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I'm playing a game where our Guild is constantly sharing teams as screenshots in Discord. I'm wondering if I can find something that will convert those team images into text, using a library of exact images for each of the troops.
Online OCR does a marginal job because of the backgrounds behind the text, so it's not a great solution. Also, it basically solves the wrong problem.
I've found mention of the OpenCV library (for Python?), but the GitHub projects I've seen are looking at a much broader problem.
Here's the algorithm I have in mind:
Locate the team in the image and resize to a standard size.
Locate the sub-images for each troop.
Search the library of template images (about 800 -- a big job to
create!) for each troop and find a sufficiently good match.
Look up and return the text associated with each match.
Ideally, I would like to point the software to an image file and it would tell me the names of the troops in copyable text.
This might be an interesting enough project for me to finally install and learn Python (but that's a whole other question). For now, let's see what already exists that might work.
Some days ago, some friends of mine told me to avoid using <iframe> for virtually anything, which of course includes Google Maps. That made me do some research and, among other things, find this thread in Quora (http://www.quora.com/Google-Maps/What-are-best-practices-and-recommendations-to-implement-Google-maps-within-an-iframe-on-a-webpage), which I think isn't conclusive, at least in my case. I've made a simple site which includes displaying a Google Map. I used an <iframe> because it is very simple and, as pointed out before, it is the option that Google offers within every map, so I guessed it was the optimal one.
My question is: using an <iframe> is always a bad solution, or in a simple case like mine (only displaying a location map), is it recommended?
Thank you all, please let me hear your thoughts on this,
João
Using an iframe is like having another page loaded in your browser. Which takes resources. I think this is what the suggestion to avoid it based on. But naturally, the solution is to avoid those who suggest that you should avoid something always. Just use it when it makes sense and know where to stop.
I'm learning web dev and I am already stucked at some point..
How do I convert a PSD template to a html/css website ?
I've cropped all part of the image and saved them in .gif separately, but then ? Do I have to manually place them in a dreamweaver empty template ? I thought there was an automated way to do so..
Also, I've tried "Save for web and devices.." but when saving, it creates a .html file and a single image which contains every element ?! I expected several images so that I could rearrange them in dreamweaver.
While certain applications advertise/provide automation of the "conversion" process from composite graphic to web layout you want to avoid using those features. They will cause you more trouble than they are worth. Especially if you are going to use CSS for layout (which I strongly encourage). Thats not to say those features dont have some limited valid usages (more on this in point 2) it just that they arent going to magically generate your site from a graphic.
In order to use "Save for Web..." you need to use the Slice tool to slice down the image into the different images you need for layout. Then when you do save for web and deices with html it will export the html/css and the images. Again this isnt magic and chances are youre going to have to completely redo most of what its done for you - making it useless for anything more than slicing a certain area of the layout (say a single menu).
There isnt a fully automated way to do this, generally speaking because depending on what you need the layout to do you have to go about laying things out in different ways and while its theoretcially possible to account for all the possible potential requirements in a nice little export GUI its not really feasible.
The bottom line is to do this you have to learn HTML/CSS. And the more you learn the more you will hate Dreamweaver (at least in "layout view"). Garaunteed.
Yea, web design doesn't work by magic. The proper way to do is to manually write the actual code that positions the elements, not just smack them in place in Dreamweaver. There's plenty of good tutorials out there, check these out for example:
http://net.tutsplus.com/videos/screencasts/how-to-convert-a-psd-to-xhtml/
http://www.devwebpro.com/creating-css-layouts-the-best-tutorials-on-converting-psd-to-xhtml/
Welcome to reality.
You'll have to slice and dice yourself (well, slice and dice the image yourself, but don't slice yourself no matter how much you want to), and then place each individual part in your HTML or template.
There are a number of automated services that convert PSDs for you:
http://converxy.com
http://psd2htmlconverter.com/en/
http://www.psdtoweb.de/
http://csshat.com/
However, you might also want to consider a service-based approach as well. There is a thriving community of professional slicers out there (just google "psd to html" and you'll see what I mean).
You might also try to redesign from a program or framework such as:
http://html.adobe.com/edge/reflow/
https://webflow.com/
http://www.ekomobi.com/en/home.html
http://macaw.co/
http://foundation.zurb.com/
http://getbootstrap.com/
http://www.awwwards.com/what-are-frameworks-22-best-responsive-css-frameworks-for-web-design.html
It really depends on your budget, your timelines and your skillset.
I'm a big proponent of understanding something really well before trying to automate it. So, like the other posters have said, slicing by scratch (handcoding) is very valuable, especially if you don't already understand it well. However, you might just not care to invest the time needed to achieve a good understanding of the subject. And, that's perfectly okay too.
I think that ad the end of the day, there is no "correct" solution. Different people have different requirements which will change the choice.
This may help you, it walks you through the process.
While designing my site I am constantly faced with the issue of whether its ok to TAKE ideas and designs from other sites. In some cases there is no distinction in certain aspects. Is there anything ethically wrong with this? Is this expected in the design programming community?
Depends on how much you 'steal'.
Code
If you're ripping off the whole design, then its a bit dodgy. If you like (for example) the Stack Overflow concept of voting up stuff, then steal the concept and use it in a different manner. If you want to know how say the orange highlighting of the up-voted items works, then look at the code. But don't do both and steal both the concept and the design, you'll just create a clone.
Due to the way different web browsers treat CSS and the like, there are often only a very few limited ways to do a particular thing (3-column layouts, etc.). It seems fair enough to blatantly copy in these cases where there is a common way of doing things. Where its something unique, and there's many ways of doing it, it seems a bit more off to blatantly copy.
Graphics
Ripping off graphics - not so okay. Images have been around a lot longer than code so copyright law, etc. probably suits them better. If nothing else you have to contend with possible watermarks or other metadata to identify the original source. It's very easy to check for image stealing, less so for code within a larger block.
I'm a coder, not a designer so what I tend to do is borrow graphics that I like just while mocking up my web-app for internal use. Does that seem fair? I'll change them for newly-designed or paid-for ones before going live. At least that's the idea, though it could be far too easy to forget and use them by accident.
That's the way it works in the newspaper world (well it used to, not sure now with the advent of this there Internet thang): You download as many graphics as you can bother waiting to come over your 57.6k modem; you only pay for the ones you actually publish.
Oh, this is a hard question.
On the one hand stealing is wrong, on the other hand you are obliged to save you employer money by solving a task quickly.
My only advice is:
If it feels wrong in your gut, you probably stole too much.
I think most designers and developers draw a distinction between 'creative inspiration' derived from someone else's work and blatant plagiarism.
I wouldn't think twice about peeking under the hood to see how someone had done a particularly nifty javascript effect, or implemented a tricky piece of css elegantly, but I'd find it distasteful to blatantly cut and paste that same code for use in my own development.
I'm not learning anything by just grabbing and reusing - although I think it's fairly standard to have the same code to hand as a rough scaffold from which to explore my own way of implementation. I think that's the way a lot of people work.
I am a web developer, not a designer. As such, I have a sense of taste, but not the ability to come up with something wholly on my own. As a matter of ethics, everything commercial or with the expectation of serious traffic that I do, I will hire a designer. They need to eat too, and there is something wrong with making money off of others work and not compensating them for it.
If it is small, personal, or an internal throwaway type thing, I will rip off things like color scheme and/or layout. Technically you could say this is stealing, but I think of it more as "imitation being the sincerest form of flattery" thing. I don't feel that bad about it since there isn't really any money to be made in it.
I think its ok to steal ideas, but not to steal code.
This is how a lot of design is accomplished. Except it's obscured by lots of lifts, not a single wholesale lift.
Stealing resources (graphics, code) is not really OK if they're not specifically marked as free/open/creative-commons/etc. Stealing design and layout is a bit sketchy if you're just xeroxing the same layout using your own code -- using someone else's design as a starting point is one thing, but don't just recreate their design verbatim. Stealing snippets of code for specific bits of functionality is fine (IMHO) since even if you grabbed a reference manual to learn it from scratch you'd end up with the same thing. (Think: javascript for changing an button image on mouse-hover)
Having said all that, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Don't steal resources, but using other sites as "influence" should be OK. Or, if in doubt, ask the owner of the site you intend to use as reference/influence.
It's almost like everyone answering this question forgot what it was like to work with web pages between 1995 and 2002 or so. Stealing was a way of life for tons of designers during that period. The key was, and still is, to take only what you need, and to make sure that you understand it well enough to make it from scratch the next time. Who knows, you might improve something in the process.
There's an old saying I was once told: Good designers create. Great designers steal.
That said however, you should never blatantly rip off code if you can avoid it. Look at it, understand it, rewrite it (or improve it, if possible; even if it's only something like using what you find are better variable names) but never just copy and paste. Same goes for layouts; take the layout and modify it to suit your needs - it might end up looking similar (look at all of the Basecamp-style clones out there as far as UI goes) and that's no big deal at all; plenty of sites look similar. The key is to go into the situation looking for inspiration and not some code to yoink. If you can use the code as-is or with little modification then you really have no problems, but it shouldn't be your intention to find someone else's code and rip it off.
It's a sliding scale. Borrowing just an idea is one thing, if you're incorporating it into the rest of your existing design, not just wholesale copying an idea. Snagging a idea for a design element is fine, copying a whole design exactly is not. As you borrow more and more of a design, it gets into the not acceptable category. Copying directly is also another factor. If you see something you like and reimplement it for yourself, that is typically fine. But doing a direct copy of code, images, or css not so much.
For the most part, ideas are fine to take and implement. If people couldn't take existing ideas and expand them or re-implement them, we'd never have gotten out of the dark ages.
If you feel the need to steal code because you can't code HTML/CSS well or don't have an eye for design, steal from a place that explicitly permits you to use their design/code, like OSWD. In general, stealing HTML is fine, but ripping off CSS wholesale is a no-no. Just because you can easily view the CSS source doesn't mean that it's ok to just copy and paste it.
Don't steal graphics, period. Especially things like photos and logos and icons. If you need that sort of thing, purchase stock photography or take your own photos.
When in doubt, ask the owner of the site.
Stealing code or designs is immoral and in some cases illegal.
Taking inspiration or copying functionality is less of a problem. For example, at some point in time someone realized that putting a "Forgot Password?" link next to all login forms is a good idea, now everyone does it. It's not theft it's just replicating a good idea.
I'm not a web developer, but I might have some insight that will help as well. My team has created several applications that have served as the starting point for other applications delivered to various customers.
The successful derivatives were those in which the developers took the time to learn the architecture and why things were the way they were. They then took the more crusty parts and rewrote them and in general expanded and improved the architecture.
Invariably, when a team simply took the existing project and tried to 'brand it' or copy it for a customer without actually figuring out the systems, they either created poor implementations of the extensions or had the project fail outright.
I realize this is a bit off the main topic of the ethical issues address by others here just fine, but my bottom line is that pure theft usually costs you more time than it saves.
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I'm supposed to do a presentation for my co-workers on a web framework I evaluated. These people are developers and hate long and boring PowerPoint stuff, so I got lots of little code snippets. I also put together a small sample application. My question is, how do I present the code so people can follow?
Some things I thought of:
Put the code on PowerPoint slides, looks pretty bad and unless it's an image I can't get syntax highlighting to work. Having my code in images is a pain and doesn't scale well to different resolutions.
I played around with the S5 XHTML presentation format and integrated a JavaScript syntax highlighter. It's a bit clunky but workable (I'll get some grief for ignoring the company's CI for presentations since I wouldn't use their templates. Don't even ask...)
I could put together a script (notes) and "live-code" in front of my audience. I don't like this so much because it keeps me so busy that it's hard for me to give a good explanation while I write. And there's also a high chance of me causing errors and make them wait.
A screencast? But then I wouldn't have to be there... Maybe narrate it?
So what would you do?
I could put together a script and
"live-code" in front of my audience. I
don't like this so much because it
keeps me so busy that it's hard for me
to give a good explanation while I
write. And there's also a high chance
of me causing errors and make them
wait.
I like this option, if you can get your demo streamlined to the point of not holding up the audience. You can do what TV cooks do when the recipe takes more time than they have; start the coding, then jump ahead to one that's 90% or 100% done.
If you have a colleague you can get up to speed, you can have them do the coding while you talk and point out what they're doing.
You can use your IDE, which will give the syntax highlighting and show your audience how to compile, deploy, test, etc. I would recommend using an oversized font though, just for the session, so that everyone can see.
Does your IDE allow opening/closing regions or code segments? In Visual Studio you can create code regions that you can expand or collapse. If your IDE has the ability to do this you could create your code samples as regions and then open/close them as you go through your presentation. You could switch back and forth between your presentation and code samples in the IDE, but wouldn't have to code on the fly. Using open/close allows you to hide the code you're not referencing to keep things less cluttered.
I actually saw this done at Agile 2008 and it seemed to work pretty well.
You can only fit so much information on a PowerPoint slide but that's actually a good thing: people can only look at a certain amount of information and get something meaningful from it.
So if you can't fit it on a PowerPoint slide, you need to rethink your approach.
Code snippets are good. They don't need to be highlighted. Just put them in Courier New (or some other fixed width font) and it'll come across as code. Code snippets don't have to be complete either. Just boil them down to the essential concepts (using comments or ellipses to indicate missing code).
Programmers being programmers, they'll probably ask questions when it gets to the technical, which is good.
Also, if the programmers are familiar with something similar try and relate all the concepts back to what they know. It makes it easier to grasp. Like if you're explaining Spring MVC and they know Struts, explain the Struts equivalents. It can be useful to put that sort of thing in table form (even as a handout).
That's what I did for exactly that (a Spring MVC primer for Struts programmers).
If you want your audience to see a lot of code snippets, especially lengthy ones, you could print them out as handouts or provide them as notes in PDF or text files (people can follow along on their laptops).
Actual presentation slides should contain the smallest amount of text (including code) necessary to convey your ideas. If there's a lot to read from a distance, your audience will get tired after awhile and might have trouble following along. Let people read the full code sections on their own laptops or handouts, while calling attention to just the critical parts in your presentation slides or script.
If they don't like Powerpoint, don't use use it. We use Camtasia screen recording to record 'live' demos for presentation to customers (live in quotes since it doesn't have the disadvantage of crashing halfway through your presentation :-). They always prefer to see it in action rather than what they think is fudged functionality.
It's pause-able like your Powerpoint slides and has the advantage of syntax coloring since you just record bringing your up in your favorite editor. It's also dynamic which is much better than Powerpoint (although I've seen some people do crude animation with multiple Powerpoint slides, always funny to watch in action).
This basically maps to your screencast idea but, if you want a reason to be there, do a large number of small screencasts to show interspersed between your real presentation, narrating (in person, not on the screencast) if necessary.
Personally, I'd prefer to send a fully narrated Camtasia off to the target audience but that's because I'm not totally over my early-career phobia of public speaking :-).
In a pinch, you could do a real live demo since your audience (is videance the equivalent for video presentations?) are programmers and will understand any problems you have.
I had this done to me, and thought that it was the best possible solution:
Get another person to help you out. While you are talking about the code, let the helper type the code. This way everyone in the room will be looking at the code, while listening to you explain it.
This of course involves finding someone who can help out, and understand the code just as well as you do. But the results can be great.
If you could do it all in a screencast and you wouldn't have to be there, then do a screencast and don't be there. Nobody complains when a meeting gets canceled. Just distribute the video, maybe with an accompanying report with notes or links so people can read more about the tools you're demonstrating.
And you'll get more credit later as your co-workers and managers talk to other people: "Hey, did you see the presentation Bibac did? No? You should; I'll send you the address after lunch."
If you're demonstrating code in the presentation, then also consider having the finished project available so people can try it for themselves.
When I give presentations involving Visual Studio I put code snippets on the general tab of the toolbox. During the presentation I drop/drag these code snippets into a code file, markup page, etc.