The older we get, the more resistant to change we become, however the recent (March 2009) interface update to Facebook rattled a lot of my friends, old and young alike. Some love it, some hate it, all will have to get used to it until it changes again. So until the next change arrives, I’m posting some tips to help you guys understand how to better manage your Facebook experience. Let’s start by looking at the left hand column on the home page (item #1 in Figure 2).

Facebook identifies this column as its “Filters”, and you’re going to appreciate the power of Filters, especially as your list of friends on Facebook grows.

By default, the Filter “News Feed” will be selected (note that in Figure 2 the item “News Feed” is highlighted in blue) and will automatically show the most recent posts by ALL of your many varied friends in the “Stream” of posts by your friends. In reality, Facebook will only show a randomly selected few posts from your list of friends.

This means that as you add more friends on Facebook you’re less likely to be shown every update from every one of your friends, and since Facebook is just a computer program it isn’t necessarily smart enough to show you updates which might interest you.

This is where Filters come into play.

For example, let’s say that I’m in a mood to catch up on the behind-the-scenes antics of all my famous friends. All I need to do is click on the Filter named “Celebrity Pals” and Presto! I’m up to date on why Jenn’s not dating that singer anymore (dude, all she wanted you to do was brush your teeth more often… you passed up on THAT action because you’re too lazy??).

Pretty cool, huh?

However, to enjoy the benefits of Filters you’re going to have to do a little work first; you’re going to have to learn how to create some Friend Lists, so let’s go make one now!

Take a look at the drop-down menu (item #2 in Figure 2) available from anywhere inside of Facebook. Note that this menu item will only be visible to you when are logged into your account.

Click on the word “Friends” at the very top, or on “All Friends” which is second down in the drop down list. This takes you to your Friends page, which is the central location for managing your friends (Lord knows nobody else can seem to manage them), take a look….

Since we elected to go to the “main” section of our Friends page you’ll notice that “All Friends” is highlighted in blue at the top of the left hand column (item #3 in Figure 3).

You can see from my example that I’ve already organized most of my friends into several Friend Lists, including: Film Friends, Sugar Mommas, People Who Spit When They Talk, Silent Farters, Supermodels Who Are Stalking Me, Church Friends, School Chums, Celebrity Pals, and Funny Old People.

But since that awesome day at spring training last week when I ran into the flight crew for the next shuttle mission I now have a lot of friends who are astronauts, so let’s make ourselves a new group called “People Smarter Than Me” (an admittedly vast list).

Underneath my existing Friend Lists you’ll see a boxy button labeled “Make a New List” (item #4 in Figure 3). Click it!

Up pops a box which states “Step 1: Choose a Name” and displays a field with “< New List >” highlighted inside (item #5 in Figure 4). Change this to read “People Smarter Than Me” (without quote marks) and hit the Return key.

Up pops another box, toward the top of the page, which states “Step 2: Add friends to this list and use it all around Facebook” (item #6 in Figure 4). Now I can add all of my friends who fit this category by typing their names into the field which follows the words “Add to List:”.

As you’ve no doubt already experienced, Facebook uses “predictive type” to narrow down your choices as you type in a name, making it fast and easy to add people to your lists.

Go ahead and make yourself some Friend Lists and when you’re finished, let’s go back to the home page and wrap this thing up….

Are you back on the home page yet? Do it!!

Aha!!
Did you notice?

Those “Filters” in the left hand column are nothing more than a way to use our “Friend Lists” to filter what we see on the home page. That’s right, they’re simply a way to sift through updates from certain subsets of our friends. Pretty handy!

But wait!!

There’s one more thing.

You can tweak the way that your homepage displays your list of Filters. You can make them all visible so that they’re handy, or you can hide them all away to have a neat and tidy homepage.

Look at the word “More” between your Friend Filters and your Application Filters (item #7 in Figure 5). When you click this you’ll see any Filters which aren’t already visible. Note that there is a double-line dividing the “seen” from the “unseen” (item #8 in Figure 5). To rearrange your Friend Filters all you have to do is to drag and drop the lists across that double line (item #9 in Figure 5). When you’re finished just click the word “Hide” and any Friend Filters you’ve set to be “below the line” will disappear. And you can get back to them quickly whenever you want.

So there you have it!

Friend Filters, not so bad now that you understand them!

Thanks for stopping by and please feel free to share this tutorial with your friends on Facebook!!! Stick around and read some of my stories!

Related posts:

1. Make Facebook’s NEW Status Updates Group Your Default
2. Fix Your Broken Facebook Feed
3. Facebook Love

In Wordpress, these things we call “categories” serve several functions.

Categories quickly inform first-time visitors what the topics are that you, as an author, write about. This is immensely helpful, both for your visitors and for you. Categories, accurately titled and accurately applied to posts (which I occasionally refer to as “articles”), certainly won’t be overlooked by search engines.

The grand convenience of categories is that, thanks to the way that WordPress stores your posts in a database, visitors may elect to view posts which only belong to one category. For instance, you may only want to read the articles that I have published under the “How To” category here on my own website. This rich and powerful means of navigating your data ensures that you’re providing the ultimate convenience to your visitors, and thus to yourself as a content provider.

Find Your Category Listing
Before you press the “Publish” button on that article you’ve been composing, look around for something called “Categories”. In the newest WordPress.com interface they’re listed underneath the area where you compose your article. Just scroll down past the box where you’ve typed the body of your post and look for a listing of your categories (as shown in the image at the beginning of this post).

See All Your Choices
When you first scroll down to look at the list of categories WordPress may only display the “Most Used” categories. To see ALL of the categories you should click the word link that say “All Categories”. (In the screenshot above you’ll see that I’ve already clicked the “All Categories” link)

Make a Selection
Remember, you must PICK a category to associate with your article before you click the “Publish” button to publish your article. All you need to do is to click the box to the left of the category (which will put a little check mark in the box).

Add a Category
Every new WordPress blog starts off with only one category name: “Uncategorized”. It’s up to you as an Author to create more categories as they’re needed. I’d STRONGLY urge you to use single words as categories, to provide clarity for your visitors. Who can figure out a sentence-long category name? Be concise! (However, as you can see in the provided example above, it is possible to use more than one word in your descriptions.)

Warning: Don’t Forget to Choose a Category!
Please note in this same example that I (as administrator of the blog) have deleted the default category name “Uncategorized”. If you elect to do this, be sure that you (and any other authors on your blog) know that they must select a category from the list of categories before they publish an article, otherwise WordPress will create a new category named “1″ and assign it to that uncategorized post, which is obviously not going to be very helpful to your visitors (now is it?).

Multiple Categories
There are times when you might want to list a post under more that one category, and you are able to check more than one category from that list if needed.

I hope that this article helps some of you who don’t understand what categories are, or how they work. Those of us who work with this stuff all the time can lose sight of the fact that some people need a primer on the basics!

Related posts:

1. Make Facebook’s NEW Status Updates Group Your Default

But you came here for a way to fix your problem didn’t you?!

I’m going to give you a way to create a properly imposed PDF version of your InDesign document, without using anyone else’s plug-ins or scripts. It’s an entirely Adobe-based solution and while it doesn’t provide an editable InDesign imposition, it’s a very good solution that should benefit a good number of users. Are you ready?

Users of InDesign CS2 had an item in the File menu called “InBooklet SE…” located under the File menu. In the CS3 version of InDesign you’ll find an item named “Print Booklet…” in the same location. (see image below)

Now take a look at the dialog box from CS2 InBooklet SE:

and compare it to the dialog box from CS3’s new “Make Booklet” wizard:

Did you notice something missing?

That’s right, there’s no option to create a new document from the imposition.

Besides offering the designer the ability to print a properly imposed version of their document, InBooklet SE’s “killer feature” was that it provided the user with the ability to create a brand new InDesign document with the page order permanently rearranged for imposition. In my situation, I would use the new document to export a correctly imposed PDF for my admin staff so that they could print company documents on demand. This workflow eliminated the need for the company to purchase a second license for InDesign, protecting original documents from untrained users.

It was a shock to discover that InDesign CS3 had lost its ability to create new documents based on the new imposed page order and I spent some time searching the internet for a solution to this problem. The only solution I could find online to combat this missing feature is a script written by Stephen Carlsen (available for download from his website), which examines your document, determines the correct imposition order for the pages, “cooks” a PDF of each of the pages in the InDesign document, and reassembles those solitary PDF page snaps in sorted order into a new InDesign document.

It’s a nice little script and I give kudos to Stephen for tackling a way to work around Adobe’s infuriating gaffe, but it’s an extremely inelegant solution to the problem and it fails to generate correct output if you use section breaks… and honestly, who doesn’t use section breaks?

But there is a more elegant way to achieve the result you’re seeking and it’s easy to do, as long as you also own a licensed version of Adobe Acrobat Professional!!

While you have the “Make Booklet…” wizard open click the button which reads “Print Settings…”, located along the lower edge of the dialog box.

This will call up the traditional InDesign Print dialog box (see next image).

Click on the pop-up list of available printers, at the top of this dialog box.

Next, click the button labeled “Printer…” along the bottom edge and yet another dialog box will pop up, but this one should look familiar to regular users of InDesign as it’s the regular old printer dialog box you normally see when printing less complex documents.

Select either “Adobe PDF 8.0″ or “Adobe PDF 7.0″ from that list to use as a virtual printer (whether you have either of these options available to you depends entirely upon your installation of Acrobat).

Next, click “Print” and you’ll be asked to select a location on your computer where the Acrobat virtual printer can save the file you’re about to create…

after you select a location click the “Save” button in the lower right of that dialog box.

Now you’re back down to the InDesign Print dialog box and almost done…just click the “OK” button.

Finally, you’re returned to the original “Print Booklet” menu, and it’s time to actually CREATE your PDF document!

Just click the “Print” button in the “Print Booklet” menu and InDesign will spool the print file off to the Acrobat Distiller engine and in no time at all you’ll be awash in a sea of properly imposed PDFs!!

Ta Da!!! A properly imposed PDF file!!!
Now all you need to do is to print your document in “duplex” mode on your printer/copier, a process that varies between manufacturers and is far beyond my ability to lend assistance. However, I can do one thing for you, and that’s to remind you to tell your output device not to scale the artwork to fit your page in Adobe Acrobat. Need some help with doing that? Read my article on “How To Make Adobe Acrobat Stop Printing the Wrong Size“.

So…..
I hope all of this helps you!??

I wish that I’d been smart enough to figure this out long before now, back when I was using CS2, because there was really no need (in my particular situation) to create a new InDesign document with the pages rearranged for imposition. From now on I’ll only need to use one InDesign document.

Sure would be nice if Adobe would create a shortcut for this… hmmm, I wonder if you can make an action to do all of this for you?

Thanks for all the comments folks!

[tags]Adobe, InDesign, CS2, CS3, InBooklet, SE, Quark, imposition, rearrange, pages, create, new, document, plug-in, plugin, script, print, printing, solution, workaround[/tags]

No related posts.