At our school I often find that more and more of our fellow pupils use pivot as their primary animation software, but do not be deceived by the propaganda that's out there it is one of the worst if not the worst animator soft wares that are there on current retail market. I seen many people use it i even tried it my self although some people may find it fun to play with and it is easy to get a hang of, but it is just crap; in the sense of the animation quality and the creativity you can create. It is the most limited software that there is. None the animators should ever use it for animations. Instead use a very cool useful, creative software called Flash- I have used it a lot and I just admire it for the functions it has to offer. and how easy it is to use you can animate with flash about 35% faster than pivot. Also filing saving in pivot is limited to .gif files and .piv(pivot) files.
I understand that the point of pivot to create stick fighting but even for that is does not manage the task it was designed for the design quality and edibility of the animation is very limited and you cannot add as many special effects. So in a nutshell Never NEVER EVER use Pivot instead us a better quality soft wares like flash. Overall rating: 2/10. Judge for yourselves get a demo version try it out an you'll see what I'm on about. Damian Gaslawski...signing off.
Previously I have mentioned dreamweaver as the proper software for web design. Today I am going to review it properly. Dreamweaver CS4 is the best software there is for web design. I know professional coders, web designers and even amateur web designers use it. The code the dreamweaver uses is just beautiful. it doesn't add as much useless fluff to the code as it used to. The old fashioned feature that dreamweaver decided to get rid off is layers(hurray) as layers are useless and just mess up the code I'm glad they gone you wont' believe that ta my school for our e-portfolios we had to use layers we had no choice! Anyway, you don't have to know css or javascript off by heart as a lot of that stuff you can do it manually through dreamweaver and the software nits the code for you ;)
Dreamweaver is not a hard software to use it is very easy to get a grip of. The uploading procedure is now easier than it used to be and managing your website is even more easier than it used to be. I like the dreamweaver because you don't get screw ups in your layout as the dreamweaver works very precisse. With dreamweaver you can create a log in script, members database, pod casts, forms and polls. I use dreamweaver and my friend who manages his 4 websites professionally uses it too. I recommend it to evryone who wants to do web design via professional software. I rate it 10/10 as it is just a Great product you can but dreamweaver for about $399 but if you don't have that kind of money get dreamweaver CS3 or CS2 they are awesome is well. Test it out download trial from http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/ and see for yourselves. Damian Gaslawski...signing off.
Photoshop is the best software if you want to be a professional designer. I've never met a person who wasn't pleased with what photoshop has to offer. Photoshop has many features too long to list but some of them are the extended number of effects, also it is now easier to create better designs. Editing images is extremely easy with photoshop you can create more crazy stuff without being limited. My good friend of my who does photographing at important events he uses photoshop to edit and add crazy stuff for videos. People often don't use photoshop because they say that it is too complicated to use and you will be limited and also they complain about the file size of their designs. They are just talking a load of rubbish I guarantee that their designs wont be nearly as good as they will create them on photoshop.
If you want to get into web design or image creating photshop is a software right for you it is very good for creating rollover buttons, banners, logos and templates. It work really well with software's like BB Edit and dreamweaver. In addition the designs created ,in photoshop will add a lot of contrast to your web designs. The work that is produced in photoshop is also very well presentable in Internet browsers such as Internet explorer and Mozilla FireFox.
One day I will create a video review of some cool features photoshop CS4 has to offer. If you think photoshop will be too hard for you to grasp then watch some video tutorials by Lynda.com or just google some and I'm sure you'll find a lot of them. I rate this software 10/10. Judge for yourselves download a trial version from adobe website the price of Photoshop CS4 is about $700. Damian Gaslawski...signing off.
Fruity Loops is the easiest software to make music
comparing to garage band is far better. You don't need to be an expert musician to use it you just add simple notes on the beats. One of the nice features I like in FL8 is that you can add better effects and compose more professional compositions. If you are a person who seeks for a good software to create sound track for your rapping. Or if you like more pop music or disco this is a great software to produce your tracks here.
If you like playing with it just for fun is the best software there is in terms of how easy it is to use but if you want to take it more towards professional level this software may have some limits in terms of creativity. I used to enjoy playing with the older versions but I felt that i was limited in producing more rock style of music. My favorite feature in FL8 is the range both plug ins you can use to 'spice' up your music.
Overall I think it is great software for beginner and for those more advanced, but for professionals I recommend soft wares like Sibelius. Judge for yourselves download demo version for free (but the only problem with the demo version is that you apparently cannot save your work). Go to http://flstudio.image-line.com/documents/download.html to download the demo version. You can buy FL studio 8 for about $100 or £80. Looking closely at this software I rate it 8/10. Damian Gaslawski...signing off.
As I have written before about serif web plus X2 and how scummy it is so history repeats its self with this software is well. at school it is not used as much but is used as a primary software for animation. My old I.T. teacher told me to use it I hope he told me to use it the=n because flash would be too complicated for me but still. this nasty so called "software" claims to be outstanding for its graphic drawings- what a load of rubbish brush strokes don't look as good as most of us probably expected you cannot have a grey scale tool colour cubes are gone and there is no Gradient! that's ridiculous anyone knows that any professional design now days have gradients any professional knows that.
Animations- crap there is nothing worse the frames are not smooth you cannot have like in flash a motion tween that saves you about 45% of your time in producing your project. if you want a nice drawing look like live objects designs use illustrator if you want animations use flash. I refuse to talk more about this scum of the soft wares but google it test it and I'm sure you'll see my point. I rate it as 2/10 one of the worst graphics studios of the year.
Damian Gaslawski...signing off.
So I thought that today I should write about some anti viruses so the best antivirus that came into my mind was not Norton 360, not McAffe, but Avast 4.7. I think that it is by far the best antivirus there is on current retail market. Avast comes from Czech security vendor company calle Alwil. Which has quietly been producing the avast products for many years. Avast comes with 2 editions, Home Edition and Professional edition; to be honest both are excellent at the job they do.
What I personalty think makes Avast special is unlike other viruses e.g. Norton 360 doesn't slow down your PC's performance, but however avast lacks some useful tools like antirootkit protection, antispyware, and antiphishing protection. Still avast has pretty cool features like P2P and IM shields for blocking viruses transmitted other than through infected Web sites and e-mails. One of my favourite features is Virus Recovery Database (VRDB), which captures information about the current state of a given file and saves that information. That way, if your system gets attacked with a virus, Avast can go back to the infected file to a version that it's saved- the one that is not infected. Avast is amazing as it is very efficient in protecting your files really well so there would be practically no chance of virus infections. About Malware- Well I think Avast does its best job at finding the annoying think and kill it before it does anything crap.
I was pretty much stunned by what avast has offered us in this version. Although it misses some bits and pieces I only hope that in the future versions it will improve on the features that are missing especially protection against root kits. I rate it as 7/10. The price of it is about $0 as you can download it for free! So check it out and kill your threats. Damian Gaslawski...signing off.
As I recently found out. I used Fireworks for a lot of my image creating and editing. Its not like I've got anything against it, it just is limited to the things you can do e.g. You can't professionally design an object that would look like live one. The image editing is limited to the properties you can edit.
Although fireworks has some problems like every professional software there is on the current retail market. It's still out weighted by its pluses such as the tool of live marquee and the magic wand tool, the filters (although there aren't that many compared to Photoshop). One of the biggest pluses there is I think it's how easy a person can learn it to use. I've found it incredibly easy, I recommend it for beginner designers. Its compatible with kickass softwares such as flash, illustrator and dreamwever.
I recommend Fireworks as it is easy to learn, but for more professional designers who do not like to be limited and like freedom of designing all sorts of crazy stuff I recommend softwares such as Illustrator and Photoshop. Overall I think it is a very good product one of the first that a beginner designer should use. For more checkout:
http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/
Overall I think the ranking should be 7/10 for this product but as I say judge for yourselves get a trial version and test it out
Damian Gaslawski...signing off.
