viziblr

Sometimes you want to add some extra emphasis to your text in a Visio diagram by adding a shadow.

For example, you want to turn this …

Into this …

Notice that the shadow has a little transparency so that it darkens what us underneath it.

 

There are two techniques to getting these shadows.

 

THE SCREENCAST

You can watch me perform these steps or read about them below the video.

 

THE NORMAL WAY

This is the most convential way: by duplicating a shape and setting the the text properties as needed.

The original text.

Duplicate the shape

 

Then select the shape that will serve as a shadow and right-click and select Format > Text

Then in the Text properties, in the Font tab, set the Color to black and the Transparency to 50%.

This leaves you with the primary text and the shadow.

Now we simply put them closer together …

So this all works, but it has one big disadvantage: the shadow doesn’t respond dynamically to the text.

If you need to change the text, you’ll have to change the shadow separately …

If you modify the text in other ways: changing the size, or font, or style, you will have to again match those changes in the shadow.

And of course, you will have to deal with handling two objects instead of one.

If only there was a better way.

 

THE BETTER WAY

This technique is not any more complex, and had the distinct improvement that the shadow will always dynamically respond to the text.

Again we start with the original text.

 

Select the shape and then under the Format menu, click Shadow

 

The Shadow dialog will appear.

Set the Style to “02: Offset, lower right”

Then select a Color. You can pick anything, but of course, in this example use black.

Set the Transparency to 50%

 

You can control the position of the shadow via Size & Position.

 

Then press OK. Now you have a shadow.

 

And now when you edit or modify the text in any way, the shadow dynamically responds…

 

 

At least among my colleagues, I seem to be the one of those who are pushing the boundaries of using large LCD monitors – those above 24-inch in size.  You may be looking to upgrade this year, so I’d like to share my experience with my two purchases this year: the 27-inch ZR2740w and to 30-inch HP ZR30w.

 

THESE ARE BOTH GREAT MONITORS

Let’s this that out of the way, I really enjoy using these monitors. Easily they are both the best LCD monitors I have ever owned and have no reservations in recommending them.

 

SPEC COMPARISON

	ZR2740w	HP ZR30w
Diagonal Size	27 inches	30 inches
Aspect Ratio	16x9	16x10
Resolution	2560x1440	2560x1600
Pixel pitch	0.233 mm	0.2505 mm
LCD Technology	IPS	IPS
LED Backlighting	Yes	No
Tilt angle	-5 to +35°	-5° to + 35°
Swivel angle	±45°	±45°
USB ports	4 USB ports	5 USB ports
DVI-D	Yes	Yes
DisplayPort	Yes (supports HDCP)	Yes
HDMI	Yes (supports HDCP)	No
Weight	10.5kg (23.1 lb)	13kg (28.6 lb)
Power Consumption	120W (maximum) 95W (typical) <2W (standby)	185 (maximum) 130W (typical) <2W (standby)
Price (as of 2011-10-21)	~$720 US	$1,100

 

THOUGHTS

For both these monitors, the first thing you will notice is how bright the displays are and the colors seem very crisp. Both of the monitors I purchased had zero defective pixels – but your mileage may vary.

Notice that despite being smaller, the 27-inch ZR2740w has almost as many pixels as the 30-inch ZR30w – which means that the ZR2740w display has a higher resolution (as you can tell from the pixel pitch in the table above).

The ZR2740w has a LED backlight – this doesn’t have any visual difference to me, but at least it allows the ZR2740w display to be thinner.

 

RECOMMENDATION

I think this is simple – the ZR2740w packs almost as many pixels as the ZR30w into a smaller, lighter device with more support for display inputs and consumes less power and costs $400 less. If you are looking for a larger display for the next few years my #1 recommendation would be the ZR2740w .

In September 2011 I encountered Ubuntu Mono. Having used it for all my coding since, I find it’s a worthy coding font. I find it one the closest practical replacements to Consolas. Today, I’ll take you on a visual tour of Ubuntu Mono.

Basic Characters

(click for a larger image)

(click for a larger image)

 

Key Differences

Overall Consolas and Ubuntu Mono are very similar. There are few interesting differences worth looking at in greater detail.

Consolas is on the left. Ubuntu Mono is on the right.

 

I find the Ubuntu Mono uppercase M a bit odd due to its curvature.

The W shares a similar style to the uppercase M.

 

The lowercase "i" and "j" have a cute little curve on them. Although I feared it would be distracting, in practice I never noticed them.

 

 

 

The lowercase "r" is a sharp departure from what I would have expected.

 

I generally like my angle brackets taller in the manner of Consolas.

 

It's the zero that I least adore. I do appreciate that it looks different than the capital letter O, but I prefer a slashed zero of Consolas.

 

 

Get the Comparison Chart

I created a PDF file and VSD file showing the comparison between the two. It’s available below:

I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting them to look like this. It’s either genius or madness.

Price? $500 for the 16GB model and $400 for 8GB model.

16GB lets you have 750 pictures – averaging out to 21MB per picture. That seems large – but don’t have a statistically interesting dataset to compare it against. Also given what these pictures purport to do, it would be reasonable to expect larger file sizes.

 

Specs are here: https://www.lytro.com/camera

Some highlights…

 

Makes sense that it needs a custom format. I wonder if there’s any way to see thumbnails when viewed in Windows Explorer or Mac OS X.

Megarays!

I’m still a little concerned there aren’t a lot of example pictures on the website. Selling a camera, one would think the Lytro site would have hundreds available.

Some other tidbits:

• Again, these are PRE-ORDERS
• There is no way to view or edit these pictures on Windows, only Mac
• The camera will start shipping in 2012

Not much here has removed my skepticism, but let’s see what happens when there are some hands-on reviews.

[2013-08-13] Visio 2013 features built-in support for double-lined shapes. See this post.

 

Visio shapes typically have a single line around the edge (or no line at all), but sometimes you want to create a line with *two* edges.

Single Line:

Double lines:

Typically someone will try to do this by drawing two shapes. With one shape whose sole purpose is to draw the extra line. This technique has a couple of disadvantages:

• Now you have two shapes to deal with
• It can be hard to make the extra shape curve correctly to match the original shape

On the other hand, it is apparently the only solution available.

Except that it isn’t. It’s entirely possible to create a single shape with two lines in Visio. It just isn’t obvious how. The solution is to create your own Line Pattern.

So for example in the list of Line Patterns, you’ll see a custom one:

 

WATCH THE SCREENCAST

Although I provide the basic instructions at the bottom of the blog post, there are some nuances that are much more easily grasped by watching the screencast below.

 

SUMMARY OF STEPS

• Show the Drawing Explorer
• Create a new line pattern by right clicking on the Line Patterns node and select New Pattern
• Set the name of the Line pattern to “Double Line” and press OK
• Right-click on the new pattern that was created and select Edit Pattern Shape
• Draw two filled rectangles such that the shape looks something like this
  • 
• Close the window with the pattern
• Now pick any shape you want and set the line pattern to “Double Line”