The AC Multimedia blog is a web design and development blog containing articles and tutorials about the web and the stomping ground for Andy Crathorne, owner of AC Multimedia and web developer.http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/73 We're currently moving from PC to Mac and part of this process involves transferring our email from Microsoft Outlook 2004 to Apple Mail. This is by no means a straight forward process when you have 2GB worth of email spanning 7 years! That was until we came across a tool named MessageSave by TechHit! Read on...2008-04-04T21:12:30+02:00 http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/59 Ever wondered how websites can tell you how far it is from one UK post code to another? This tutorial will tell you everything you need to know about adding this cool feature to your website using PHP and MySQL. Warning - although there is complex maths involved, no clever maths knowledge is required.2008-03-30T18:36:30+02:00 http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/72 As far as website accessibility tools go, Bobby by Watchfire WebXact is one of the most popular and, in our opinion one of the best. We use it all the time to test our websites for accessibility compliance. Sadly, Bobby has been taken underground and since 1 February 2008 it's no longer available to the public. What a shame.2008-02-27T14:27:30+02:00 http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/64 This is the first part in our series of niche website design articles. The purpose of a niche website is to get lots of targeted traffic and make money from pay-per-click advertising or affiliate schemes. Following the launch of 2 niche websites; Telescope Advice and Lawn Mower Advice, we are discussing the techniques used to identify a niche in this first of our five part article.2008-02-09T15:55:30+02:00 http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/71 It's now 2008 and we've been in business for 7 years, so we feel it's time for a change. We value our blog readers' opinions and would like to see what you guys all think about a few logo ideas we've been playing with.2008-01-12T22:09:30+02:00 http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/65 One of the first things to decide when designing a website is how wide you're going to make it. When using a fixed width (as opposed to a fluid layout) we need to decide exactly how many pixels we're going to make it. Unfortunately, like most web design techniques, it's not an exact science therefore we utter the all too familiar words of "developing for the majority". We begin...2007-12-11T14:40:30+02:00 http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/37 Ever wanted to see who was responsible for giving us the server-side scripting language, PHP? Thought so. So here's a handy tip for displaying the names of the folks who were responsible, right from any PHP script.2007-11-07T12:03:30+02:00 http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/57 During a recent project, we had to compile a definitive list of counties within the UK (excluding Northern Ireland). This proved harder than we'd anticipated so we thought we'd publish the list in both CSV and SQL formats. Aren't we lovely?2007-09-19T07:34:30+02:00 http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/34 osCommerce is an open-source (free) fully featured e-commerce website. It's one of the most popular online stores due to its features, price, additional modules, and the massive community of helpful developers and users. This tutorial goes through the basics of installing the store from scratch onto your website.2007-08-18T12:41:30+02:00 http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/blog/article/26 Usability is an integral part of any website and is just as important as accessibility and search engine friendliness. So many websites are shooting themselves in the foot with poor usability by making it difficult for users to navigate, access material, and even purchase products. Why then, do so many websites simply ignore the usability principles set out? Is it lack of knowledge, awareness, or skill? We're going to be looking into the possible reasons for poor usability in this article.2007-06-12T08:33:30+02:00