A future perspective on photos

This post is not about web development, but more about what we'll soon have on the web.

My wife recently returned from Malta and she brought with her quite some number of photos. They're all nice but to imagine exactly how this place looks is a bit hard. For example to fully enjoy the view from a balcony - you have to take multiple photos and then make panoramic stitching.

Well, this site looks very promising to put a new perspective - almost like being there. Still in technology preview but you can already see. What it does is it takes bunch of photos from one place and recognizes which is located where (according to common objects on photos) - and then you can view the photos in 3-D space!

 

A cheap alternative to travel ;)

More than 2 columns in SharePoint Data view

If you insert a SharePoint Data View Web Part (DVWP) in a page using FrontPage or SharePoint Designer, you have some nice layout options. A lot of times I like to make a web gallery using picture library, but the DVWP has only a two-column layout. If you'd like to have more columns (for this example, let's make 4 columns), here's an easy way.

1. When selecting layout of DVWP (in FrontPage select smart tag and click Style, in SharePoint Designer select Smart tag and select Change Layout), chose the two column layout:
   
   
   
2. Next in source code look for mod 2 (you'll find 2 occurences)


3. Replace the number 2 in both of those occurences with the number of columns you wish (for our example we'll make mod 4)
   
4. At the end change or remove the width property of the table cell, which is set to 50%
   - Using tag selector select the element which is holding table with details
   



5. Delete or correct the "Width" attribute, because you have more columns and each can't have 50% of width.

And there you have it. You're in control of columns now :-)

Free Tools Galore pt. 9 - For those who believe in writing code

The cleanest way to build a website is to write clean code. Like that you control the components that usually graphical editors take over. Even though I like the graphicak WYSWYG editing, sometimes I simply have to dig into code and make manual corrections.

If notepad is just a bit not enough for you (like for me), here is an improved version:

Notepad++

Just check the list of features... Tabs, Color coding, auto completion, Code grouping, Macro recording and playback, bookmarks, zoom, multiple views, etc, etc, etc. The guys really made a great product.

When you install the program, it can even replace the default program for viewing source code on the Internet. So super. Next time Internet Explorer will tell me in which line of code I made an error, I'll be able to find it!

Just check the list of languages it has color coding for... The menu doesn't fit in a screen! :)



(in the screenshot above I'm checking a website template from OSWD (I know they write good code)).

Bigger, nicer, on steroids - new Office online

Looks like I'm starting to repeat myself... Some time ago I was posting about a very good place to find beautiful pictures and photos for your website - Office online. I have to make again the post about it, because it deserves it. It's renewed - bigger, better, nicer and looks like with a lot more contents.

Thumbs up!