How to Create a Personalized Christmas Card

Use Internet Explorer to Personalize the Seasons Greetings

Nov 22, 2008
Mark Alexander Bain

A Personalized Christmas Card - Mark Alexander Bain

Save money and keep the childrern occupied by creating personalized Christmas cards - with just Internet Explorer and a printer.

As Christmas approaches each year everyone has the same problem: how to keep each Christmas special and unique without breaking the bank. One answer is to send out personalized Christmas cards - and all that's required is:

a text editor (such as Notepad)
Internet Explorer
a printer

Selecting Paper for a Personalized Christmas Card

If the aim is to produced a personalized Christmas card but not to have to spend any money then the obvious thing to do is to is to use the standard A4 paper that is used in any typical household printer, however there are two problems with doing this:

Christmas cards are not normally A4 in size - they are more usually half or a quarter of the size of a sheet of A4 paper
a Christmas card made from a single ply A4 sheet of paper is too thin to stand up on it's own

The answer is, of course, to fold a sheet of A4 paper correctly.

Folding Paper for a Personalized Christmas Card

If a sheet of A4 is folded in half then it will not really be strong enough to stand up on its own, however if that same sheet of paper is folded in half again then it will have the strength of a typical Christmas card - and will be the right size as well; so the technique is:

hold the paper with the narrowest sides to the top and bottom
fold the sheet in half - bringing the top edge to the bottom
again hold the paper with the narrowest sides to the top and bottom
and again fold the sheet in half - bringing the top edge to the bottom

If the card is to decorated by hand then it's now ready for use, however this will not work for a computer print out - the inner page (page 3) will appear upside down once the card has been folded.

And this is where Internet Explorer is useful - with Internet Explorer the user can format the text and images on the screen so that the pages will be displayed correctly once the card has been folded.

Formatting a Personalized Christmas Card

The secret to creating a personalized Christmas card is to use the Internet Explorer style to format the the text and images on the page; and it's at this point that the text editor and Internet Explorer are required:

the text editor is required to write the HTML code that Internet Explorer recognizes
Internet Explorer is required to view and interpret the HTML code

So, for example, a file christmas_card.html could be created as follows:

<html>

<head>

<style>

.rhand_text {

writing-mode: tb-rl;

filter: flipH flipV;

}

.lhand_text {

writing-mode: tb-rl;

}

.rhand_image {

filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=3)"

}

.lhand_image {

filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=1)"

}

</style>

</head>

By using these style settings pages can be displayed so that they are turned by 90 degrees or by 270 degrees. It's then just a matter of applying the styles to the text and images on the sections of the page that will make up the pages of the Christmas card:

<body>

<tr>

</div>

</td>

<td>

<br />

<b>A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year</b>

_________________________

<br />

<p>To the Brown family</p>

<br />

<br />

<p>the Bain family</p>

</center>

</div>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>

<h1>Happy Christmas</h1>

</center>

</div>

</td>

<td>

</div>

</td>

</tr>

</table>

</body>

</html>

Conclusion

A personalized Christmas card card is a simple way to make Christmas that little bit more interesting, and by using a Internet Explorer it can be produced at no extra expense - just a little time and effort.

Mark Alexander Bain - Mark Alexander Bain is a writer, Mo Bro and consultant for all aspects of software development at dsquared. He has also written regularly ...