Web sites use templates called skins, themes, and styles to describe how web sites can be modified to change the look and layout of a web site without changing the content.  Wordpress, Blogspot, DotNetNuke and others all provide the ability to modify the color, layout and style with thousands of templates that are available.  Many are free, some cost only a small fee.  The ones that do cost something range from less than $50 to about $200 for a bundle.

One of the greatest sites to extol the virtues of using CSS to modify layout, colors, images, and style of a stie but using the the unchanged same content is the CSS Zen Garden.  A lot of significant design effort went into the styles used at the CSS Zen Garden, but they look great.

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Focus or stress causes us to overlook things we would normally notice (inattentional blindness).  When people focus too much on one thing, people don't notice other changes.  Take the video example below that illustrates this example.  There are five changes that occur during this video. More...

image: Edward H. Adelson

Every sense we use to communicate with can be tricked, or confused into perceiving things that don't exist and not perceiving things that do exist.  Our senses are good at what they do, but have limitations and adaptations that work for or against us in a certain way.  If we know the limitations, we can better compensate using other techniques. More...

photo: Willi Heidelbach stock xchng

It's not that software is never finished.  It's just that done is not a good description to describe the status of software.

What's the status of the "Buy 12 get one free promotion?"

It's done!

What's done for one particular team isn't done for another.  Done for the business analyst isn't done for the the person doing deployment.  It leads to a lot of confusion among teams, particularly when teams are in multiple physical locations. More...

In the days of global development teams, communication can be difficult.  It's what the recipient hears that is more important than what the communicator says.

What was said:

I believe in you. Love, Mose

What was heard:

I be leaving you. Love, Mose.

The next time you communicate with your team members, get them to repeat what they understood in their words.  It's better to straighten out any misunderstandings up front than to let things go misunderstood. More...

On Dec 9, Microsoft released the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP Preview for Visual Studio 2008.  Scott Guthrie outlines some  ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP Preview key features this preview release provides.

These include:

• ASP.NET Ajax Improvements
• ASP.NET MVC
• ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support
• ASP.NET Silverlight Support
• ADO.NET Data Services

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On November 19, 2007, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008.  Scott Guthrie outlines some of the Visual Studio 2008 key features.

Some reasons on why you may want to upgrade.

Key VS 2008 Features

• Full tool support in VS 2008 for WF, WCF, and WPF
• Target builds for .Net 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5
• Java Script intellisense and richer Java Script debugging
• Nested ASP.Net master pages
• Rich CSS editing and layout support within the WYSIWYG designer 
• Continued support for web site and web application project models
• ASP.NET AJAX support
• ASP.NET 3.5 ListView control
• LINQ (language integrated query) support
• Intellisense code editing improvements

Key .Net 3.5 Features

• LINQ support
• ASP.NET AJAX
• New WCF Protocols (including AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS, ATOM, and several new WS-* standards)
• New base class library features

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