
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! TODCon 2007 Announced For the few who haven't experienced it yet, TODCon is the most informative yet informal Macromedia-related event you're going to find. Whether you're a seasoned veteran of Macromedia products or just starting out, you will have a great time learning a great deal from many knowledgeable speakers about CSS, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, ColdFusion, Flash, Central and even about running your business properly. Those who attend usually end up coming back every year because of the unique and informal atmosphere. You don't want to miss out on this event. This year, TODCon will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada. We predict that this year's turnout will be even bigger than last year's. You're invited to register for this fantastic, one of a kind event. Hurry, so you can get the early bird registration fee. Last Chance For $100 Discount If you haven't already heard about Web Directions North, the web design conference covering Ajax and Javascript, CSS, Microformats, mashups, standards-based web design and development, accessibility, web app development, XHTML and HTML and more, in Vancouver next February, then check out WebDirections.org. Between now and January 14th Community MX readers can get $100 off the ticket price for the conference, bringing it to just $795. To take advantage of this limited time discount go to the Web Directions registration page, and be sure to use the promo code: CMXWDN07. If you sign up before January 5th, you'll be eligible for some pretty cool prizes. For more details on the conference, go to the Web Directions website. If you or your members have any questions, feel free to send the Web Directions folks an email at north@webdirections.org Is This Like The Bug Of The Month Club? From the guys that brought you the Month of Kernel Bugs project, aimed at pointing out the kernel flaws in the Apple OS, comes the "Month of Apple Bugs." An independent security researcher by the name of Kevin Finisterre, and a hacker only known as LMH (which believe either stands for Loopy Moron Head or Love Mom's Home-cookin'), plan on pointing out a Mac security bug each day for a month. The flaw might not specifically be in OS X, but it could also involve software like iTunes, iPhoto and Quicktime. If you want to see the bugs found so far, head over to "Month of Apple Bugs." The Quicktime vulnerability sounds pretty nasty. News.com has more information on this one, as well as more about the Month of Apple Bugs project. The Latest "If We Can't Make Money, No One Can" Company Intertainer, a company that never quite made it big, says it holds the patent on digital downloads. It plans on sueing the pants off of companies like Apple and Google, who it feels are infringing upon this hugely original idea that Intertainer patented in... 2001. Sure. Makes sense. This type of thing happens more and more recently, but thankfully, most cases go the way of the Dodo, because the people who claim these ideas are theirs are typically, well... Dodos. More on this at TechDirt.com. Dear Diary, Vista Is So Cute, I Want To Marry It Barry Gerber kept a diary of his experience using Windows Vista Ultimate edition at TomsHardware.com. His hands-on experience could be very helpful for those who will eventually make the leap to Vista. Overall, it doesn't seem that Gerber was very impressed with it. His exact words were "I wasn't that impressed with Vista's Aero windowing system." He was more keen on the Classic Windows look than the new Aero look that you'll find in Vista. Of course, one person's opinion isn't enough to sway us one way or another, but it's nice to get an opinion from someone who seems like your standard computer user.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Thank you so much for this article. It has been a great, great resource for a beginning dot net programmer." - D. Cunningham, CMX Subscriber, commenting on Heidi Bautista's article, "Using the ASP.NET Insert Record Server Behavior - Part 2". Whether you're just starting out or need advanced support, Community MX will give you answers and ideas to work through your tough issues. Don't miss out. Learn more about CMX or sign up for a free trial today!
Great Quotes: "Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?" — Clifford Stoll We're Hoping He Becomes SnoopDogg HollyWonker PoopButt Time is running out to bid on choosing a name for Scott MacDonald. So far, the winning bid is over $36,000, and the name is "Finest, Freshest, Fastest." Why is MacDonald (or "The Future Mr. Fastest) doing this? Well, money of course. But he's giving 10% of he gets to charity, so there is an upside, besides the money, of course. Past bids included names like "King Taco" and "Oprah Winfrey." We were really pulling for that last one. If you've got plenty of cash to spare, or just want to read about MacDonald's quest, head over to ChooseMyName.BlogSpot.com. Well, That's Not Fly At All Although we haven't heard RegisterFly's take on this story, this story doesn't put them in a good light. RegisterFly is a domain registrar, and according to this review at TheFixed.org, The reviewer says he registered his domain with RegisterFly, and that everything was fine for about a year. When he tried to move his domain to another registrar, he found that he was no longer the owner of his domain. The new owner was... wait for it... RegisterFly. Check out the story at TheFixed.org. Flash Lite Contest Nearly Over The second Flash Lite contest is in ful swing, and will end in February. There are several categories you can compete in: Best Overall Flash Lite content, Best iRiver Flash Lite content, Best Application, Best Animation and Best Flash Lite Site. The prizes for the winners will provide you some motivation, and you can go to FlashMobileGroup.org to see what they are and how to enter. Not Tested, But If You Feel Adventurous... This tutorial at MattPippen.com shows you how to increase the strength of your wireless router's signal using - get this - scissors, mesh wire, glue and cardboard. We can neither confirm nor deny whether or not this little trick works. But if you try it, by all means, let us know the results. We've heard weirder things, but most of them involve fixing things with bubblegum. For Those About To Switch: We Salute You I just bought my wife a wonderful gift for Christmas: A Macbook Pro. She's ecstatic, I'm ecstatic, but neither of us have ever owned a Mac. We've worked with them, but have never been responsibe for loading applications, fixing problems, and all of the other things that go along with being a computer owner. We were, up to this point, Windows devotees. Advice for new owners is plentiful, but it can be either too technical, or too simple. Striking a good balance, with plain old good advice, is Cameron Banga, with a list of Ten things he wish he had known before he switched to OS X. Ah! Just found a very similar link at LifeHacker.com. Enjoy.
CMX Slideshow (Flash Extension) This extension for Flash MX 2004 loads external JPEG and SWF files to create a Flash slideshow. The CMX Slideshow component is very customizable and includes support for hyperlinks, captions, padding, resizing, transitions, controls, and much more. You can also access CMX Slideshow's methods, properties, and events using ActionScript. The support files demonstrate how to create your own custom controls, and how to load a list of images from an external XML file. Take a look at this extension by Paul Newman
Fun and Freebies! The Girls At Wal-Mart Do Not Look Like This Danny Griego, country singer, wants us to believe that the girls of Wal-Mart are frolicking MTV video-type girls. We think that's baloney, but you be the judge. We Probably Shouldn't Be Telling You This, But... Your boss doesn't want you to read this article at WebStuffScan.com. It shows you how to access websites from work that are blocked by your company's firewall or web-blocking software. We don't advise using any of these methods to get to websites your company doesn't want you to visit, so if they find out, don't blame us. Sorry, but my boss was looking over my shoulder as I was typing that. Carry on. Gorkys Zygotic Mynci Broke Up?! Wikipedia.org has a lot of information, much of informative, much of it useless. The "List of bands that broke up in 2006" is probably edging toward the useless end, but what can we say? We love lists like this.
Slicing Fireworks Navigation Bars With Frames A question that often comes up when discussing slicing Fireworks navigation compositions is "Should I use layers or frames for composing my image?" The short answer is, "Yes", which is really no answer at all of course. The slightly longer answer is "It depends." This free article by author Kim Cavanaugh can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Implementing a Record Locking System in ColdFusion 7 Tom Muck Most databases have some sort of row-level locking of database records, however when building a web application you need more than that. Picture a scenario where a database will have multiple users and each user could potentially be working on the same record. This can happen in an e-commerce site, where different departments have access to a given order for fulfillment, or in an Intranet site where various employees have access to a given record. In this article I will show you how to implement a record locking system that relies on the Application.cfc file that was introduced in CF 7. Because of the extended setup to get to the locking portion, we'll run this tutorial in two parts. In this first part, we will set up the Application.cfc with a simple login system, and build the results, login, and update pages. Design Your Own Custom CMX CSS Course [FREE] Sheri German A common question on the forums is for the recommendation of the name of a good CSS book. There are certainly valuable CSS books on the bookshelves of Borders or Barnes and Noble and the virtual bookshelves of Amazon, but why not start right here with the scores of CSS articles on CMX? Perhaps it has been hard to keep track of them all, and even harder to know where to start from among so much bounty. That is where this learning guide comes in. It will group articles into categories, guide you in determining their levels, and help you design your own custom CSS course. Creating Navigation in PDFs - Part 2: Hotspots and Buttons Derrick Ypenburg In Part 1 of this series, Creating Navigation in PDFs: Bookmarks, I covered how to navigate to pages and custom page-views in a PDF document by creating and using bookmarks. This tutorial will also cover how to navigate a PDF to pages and custom page-views, but by creating and using buttons and hot-spots that exist directly in the PDF instead. This creates a PDF that navigates more like a webpage or interactive book/manual. This article requires that you have Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional. Vertically Align Labels and Inputs with CSS Zoe Gillenwater Although forms where the labels are placed above the input fields they describe are considered to be more usable, there are undoubtedly going to be times where you need to use a form layout where the labels are placed to the left of their input fields with right-aligned text. This tutorial will teach you the basic (X)HTML structure and CSS to do just that. It assumes you're already familiar with the building blocks of forms and how to use them correctly to build accessible forms: fieldset, legend, label and input elements. In a followup tutorial, you will learn how to build on this basic structure to accommodate more versatile form content, including checkboxes, radio buttons, textareas with long labels, and instructional text. The CMX PPC Theme for WM5 [FREE] Adrian Senior The CMX theme for Windows Mobile 5 Using mod_rewrite Arman Danesh URL rewriting is a powerful Web server feature -- it allows you to define complex handling of user-requested URLs without the disconcerting behaviour of redirects where the user's displayed URL changes. In this article we show how to use Apache's mod_rewrite to perform URL rewriting. Happy New Year from Community MX! [FREE] Happy New Year from all of us at Community MX! Wishing everyone a safe, healthy and prosperous 2007! Recipe For A Happy New Year Author Unknown To leave the old with a burst of song To recall the right and forgive the wrong; To forget the thing that binds you fast To the vain regrets of the year that's past; To have the strength to let go your hold Of the not worthwhile of the days grown old, To dare to go forth with a purpose true, To the unknown task of the year that's new; To help your brother along the road To do his work and lift his load; To add your gift to the world's good cheer, Is to have and to give a Happy New Year. Making a Flag Icon in Fireworks Paul Davis Create a flag icon with the built-in features of Fireworks. Add a professional touch to the plain flat flags commonly seen across the web. From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Eight - Building the Handheld Media Type Adrian Senior This is the eigth and final part of the "From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility" series; in this final tutorial you will learn how to port your website to the handheld media type. PDAs - Personal Digital Assistants - and smart phones are becoming an increasingly popular way of accessing the Internet for both information and purchasing, certainly within the UK. The Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility Series: From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part One - Building the Header From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Two - Building the Content Area From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Three - Buidling the Footer and Exporting the Slices From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Four - Site Structure and Image Preparation From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Five - Building the Screen Media Type Layout From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Six - Completing the Screen Media Type Layout From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Seven - Building the Print Media Type Layout From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Eight - Building the Handheld Media Type Fixed Position in IE7 - Part Three - Fixed Position and Older IE Versions John Gallant, Holly Bergevin Last time we framed our whole demo page with fixed position elements, header, footer and side columns. Now it's time to add some new code that will make the page display in a simpler but acceptable fashion in IE6 and older IE browsers that don't support fixed positioning. The modifications are made mostly in the CSS, but also add two background images to create faux-columns in those older browsers. ,br /> This is information you need, so join us! The Fixed Position in IE7 Series: Fixed Position in IE7 - Part One Fixed Position in IE7 - Part Two Fixed Position in IE7 - Part Three: Fixed Position and Older IE Versions
The CMX CSS Hack Cheatsheet PDF Hacks and other CSS rule fragments can include a dizzying combination of slashes, asterisks, and sequences of code. How does anyone remember all that? And how does anyone remember which hack works for what problem? Today we have just the solution: a one-page PDF you can print out that includes the most popular hacks, conditionals, and cheats. Tape it to your desktop and give it a glance when you need that code in a hurry. You'll have six IE Conditionals, the Tan Hack and the Tan Hack with Anti-Mac hack, a hide from IE Mac hack, a feed only to IE Mac hack, the Caio Hack and the Anti-Caio Hack, the Holly Hack, the Box Model problem hack, fully clickable IE buttons, two classes for clearing floats, and the "bones" for a fixed-width centered layout all at your finger tips. Check out the Article by CMX Partner Sheri German
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Stephanie Sullivan , CMX Partner. Excuse Me, Are You Using That Class? Have you ever inherited a page from a previous web developer with a myriad of CSS classes in the head of the document? Sometimes you wonder if they're all really being used. Don't forget that Find and Replace does so much more than search for text or bits of code. Open Find and Replace and select: Find in: Current Document Search: Specific Tag [any tag] + With Attribute class = [any value] Click "Find All" Dreamweaver will return a list of every element with a class value within the document. You can then scan through them, see what's being used and as long as the classes are embedded in the head of the document, you can delete the rest (and perhaps boil it down even more by creating type and descendant selectors -- but that's another subject). Voila! A cleaner more organized page. Would you like your tip published? Submit it to tips@communitymx.com. That's it for this week. Stay tuned for the next CMX newsletter!

CMX Weekly Newsletter

News
Fun and Freebies
Recent CMX Content
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats

Check the News!

TODCon 2007 Announced

For the few who haven't experienced it yet, TODCon is the most informative yet informal Macromedia-related event you're going to find. Whether you're a seasoned veteran of Macromedia products or just starting out, you will have a great time learning a great deal from many knowledgeable speakers about CSS, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, ColdFusion, Flash, Central and even about running your business properly. Those who attend usually end up coming back every year because of the unique and informal atmosphere. You don't want to miss out on this event. This year, TODCon will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada. We predict that this year's turnout will be even bigger than last year's.

You're invited to register for this fantastic, one of a kind event. Hurry, so you can get the early bird registration fee.

Last Chance For $100 Discount

If you haven't already heard about Web Directions North, the web design conference covering Ajax and Javascript, CSS, Microformats, mashups, standards-based web design and development, accessibility, web app development, XHTML and HTML and more, in Vancouver next February, then check out WebDirections.org. Between now and January 14th Community MX readers can get $100 off the ticket price for the conference, bringing it to just $795. To take advantage of this limited time discount go to the Web Directions registration page, and be sure to use the promo code: CMXWDN07. If you sign up before January 5th, you'll be eligible for some pretty cool prizes.

For more details on the conference, go to the Web Directions website. If you or your members have any questions, feel free to send the Web Directions folks an email at north@webdirections.org

Is This Like The Bug Of The Month Club?

From the guys that brought you the Month of Kernel Bugs project, aimed at pointing out the kernel flaws in the Apple OS, comes the "Month of Apple Bugs." An independent security researcher by the name of Kevin Finisterre, and a hacker only known as LMH (which believe either stands for Loopy Moron Head or Love Mom's Home-cookin'), plan on pointing out a Mac security bug each day for a month. The flaw might not specifically be in OS X, but it could also involve software like iTunes, iPhoto and Quicktime. If you want to see the bugs found so far, head over to "Month of Apple Bugs." The Quicktime vulnerability sounds pretty nasty. News.com has more information on this one, as well as more about the Month of Apple Bugs project.

The Latest "If We Can't Make Money, No One Can" Company

Intertainer, a company that never quite made it big, says it holds the patent on digital downloads. It plans on sueing the pants off of companies like Apple and Google, who it feels are infringing upon this hugely original idea that Intertainer patented in... 2001. Sure. Makes sense. This type of thing happens more and more recently, but thankfully, most cases go the way of the Dodo, because the people who claim these ideas are theirs are typically, well... Dodos. More on this at TechDirt.com.

Dear Diary, Vista Is So Cute, I Want To Marry It

Barry Gerber kept a diary of his experience using Windows Vista Ultimate edition at TomsHardware.com. His hands-on experience could be very helpful for those who will eventually make the leap to Vista. Overall, it doesn't seem that Gerber was very impressed with it. His exact words were "I wasn't that impressed with Vista's Aero windowing system." He was more keen on the Classic Windows look than the new Aero look that you'll find in Vista. Of course, one person's opinion isn't enough to sway us one way or another, but it's nice to get an opinion from someone who seems like your standard computer user.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Thank you so much for this article. It has been a great, great resource for a beginning dot net programmer."

- D. Cunningham, CMX Subscriber, commenting on Heidi Bautista's article, "Using the ASP.NET Insert Record Server Behavior - Part 2".

Whether you're just starting out or need advanced support, Community MX will give you answers and ideas to work through your tough issues. Don't miss out. Learn more about CMX or sign up for a free trial today!

Great Quotes:

"Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?" — Clifford Stoll

We're Hoping He Becomes SnoopDogg HollyWonker PoopButt

Time is running out to bid on choosing a name for Scott MacDonald. So far, the winning bid is over $36,000, and the name is "Finest, Freshest, Fastest." Why is MacDonald (or "The Future Mr. Fastest) doing this? Well, money of course. But he's giving 10% of he gets to charity, so there is an upside, besides the money, of course. Past bids included names like "King Taco" and "Oprah Winfrey." We were really pulling for that last one. If you've got plenty of cash to spare, or just want to read about MacDonald's quest, head over to ChooseMyName.BlogSpot.com.

Well, That's Not Fly At All

Although we haven't heard RegisterFly's take on this story, this story doesn't put them in a good light. RegisterFly is a domain registrar, and according to this review at TheFixed.org, The reviewer says he registered his domain with RegisterFly, and that everything was fine for about a year. When he tried to move his domain to another registrar, he found that he was no longer the owner of his domain. The new owner was... wait for it... RegisterFly. Check out the story at TheFixed.org.

Flash Lite Contest Nearly Over

The second Flash Lite contest is in ful swing, and will end in February. There are several categories you can compete in: Best Overall Flash Lite content, Best iRiver Flash Lite content, Best Application, Best Animation and Best Flash Lite Site. The prizes for the winners will provide you some motivation, and you can go to FlashMobileGroup.org to see what they are and how to enter.

Not Tested, But If You Feel Adventurous...

This tutorial at MattPippen.com shows you how to increase the strength of your wireless router's signal using - get this - scissors, mesh wire, glue and cardboard. We can neither confirm nor deny whether or not this little trick works. But if you try it, by all means, let us know the results. We've heard weirder things, but most of them involve fixing things with bubblegum.

For Those About To Switch: We Salute You

I just bought my wife a wonderful gift for Christmas: A Macbook Pro. She's ecstatic, I'm ecstatic, but neither of us have ever owned a Mac. We've worked with them, but have never been responsibe for loading applications, fixing problems, and all of the other things that go along with being a computer owner. We were, up to this point, Windows devotees. Advice for new owners is plentiful, but it can be either too technical, or too simple. Striking a good balance, with plain old good advice, is Cameron Banga, with a list of Ten things he wish he had known before he switched to OS X. Ah! Just found a very similar link at LifeHacker.com. Enjoy.

CMX Slideshow (Flash Extension)

This extension for Flash MX 2004 loads external JPEG and SWF files to create a Flash slideshow. The CMX Slideshow component is very customizable and includes support for hyperlinks, captions, padding, resizing, transitions, controls, and much more. You can also access CMX Slideshow's methods, properties, and events using ActionScript. The support files demonstrate how to create your own custom controls, and how to load a list of images from an external XML file.

Take a look at this extension by Paul Newman

Fun and Freebies!

The Girls At Wal-Mart Do Not Look Like This

Danny Griego, country singer, wants us to believe that the girls of Wal-Mart are frolicking MTV video-type girls. We think that's baloney, but you be the judge.

We Probably Shouldn't Be Telling You This, But...

Your boss doesn't want you to read this article at WebStuffScan.com. It shows you how to access websites from work that are blocked by your company's firewall or web-blocking software. We don't advise using any of these methods to get to websites your company doesn't want you to visit, so if they find out, don't blame us. Sorry, but my boss was looking over my shoulder as I was typing that. Carry on.

Gorkys Zygotic Mynci Broke Up?!

Wikipedia.org has a lot of information, much of informative, much of it useless. The "List of bands that broke up in 2006" is probably edging toward the useless end, but what can we say? We love lists like this.

Slicing Fireworks Navigation Bars With Frames

A question that often comes up when discussing slicing Fireworks navigation compositions is "Should I use layers or frames for composing my image?" The short answer is, "Yes", which is really no answer at all of course. The slightly longer answer is "It depends."

This free article by author Kim Cavanaugh can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Implementing a Record Locking System in ColdFusion 7

Tom Muck

Most databases have some sort of row-level locking of database records, however when building a web application you need more than that. Picture a scenario where a database will have multiple users and each user could potentially be working on the same record. This can happen in an e-commerce site, where different departments have access to a given order for fulfillment, or in an Intranet site where various employees have access to a given record.

In this article I will show you how to implement a record locking system that relies on the Application.cfc file that was introduced in CF 7. Because of the extended setup to get to the locking portion, we'll run this tutorial in two parts. In this first part, we will set up the Application.cfc with a simple login system, and build the results, login, and update pages.

Design Your Own Custom CMX CSS Course [FREE]

Sheri German

A common question on the forums is for the recommendation of the name of a good CSS book. There are certainly valuable CSS books on the bookshelves of Borders or Barnes and Noble and the virtual bookshelves of Amazon, but why not start right here with the scores of CSS articles on CMX? Perhaps it has been hard to keep track of them all, and even harder to know where to start from among so much bounty. That is where this learning guide comes in. It will group articles into categories, guide you in determining their levels, and help you design your own custom CSS course.

Creating Navigation in PDFs - Part 2: Hotspots and Buttons

Derrick Ypenburg

In Part 1 of this series, Creating Navigation in PDFs: Bookmarks, I covered how to navigate to pages and custom page-views in a PDF document by creating and using bookmarks. This tutorial will also cover how to navigate a PDF to pages and custom page-views, but by creating and using buttons and hot-spots that exist directly in the PDF instead. This creates a PDF that navigates more like a webpage or interactive book/manual. This article requires that you have Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional.

Vertically Align Labels and Inputs with CSS

Zoe Gillenwater

Although forms where the labels are placed above the input fields they describe are considered to be more usable, there are undoubtedly going to be times where you need to use a form layout where the labels are placed to the left of their input fields with right-aligned text. This tutorial will teach you the basic (X)HTML structure and CSS to do just that. It assumes you're already familiar with the building blocks of forms and how to use them correctly to build accessible forms: fieldset, legend, label and input elements.

In a followup tutorial, you will learn how to build on this basic structure to accommodate more versatile form content, including checkboxes, radio buttons, textareas with long labels, and instructional text.

The CMX PPC Theme for WM5 [FREE]

Adrian Senior

The CMX theme for Windows Mobile 5

Using mod_rewrite

Arman Danesh

URL rewriting is a powerful Web server feature -- it allows you to define complex handling of user-requested URLs without the disconcerting behaviour of redirects where the user's displayed URL changes. In this article we show how to use Apache's mod_rewrite to perform URL rewriting.

Happy New Year from Community MX! [FREE]

Happy New Year from all of us at Community MX!

Wishing everyone a safe, healthy and prosperous 2007!

Recipe For A Happy New Year

Author Unknown

To leave the old with a burst of song
To recall the right and forgive the wrong;
To forget the thing that binds you fast
To the vain regrets of the year that's past;
To have the strength to let go your hold
Of the not worthwhile of the days grown old,
To dare to go forth with a purpose true,
To the unknown task of the year that's new;
To help your brother along the road
To do his work and lift his load;
To add your gift to the world's good cheer,
Is to have and to give a Happy New Year.

Making a Flag Icon in Fireworks

Paul Davis

Create a flag icon with the built-in features of Fireworks. Add a professional touch to the plain flat flags commonly seen across the web.

From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Eight - Building the Handheld Media Type

Adrian Senior

Fixed Position in IE7 - Part Three - Fixed Position and Older IE Versions

John Gallant, Holly Bergevin

Last time we framed our whole demo page with fixed position elements, header, footer and side columns. Now it's time to add some new code that will make the page display in a simpler but acceptable fashion in IE6 and older IE browsers that don't support fixed positioning. The modifications are made mostly in the CSS, but also add two background images to create faux-columns in those older browsers.
,br /> This is information you need, so join us!

The Fixed Position in IE7 Series:
Fixed Position in IE7 - Part One
Fixed Position in IE7 - Part Two
Fixed Position in IE7 - Part Three: Fixed Position and Older IE Versions

The CMX CSS Hack Cheatsheet PDF

Hacks and other CSS rule fragments can include a dizzying combination of slashes, asterisks, and sequences of code. How does anyone remember all that? And how does anyone remember which hack works for what problem? Today we have just the solution: a one-page PDF you can print out that includes the most popular hacks, conditionals, and cheats. Tape it to your desktop and give it a glance when you need that code in a hurry. You'll have six IE Conditionals, the Tan Hack and the Tan Hack with Anti-Mac hack, a hide from IE Mac hack, a feed only to IE Mac hack, the Caio Hack and the Anti-Caio Hack, the Holly Hack, the Box Model problem hack, fully clickable IE buttons, two classes for clearing floats, and the "bones" for a fixed-width centered layout all at your finger tips.

Check out the Article by CMX Partner Sheri German

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Stephanie Sullivan , CMX Partner.

Excuse Me, Are You Using That Class?

Have you ever inherited a page from a previous web developer with a myriad of CSS classes in the head of the document? Sometimes you wonder if they're all really being used. Don't forget that Find and Replace does so much more than search for text or bits of code. Open Find and Replace and select:

Find in: Current Document
Search: Specific Tag [any tag]
+ With Attribute class = [any value]
Click "Find All"

Dreamweaver will return a list of every element with a class value within the document. You can then scan through them, see what's being used and as long as the classes are embedded in the head of the document, you can delete the rest (and perhaps boil it down even more by creating type and descendant selectors -- but that's another subject). Voila! A cleaner more organized page.

Would you like your tip published? Submit it to tips@communitymx.com.

That's it for this week. Stay tuned for the next CMX newsletter!