So you use Firefox. Do you want to know how to take your browsing experience to a whole new level? Check out these shortcuts:

CTRL+ENTER:
This shortcut makes entering a URL quicker. You just type in jonbrittphoto, hit CTRL+ENTER, and .com will be filled in for you. Furthermore, SHIFT+ENTER will send you to the www.jonbrittphoto.net and CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER to www.jonbrittphotor.org. *This tip seems to be a hassle. But once you get the hang of it. It will relaly save you allot of time!

CTRL+W:
Close a Tab.

CTRL+T:
Open a Tab.

CTRL+CLICK:
This opens the link you click in a new Tab (versus SHIFT+Click which opens the link in a new window). You can also open a link in a new tab with a middle mouse button click if you have one.

CTRL+PGUP and CTRL+PGDN:
These two shortcuts help you go through all the tabs you now have open.

CTRL+F:
Search for text in a webpage. You can also press “/” or “‘” for a quick search version.

F11:
Toggle to fullscreen mode. I use this sometimes for viewing Flash sites or when trying to show a client a site without having my toolbars interfere.

PGUP, PGDN, CTRL+HOME, CTRL+END:
Honestly, I don’t ever use my mouse to move a page around. I can use these four keys to move up, down, to the start, and to the end.

CTRL+U:
View the source, even when the page is not fully loaded.

RIGHT CLICK:
Have you right clicked pages, links or images? There’s a ton of things you can do w/ this useful shortcut.

So there are a few shortucuts that can make your browsing experience more friendly and take some of the tedium out of web surfing.

Drawing a beveled star may seem like a very basic thing to do in Illustrator. But doing it well is a whole other story.

In the following tutorial, I’m going to show you a simple way to design a beveled star in Illy so all the points are the exact same dimensions as well.

So here goes:

1. Draw a vertical path.

2. With the path selected, go to Effect>Transform. Enter a roation angle of 36° and 4 copies. Click OK.

3. Go to Object>Expand Appearance, which will result in 5 paths, grouped.

4. Draw a star (hold down Shift and Option to constrain it to a right-side-up, 5-pointed star).

5. Center-align the star and the line group horizontally. You may have to move the star up or down so that each line bisects the star’s points.

6. Select the star and the lines and go to Pathfinder>Divide.

7. Take the Live Paint bucket and color every other shape for the beveled look.

That’s it!

It seems like a simple tut. But wathing how simple shapes like these are created in Illy is the foundation to understanding depth perspective in illustration.