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 GUEST BLOGGER: Susan Strandberg, Instructor
PowerPoint is such a wonderfully useful tool when we want to present information to a group of people. We work hard to create interesting and inventive presentations that will grab and hold our audiences attention. Many times, if we have to create a presentation quickly we try to reuse slides from previous presentations.
How do we go about putting a slide from an existing presentation into a different presentation?
Open the presentation that you are working on. On the Home tab in the Slides group click on the bottom half of the New Slide command.
At the bottom choose Reuse Slides. This will open the Reuse Slides task pane on the right-hand side of your PowerPoint window. Click on the Browse button and choose where you would like to look for the PowerPoint presentation that contains the slides that you want to reuse.
Once you have selected the presentation with the slides you want to reuse click on Open. You should now see the slides from that presentation in the Reuse Slides task pane. If you hover over the slides you will see a larger version of that slide so that it is easier to determine which slides you want to use.
If you click on a slide it will insert that slide into your current presentation while matching the theme/design that you have applied to your current presentation. If you want to retain the theme/design of the original presentation when inserting the slides you must check the box at the bottom of the Reuse Slides task pane that says Keep source formatting. That will insert the slide exactly as is in the original presentation.
When you are done inserting slides into your current presentation you can close out of the Reuse Slides task pane by clicking the x in the top, right corner.
Check out upcoming PowerPoint classes offered by New Horizons here.
 GUEST BLOGGER: Cristian Easterly, Applications Instructor If you have ever worked with HTML, you know the frustrations that come with setting up each page and making sure they all link together. I am going to show you how to understand how the pages link, and we will break down the line of code to understand what each part means.
The first thing we want to look at is the basic structure of the link itself.
<a href=”index.html”>Home</a>
The parts of the link that are highlighted in red are the tags. You need one at the beginning, and one at the end to close the tag. It will not work unless you close the tag. This specific tag is an anchor. It is working to make the pages link together.
<a href=”index.html”>Home</a>
This next highlighted part is the attribute. This attribute specifies the page that it will be linked to. So, if we were adding this line of code to our “About” page, this link would take us to the “Home” page (index.html).
<a href=”index.html”>Home</a>
Our “Home” page text file is called “index.html”. Make sure you put the exact name of the text file you are linking to or it will not recognize it and it will not work. Remember to surround it in quotes too.
<a href=”index.html”>Home</a>
For this example, I am linking my “About” page to my “Home” page. This line of code is in my “About” text file. The highlighted text is what will appear on my page when viewed in a browser. You can put anything you want here. Depending on how you style your links in your style sheet (CSS), the word “Home” will appear that way. None of the other text shown here will appear.
So there you have it! Linking your pages together is as simple as adding this line of code to your html text file and changing the names around. Now that you know all of the parts of this tag, it should make linking the pages together a little easier.
View upcoming HTML classes here.
 Mark Rosenberg, 5 Time MVP. MCP, MCTS, MCPD, MCT, STEP Last time I talked about Intellitrace in Visual Studio 2010. This time I am going to talk about MSDeploy. MSDeploy is a tool that will help you deploy web sites. It was originally included in IIS7 and used to help deploy a website over a server farm. The idea is you could copy the files and settings from an existing working web site from one web server, zip all that info up, take it to another server, and with one click (or a few clicks) install all the files and settings on the other server, including things like application pools and security settings from IIS.
Visual Studio 2010 has a front end to this tool and actually adds some functionality to it. You get to the Package/Publish Web Site tabs by right clicking on your web project and either selecting Properties or Package/Publish. You can choose to package all files in the project, or only the ones you need to run the web site. You can also include or exclude the files in the App_Data folder. There is a second tab called Deploy SQL which handles deploying a database. You can package (and the tool will create the scripts) to include an entire database and all its data or just the database schema, or you can create your own scripts to run against the database to update an existing schema.
Another feature in Visual Studio 2010 that is included in MSDeploy is multiple web.config files. You get one web.config file for each configuration you have defined. By default you get debug and release, but of course you can add additional configurations. You can have entirely different config files, or you can use a simple langage to change parts of the file.
Finally, just like in IIS, using MSDeploy from Visual studio 2010 can retrieve things like application pools from IIS and package them with your web site. All this information is put in a .zip file which you can then give to your IT staff to install in QA or Production.
View upcoming Visual Studio classes here.
GUEST BLOGGER: Cristian Easterly, Applications Instructor When designing a website, one of the most important things to keep in mind is, “Is this site easy to use?” There are a few ways to make sure your site will be easy to use for your target audience. First, you need to know your target audience. Who will be using your site? What will they be looking for? Is that thing they are looking for easy to find?
The next thing you want to think about is your color scheme. Are the colors too bright? Too dull? Do I have too many colors? There are a lot of ways to choose the color scheme for your site and a lot of helpful websites out there to help with this problem too. I know personally, I have spent hours finding the right color scheme for some of my sites. It can be a frustrating situation.
Even after you choose the right colors, you need the right font, layout, and navigation. The list goes on and on, but one thing you can do to make this all come together is keep things consistent. What does that mean? Don’t confuse your audience with a different layout, color scheme, and font choice for each page. They will find it hard to navigate through your site and they will leave.
When you start to design a website, the first step in the process (after brainstorming) is to create wireframes. You can do this on paper (graphing paper is best), or you can use a pixel based program on your computer. For this example, we will be using Adobe Photoshop CS5 to create a wireframe that stays consistent on each page.
Remember, your wireframe does not need color or pictures yet. The only thing you are doing here is planning out where all of your site elements will be. Here is an example of a wireframe for a website design:
You will notice that it is the most basic idea of what my site will look like. I used greyscale shapes and text to show where everything will be once I get to the designing phase. I put in photo placeholders so I can have an idea of what the final design will look like. I also added my navigation bar with my button placeholders. As a designer, you will start to see the final product as you move from this phase to the next. You will start to pick colors and font choices after each wireframe is designed. It is one step that will save you a lot of time.
As far as consistency goes, you will want to make sure most of these elements follow you from page to page. If this is my home page (the first page users will come to), then this will set the tone for the rest of the site. Users will get comfortable here and expect the same things to be on the next page they come to. The only things you will swap out are pictures and text (content).
The things that are circled in red should stay the same on every page. The user will get lost without these elements.
The first thing that is circled is my website title and logo. You want to remind the user where they are and show off that logo you spent hours working on. This is an easy way to keep your site design looking consistent. Again, it will make the user feel comfortable.
The next thing that is circled is the navigation. You never want to change the navigation. NEVER. If you move the navigation around on each page, the user will almost always get lost, get frustrated, and get out. This is another comfort issue that some designers forget. The user needs to know how to move from page to page. Even if the content changes, the navigation will always be there to help them out. Think of it like a tour guide for your website.
When designing a website, you can easily overwhelm yourself when you start thinking about all of the things you have ahead of you. Step one: breathe. Step two: think about your target audience. Step three: brainstorm and start wireframing those ideas out. Once you have the wireframes made, keep consistency in mind and start designing. Change the colors, add pictures and logos. Having the wireframe will keep you from losing your consistent design and keep you from losing users on your site.
Start creating your wireframes in Photoshop! View upcoming classes from New Horizons here.
Mark Rosenberg, 5 Time MVP. MCP, MCTS, MCPD, MCT, STEP
In this blog post I thought I would talk a little about one of my favorite features of Visual Studio 2010, Intellitrace. Intellitrace is debugging on steroids. In a regular debugging session you can see the values of variables at a certain time, but you can’t go backwards or see the state of the entire system. This means that some bugs cannot be reproduced.
With Intellitrace a log file is created that allows you to debug the file. This is similar to a dump but it has more information. When run inside Visual Studio it allows you to recreate (or at least see) the bugs that occurred on the other computer. An example of this that you might read a value from an XML file when the application starts that is used much later, and only on a limited number of code paths. If this value is not read it may cause no problems most of the time. If after some work you narrow down that the problem is that the value is not there you would still have to then add a breakpoint where the read occurs and see why it was not read. If your computer has the file but the other computer does not, that can add even more complexity to the debugging process. With Intellitrace you can load the log file that was made on the QA machine and immediately go back to where the file was read and see what the problem is.
Intellitrace is available only in the Ultimate edition of Visual Studio 2010, but works on C# and VB .NET code written for .NET versions 2.0 and up. Intellitrace does not support debugging in XBOX, script and Silverlight applications. While Intellitrace does not support debugging applications running on another computer and attached, it does support opening a log file created in Visual Studio on another computer. Intellitrace can also be run from Test Manager as well as Visual Studio Ultimate 2010. Intellitrace also integrates with Team System allowing QA people to attach trace log files to work items that can then be assigned to other developers.
Intellitrace is always on be default but only collects minimal information, you can change the information Intellitrace collects by changing the settings in Visual Studio. The events that can be collected by Intellitrace include debugger events (events that occur while you are debugging your application including the STEP event and hitting breakpoints), exception events, and framework events (these can be initiating a method call, or file access).
As you can see Intellitrace is a great tool for speeding up the debugging process and if used correctly can even allow you to go backwards through your code. For more information, check out MSDN’s information at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264915.aspx
View upcoming Visual Studio classes here.
GUEST BLOGGER: Cristian Easterly, Applications Instructor
Adding a blending mode to a layer can add a quick effect to a photo or logo design in just a few simple clicks of the mouse. Think of it as blending two layers into each other.
The two most commonly used blend modes are Multiply and Screen. They darken or lighten images respectively. All of the blend modes are just different ways to make two layers interact with each other.
 Blend modes can be found in your layers panel in the drop down menu towards the top. By default, it should say “Normal.” When adding a blend mode to a layer, keep in mind that it will effect that layer and the layer below it. Make sure your layers are in the correct stacking order before adding a blend mode or you will not get the results you want.
To start, I have my background layer (“Background”) changed to “Layer 0” so that it can be hidden. To unlock your background layer, simply double click and when prompted to name the layer, click “OK.” Once you have the layer unlocked, you can click the hide/show icon (looks like an eye) to hide the layer.
I also added a photo on a new layer above a rectangle shape on a separate layer. These will be the two layers that I will blend together.
Here is what the layers will look like:
The next step is to move the layers so that they are overlapping. The photo layer should be above the rectangle layer, so you will not be able to see the rectangle once they are stacked on top of one another. Once you add a blend mode, you will be able to see the rectangle layer.
Make sure you have your photo layer selected and choose a blend mode from the drop down list at the top of your layers panel. You can always choose the layer with the blend mode, and change it back to “Normal” if you do not like the effect. Blend modes are all about preference. Which one looks best to you?
 This is what the photo looks like with the blend mode “Overlay” chosen. The layer with the purple rectangle that it is being blended with, will effect the way the picture will look. By changing the color, the blending mode will look different.
The only change I made here was changing the fill color of the rectangle layer behind the picture. By doing this, the two layers will blend differently.
Blend modes will work with any kind of layer. Remember that adding a blend mode will change the way TWO layers interact with each other so make sure the layer below the selected layer is the right fit for the blend mode. By changing the color and blend mode, you can have hundreds of effects on one photo.
Brush up on your Photoshop skills with a class from New Horizons.
 GUEST BLOGGER: Steve Chase, Applications Instructor. MOS, MCT
Sparklines are a cool, new charting feature in Excel 2010. Basically they are charts contained within a single cell range.
There are three types of sparklines (line, column, and win/loss). Make sure that you have a contiguous series of numerical data before you are ready to insert Sparklines. The series of data can make up either a row or column.
 To create a Sparkline, first click inside of the cell you wish to display it in. Then click the Insert tab and choose the type of Sparkline you desire (line, column or win/loss). Now just drag your mouse to input the data range. Verify that the location range is already entered based on the active cell. Click OK. 
Tip: you can left click and drag the auto-fill handle (the tiny black square at the bottom of the cell) to copy the Sparklines to adjacent rows or columns.
What types of spreadsheets are perfect for sparklines?
 Logging is one of the most important tools when troubleshooting network problems. However, its usefulness is greatly diminished if you log so much information that you’re unable to find what’s important.
One key to avoiding information overload is to log errors, not warnings. If you need more information to resolve a problem, you can go back to logging warnings, or even several levels beyond if necessary. IOS supports the following logging levels:
0 emergencies
1 alerts
2 critical
3 errors
4 warnings
5 notification
6 informational
7 debugging
In configuration command mode, you can set the logging sent in various places to the desired level:
logging console errors
logging monitor errors
logging buffered errors
logging trap errors
View our upcoming Cisco classes here.
GUEST BLOGGER: Mark Rosenberg, 5 time MVP. MCP, MCTS, MCPD, MCT, STEP For my first entry I would like to talk about ClickOnce. It is very cool technology allowing you to automatically update your Windows Forms application. One popular feature is that you can add your own prerequisite to the application. There is even a tool that you can use to generate the manifest requirements here: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/bmg. There is an article about how to use it here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/Add_Custom_Prerequisite.aspx
To do this process manually, the first thing I did was create a standard Windows Installer for my application. I tested this with the Windows Forms application but you can also test with a Console Application.
Next I copied the application to a language subfolder to a subfolder of the BootStrapper folder. The default location looks like this:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\(packagenamehere)\en
Inside this folder I have the MSI Installer I created and a new xml document called Package.xml. Here is what my package.xml document looks like:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<Package xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper” Name=”HelloWorld” Culture=”En”>
<PackageFiles CopyAllPackageFiles=”false”>
<PackageFile Name=”HelloWorldSetup.msi”/>
</PackageFiles>
<Commands Reboot=”Defer”>
<Command PackageFile=”HelloWorldSetup.msi” Arguments=”">
<ExitCodes>
<DefaultExitCode Result=”Success” FormatMessageFromSystem=”true”/>
</ExitCodes>
</Command>
</Commands>
</Package>
You would just need to change the HelloWorld to what you named your application and MSI file (My MSI file is called HelloWorldInstaller).
There is only one more thing you need to do to make the prerequisite work. You need another xml document in the folder one level up. In my example the folder would be here:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\(packagenamehere)
This xml file is called Product.xml and it looks like this:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?>
<Product
xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper”
ProductCode=”HelloWorldSetup”/>
Once again change the ProductCode to match the installer name. That’s it. When I go to publish a ClickOnce program, the HelloWorld prerequisite is available to me just like any other.
Develop your skills with an upcoming class from New Horizons!
Adding a search engine to your website can cost a small fortune if you don’t shop around. Fortunately, we have two solutions for obtaining a free search. Atomz Corporation, www.atomz.com, offers the Atomz Express Search. It’s a free commercial solution that you can implement in just a few minutes. To learn more about the Atomz Express Search check out www.atomz.com/applications/search/trial.htm. Another free search solution is on Bravenet’s site at www.bravenet.com/webtools/search2/index.php. You can try either of these resources for free and if later you wish decide that you need a larger search you can upgrade.
New Horizons offers a full suite of courses from the top vendors of design and media software, including Microsoft and Adobe. These hands-on courses are available in multiple delivery formats and for an array of users. Explore courses here.
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