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I have been asked many times, “How do you make those cool graphics that look like slide shows?”  Well, if you have Adobe Photoshop, then you have found the answer.  If you don’t have Photoshop, you can purchase it here.

1. Open Photoshop CS3

2. Click on the ‘File’ menu button  from the top menu bar.

3. Select ‘Scripts’ > ‘Load Files Into Stack…’

4. Click the ‘Browse’ button and select your images.

5. When you have selected all of the frames or images that you want to load into this animated gif, click the ‘OK’ button.

6. Once the file is finished loading the layers, select the ‘Window’ menu button from the top menu bar.

7. Click the ‘Animation’ option in the ‘Window’ drop down menu.

8.  Click the icon that looks like  and select ‘Make Frames From Layers’

9. Please take note:  there are 2 different views of this step, you need to be in the frame view.  To be sure that you are in this view, make sure the icon in the lower right corner of the Animation window looks like

10. Set the time on each frame by clicking the down arrow below each frame image in the Animation window.

11.  You can test the speed by clicking play at the bottom of this window.

12.  Once satisfied with the speed settings, go to the ‘File’ drop down menu at the top of CS3 and click on ‘Save For Web and Devices’

13.  Make sure in your save settings, it is saving as a gif file or your animations will not work.

14.  If the file size is too big, check your save settings for unnecessary additions, remove them and continue save.

Here is my finished example:

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I have been looking around for deals on Adobe® products so I could upgrade my version of CS3 for CS4, and have come across some pretty awesome deals from Adobe®. I found a page on the Adobe site that has all kinds of deals.

The first one of interest is where you can save 30% on the purchase of a full or upgrade version of Adobe Photoshop® Lightroom® 2 software along with a full or upgrade version of any CS4 edition. I recommend this product to anyone who is trying to use Photoshop with their camera.

You can also save $20 on Photoshop Elements 8 or Premiere Elements 8 with a mail-in rebate or save $30 on Photoshop Elements 8 & Premier Elements 8 with a mail-in rebate. These are 2 pretty good deals, the down side is you have to wait for the check to come in the mail.

One more in store here where you can save $20 instantly. When you purchase the full version of Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac or Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows® along with a full or upgrade version of Acrobat® 9 Pro Extended, Acrobat 9 Pro, or Acrobat 9 Standard, you can save the $20. This seems like a great deal for someone who has not purchased Elements in the past.

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So a client wants to preview the changes that I just made to a site, and they browse but don’t see the changes. What happened to all that work?

First things are first – did the file get saved and uploaded to the site properly? Yes, so then what? My next question is always “W Most times, they have no idea what private data is or at the least, have no idea that it is affecting their preview.

What is a Cache?  Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

In computer science, a cache (“cash”) is a collection of data duplicating original values stored elsewhere or computed earlier, where the original data is expensive to fetch (owing to longer access time) or to compute, compared to the cost of reading the cache.

In other words, a cache is a storage area where data that is accessed a lot is stored for faster loading time and/or quicker access to things.  In a way, it’s your browser’s memory and can hold old/out dated versions of things unless it is properly maintained.   Every browser has this feature and it is enabled by default, but clearing it is not.  This must be done manually.

How do you clear your browsing data?  Depending on your browser type, follow the instructions below.

1. Internet Explorer (IE)

2. Mozilla FireFox

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This ‘How To is designed to help you clear your Internet Explorer (IE) cache only.

If this is not your browser click here.

1.  Open Internet Explorer (IE)

2.  Click on the ‘Tools’ drop down menu.  This can be located either at the top of the page (*2a) near the ‘File’ drop down or at the right of your page (*2b) near the ‘Safety’ or ‘Page’ drop down.

2a

2b

3.  Select the ‘Internet Options’ from the Drop Down.

4.  Within the ‘General’ tab, find the section that is titled ‘Browsing History’.

5.  Click the ‘Delete…’ button (*5a).

5a

6.  You want to make sure that the following is checked:  Temporary Internet files, Cookies, History, Form Data and InPrivate Filtering Data.

7.   Click the ‘Delete’ button.

Once these actions are performed, you can close out of your ‘Internet Options’ window and continue browsing.

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This ‘How To is designed to help you clear your Mozilla FireFox cache and Private Data only.

If this is not your browser click here.

1. Open Mozilla FireFox

2. Click on the ‘Tools’ drop down menu. This is located either at the top of the page (*2a) near the ‘File’ drop down.

2a

3. Select the ‘Clear Private Data..’ or ‘Clear Recent History..’ (depending on version) from the Drop Down.

4. When the box comes up, you want to make sure that the following is checked: Browsing History, Saved Form and Search History, Cache, Cookies and Offline Website Data. If there is a time range available, select ‘Everything’.

5. Click the ‘Clear Private Data Now’ button.

Once these actions are performed, the window will automatically close and you can continue browsing. Please note that you will need to sign in again to any sites that you were signed into prior to clearing your cache.

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I was curious today as to how Google Bots were seeing the SBTV.com website.  So, I got on Google and started searching for a free SEO testing tool.  I came across one that did require me to register, but it was worth it.  I found this site called SEOmoz that had a SEO test tool and so much more.  (I had some issues with their test tool and found another – I’ll tell you about that in a minute)  In the process I found this SEO Quiz – Show What You Know About SEO.  I am so happy I found this quiz.  It was 75 questions long and when it was over, I had all of the questions with my answer and the correct answer laid out for me with explanations. Unfortunately I only scored a 42% for now, but with these results, I can improve my score through reading more!  I am so excited to improve my SEO abilities.

As for their tool, when you are a free user on their site, you can only use the tool once per day.  I made a mistake the first time around and found out I could not re-do my crawl after without paying the $79 Pro Membership fee.  I did find a completely free tool though that worked well and gave me detailed results about my site.  Not quite as detailed as I would like, but hey it was free and I got my answers.  The site’s name is MetaMend and the SEO Test was a free SEO analysis of my site.  The results were fair and covered all of the major bases of SEO, so I do recommend it.  Plus it does not limit you to 1x per day.

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