How to request shipping address in a custom cart checkout to Paypal

OK, this is so simple, yet it's not a simple option you can just set in your account settings.

So say you are a business selling online and you have a simple button to check out for one item, then yes, you can create these buttons in Paypal and get the shipping address.

But if you have a custom cart...

<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart">

... and you want to make sure the user enters a shipping address, you need to request it. All you need to add is this line:

<input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="2">

The user will see a checkbox next to billing address, that says "Same as Billing Address".
If they want to send a different postal address, they can untick and fill in form.

By not asking for it on your website, you save registered Paypal users from having to unecessarily fill it out. It will be saved in your Paypal account transactions, and you can print packing slips from there too.


Enjoy!

Mac Tip #28: How to get some quick disk space back on your Mac...

Don't know what it is about Mac's but I just feel I have less ability to "get under the hood".  Like when you look at the engine bay of a new car and it's all covered up by a plastic branded cover....

Anyhow, you need some more space on your hard drive?  If you have been doing updates for a while, you can get some space back by deleting these update downloads.

(OSX 10.6)
1. Goto "Macintosh HD"
2. Select "Library"
3. Select "Updates" folder...

(OSX 10.7/8 that folder is hidden... see what I mean?)
1. In Finder, select "Go"
2. Select "Go to Folder"
3. Type in "~/Library" to temporarily access the Library directory in the Finder.

Now DELETE everything EXCEPT any ".plist" files.

That should give you back some space.... once you empty your trash of course!

Enjoy!

TIP #44 - When copy and pasting text from Photoshop for HTML... Beware!

If you have ever copy and pasted text from Photoshop for use in a website or EDM, you need to be aware of a potential problem.

Dreamweaver or WYSIWYG editors are not going to show up this problem either, you'll need to use a code editor such as Sublime Text.

Pasting the copy into Sublime Text you may see an "EXT" character if a soft return has been used in a Photoshop text element. (SHIFT and ENTER). Hard returns will paste correctly as a <br />.

The reason this is an issue is that it will cause the space to close up when rendered in a browser or email client. So instead of a space or a new line, you will see no space or return!

Pasting this copy into a text editor like note pad would normally save you from unwanted code from Microsoft Word... but not from this sucker!

There are also other characters that can throw HTML rendering related to languages.

So my tip for any designers who are starting to code more HTML, while Dreamweaver gives you the visual display, it's editing is not the best. Move to something more powerful and don't rely on the visual cues. This will speed up your coding skills as well!

More on Sublime Text and other editors later...

MAC TIP #17: How to move program toolbars to the top of a second monitor

OK, so if you use a laptop and plugin a second monitor as your main monitor, what you really want is the program toolbars (or menu bar) at the top of the larger montior, not on the laptop monitor.

So how do you do that?

Simple... just go into "System Preferences" and select "Displays".

OR, if you have "Show displays in menu bar" already turned on, you can access this option from the top tool bar and go to "Display Preferences". (Highly recommended).

 Once in "Displays" menu, now select the "Arrangement" tab.

This is where you set whether your monitor is on the left or right of laptop and if it's higher or lower. But you can also move the menu bar. Simply drag the white menu bar to the larger second monitor. (cursor added)

The monitor screens will then refresh and then you will note all program tool bars now on your larger monitor! Browser, Photoshop etc.

Happy days.  :-)

Linking to a Calendar Event on your website

A lot of companies still use email clients like Outlook and many want to promote events on their website so people can easily add the event to their calendar.  But how can you do this from Outlook so that it's compatible for other mail clients as well?

Well, there is the good old iCalendar - .ics files...

Thanks to the peeps at Microsoft, check out this tutorial (Outlook 2010)

Happy "Calendaring"!

Positional Images for website dev - Placehold.it

This is a great little website / service... when coding a site and you want to use positional graphic and show the pixel dimensions, check out Placehold.it

You can use the source in URL or download image and use...

EG: < img src="http://placehold.it/350x150" >

> http://placehold.it/

Form buttons, where should they go?

I am writing this post, because again today while "topping up" our account with Instra, I accidentially "reset" the form instead of submitting it - after entering credit card info and top up amount. Why? Because the reset button was on the right and I instinctively clicked it.

Humans are creatures of habit and we expect things to be in certain places for common activities like using an online form.  IMHO, a confirmation or submit button should be the right aligned button of two in a form. Don't mess with this, it works well, leave it alone please.

Why they felt the need for a reset button on such a small form is another matter.

Now, I wonder who else is experimenting with this?