Projects/Cursors & Icons
Bittersweet is an adaptation of the traditional Mac OS cursor set for Windows 2000 onwards. The cursors is designed with a strong shadow and a subtle white glow; making it appear as if the cursors exist on a pane of glass above the monitor. This ensures the cursors are distinct from their environment. The “busy” and “waiting” animations have been replaced with a specky black & white light-show. The second revision of this cursor set introduces 4 new coloured busy and waiting animations.
Download
Download Bittersweet
Installation
If you have already installed an earlier copy of the Bittersweet cursors, following the instructions below will uninstall the previous cursors before installing the new sets.
- Download the package,
- Unzip to a location of your choosing,
- Right-click the Install.inf file and press Install,
- Press Start, Control Panel then Mouse,
- Press the Pointers tab.
Within the Schemes list, you will find 5 schemes:
- Bittersweet - Black (original)
- Bittersweet - Red
- Bittersweet - Green
- Bittersweet - Blue
- Bittersweet - Purple
After installation you may delete the archive and the files you’ve extracted.
Comments welcome and a happy new year to all.
Web Development
Reducing bandwidth usage is obviously a priority of web developers. Images are one of the common culprits of bandwidth usage. It goes without saying that the more kilobytes we can save, the less money we have to pay to keep out site on the net.
This is when the little known utility developed by David Crowell named jStrip comes in handy. jStrip removes optional data chunks, such as Exif Data or Photoshop thumbnails, from the JPEG’s. By doing so it usually shaves around a half-dozen kilobytes off of the image size.
I originally began using jStrip to prevent an incident similar to what happened to Cat Schwartz in 2003. Whilst you won’t catch me naked in any of my Exif thumbnails, there is obviously a bit of risk associated in uploading images straight from your image-editing software to your website.
For that matter, jStrip is a great tool for removing unexpected materials and reducing file-size.
Projects/Cursors & Icons
I had a free hour and I decided to redo the Neverwinter Nights icon. The pack contains three icons in three colours; blue, green and red. Each icon contains 5 sizes; 16, 24, 32, 48 & 64 in 32-bit, 256 and 16 colour. An additional 256 pixel PNG is provided.
Download the icon pack.
I plan to revise the pack and add additional colours later. Comments welcome.
Projects/Cursors & Icons
I’ll admit I’m rather picky when it comes to my cursors. Glaring at the same little pointer for a half a dozen hours each day becomes quite the eyesore. As of yet, the only cursor scheme simple enough for my liking has been Apple’s OSX cursors. However, the one downside I find with nearly every OSX cursor pack for Windows is that the “busy” and “waiting” animations are usually limited to either blue or “graphite”. This is fine for OSX themes, but I tend to change my visual style quite frequently, so I want to be able to change my cursors to suit.
To that extent, I decided to design “Tonic Water” (pun intended). “Tonic Water” is a conversion of Mac OSX’s cursors for Windows 2000 onwards, with additional “busy” and “waiting” animations. The pack contains 5 new animations, as well as the 2 originals. The new colours are named after the cocktail mixers and bases.
Download
Download Tonic Water
Installation
- Download the package,
- Unzip to a location of your choosing,
- Right-click the Install.inf file and press Install,
- Press Start, Control Panel then Mouse,
- Press the Pointers tab,
Within the Schemes list, you will find 7 new schemes:
- Tonic Water - Aqua (original)
- Tonic Water - Graphic (original)
- Tonic Water - Cranberry
- Tonic Water - Galliano
- Tonic Water - Lime
- Tonic Water - Ginger Beer
- Tonic Water - Soda
Comments are welcome as always. Suggestions of other styles and colours are also welcomed.