LearnKey Blog
Web Browsing Tips – Tab Groups
Personally, I usually use Chrome for the majority of my web browsing. Being LearnKey’s webmaster though, I need to at least have a copy of the major browsers around to test things, and I recently installed an update to Firefox 5. Our graphic designer Kari pointed out a pretty cool and useful feature Firefox recently added to their updates – Tab Groups.
Say you’re working on a few different projects at once, and you don’t want to mix up the different tabs you have open between projects. You could open a new browser window and separate them that way, but Firefox’s Tab Groups feature lets you keep it all in one window, and switch between groups easily. It’s fairly similar to the Spaces feature in Mac OS X.
Premiere Pro CS5 with Ryan James
It’s time for another piece of the Adobe CS5 training puzzle – Premiere Pro CS5 featuring expert Ryan James. Not only is this course made to teach you how to use Premiere Pro CS5, but it walks you through the video creation method, from pre-production all the way to the final steps, all while preparing you to earn your ACA certification by passing the Visual Communication using Premiere Pro CS5 exam.
Find out more about our Premiere Pro CS5 course, or check out the video below for a preview.
Also, if you purchase this course on our website between now and June 30, you can receive 20% off by entering coupon code NEW20 at checkout. Coupon only applies to single-user web purchases.
Web Browsing Tips – Disable Compatibility View
When you work with websites for a living, you tend to pick up on the different quirks of all the web browsers. You know which ones have trouble with spacing, or which ones work better with certain Flash objects, and so on. For most people who don’t live their lives inside a web browser, it can be confusing – and that’s why we’re here to help!
Internet Explorer 8 and 9: “Compatibility View”
At first glance, you may see Compatibility View and feel the need to turn it on, or else your web experience might be glitchy and broken. That may have possibly been the case when IE8 was first released, but these days it does the exact opposite. To understand what I mean, there’s a few things about Internet Explorer you need to know.
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Happy Flag Day!
Happy Flag Day! This is a holiday that has always confused me. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that it is a day to honor and celebrate our country’s flag, but why would we celebrate the flag on a separate day from our Independence Day? As we do with most of life’s questions, I went to the Internet for answers.
LearnKey Events – Summer 2011
We attend a lot of tradeshows throughout the year, but summer is definitely our busiest tradeshow season. We wanted to give you a quick rundown of which events we will be attending:
54th PTE Summer Conference
June 15-17, Boise, ID
ISTE 2011
June 27-29, Philadelphia, PA
64th Annual GACTE
July 10-13, Atlanta, GA
HealthStream Summit 2011 Recap
I recently attended the HealthStream Summit at the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, TN. One year ago, the first floor of the hotel was covered with 10 feet of water; in fact, much of the Nashville area was pounded by flood waters. What an amazing feat to bring the hotel back to its original beauty. I snapped a couple photos with my cell phone, but it does not begin to capture the grandeur and detail of the environment. It’s a complete ecosystem under a glass shell. If you find yourself in Nashville it is definitely worth a visit.
Enjoy Memorial Day, and a Special LearnKey Offer
As with most holidays, Memorial Day originally had a more serious and specific meaning than typically observed today. Memorial Day was first meant to commemorate those that had died in military service during the Civil War, but was later changed to include all wars. It was also originally known as Decoration Day, named for the practice of honoring fallen soldiers by decorating their graves.
Today, because of most Monday-Friday workers receiving a 3-day weekend, the holiday is usually celebrated with family vacations, cookouts, and shopping. Most stores have large sales during this weekend, as many people will be looking for somewhere to go or something to do on their holiday.
Which leads me to my next point – now through May 31, in honor of Memorial Day, you can receive 10% off all LearnKey video courseware (that means no MasterExams, Workbooks, or Exam Guides) purchased through learnkey.com.
LearnKey offices will also be closed through the weekend, and will re-open again on Tuesday May 31, which means that all sales, support, and shipping staff will be available again starting Tuesday morning.
Have a happy and safe Memorial Day!
Tech Hiring Drastically Improves California’s Economy
In the first quarter of 2011 California added 90,600 jobs, which was an increase from 82,600 over all of 2010. Just a few weeks ago California’s deficit was an astounding $26 billion, but the state recently cut $11 billion. If this trend keeps going, it could potentially shave off another $6 billion. The added jobs in the state are making it a reality that one day, California might actually be able to get out of debt – and it might be sooner than everyone thought.
This drastic improvement comes largely from the tech industry. Information technology jobs grew by 5.3% in March, outpacing all other industries. This is affecting the San Francisco Bay area and the Silicon Valley with many local companies doubling and even tripling their workforce. This is good news for the technology industry, and for California.
To read the full article visit The Wall Street Journal.
The Power of CSS3
I just stumbled across one of the coolest sites demonstrating of the power of CSS3 – css3please.com. For those of you who don’t know what CSS is, its simply the language web developers use to put style and color into an average web page. CSS3 has taken style to the next level by allowing designers and developers to not only be able to add a color to an object, but be able to have it display a gradient from any specific color to another. You can also add drop shadows, rounded corners, custom font faces, and even rotation to an object. These features take a lot of pain out of website development by making objects much easier to work with, and quicker to customize and create. Any good developer can tell you of the hassle of trying to make a box with rounded corners without CSS3 – having to first create the image in Photoshop, then cut the image into several smaller pieces, and then get them all to behave and fit tightly together to look like they never were cut up. That can take quite a bit of time. Compare all that with this CSS3 code:
The New Office, Moving, and Other Happenings
Over the past week, everyone in our St. George, UT office has been moving into our new office space. We’re currently occupying the theater area of the Main Street Ballroom and Theater, which has been converted into a modern office space over the past few years. (Check out the photo album on our Facebook page to see the completed office.) It’s quite a big change from our previous space, which was the ballroom area of this same building. No dance floor lighting or chandeliers this time around, but I think we’ll manage.
With most of the current Marketing department at LearnKey being fairly new here (2 years or less in a 24-year-old company), there tends to be a lot of stuff around that was left over from our predecessors. I personally go by the “If you don’t know what it is, don’t touch it” rule, so over time, things started to accumulate.
As you can imagine, cleaning out drawers and taking down cubicles lead to finding some pretty random stuff.
Pictured: boat catalogs, font books, a Star Wars audio book, a classic iPod Video, ear plugs, a rubber spider, and a plush squirrel. Don’t ask, because we don’t know either.
We’re all moved in by now, but it’s still taking us a little while to get settled and used to our new routines. For instance, apparently this new office gets quite warm when nobody turns on the air conditioning. Who knew?
Regardless of our comfort, we have some cool stuff going on. Our (sort of) Quarterly Newsletter is coming soon, and if you’re not already a subscriber, you can sign up here. We have a SQL Server webinar coming up on June 3 featuring expert Wayne Snyder, which is free to attend. Our Client Services department is a currently a finalist for Support Department of the Year in the 2011 American Business Awards (read the full press release here). We were also recently notified that our Server+ video training course has achieved CompTIA Authorized Quality Curriculum status (more on that next week).
We are also always looking for new ideas. Are there any specific topics you would like to see us cover in the blog? Do you have an idea for a course you would like to see LearnKey release? Let us know in the comments!