When people think of Microsoft Excel, they often picture dull figures and charts and just generally lots and lots of data. All very useful stuff but not the most enthralling outside of a work environment.

Some people however, take a different approach. To them Excel can be anything and everything. It's not just for business and numbers. It can be used to create innovative and original concepts, in all sorts of different ways.

Whatever you want to use Excel for, our Excel Training will give you all the knowledge you need to make the most of this powerful tool and it's also worth reading this blog post on some hidden Excel tips and tricks.

So let's take a look at some of the less traditional uses of Excel to give you an idea of what this software can really do.

Art in Excel

Excel can and has been used by artists as a platform to express their ideas and creativity. It may sound like an odd choice of medium but the flexibility and functionality Excel provides is surprisingly suited to artistic endeavour.

Take a look at these magnificent pieces by Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi:

And these Star Wars-themed works by Shukei are out of this world (excuse the pun):

When people think of Microsoft Excel, they often picture dull figures and charts and just generally lots and lots of data. All very useful stuff but not the most enthralling outside of a work environment.

Some people however, take a different approach. To them Excel can be anything and everything. It's not just for business and numbers. It can be used to create innovative and original concepts, in all sorts of different ways.

Whatever you want to use Excel for, our Excel Training will give you all the knowledge you need to make the most of this powerful tool and it's also worth reading this blog post on some hidden Excel tips and tricks.

So let's take a look at some of the less traditional uses of Excel to give you an idea of what this software can really do.

Art in Excel

Excel can and has been used by artists as a platform to express their ideas and creativity. It may sound like an odd choice of medium but the flexibility and functionality Excel provides is surprisingly suited to artistic endeavour.

Take a look at these magnificent pieces by Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi:

And these Star Wars-themed works by Shukei are out of this world (excuse the pun):

Silicon Beach offers a range of Programming Training courses. We also offer Social Media Training, Ajax Training, Photoshop courses, PRINCE2 Training and Web Design Training in Brighton, Sussex. Bespoke courses are also available.

A robot that can detect faces and emotions!

Went to a breakfast meeting today called "Likemind" in Brighton and met some interesting people. Ian Oszvald a self-confessed Entrepreneurial Geek popped this little gismo out of his bag, brilliant! It is called the Headroid1 and is a face-tracking robot that can follow people’s faces, it is being developed to detect emotions and react to engage with people, I believe Ian is working on the "Smile Detector".

He says that programming is getting easier and is using a programming language called Python. Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. It's supposed to be easy to read, quick to write, runs on all popular platforms and is open source (which means it's free) "Anyone can make stuff like this now." he says (yeah right I'll just knock one up - give me a minute!).

As you can see from his demo the camera is tracking me as I move shifting and tilting so that my face is always in centre of the screen.

It's a collaborative project by BuildBrighton. Ian developed the AI for the device. If you want to learn more about the programming and code side of things you can read up about it on his blog.

Silicon Beach offers a range of Programming Training courses. We also offer Social Media Training, Ajax Training, Photoshop courses, PRINCE2 Training and Web Design Training in Brighton, Sussex. Bespoke courses are also available.

A robot that can detect faces and emotions!

Went to a breakfast meeting today called "Likemind" in Brighton and met some interesting people. Ian Oszvald a self-confessed Entrepreneurial Geek popped this little gismo out of his bag, brilliant! It is called the Headroid1 and is a face-tracking robot that can follow people’s faces, it is being developed to detect emotions and react to engage with people, I believe Ian is working on the "Smile Detector".

He says that programming is getting easier and is using a programming language called Python. Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. It's supposed to be easy to read, quick to write, runs on all popular platforms and is open source (which means it's free) "Anyone can make stuff like this now." he says (yeah right I'll just knock one up - give me a minute!).

As you can see from his demo the camera is tracking me as I move shifting and tilting so that my face is always in centre of the screen.

It's a collaborative project by BuildBrighton. Ian developed the AI for the device. If you want to learn more about the programming and code side of things you can read up about it on his blog.

The navigation bar is an important consideration for your website, both in terms of design and usability.Visitors use it constantly to get to the different parts of your site, so if it is poorly designed or difficult to use your visitors may not enjoy using your site and be reluctant to return.

UPDATE: Since we wrote this post, LOADS more tutorials have hit the web! Check out our NEW10 BEST jQuery Navigation Bar Tutorialspost in our Free Resource section.

However a really well designed dynamic menu that's easy to use can make your site stand out from the crowd. One of the most popular ways of creating animated navigation bars used to beFlash- however with the popularity of iPhones and iPads now (which don't support Flash)no-one in their right mind would make their main navigation elements in Flashas it would render their site unusable on any device running iOS!

Read more about designing for mobile devices in our post aboutResponsive Web Design and the technologies it uses.

So - is this the end for animated navigation bars?Well - NO!

EnterjQuery and CSS! You can now createanimated jQuery navigation barsthat will display just fine on iOS. In some cases the full animated functionality might not work on mobile devices, but its still better than Flash which won't display at all!

In this post we’ve collected together a range of tutorials that showhow to create animated jQuery navigation bars(with our thoughts on each one!)

The navigation bar is an important consideration for your website, both in terms of design and usability.Visitors use it constantly to get to the different parts of your site, so if it is poorly designed or difficult to use your visitors may not enjoy using your site and be reluctant to return.

UPDATE: Since we wrote this post, LOADS more tutorials have hit the web! Check out our NEW10 BEST jQuery Navigation Bar Tutorialspost in our Free Resource section.

However a really well designed dynamic menu that's easy to use can make your site stand out from the crowd. One of the most popular ways of creating animated navigation bars used to beFlash- however with the popularity of iPhones and iPads now (which don't support Flash)no-one in their right mind would make their main navigation elements in Flashas it would render their site unusable on any device running iOS!

Read more about designing for mobile devices in our post aboutResponsive Web Design and the technologies it uses.

So - is this the end for animated navigation bars?Well - NO!

EnterjQuery and CSS! You can now createanimated jQuery navigation barsthat will display just fine on iOS. In some cases the full animated functionality might not work on mobile devices, but its still better than Flash which won't display at all!

In this post we’ve collected together a range of tutorials that showhow to create animated jQuery navigation bars(with our thoughts on each one!)

Well well well - it seems that Adobe can't stop releasing previews and betas at the moment!

We recently saw the unveiling of Adobe Edge - a potential future replacement for Flash which creates animations using HTML5. You might like to check out my summary of Adobe Edge (and my atrocious attempt at an animation).

Then last week, they also lifted the lid on Adobe Muse. Muse is a "code name" - so we wait with baited breath to see what the final product will be called. Adobe is currently "working with the branding team to determine the final name of this product" (perhaps the developers are fans of the Devon rock band of the same name!)

Whatever it ends up being called - Muse is a web design tool that allows designers without any coding experience to create website designs and publish them without having to look at any HTML. It's a What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) tool.

Hang on a minute though! Adobe already has the industry standard WYSIWYG web design tool on its books in the shape of Dreamweaver - which has been around for a LONG time (we've been running web design training since 1999 and our Dreamweaver course was the first Silicon Beach Training ever offered!)

Dreamweaver was originally released in the age of static HTML pages - and has had to reinvent itself over the years to keep up in the age of dynamic database driven websites. It hasn't done a bad job of that, and remains a very useful design tool and code editor (Dreamweaver CS5.5 also includes tools for mobile authoring - which is the biggest growth area in web design at the moment). But - to use Dreamweaver effectively to produce dynamic sites which include blogs, social integration etc... (all of which are really important now), increasingly requires more coding experience.

This is where blog and web design CMS systems like Wordpress and Joomla have come in to their own in recent years. Via simple interfaces and easy to use plugins, these tools allow people with genuinely NO programming experience to set up sites with interaction and social integration. They are theme based, and don't have as much flexibility in terms of layout design as Dreamweaver - but nevertheless can deliver professional results.

Well well well - it seems that Adobe can't stop releasing previews and betas at the moment!

We recently saw the unveiling of Adobe Edge - a potential future replacement for Flash which creates animations using HTML5. You might like to check out my summary of Adobe Edge (and my atrocious attempt at an animation).

Then last week, they also lifted the lid on Adobe Muse. Muse is a "code name" - so we wait with baited breath to see what the final product will be called. Adobe is currently "working with the branding team to determine the final name of this product" (perhaps the developers are fans of the Devon rock band of the same name!)

Whatever it ends up being called - Muse is a web design tool that allows designers without any coding experience to create website designs and publish them without having to look at any HTML. It's a What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) tool.

Hang on a minute though! Adobe already has the industry standard WYSIWYG web design tool on its books in the shape of Dreamweaver - which has been around for a LONG time (we've been running web design training since 1999 and our Dreamweaver course was the first Silicon Beach Training ever offered!)

Dreamweaver was originally released in the age of static HTML pages - and has had to reinvent itself over the years to keep up in the age of dynamic database driven websites. It hasn't done a bad job of that, and remains a very useful design tool and code editor (Dreamweaver CS5.5 also includes tools for mobile authoring - which is the biggest growth area in web design at the moment). But - to use Dreamweaver effectively to produce dynamic sites which include blogs, social integration etc... (all of which are really important now), increasingly requires more coding experience.

This is where blog and web design CMS systems like Wordpress and Joomla have come in to their own in recent years. Via simple interfaces and easy to use plugins, these tools allow people with genuinely NO programming experience to set up sites with interaction and social integration. They are theme based, and don't have as much flexibility in terms of layout design as Dreamweaver - but nevertheless can deliver professional results.