feedback - Refusing a user permission to click a URL

I've been asked to work on a system message on an intranet where by there are various URLs (linking to lists of content) that have permission rights attached to them, so only certain users have access to the content.

Currently it's spec'ed so that if a user without permission clicks on one of these URLs a message appears which says 'You do not have Permission to view this content'.

I'm wondering is there a better way to handle this?

I was thinking of maybe disabling the links (the user has no permission for) altogether.

There are pro's/cons here.

Pro:

It will stop users clicking on said link and receiving a message which may leave them feeling stupid and maybe annoyed they don't have permission.

Con:

Maybe the user needs to/would like to be aware that this content exists (so needs to be recognizable as a URL) even if he/she cannot view it.

Anyone any ideas on this/seen any similar patterns in use?

Answer

• If a user doesn't have permission to access a particular item of content, I would suggest not displaying it at all.


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  If the user needs to know that content they don't have access to exists - show them the content in a different form and provide them with a way of enquiring about how to gain access if necessary.

  
  
  
  
  • Eg. as a content list (rather than semi functional links), with a suggestion about who to contact if they feel access if required.
  
  
  
  

Double Page Spread Bleed in illustrator?

I am working on brochure in Illustrator and need to export it to a PDF for printing. I want page in Double side when export PDF like in InDesign. Is it possible in Illustrator?

creative writing - At what point does a POV character noting their surroundings go from showing/telling to an infodump?

In a story I'm working on, at one point one of the main characters (also the POV character in this case) arrives at a new location which he has never been in before. This is the first mention of this location within this story, so the reader can also be assumed to be completely unfamiliar with the location.

Shortly after arriving, the POV character is looking around and noting, in this case, what the house he's entered is like on the inside. This results in a bit over half an A4 page of text where this character notes different aspects of the interior of the house.

Everything that the character notes is things that would be visible from where he's standing, so none of it seems unreasonable at a glance that he'd note; also, looking around to get a feel for the place you're in would be a fairly normal thing to do when you arrive in a new location. The things he notes, while not exactly Chekhov's rifle hanging on the wall, are relevant for setting the scene for much of the rest of the story. On the other hand, it does feel a bit like an infodump.

At what point does showing a character looking around and noting their surroundings go from "showing" or even "telling", to an infodump? What are good tricks to keep a legitimate "looking around" from becoming an infodump, when you can't break it up into, for example, one smaller room at a time?

What book review sites allow authors to send a copy of their books for reviews?

Since I'm published with smaller publications, getting reviews is often one of the best ways to make sales. But what professional book review sites out there will write a review in exchange for a copy of the book? I don't want ones that'll give you a good review just because you gave them the book, but ones that give honest reviews.

Answer

You might not get the publicity you're looking for from these kinds of sites. Many don't have focus or the eyeballs that make giving away your product a good financial decision. Genre sites for genre books, are a good exception to that though.

This article spells it out better and has some advice on getting some real reviews in real publications.

forms - Should field labels be nouns or verbs?

On a web form should field labels be nouns or verbs? This issue arose from two fields on an account request form that currently read:

• Temporary Password


• Re-Enter Temporary Password

There is debate as to whether a verb should ever sneak in. From general observation I believe nouns are more frequently used - especially for sign-up forms - but I do know that breaking a pattern can draw attention to the item.

So, nouns or verbs (or both)? Links to studies would be greatly appreciated.

Illustrator - two triangles with text

Using illustrator CS6, Is there a way to make only the text on the white triangle be black, and keep the part on pink still white?

I do it manually, by making two copies of the text one with white background, one black, making an image and slicing it, but just thinking there might be an easier way.

I've tried arranging different layers

Answer

One way of doing it is making a Clipping Mask.

You have to make another triangle like the pink one but from the other side (bottom-left corner) and make it black, then copy and paste-in-place the text, go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make .

You will end up with this:

PS: There are other ways of doing this, but the ones that I know of involve Outlining the text, this would not preserve the text's editable state but with the clipping mask it does, the only bad thing is that you have to change the text in both the original text that's left below your clipping mask and it's white, and the one in the clipping mask itself.

adobe photoshop - How to create a pattern or tiles from rotated elements

I have a geometric pattern – say, a cross:

Which I want to repeat with some overlap and tile … easy:

The blue square marks the 100×100 px unit tile.

However, here comes the catch: I want to rotate the image by about 30° and then tile it. This has proved surprisingly hard; of course rotating the image is easy – but finding a perpendicular unit tile (the blue block in the above image) isn’t:

Clearly the 100×100 unit tile won’t cut it. How do I choose the correct unit tile? The position presumably doesn’t matter, only the size is important, but I don’t know how to calculate that. Intuitively I expect that the rotation angle and the dot product will feature heavily but that’s as far as I got¹. What’s worse, the rotation for arbitrary angles isn’t exact due to the inherent discreteness of pixels so even if I calculate the mathematically correct size it won’t necessarily result in a seamless tile.

So how can I calculate an optimal angle/size combination given the size of the perpendicular unit cell (here, 100×100) and an approximate desired angle?

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¹ My thought was that (using Wikipedia notation), since we want the projection of A onto B to be as long as B, we have |B|=|A|·cosϑ, and thus |A|=|B|/cosϑ. Which, in my case, would yield the new length |A|=115.470 but a simple try shows that this cannot be correct by a long shot, besides yielding an ugly non-integral number. In fact, just looking at the above rotated picture we can see that the whole 200×400 picture doesn’t contain a repeating perpendicular unit.

Answer

I found this that might be of help: Create rotated tileable patterns

As you mention, there's math involved that is way beyond my understanding, so I'll only bring some of the principles that have to do with designing it.

Basically, the 'solution' would be:

• Take an unrotated, tileable texture that repeats horizontally and vertically.


• Tile it to a large image.


• Rotate the large image by the desired angle.


• Find the size of the smallest repeatable unit of this rotated texture (using the math below).


• Crop the large image to the size of the repeatable unit.

The image below shows a rotated texture that was formed by tiling the original unrotated pattern and then rotating the resulting mosaic. The basic unrotated texel is highlighted and has width w and height h. The angle of rotation is the acute angle formed by the w line with the horizontal:

Since we want acute angles, if you are rotating in the other direction, then the diagram above looks like this:

The image size (w' x h') necessary to make the texture tileable can be found as follows:

The explanation goes on a little bit more, so if you found it useful please feel free to edit the answer (or post a new one).