Contact details featured in the help files on Artylicious CDs are no longer active so if you have any problems please get in touch with Chocolate Baroque, the current owners and distributors of Artylicious CDs.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

oops - A6 inserts on Season's Greetings

Er, it seems we labelled one of the inserts wrongly on the Season's Greetings CD. The insert on Disk 2 that says A6 is actually the square insert. To do an A6 insert, use the DL one and cut it down to fit.

I'm sorry about that - a little oversight on our part!

Glenda

Monday, October 8, 2007

Why do I need Adobe Reader to use the CDs?

I was asked the question recently - why do you need Adobe Reader when the CD seems to run just using Internet Explorer. I thought this was a very valid question, so I'm posting the answer here for everyone's benefit...

The CDs actually work in two parts - when you are browsing through the designs you are looking at them in your default internet browser which for most people is Internet Explorer. When you actually select a layout to print, you are opening up a PDF file. You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print a PDF file, but this type of file has become so popular and widely used, that Adobe provide something called a "plug in" for most common internet browsers, to keep the whole thing seamless. So although it looks like the whole thing is done in Internet Explorer, when you are looking at one of the layouts, you are actually using Adobe Reader, but in its "plugged in" version, inside the browser.

So you do need Adobe Reader, but you shouldn't need to ever open it first to use the CD. It should all happen automatically inside your browser. The toolbar that you see just above the layout is not an Explorer toolbar, it's an Adobe one. That's why you can make the snapshot tool visible - you're tapping into Adobe's tools at that point. Also when you print, it's Adobe that is handling the print menu, not Internet Explorer. That was the whole reason for doing it this way, Internet Explorer is rubbish at printing and can't be relied on to keep everything on the page! PDF files were invented for printable documents.

So, for those of you who like to know how these things work, I hope that's helped explain it a bit better.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Where's the snapshot tool gone?

For some reason best known to themselves, Adobe have not made the snapshot tool visible in the default toolbar. To make it visible, you need to right click (control click on a Mac) in the empty part of the Adobe Toolbar to bring up a menu.



From the menu, left click on "More Tools" at the bottom and that will bring up a long list. Go right down to the bottom of the list and you will find the Snapshot tool. Click in the box next to the image to tick it and click on OK.


The snapshot tool should now appear in your toolbar.


So, what can you do with the Snapshot tool? Well this enables you to "grab" any part of the PDF file that you can see. Click the snapshot tool, then drag your mouse around something you want to copy, and when you let go, there's a flash (like a camera - get it?) and the area you selected is copied to the computer clipboard. Press the snapshot tool again to turn it off.


You can then go into another program that understands graphic images (Word, Publisher, PaintShop Pro, Photoshop, etc) and press paste (Control + V or right click and paste) to put your copied item into that program.


There are limits to it - you'll find that it will go pixelated if you try to enlarge the item, it's really much better for when you want to shrink something down or just select one tag from a page.

Anyway hope that helps all of you who feel lost without your Snapshot tool!


Glenda

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Which Printer to buy?

We've had a few people lately who are looking for a new printer, and asking me which one I would recommend. I have access to a huge colour laser at the office, and two old inkjet printers at home which are no longer manufactured. So, I'm not exactly up to date and therefore completely unqualified to give advice!

So, my recommendation would be to take a look at the Which website which I think is one of the better sites for impartial advice. They test printers and explain features, so you can decide what is important to you and compare different models within your budget.

This link should take you straight to the printer section of the Which website, but if that changes and the link doesn't work, go to http://www.which.co.uk/ and search for printers.

Glenda

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Gaps in the printing

We have had a number of cases reported of problems printing the A4 sheets from Damask Delights and Butterfly Bliss. What is happening is that three quarters of the page prints, then there is a white gap about an inch wide, followed by a little more of the pattern.

We have now identified that the problem is due to a mismatch between the version of Windows and the version of Adobe Reader.

We say on the CD insert that you need to have Adobe Reader 8 to use the CD properly and in order to run Adobe Reader 8, you need to have Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

The printing problem has happened on PCs with Adobe version 7 and it has also happened on PCs with version 8, but where they don't have Service Pack 2 installed.

How to fix it?

If you are using Adobe Reader version 7 , then try installing version 8. You can install it from the disk if you don't have an internet connection, but on a Windows XP computer, you MUST have Service Pack 2 for Adobe 8 to run properly.

There is another very simple way to fix the problem - Adobe have now released a new version of Acrobat Reader - version 8.1. (We supplied version 8 on our CDs as that was what was current at the time they were produced.) If you have an internet connection, you can go to the Adobe website and download version 8.1 which will work on PCs whether you have Service Pack 2 or not.

You can take a look at this article for more information on what all this technical stuff means!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

How to install Adobe Reader 8 from the Artylicious CDs

To install Adobe Reader 8

Adobe 8 is provided on Damask Delights and Butterfly Bliss.
Adobe 7 is provided on Fantasy Floral and Filigree Fusion.

To install:

Close down all programs.

Put the CD in the drive and when the program opens up, close it down by clicking the red X in the top right corner of the screen

Click on the Start menu, from the options that come up, you should see an item that says My Computer

Double click on My Computer

You should now have a window which shows you your hard drive and the CD drive with our CD in.
RIGHT click on the CD icon, then left click on Explore

You should now have a list of folders and files on the CD. Find the folder called Adobe Reader and open it by double clicking the folder.

Within that folder are three files, the one with the red Adobe icon is the one you need.

Double click the Adobe file and this will start the install process.

Follow the instructions and at the end, you need to accept the terms and conditions otherwise the program won't work.

(You also get a screen at the end asking if you want something called Beyond Adobe Reader. I would say no to this as I believe all it does is take you to their website to tell you about other products.)

Explaining some of the Technical Stuff in laymans terms

OK, so you've got the disk and before you break open the tamper evident seal, you have all this technical jargon you don't really understand. Well let's see if we can explain it in simpler terms.

Firstly, your computer needs to have certain things on it for this CD to work properly. When designing a CD like this, I needed to find a way to let you browse through the designs quickly and easily. It had to be simple to use and something that most people would be able to use without learning something new.

That's why I chose to make it work just like the Internet. Most computer users these days do have access to the Internet and are comfortable with how to click on links and images to move around and browse through different pages.

So, the CD was designed like a mini, stand-alone website. You don't need to actually connect to the Internet to look at it - everything is there on the disk itself. When a computer comes across a file designed like this, it understands it and automatically opens it up using the same program that you normally use to look at the Internet. For the majority of people, this program is Microsoft Internet Explorer, but some people might use another program such as Firefox or Netscape. The point is, you don't actually need to worry about that, as the computer will work it out for you.

So far, so good. Now when it comes to printing a design, Internet programs are not very good. They end up printing out funny, missing bits off or going onto two pages. So to actually get the printing working fine (which after all is the whole point), the printable pages have been designed to use another program, Adobe Reader.

Adobe Reader is a free program that lets anyone view and print files that were created using Adobe Acrobat. You will also see it referred to as Acrobat Reader or even Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Because Acrobat is very widely used, Adobe who make it, are always improving it and bringing out updated versions. At the time of writing this, Adobe Reader 8 is the latest version. For us crafters, Adobe 8 has one massive, brilliant improvement over its earlier versions - the ability to format text.

On our Damask Delights and Butterfly Bliss CD, there are several places where you can put your own text in - greetings and inserts. The place where you type your text is called a form by Adobe, as it's original purpose was to allow people to fill in forms online (tax returns for example). The Inland Revenue was never really that bothered about letting people change the colour or the font they were using, but that's exactly what us crafters wanted and finally, we can do it.

Our first two CDs, Filigree Fusion and Fantasy Floral, were released in October 2006, when the latest version of Adobe Reader was version 7, so these do not have the text feature enabled. If enough people demand it, I will bring out an upgraded version.

So, are you still with me? To summarise, you need to have some kind of Internet program to browse through the designs on the disk, but don't need an active Internet connection.

Plus you need to have Adobe Reader to view and print the individual page layouts - version 7 for Filigree Fusion and Fantasy Floral and version 8 for Damask Delights and Butterfly Bliss.

Now, for the technical bit.

Adobe Reader 8 is pretty new which means that it will only work on fairly up to date computers. In technical terms - Windows XP with Service Pack 2. To understand this in laymans terms, here's a some info about Windows updates.

What you may not know is that PCs need to be regularly updated. Microsoft are always updating and tweaking Windows XP and these "updates" are made available to you free of charge.

You may have noticed sometimes that when you switch your computer on, you get a message that says Updates are ready for your computer. Click here to install these updates. If you have an internet connection, you can click on this message and Windows XP quietly downloads these updates. The reasons they do updates like this are varied and usually highly technical. Most of the time, it won't affect you or your computer if you don't bother downloading these updates, though it is always recommended that you do.

However, Adobe 8 will only work properly on PCs that have had certain specific updates installed. How do you know which ones? That's where Service Pack 2 comes into play. Service Pack 2 (SP2) is a shorthand way to describe a whole bundle of updates.

This means that other companies (such as Adobe) can then produce their own programs (such as Adobe Reader), knowing that they can work to a fixed technical specification and their users won't have to worry about updates at all.

So how do you know if you have Service Pack 2 installed. Well I have covered this as a separate article and you can read all about it here.

Once you have checked that you DO have SP2, you might want to find out exactly how to install Adobe Reader 8 and again, I have written a separate article on exactly how to do that - click here to find out how.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Will Artylicious CDs work on my computer

Well, let's start with the two latest CDs, Butterfly Bliss and Damask Delights, as they are slightly different to the first two.

The main thing you need to know is that you need to be able to run Adobe Reader version 8 to get the most from the CD. You CAN still use them in Version 7 (more on that later), but version 8 really is much better.

Adobe 8 will only work properly on PCs with Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Service Pack 2 is a collection of updates, most people who are regularly using the internet will have these updates installed automatically by Microsoft. If you never use the internet, you may not have a fully up to date version of Windows XP and you may have some problems with Adobe 8.

How do you know if you have Service Pack 2?

Find My Computer on your desktop. Use the right mouse button to click on it, then select properties (with the left button). The window that comes up will tell you what your operating system is – it should say something like

Windows XP Home Edition
Service Pack 2

If it says Service Pack 1 or doesn’t mention a Service Pack at all, then you do not have the right spec for Adobe Reader 8 to work properly. You will still be able to use the CD with Adobe 7, but you won’t have the full range of text formatting features.

Filigree Fusion and Fantasy Floral were the first two CDs that we launched in October 2006. At the time, Adobe Reader version 7 was the latest version available, so these CDs work fine with Adobe Reader version 7 and 8.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Can I change the text on Filigree Fusion or Fantasy Floral?

These were the first two CDs I created and at the time, the option wasn't available in Adobe to change text the way I wanted.

I included a few greetings on the disk, and there is a way you can copy and paste them into another program, but there is no way that you can just edit the text like you can in the newer CDs.

The workaround is using the Snapshot tool. Go to the layout where you want to copy something from. Immediately above the image is the Adobe toolbar, where you should see a button with a little camera on it, that is your Snapshot tool.

(If you can't see it, right click on the Adobe toolbar and you should get options to add extra items to your toolbar. Scroll down through the list (you might have an option that says more tools) until you find the Snapshot tool and tick the box to turn it on.)

Click on the Snapshot tool, then drag your mouse over the area you want to copy. Let go and the screen will flash and a message will tell you that your selection has been saved to the clipboard.

You can now go to another program (Word, Photoshop, etc) and 'paste' the thing you have just copied. Most programs have the paste option under the Edit menu, but the simplest way to paste is to press CONTROL plus V on your keyboard.

If you are using Word, after you have pasted your selection, you can place a Text Box over the top of the existing text. To do that, click the Insert menu, then select Text Box. Your cursor changes shape and if you click and drag, you get a box appearing on screen. Let go and you will see the outline of your box. Don't worry if it's not quite right, you can change the size with the little square "handles" around the edge and you can click the shaded area around the edge of the box to pick it up and drag it around to get it positioned just right.

Make sure you have the Drawing toolbar turned on (Click on the View menu at the top of the screen, select Toolbars, then make sure there is a tick next to Drawing). This toolbar lets you change the settings of the Text Box you have just created.

Click on the edge of the text box so you have the grey shading showing around the edge. From the toolbar, click on the Fill Colour button (looks like a paint bucket) and select white. This will fill the box with white and hide the original text underneath. Next click the Line Colour button to choose the border colour. Select none. TIP - HOVER OVER A BUTTON FOR A SECOND AND IT WILL SHOW YOU ITS NAME.

Now you are ready to type your own text. Click inside the text box and type away. You can choose to centre your text, change colour and choose your own font.

Using the snapshot tool like this allows you to select areas from any of the pages on the CD and copy them to another program. Some people find this a more economical way to use the disk, though the quality of the image is reduced.

How to format text

The Damask Delights and Butterfly Bliss CDs both have the option to add text to inserts and greetings. However, what is not so obvious is how to change the format of the text - the colour, font, size, etc. Well the answer is simple

CONTROL + E

Yep, just hold down the control key on your keyboard and press the letter E. This brings up a toolbar which gives you all the formatting options you need.

CONTROL E works as a toggle switch - it turns the toolbar on, but if you press it again, it turns it off! So if it ever disappears, just click it again.

If you are not actually working on one of the pages where you can put text, the toolbar will be inactive, but still appear on screen.

The toolbar has buttons on which let you change the colour, font, size, etc. If you hover over a button for a couple of seconds, a little box will come up telling you exactly what that button does.

Glenda

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Butterfly Bliss Mac problem - workaround

I have just been made aware of a problem with the Butterfly Bliss CD when viewed on an Apple Mac.

Our CDs are designed to open up in your default Internet Browser, which for most Mac users is Safari, but the problem also occurs in Firefox.

Some of the files (all the red ones) have been named with the last three characters of the file name in uppercase (PDF), but the link for the A4 layout brings up the following error message in Safari:

No file exists at the address “/Volumes/Butterfly Bliss/a4/RA4_1_001.pdf”.

and in Firefox:

Firefox can't find the file at /Volumes/Butterfly Bliss/a4/RA4_1_001.pdf.

The problem is that the link is looking for a file with the characters pdf in lower case, when in actual fact they have PDF in upper case.

The workaround is to go to the address bar at the top of the screen and replace the characters pdf with PDF (upper case).

The problem doesn't occur on Windows PCs because windows is not case sensitive. Unfortunately the Mac operating system is.

IF YOU HAVE A MAC AND HAVE ENCOUNTERED THIS OR ANY OTHER PROBLEM, PLEASE CONTACT ME FOR A REPLACEMENT DISK. You have the contact email in the help files on the disk itself. You will also need proof of purchase (sorry, Ebay doesn't count).