dynamic and should be changed from time to time, live flash chart is the best solution because it allows to change data without changing anything in your web page.

Why do you need flash chart or flash graph to represent your data?

Charts are comprehended by the reader over 80 times faster than data. Chart makes relationship between different parts of the data obvious from the first sight. Flash charts are colorful and eye-catching while data represented as a plain text or data table is rather boring. Flash chart attracts your visitors while text data frightens them off.

Where are flash charts or flash graphs used?

Flash graphs are used everywhere where statistical data needs to be represented in the most comprehensible way. For example, web charts are perfect for:

- financial reports and business monitoring;

 

How to create and publish flash chart or flash graph?

To create flash graph without wasting time for coding, you need a special graph making software. Such a utility allows to make a graph without any programming skills and publish it to website with ease. Try Animated Chart software for chart making. This flash charting component will help you to create a flash chart of any type, customize every chart item with some mouse clicks, save chart as swf, html or image file and even create a real time web chart based on live data from any source. To publish your flash chart to a web page, you need only to upload swf to your server and paste html code into the code of your web page. Animated Chart generates web ready flash graphs and gives you both swf chart and html code to be inserted into your page. Download free trial version of Animated Chart software right now and try yourself in graph making! To learn more about the software, to see chart examples or to read tutorials and tips for making flash charts and graphs, visit Animated Chart website.

Happy chart making!

Do you want to create your own calendars? to make printable calendars of whatever size and color? to create swf, pdf, jpeg, html, txt, etc. calendars? Are you interested in calendar creation software which will allow you to make calendar in a few easy steps? Visit the renewed website of Calendar Wizard. Here you can download the newest, recently released version of Calendar Wizard software. Calendar Wizard 3.0 is a smart calendar maker which allows creating both yearly calendar and monthly calendar, customizing every parameter from font and cell color to text orientation, marking any event on the calendar, creating multi-lingual calendars and much more. The new version of Calendar Wizard has the new plug-ins for making swf calendars and calendars in Windows metafile format, supports Corel Draw X4 and has some new features for creating html calendars. Whether you are a professional designer or ordinary user, you'll find everything you need to make your calendar. Visit Calendar Wizard homepage, download free trial version or buy the software and enjoy this powerful calendar creator.



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Everyone knows this annoying Internet Explorer's "click to activate" which makes you click "Allow blocked content" every time a website tries to run active content on your computer. Yes, it's really great for protecting your computer, but when it comes to embedding flash content into web pages, this IE's requirement seems to be a real problem.

For example, when you create a flash sound player and embed it into your web page, do you want your website visitors have to make additional clicks to run your content? Of course, you don't want, because it's obvious that the more clicks are needed to achieve a website, the less people want to achieve it at all. As a result, you lose your potential visitors and they lose possibility to learn what you can offer them.

Going into the technical details, whether "click to activate" requirement appears or not - depends on how flash content was embedded into a web page. If controls are loaded directly in HTML, Internet Explorer will block them. And if they are loaded via JavaScript, the content will not be blocked. So, the easiest solution for removing IE's "click to activate" requirement is embedding flash content using JavaScript.

If you have no idea about what is the difference between HTML and JavaScript and the previous paragraph is double Dutch for you - never mind. You still can embed your audio in the best way. The only thing you need is software for creating audio flash players which doesn't require any programming skills. Some days ago, FeatherySoft Company released the new versions of its Fun SoundPlayer Maker and Flash WAmp (read the press release). They use SWFObject 2.0 - one of the most optimized and flexible flash player embed method. One small JavaScript file included with these flash player creators solves the problem of blocking flash content. You simply choose sound player's design and tracks to play - and get web ready swf file which won't be blocked by any web browser.

Download free trial versions of Fun SoundPlayer Maker (to create custom flash sound players) or Flash WAmp (to convert any Winamp skin into a flash music player).

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Slideshow is a series of still images delivered one after another. Slide shows in their original meaning were the series of slides shown using slide projectors. But in recent years slideshow is mainly associated with computers. Slideshows have become the important part of web design. It's not surprising because slideshow is a great way to turn common digital images into an eye-catching "movie". Nevertheless, slideshow can be not only eye candy. It can be a marketing tool, an educational method, a way to attract attention to one's blog or social network profile. And, of course, it remains one of the most popular ways to save memory about the brightest moments of life.

The main things you need to create your slideshow are a great idea, a batch of digital photos, sound track (either music or voice record) and a good slideshow creation software. Regardless of what your slideshow is designed for, your slideshow creator should have the following features:

· Slide transitions. This feature may be unnecessary for an educational slideshow, but if you create a slideshow for your blog or profile, slideshow of your child's birthday party or honeymoon - transition effects will be of great use. They make slideshow more vivid, add personality and dynamism to your "photo story".

· Text. Text comments, titles or even date the picture taken on give more details to a slideshow, especially if it has no voice comments. Maybe your wedding slideshow doesn't need titles on each slide, but it's difficult to imagine promotional or educational slideshows without a text.

· Hyperlinks. This feature is indispensable for creating promotional slideshows. For example, you create a slideshow of your company's products. It's great if you're able to assign hyperlinks which will redirect users to the products' web pages. As you see, it's better if your slideshow creator allows to assign not only a total URL to the whole slideshow, but also to assign different URLs to each slide.

· Navigation buttons. Great feature which can be of use for every slideshow type. It gives your audience more control for better perception of your slideshow content and for its convenience.

· Sound. Adding background sound is an important feature regardless of slideshow's aim. Event slideshows can't be perfect without a corresponding music, educational slideshows and business presentations are mainly accompanied with sound (e.g. voice comments).

· Timing control. Timing control means that your slideshow creation software allows you to control how long each slide displays. It's really necessary when you add a background sound with voice comments or narration. In this case timing control helps you to synchronize pictures with comments. Even if slideshow has no background sound, timing control is very useful - it enables you to show one image longer than another, choose how long a transition should last, etc.

· Speaking of web design, we must consider not only how to create a slideshow, but also how to embed it into a web page. Thus, your slideshow creator must allow both easy creating slideshow and easy publishing it to the Web. And its key feature is making web-ready slideshows which can be embedded in a web site without programming skills.

As an example of slideshow creator which has all these features and allows creating Flash slideshows and publishing them to the Web without Flash experience, try FlashSlider software. It has 110+ cool transition effects, allows adding titles, music and navigation buttons, assigning hyperlinks and much more. FlashSlider generates ready to publish swf files to simplify slideshow embedding. Download free trial right now and enjoy creating your own slideshows.

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Wallpaper manager is a program which helps you to manage your desktop wallpapers, change them automatically at specified time intervals, make background images fit your desktop perfectly, etc. If you want to change your desktop look and feel every day or on every startup but have no time to choose another wallpaper each time, wallpaper manager can do that for you. If you have tons of digital images and need to organize them into handy lists of backgrounds to choose from, wallpaper manager will be of use too. Looking for the best wallpaper manager, pay attention to the features which will help you to manage your desktop backgrounds effectively:

· Wallpaper changer. Automatic wallpaper changer is a key feature of wallpaper manager. Also, make sure that wallpaper manager has an option of random wallpaper changer.

· Multiple wallpaper lists. This option is really helpful, especially for different users of one computer. A perfect wallpaper manager must allow easy editing and changing wallpaper lists.

· Changing wallpaper on the fly. You may want to change your desktop background at any moment. Not to waste time for opening program window, choose wallpaper manager which allows changing wallpapers using hotkeys or directly from tray or desktop menus.

· Image positioning. Great feature which enables you to set the position of background directly in wallpaper manager software. Good wallpaper managers usually offer more image positions than Windows does. Each of them has different benefits - one allows setting individual positions for each image, another provides image stretching without distortion to fit widescreen monitors, etc. Take it into consideration while choosing the software.

· Besides, you should check OS support and supported file formats to make sure that your wallpaper manager will meet your requirements.

Let's turn from theory to practice. What wallpaper manager can I recommend? I use Screen Calendar to manage my desktop backgrounds. Do you think I've mistaken because Screen Calendar is a calendar software, as its name says? No, I really mean this. Screen Calendar has all the features of wallpaper manager. First of all, it's a wallpaper changer which switches desktop background at specified time intervals (from 5 minutes to 1 month), on specified weekdays, at exact time or on every startup. Wallpapers can be chosen randomly from folder or from background list.

Screen Calendar has built-in background list editor, which allows you to create as many lists as you want with ease. Images can be previewed directly from editor that simplifies list editing very much. Program saves background list as a text file and allows editing existing text files. Each list is available for further use, so you can create different lists for different users or for different conditions and change them with a few mouse clicks.

Screen Calendar allows changing desktop wallpaper on the fly using tray menu (Screen Calendar's icon sits in system tray for easy access to all the options). Two mouse clicks or pressing a hotkey will switch your background at any moment.

Screen Calendar automatically makes background image aligned to certain place on a desktop, tiled or stretched to fit your screen. It may seem that all of these background positions are available in Windows's display properties, but Screen Calendar allows more options of image positioning. At first, it allows placing image not only in the center of your desktop but everywhere you need it to be. Also, Screen Calendar provides stretching image without distortion to fit any monitor, including widescreen. That's what you can't do with Windows.

Screen Calendar doesn't interfere with Windows themes and supports semi-transparent Windows's taskbar. Besides being a full-featured wallpaper manager, Screen Calendar is a full-functional desktop calendar with day scheduler, reminder, MS Outlook and iCalendar support.

So, that's why I use Screen Calendar. Download free trial version and make sure that it's a perfect wallpaper manager and calendar planner in one software.

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In general, flash sound player is used to embed audio in a web page. But there are different types of sound sources and, therefore, the types of web music players differ too. Depending of what the flash audio player will be used for, you can choose player type which will answer the purpose perfectly.

All sound sources used for flash music players can be divided into:

- External files

- Embedded sound

- Audio streaming

Players for both external files and embedded sound can have a preloader to provide a complete download before starting playback. They can also provide real-time playing mode which means that playback starts as soon as a user triggers it without waiting for a complete download. So, choose what is more important for you - to let your visitors hear sound as soon as it's possible (in real-time mode) or to be sure they'll hear all you need without interruptions (with a preloader). Also, take into account that embedded sound means only one sound file included with swf (file containing the player). Player with an embedded sound is easier to publish so it's the perfect choice when you need to embed only one song, sound or voice message into your web page. And if you want to use more than one sound files, create player using external files. Such players usually have Next, Previous, Play, Pause buttons, voice control and seeking bar, so they allow your visitors to control playback and enjoy the music while staying at your web page.

Audio streaming sounds like a real-time mode because it also means playing sound without a complete download. Nevertheless, this method differs from real-time very much. The main difference is that in case of streaming audio, no data is saved on your computer - it's just buffered for a few seconds before you can hear it. This means you can't rewind, repeat listening, etc. You just hear sound arriving (or streaming) at your computer. The best example for audio streaming is online radio. Live broadcast can never be downloaded completely so the only way to listen to it from your computer is audio streaming. Of course, flash sound players with audio streaming support are mainly used for radio streaming.

It's great to have software for creating flash audio players which allow making any type of web music player. One of the most functional tools for creating flash players is Fun SoundPlayer Maker. Extensive templates library offers you templates of any player's type. Small buttons with embedded sound, full-functional players with multi tracks support or flash radio for audio streaming - choose what you need. Also, pay your attention to Flash WAmp - this program allows converting any original Winamp skin into both flash mp3 player and flash radio player for a website.

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Flash charting software is a tool for easy creating and publishing charts in flash. As I often need to create dynamic flash charts and publish them to Web, I've tried almost every flash chart maker I've come across. And now I want to offer you reviews of four of my favorite softwares for creating animated flash graphs. I won't grade their features as in my feature comparison of web music players. Also, I won't say what charting program is better or worse. I just want you to know what I like or don't like about each of this programs for flash graphing so that you may take your choice easier.


Animated Chart is a powerful tool for creating static or dynamic flash charts.

What's great:

· Every chart element can be modified directly from the main program window: there are menus for choosing element, customizing it, editing data source. These menus are always active but they aren't interfering with the perception of chart preview. If it's easier for you to modify chart using toolbar, you can close the menus to see only the chart preview stretched to the size of the program window

· Chart type can be changed easily on every stage of chart making

· Each item is fully customizable

· Intuitive GUI

· The value of each column appears when the user moves the mouse over the column

· Source data can be imported directly from text or data files or entered manually

· Chart can be saved as image, SWF, HTML or Projector file

· Data can be exported to CLV or XML

What's especial:

· Radar chart type

What can be better:

· When choosing preset color scheme to load, you can't see its preview and can only guess what scheme it is


rChart - tool for easy and rapid creation of nice-looking flash graphs and charts.

What's great:

· Plenty of ready-to-use chart styles and ability to customize these styles to your liking

· Chart type can be changed on every stage of chart making

· Data can be imported from any ODBC data source, from a text file, from Windows clipboard, and from .fcd files

· Chart properties sheet allows to adjust any chart item directly in the main program window

· Chart can be saved as an image file, SWF, HTML

· Chart can be added to PowerPoint slide directly from the program

What's especial:

· You can import audio to add background sound of voice explanations

· You can assign URL to your chart elements to generate web content easily

What can be better:

· In horizontal bar charts, 3D effect makes bars look as if they begin at -1 point instead of 0 point


AmiChart - user friendly and easy to use charting software.

What's great:

· Wizard-based interface are the friendliest for novices in chart making

· Each chart style is fully customizable

· Source data can be imported from text or data files, copy-pasted from spreadsheets or entered by hand

· The value of each column appears when the user moves the mouse over the column

· Chart can be saved as SWF and HTML

What's especial:

· You can preview your chart in a browser

What can be better:

· The number of available chart types is miserable in comparison with other graphing programs - line, bar and pie charts

· Chart can't be saved as an image file


Swiff Chart - smart design tool for creating charts in flash.

What's great:

· A huge collection of available chart styles which are easy customizable

· Chart type can be changed on every stage of chart making

· Intuitive and friendly GUI

· Source data can be imported from text or Excel files or typed manually

· Chart can be saved as a Flash movie or as an image

What's especial:

· A nifty combination of step-by-step chart making and handy menus on the main window's size

· Chart can be previewed in a browser on every stage of chart creation

What can be better:

· Chart can't be saved as a HTML file


So, choose what you like the most, visualize your data with one of these great flash charting softwares and publish your swf chart to make your website more attractive and eye catching.
Happy chart making!

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