pollux

Isn't Quebec owned lock/stock/barrel by organized crime? That would explain how they were able to ramrod all these construction deals through the legislature the way they did.

Politicians desperately seek approval from voters. The law that was adopted was even put forward by a member of the Official Opposition. The Liberal party is laughing since all the heat of the bill went to the Opposition.

Still, there is corruption at almost every level, so I'm not surprised we're overpaying everything here, especially when it comes to roads, bridges, and public venues.

Could the Seattle engineers send their plans and budgets over to Quebec City? $150 million is a lot cheaper than the expected $400+ million over in QC.

Quebecor, from what I can glean, is basically ponying up naming rights money. They're expecting the three levels of government to pay for the arena itself, and if the Feds aren't going to cough up any dough (since the precedent for that came from the MTS Centre), and the province and citry can't exactly afford a quarter-million Canbucks each, then it's awfully dicey.

Someone from there might be able to give a better viewpoint (Pollux? GeorgesL?) but that's my full understanding of the situation.

Here's a breakdown of the current situation.

The city and the provincial government have agreed to each put in $200M for a new arena, regardless whether there will be an NHL team in the building. So that's $400M of public funding right there. For a building that still doesn't have any plans. In Quebec, the costs are usually never right, so we end up paying way more than what it usually costs. And seriously, $400M for a :censored:ing arena? Montreal built the Bell Centre cost $270M ($352M in 2011 money), but the Quebec City arena would hold 3000 seats less.

The city has then negotiated the naming rights of the building along with the exploitation fees directly with Quebecor. The deal in itself is actually good for the naming convention, but really bad for the other fees. Basically, the city and the government are taking all the risks while Quebecor is making money with all the concession stands and whatnot. This negotiation is actually illegal by law in Quebec.

There was a law voted several years ago that forced cities and municipalities to undergo calls for bids for any money spent. Therefore, while the deal is OK from a cash perspective, it's against the law. The mayor of Quebec City then asked the government for a bill to bypass this law so that no one would be able to contest the deal between Quebecor and QC. Since the current session was coming to an end, the bill would've had to be included in the omnibus bill, which would've passed if members of the parliament voted unanimously. This didn't pass, but was reviewed by the Prime Minister. So there was a parliamentary committee.

During the committee, both the mayor and PKP pleaded that the deal would be off if the bill wasn't passed. Ultimately, the bill did not pass during the June session. They will have to wait until the normal session starts in September. Then the Liberals would be able to vote in favor and the bill would pass. By September, however, both Labeaume (mayor) and PKP say that it might be too late for the deal - which is not signed yet.

This is clearly a stupid thing to say by PKP. He's just launched a new sports channel, and bringing an NHL team will be the only way to ensure success of the new channel. He would make plenty of money using the different medias to promote the new Quebec team. So he's in to get a team back for sure. He doesn't want to invest in the arena itself since he believes he would be paying more than enough for the team and the relocation fees. The real cash cow is the NHL team. The arena would be losing money if there's no team.

So while there is indeed a potential to get a team back in Quebec City, there is political ramifications to all this. Bypassing a law to get a team is, in my opinion, the dumbest thing to do. The city has lawyers... Use them to draft calls for bids that only Quebecor would answer. It wouldn't be the first time it is done.

tl;dr Political up over public funds for the arena and an illegal deal between QC and Quebecor for naming rights and arena management contract.

I'm sorta new with fonts, so can someone tell me how Ican get the font packages, that elliot posted onto paint?

Copy any font file to your C:\Windows\font folder. They'll automatically appear in any application you use.

What is the font used by the New York Rangers in their shield logo? Or what would be the closest free font to it?

I would suggest downloading a font management app. Linotype's Font Explorer X is free and freakishly awesome. It also includes auto-activate plugins for most professional design software, including Photoshop and Illustrator. I don't know where I would be without this app.

Linotype Font Explorer X

I'm glad to see they finally made a PC version of the software. I'll be downloading it tonight for sure.

Yeah, that is the long way of doing it I suppose...and I have used that technique before when doing something similar, but I figured there must be a much easier way and I know fiasco is right- I just can't get it to work for some reason.

I'm not entirely sure, but I believe you would need to have more than one word per line to get the 'Justify All Lines' to work properly. I just can't test it right now...

Question:

How do you fit text across a certain area? Like a newspaper usually does, for example.

Let's say I wanted

CAROLINA

MUSICAL

ASSOCIATES

ACCOUNTS

but all square with each other and centered...but not "centered" in the normal sense like from a mid-point. there would be precise spacing in between each letter to fit the longest word I assume, but I have never needed to use it nor have I found it.

get my drift?

You could do 'Create outline' for the whole text, align the first letter of each row left, the last letter of each row right, and then distributing all the other letters per line.

Is there a way to print a slice only? I have created a house plan and several slices, but I want to print one slice at a time to have bigger plans of each room.

I just downloaded Inkscape and I need to know where I could watch a tutorial or if someone could give some pointers that would be great Thnx.

http://www.patrickcummings.net/tutorials/

Pat's tutorial is for Illustrator...

But Google is your friend!

I use Illustrater 8 and photoshop and when I retrieve the file from Illustrater into photoshop, the black turns to a dark gray.The problem is trying to get the black to be black without darkening the other colors too.

Thanks, H

Try saving your illustrator file as an eps file, and then reopen it in photoshop.

How do you vectorize a raster image in Paint Shop Pro (I'm using Version 6.0)?

Ok, now I just got Paint Shop Pro X, but I'm still wondering how to do this.

I don't own PSP, but if it's like Illustrator CS2, there is a function called live trace, which traces vector paths from a raster image. However, the results aren't always good. The best way is to slowly trace the paths yourself over the raster image, to get the result you want.

One thing I'd say is don't be shy to use predefined forms, it'll help you a lot when tracing. For example, if you trace an oval shape, start with the circle, and play around with its points to get it shaped like the oval.

The best way to learn is to start with fairly simple logos. Good luck!

Mac, for every text item you have, you could right-click and create an outline with it. This way the font won't be exported but the outline will be, so there won't be any confusion.

It's a smidge off here and there, I know, but that's about what I was aiming at for this logo. One last thing I'd like to do is put a border around the entire logo in that colour of blue I have there (Pantone uncoated process 213-1), but I don't know how to create that around all the layers. Alternatively, I just thought about making a semicircle around the head, and put another oval in the back to create the border, which sounds easier imo.

If you want to create a border around all the logo, here's what you can do:

Copy all elements of your logo, and paste it over.

Do an Add to shape area, in the Pathfinder palette, then hit the Expand button. You should see that it covered up all of your logo.

Send the result behind your logo, then do an Object->Path->Offset path... to create your border.

You might have to play with the thickness, but the result will fit perfectly on the logo.

Is there a simple way to turn an Illustrator graphic into a webpage using ImageReady, etc? I figured out how to create slices in AI but can't figure out how to open them in ImageReady or Dreamweaver. Any help would be great.

thanks.

You can also create your slices, then use "Save for web". When it asks you the format in which you want to same, you can select HTML and images. This will generate a file called index.html, which will create tables to contain your images.

Tempest's idea could also work, although I didn't have a chance to work with InDesign and GoLive yet.

If you do know html, I encourage you to code your pages manually, because it is much easier to get clean code when you do it yourself (softwares tend to add stuff just for fun...).

Although you can do positioning in your CSS, I suggest that you don't use absolute positioning. The problem I often see is that the content of a previous div tag can overlap the content of the next div tag because of this.

Just wanted to briefly touch on this.

Absolute positioning can cause problems, that's for sure, but it's also a very powerful tool to know how to use. If you're worried about source order, you almost have to use absolute positioning.

I'm not quite sure I understand... I absolutely agree that it can be a powerful tool when you use it correctly, yet I have seen better solutions for source order.

Could you explain a little bit more what you meant for the source order?

Its cool, I got it. Works good now. Thanks man.

No problem josh.

I just looked at the code and it looks pretty clean. Good job.

I see the problem now! Every link should have its own li tag, so that the padding is applied to each link! This should do the trick!

BTW, I forgot to mention that it would be better if you set the margin and padding of the ul tag to 0px, as there are some default values which may cause some problems.

On the provided link, the table containing the links is still there... I hope I'm not bugging you by giving you code, otherwise I'll stop. Anyway, here's what it should look like once you're done modifying it:

In your HTML:

<div id="menu">
    <ul>
        <li><a href="jewelry.htm">Jewelry</a></li>
        <li><a href="gifts.htm">Gifts</a></li>
        <li><a href="knits.htm" target="_self">Knits</a></li>
        <li><a href="about.htm" target="_self">About</a></li>

        <li><a href="contact.htm" target="_self">Contact</a></li>
        <li><a href="photography.htm" target="_self">Photography</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

In your CSS:

#menu {
    width: 760px;
    text-align: center;
}

#menu ul { list-style-type: none; }

#menu li {
    display: inline;
    padding-left: 10px;
    padding-right: 10px;
}

Then you define your links the usual way...

Hope this helps!

Here's a quick link you can build on, I made it quickly: Quick horizontal lists

For some reason that isnt doing it for the individual items, only for the list as a whole.

Very weird... I tested it and it works fine on both Firefox and IE. Here's what I have:

li {
	display: inline;
	padding-left: 10px;
	padding-right: 10px;
}

If it doesn't work, can you post a link on your test? (It's not on the link you posted above...)

Actually, I did have one more question, but you answered it lol. It was how to get rid of the table lol. With that, I just adjust the margin to space them out a bit, kinda like I have currently?

Thanks again man, I really appreciate it.

You can adjust the padding-left and padding-right on the li tag. Make sure you set them the same or it won't align exaclty in the center (if you centered it).

Yeah I bought a book, and I'm trying right now to get it to do it all in a CSS stylesheet. Can I do such things as placement of objects and background color, stuff like that on the style sheet too, or is it better to just do div tags?

And yeah, its the same website. Its gonna be my guinea pig to learn CSS.

Edit: Here is the early going for it: New Website.

You can do what you want is CSS stylesheets. Positioning is possible, as well as font definition, width, height... There's almost no limit to what you can do using CSS. I had the chance to learn a lot during the past six months and I'm amazed by all the possibilities CSS stylesheet can offer to complement HTML code.

Although you can do positioning in your CSS, I suggest that you don't use absolute positioning. The problem I often see is that the content of a previous div tag can overlap the content of the next div tag because of this. Remember that a new div tag will automatically start a new line, so it'll be aligned under the preceding one.

The rest of your code looks a lot cleaner than what you have on the first version. I'm looking at it and except for the style attribute for the header (which contains an absolute positioning) and the table layout or the links, it is very well written. Kudos on that.

I can suggest that you use background images for both the header and the menu. You will eliminate the absolute positioning you're using right now.

background: url(path_to_image.gif) no-repeat;
width: (image-width)px;
height: (image-height)px;
display: block;

The display element will tell the browser to show all of the width and height. You can put this once in you #body id (which you could rename header, because you can eventually re-write your body tag) and once in your menu.

For the links, you could overwrite the ul and li tags to make them display inline.

#menu ul {
    list-style-type: none;
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
}

#menu li {
    display: inline;
}

And then define your links using #menu li a... You can always center the list by adding a text-align: center to your menu style.

I do have one more question though. Is there a script that will automattically resize a browser to show just the right size you need to show the site and nothing more? I know there probably has to be. I'm gonna look through the book more, so it might be there. Oh and Pollux, you rock dude.

There is a way to resize the window automatically, but I haven't used is for a while. The reason is that I do not think it's necessary to use it, simply because you play around the user's settings. I personally hate it when a website automatically resizes my window, because this isn't the resolution I want. But again, this is your call, and I know there are ways to do it.

And thanks for the compliments

Wow. Pollux, nice answer. Very thorough. I think it is nice of folks who know what they are doing to spend so much time researching and giving the correct and detailed answer to someone.

Very nice of you. Well done.

Thanks JR! Nice to know that some of you read the whole thing through. I may be somewhat impaired when it comes to graphic design, but I learned a lot of things for website design, so I'm happy to be able to share my knowledge here. I think you also do website design if I'm not mistaken, so you probably know as much as I do.

Anyway, I think everybody learns through constructive criticism and knowledge sharing, so I'm happy I can at least contribute!

EDIT: I now realize that my answer is very long... I hope it answers your questions though

I'm assuming you're talking about the website you did earlier this summer... So I went back to see how you coded your CSS.

Since you have created div tags with different ids for the header and the rest of the document, here's what you can do to have different styles on different links:

#Layer2 a:link, #Layer2 a:visited {
text-decoration: none;
color: #F881BF;
}

#Layer2 a:hover {
text-decoration: blink;
color: #FFFFFF;
}

This will tell the sheet to apply the style only on links included in the Layer2 div. You can do the same with your Layer3, and then change the colors/settings on those links.

------

I see that you have lots of font tags and on-the-fly CSS (for lack of a better term). I really encourage you to make an external CSS stylesheet, and then add the link to all your pages. This way, when you make a change, you'll only need to do it at one place instead of having to change all the pages. Then all you have to do in your stylesheet is to either create specific classes or overwrite the standard HTML tags.

Here's a quick example for you : Example. Okay, it's in french, but what I want to show you is how clean the HTML code looks like. I only created a couple of classes, and overwritten html tags within those classes so that they behave differently, depending on where they are in the document.

Here's the CSS: CSS document.

#menu {
	float:left;
	width: 150px;
}

#menu ul {
	list-style-type: none;
	padding: 0px; margin: 0px;
	font-weight: bold;
	padding-bottom: 20px;
}

#menu li a {
	height: 20px;
	display: block;
	line-height: 20px;
	padding-left: 15px;
	color: #333333;
	text-decoration: none;
}

#menu li a:hover {
	height: 20px;
	display: block;
	background: url(../images/lien.gif);
	color: #FFFFFF;
}

This is a good example of what I did. In the left menu, I wanted to have links with changing background image, embedded in a list. So I changed the ul and li tags to better fit my needs. This will result in a quicker loading page (no tables except for data like standings...) and also, if you remove the stylesheet from the page, it will still display something that is easily readable.

On the left toolbar, select and hold the text tool... There is one tool called Path Type Tool. Create a circle, and use the Path Type Tool on the circle. It should do the job.

Thanks JP!