Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

Are you irritated with the line spacing in Word 2007? Here is a simple solution:

If you want to have the “2003” look on your 2007 document, select your text, go from the Home Tab to the Paragraph group and open the dialog box launcher.

This dialog box is divided into four sections. Look at the third section named Spacing.

Look for the field called After and you will see the number 10 there by default. This means that Word is adding 10 points of space after each line of text. Reduce this number by pressing and dragging that number 10 and inserting a 0, (or use the downward pointing arrow to the right of that field until the number is 0).
Also, look to the right and you will see Line Spacing. Click on the dropdown and change the spacing from multiple to single. This will solve your problem for this document only.

If you want this to be your default for all of your Word documents, click the Default button at the bottom of this dialog box.

Another way to do the same thing is to go to the Change Styles button from the Styles group (Home tab) and choose Style Set>Word 2003. This will change the settings for your document without having to select the text first.

Object Styles in InDesign are used to package a set of options for an object.  Things like the stroke, the fill, the text wrap, and other things that we can apply to an individual frame.  Styles are great, because they allow us to apply the same style over and over again, which gives us consistency.

But there’s another way we can use them.  Rather than package all the styles we need at once, we can select individual traits that we want to apply, without removing the formatting we’ve already applied.

In this video tutorial, I will show you how to create a style like this.  In this case, we will create a style that rounds the corners of a text frame, without altering any of the other formatting.  That way, you can quickly and easily round the corners of any frame. This method can be applied to anything you can control with an Object Style.  Try it out for yourself!

Creating an Object Style in InDesign

Has Word cooperated with you when you are creating a list? Notice below that when a parenthesis follows the number, Word will align the numbers on the left hand side:

8) apples

9) pears

10) bananas

What if you would like the numbers lined up on the right side instead? Here’s how you would like it to look:

 8) Apples

 9) Pears

10) Bananas

Here is how you do it: 

1) On the Home Tab, go to the paragraph group and click on the option for numbers on the top row of buttons. 

2) Choose the option for numbers with a parenthesis (second option on the first row under Numbering Library).

3) Go back to the same option, clicking on the dropdown arrow.

4) Go to the bottom of the menu and choose Define New Number Format.

5) Under the Number Format section, look for the Alignment choice.

6) Click on the dropdown and choose Right.



Now begin typing your list.

This is one of the easiest web accessibility guidelines to implement. Though this is easy to code, creating a proper alt tag is not always the easiest thing to do. (And yes, technically the Alt tag is actually an attribute of an element, but the more common phrase will be used here.)

Alt tag basics

The Alternative tag, commonly referred to as the “alt” tag, is an attribute of the image tag (“img”) in HTML. Alt tags are read by most browsers. They provide an alternative text description for images or other elements so that those using screen readers have access to information conveyed by graphics. Also, if the image doesn’t load or only loads partially, the alt tag provides information conveyed by the graphic.

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Welcome to the second installment of The Green Bar of Go. In this post, I will discuss how to use a part of Cascade Server not covered in the Cascade Server: Site Managers workshop: Asset Factory Plugins. Asset Factory Plugins are a way for Site Managers to create Asset Factories that will perform specific tasks when a user submits the form. For example, when a Page Asset Factory (like our new page factory from the workshop) is submitted, if the user forgets to change the system name, Cascade Server will change the name automatically to an SEO compliant name.

This post will explain what the built-in Plugins do and how to use one of them. Check it out after the jump!
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Web authors have a wide variety of HTML or XHTML tags to work with when creating Web pages. In addition to common tags like <p>, <ul> or <strong>, there are lesser-known, but still useful ones such as those below:

There are dozens of similarly useful and perfectly valid elements available for use. Some of them, such as <code>, have a default style in most browsers (<code> will render in a monospaced font). Others such as <acronym> have no default style. However, you can use the tags as hooks to add your own style by redefining the look of the element using CSS.

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When I teach a workshop on Adobe Dreamweaver or Fireworks, I’m always amazed by a question that participants don’t ask. (No, not: “Why can’t you and the laser pointer get along?”  That question, I’m afraid, has no answer.)

The question that’s never asked is: “How do you come up with these colors?“  And by “these colors”, I’m referring to the 6-digit hexadecimal codes that we use throughout the Dreamweaver and Fireworks workshops to designate specific colors for display on the web:

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Everyone who has used a computer for analytical purposes has at one time heard the expression “Garbage In – Garbage Out”.  It might have been stated, “The analysis is only as accurate as the data.”  In either case it emphasizes that the calculations in Excel are only as reliable as the data that was entered in the first place. The data entry process is vulnerable to errors caused by tedium, repetition and perhaps similarity of entries. 

When it is necessary to enter large amounts of data, it is good practice to have the data checked for accuracy.  This can be done immediately by the person entering the data, or entries can be verified by a different person.  Wouldn’t it be convenient to have a tool that could provide immediate feedback of the data entered? 

Excel provides just such a tool that enables a quick and easy double-check of entries before you continue working with the data. It is the Text to Speech feature. Through this tool, Excel can read back to you what you have typed while you check that audio against your original data. (more…)