
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! TODcon 2007 in VEGAS - Come To Learn and Meet Friends For the few who haven't experienced it yet, TODCon is the most informative yet informal Macromedia-related event you're ever 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, 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 take advantage of the early bird registration discount. Surely You Can Do Better. No... We're Not Calling You Shirley At QuarkVsInDesign.com, they recognize that not everyone is happy about the new icons that go along with Adobe's CS3 suite. Some of us at CMX agree that they're not exactly awe-inspiring. Take a look on Adobe's website. Anyway, they're having a contest - with prizes, natch - to see if you can do better. Once the contest is over, all of the icons submitted for the contest will be made available to everyone for free. To enter or read more about the contest, go to QuarkVsInDesign.com. Lightroom Sees The Light Adobe Lightroom has been in beta for a good while, but it's now a reality, and on store shelves. Community MX author Kim Dudley wrote an article about Lightroom more than a year ago, and Jim Babbage, yet another CMX author, has blogged about it a couple of times. Adobe is offering Lightroom to consumers for $199 for another few months, at which point it will jump to $299. If you think it's an app that will help you with your work, now's the time to grab it. Trust Your Money With Microsoft Microsoft is going into the online transaction business. At a meeting at the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates got completely sloppy, fall-down drunk and... ok, he didn't, but it would have been such a better story if he did. In any case, Bill Gates announced that his system will lower costs on the part of the merchant, making it more profitable to sell goods online. Gates' plan may undercut credit card fees, which will either create some great price competition, or completely ruin the big credit card companies. We're hoping for the former... Read more about it at CNN.com. Now You Need Windows To Load Windows Many Windows users were accustomed to upgrading to the next version of Windows on a freshly formatted hard drive. To the chagrin of those aforementioned "many", Windows Vista will require that XP or Windows 2000 be present on your computer when you upgrade. Upgrades from MS have always been iffy at best, especially when upgrading on top of the old OS. Arstechnica.com speculates about why MS is heading this direction after so many years of offering a more open-ended upgrade. TechRoom.com also has an informative article on the upgrade situation. When you do get around to upgrading though, head over to HowToGeek.com to get some great Windows Vista tips.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Finally, What I have been waiting for, I cannot wait till the next parts, this is worth my money, Keep Up The Great Work Mate." CMX Subscriber Faisal A., commenting on Adrian Senior's FREE article "Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 1 - Installation and the Testing Server" 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: "Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it." — Samuel Johnson You Mean Google's Not "IT"? Yes Virginia, there are other search engines out there besides Google. Some darn good ones too. Google, MSN and Yahoo! do a great job, but depending on what you're looking for, you may find that another search tool does the job better. ReadWriteWeb.com has posted a list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines. Looking through the list, we found a lot of search engines we'd never even heard of. You'll want to read the descriptions for each one, because many of them search for specific types of things, which could make your job easier. This Just In: Second Life Is Not a Game If you play Sims Online, you're playing a game. If you play World of Warcraft, that's a game too. Second Life? Not a game. At least, not according to eBay, who have decided to ban the selling of virtual goods on eBay. Players of games like Everquest II had grown used to being able to buy items to improve their gameplay, but because eBay is unsure of the legalities of acting as the middleman for buying and/or selling virtual goods, those players will now, probably, be flooding Craigslist - unless they play Second Life, which apparently you cannot really "play" because again, according to eBay, Second Life is not a game. This article at ITWire.com has more news on the subject, including the quick mention that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar is an investor in Second Life... Spammers Take Note If you send out a weekly newsletter, or send out offers to registered users of a website, you're probably aware of the spam laws and etiquette involved in these types of mass mailings. For instance, Community MX does not send this newsletter to anyone who doesn't want it. You have to sign up for it, and once you have, we use your email address for that purposee, and only that purpose, as opposed to selling it to someone that is going to spam the borscht out of you. DarkReading.com has a pretty good article on making sure you're not mistaken for a spammer anytime soon. Is SEO a Waste Of Your Money? At MarketingPilgrim.com, Jordan McCollum got a bit irked about a newspaper that was knocking search engine optimization services. The article seems to have been a bit too black and white, not leaving much room for SEO's who do a good job for their clients. Jordan's rebuttal contains some good tips for anyone who currently uses, or is thinking of using a SEO service. We're Not Playing Games Here. At Least, Not Any PS3 Games The anticipation over the Playstation 3 console was massive in the last quarter of 2006. We waited. Then we saw pictures. Ooooh! Ahhh!! Then we heard about the price? "What?! Not me," you said. "Let some other joker pay that kind of cash for a gaming console that's getting pretty poor reviews anyway." Well, you weren't the only one thinking that way, and as a result, Sony's projected earnings toppled while Nintendo's skyrocketed. The idea that the Wii could surpass the PS3 in sales is amazing, considering how different the playing field was up until recently. TechNewsWorld.com explains how this might have happened.
CMX Mp3 Player The CMX MP3 Player component enables you to load external MP3s from an XML playlist. Features include track info display (title, artist), elapsed and remaining time, audio scrubber, volume slider, and playlist navigation. Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Paul Newman
Fun and Freebies Geeky Guy Gets Girl We don't throw the term "geek" around lightly, but if a guy proposes to his girlfriend using a Dashboard Widget, well... that my friends, is a geek. Check out his blog to see if she said yes. Cursing For Fun and Profit. Or Just For Fun. Do not play the Profane Game if you're not good at swearing. However, if you've got a lot of bad words stored up that you've just been dying to use, why not make it fun? Hi Mark! I'm Like Totally Doing My Cheerleading Right Now! I Know! Isn't That Cool?! OK, we know teenagers like their cell phones. Some can't live without them. But it's time to reflect on your dependence to gadgets when you're a cheerleader who talks on the phone at the same time she's cheering her team on. This cheerleader unabashedly chats through the entire cheer. Miraculously, none of her fellow cheerleaders kick her in the butt. Check out the YouTube video.
All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part One Do you like drop shadows on your page elements, but haven't a clue how to get them on your pages? Maybe you do know a bit about creating drop shadows, but a refresher on the modern methods would be welcome? Do you want to learn the very latest cutting edge tricks? If you are any of these, don't go away because we now begin a series on drop shadows for HTML elements. At the start we'll keep it simple, and as we progress in the series the methods will become more advanced and effective. At the end you will be treated to a brand new method so advanced that it must wait for IE7 to arrive before you can use it properly. This free article by CMX Partners Holly Bergevin and John Gallant can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part Two Sheri German Welcome to Part two in the Dreamweaver web standards lesson plan series. In Part one you guided students through exercises in floating images and setting page areas with divs. In this lesson. you will teach your students about two models for creating side-by-side columns, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. This lesson plan includes the files for all three exercises in this part. The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series: The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 1 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan - Part 2 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part One [FREE] Sheri German There is a concern among educators that web design is often being taught poorly - even at the college level - and without regard for standards. In some cases it is because the instructor has not updated her skills since the turn of the century. In other cases it is because there is a perception that it is too hard to teach and learn CSS. Yes, it is true that one must go slowly, start simple, and build skills in a systematic way. Still, after some experimentation and a few of my own lessons learned the hard way, I came up with some beginning exercises that seem to instill the essential concepts without overwhelming the students. In this series I would like to share some of these lesson plans with my fellow educators who, like me, would like to start their students out with "best practices". Each lesson plan includes step-by-step exercises along with the starter and completed exmple files for each. In this first tutorial in the series, the students will construct a simple page, learn to wrap text around an image, and learn how to divide the page into a series of divs that will later provide the hooks for positioning page areas with CSS. The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series: The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 1 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan - Part 2 Shut Off Your Site -- ColdFusion Maintenance Tom Muck There is frequently a need for page maintenance or database maintenance, without turning off a server. If you are at a remote location, wouldn't it be nice to be able to shut down access to your pages without having to call someone or pull up a remote desktop? With a couple simple variables and the Application.cfc file (or Application.cfm), you can create the functionality to shut off access to your site and return a simple message to any user that happens across your site while the maintenance is underway. The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 6: Resource Pointers and One Last Trick Rob Williams One of the key components of any scripting or programming language are control structures; statements that tell a language interpretter to stop reading code in a linear line-by-line fashion and start to make more complex operations based on simple logic. While most developers are aware of the common "if else" and "for" structures, there are many others available in PHP (and other languages I might add) that allow you to save a great deal of time and make your coding more efficient and easier to understand. In this series we're going to take a look at some of those "forgotten" structures and some practical examples of how they can be used to clean up your coding techniques. In the final part of this series we'll tie up some loose ends and take a look at one last neat little trick: resource pointers. The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures Series: The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 1: Switch Statements The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 2: The Break Command The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 3: Advanced Loops and Arrays The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 4: Internal Array Pointers The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 5: Variables by Reference The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 6:Resource Pointers and One Last Trick Google Analytics Part 2: Examining Analytical Data [FREE] Kim Cavanaugh There are two fundamental questions regarding web site design and functionality that every site designer needs to answer: Who is your target audience and what is it that you want them to do at your site? The answers to those two questions go a long way towards driving site design as they affect everything from the colors you choose, the kind of navigation you select, and the services that you offer. During the design process the savvy designer/developer keeps these questions firmly in mind as they make their decisions, making assumptions based on what they think people will do at the site. You can take the guess work out of this process by using the new, and completely free service offered by Google called Google Analytics. In this article you'll see how data is organized by Google Analytics for your quick review and how you can drill down to get even more information. Be forewarned though. The kinds of data analysis you can do on a site can be somewhat addictive, and you may find yourself spending a considerable amount of time looking at all the information Google Analytics provides on your sites. Working with the Camera Class - Part 2: Detecting Motion Robert Reinhardt In this "Working with" series, you learn how to use the Camera class in Flash Player. The Camera class has been available in Flash Player since version 6, yet many Flash designers and developers don't know much about it. The Camera class gives you access to the user's webcam, to do everything from publishing a live video stream to detecting movement in the camera frame. In this tutorial, you learn how to use the Camera.onActivity event handler to detect motion in the video feed. The Working With the Camera Class Series: Working with the Camera Class - Part 1: Viewing Live Output Working With the Camera Class - Part 2: Detecting Motion Peronalized E-cards with Flash Derrick Ypenburg I know the busy season for sending out greeting cards to your clients and friends has passed, but you can plan ahead for next year as well as using this tutorial for sending out any customized info and greetings throughout the rest of the year. Nicely designed e-cards using Flash can send an effective, fully animated-greeting and message to your clients/friends. It also saves you a bundle in printing and mailing costs that come with hard-copy cards and mail-outs. If you're like me and you wait to the last minute with things, you can send them out much later and not have to worry about the time mail takes to get to places on-time! This tutorial covers using PHP, URL encoded strings, FlahVars, and Flash to send out an address to a simple Flash e-card template that is personalized for each recipients name. Bulletproof Your Home Business Deduction [FREE] Paul Davis If you are in the USA and you have a home office, but you are afraid to deduct it or you would like to see how to deduct it more effectively, without fearing an IRA audit, check out the tips in this article (Please note: The author is not a tax lawyer or accountant and the advice that is given should not be considered as legal or accounting advice. Discuss all of these suggestions with your accountant or legal adviser. Your state laws may be substantially different) The Displacement Map Filter Demystified: Part 1 - How It Ticks [FREE] David Stiller Flash Professional 8 introduced a number of exciting new visual filters — such as drop shadow, blur, glow, and bevel — which reproduce many of the corresponding filters of Photoshop and Fireworks. Of these, most are available via the Property inspector's Filters tab. All filters are accessible to ActionScript, but a few actually require programming. One of these is the DisplacementMapFilter class, which distorts images based on the colors or transparency in a special reference map. Here in Part 1 of this series, you will learn how the displacement map filter works and how to use it to reposition pixels in an imported graphic file. In future installments, you will learn how to produce a handful of very cool visual effects that are only possible with ActionScript, including a magnifying class, fisheye lens, and ripples. Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 1 Zoe Gillenwater One of the stereotypical types of CSS layouts is known as a toilet paper roll layout: a centered, fixed-width column of content, usually subdivided into two or three columns, with a header and footer spanning them all. It became known as the toilet paper roll layout because the content seemed to spill down the page as if paper coming off a roll. It has a very vertical feel to it. Another type of CSS layout that is now popular, however, is what I call a horizontal band layout. Its content can still be fixed-width and centered, but instead of the vertical feel of the toilet paper roll layouts it has a horizontal one because of the background colors or images applied to the stacked divs that stretch across the entire width of the viewport. Sometimes these horizontal bands are just restricted to the header and footer areas. Other times the entire layout is made up of stacked bands. Despite the many different looks of these horizontal band layouts, the markup and CSS required for forming their basic shape is quite similar throughout. In this tutorial, you'll learn what separates them from vertically oriented layouts by modifying the markup and CSS of a simple vertical layout and turning it into a basic horizontal band layout. This tutorial assumes you have an intermediate understanding of CSS, specifically backgrounds, margins, and floats.
Making Full Use of Bindings The Dreamweaver bindings panel has a lot of uses beyond a place to build recordsets and stored procedures. Many people don't realize that when you add session, request, and application variables to the panel manually, you get some visual advantages — the ability to drag items to the page into design view, the ability to use variables as filters, and the ability to add formatting functions to design view. This article will explore the bindings panel and its advantages. Because we are discussing core Dreamweaver functionality, the article will apply equally to all server models in Dreamweaver, although some server models have better bindings panel support than others. Check out the Article by CMX partner Tom Muck
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX partner Tom Green Changing Cue Points in Your FLV If you have an overwhelming urge to embed Cue Points into an FLV file's metadata you have most likely discovered that once they are embedded they can't be removed or changed. Here’s a little trick that will bail you out of a rather tricky Cue Point situation: Let’s assume you discover, when testing the video in Flash, you have screwed up the timing for the first Cue Point. Relaunch the Encoder. You will notice that the video just encoded is still in the interface. Select the video and then select Edit >Reset Status. The settings will open and you can then make the change in the Advanced Settings.Recompile the FLV and you have changed a cue point. If the video has been removed - you selected the video in the Encoder and clicked the Remove button - you are out of luck. 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 in VEGAS - Come To Learn and Meet Friends

For the few who haven't experienced it yet, TODCon is the most informative yet informal Macromedia-related event you're ever 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, 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 take advantage of the early bird registration discount.

Surely You Can Do Better. No... We're Not Calling You Shirley

At QuarkVsInDesign.com, they recognize that not everyone is happy about the new icons that go along with Adobe's CS3 suite. Some of us at CMX agree that they're not exactly awe-inspiring. Take a look on Adobe's website. Anyway, they're having a contest - with prizes, natch - to see if you can do better. Once the contest is over, all of the icons submitted for the contest will be made available to everyone for free. To enter or read more about the contest, go to QuarkVsInDesign.com.

Lightroom Sees The Light

Adobe Lightroom has been in beta for a good while, but it's now a reality, and on store shelves. Community MX author Kim Dudley wrote an article about Lightroom more than a year ago, and Jim Babbage, yet another CMX author, has blogged about it a couple of times. Adobe is offering Lightroom to consumers for $199 for another few months, at which point it will jump to $299. If you think it's an app that will help you with your work, now's the time to grab it.

Trust Your Money With Microsoft

Microsoft is going into the online transaction business. At a meeting at the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates got completely sloppy, fall-down drunk and... ok, he didn't, but it would have been such a better story if he did. In any case, Bill Gates announced that his system will lower costs on the part of the merchant, making it more profitable to sell goods online. Gates' plan may undercut credit card fees, which will either create some great price competition, or completely ruin the big credit card companies. We're hoping for the former... Read more about it at CNN.com.

Now You Need Windows To Load Windows

Many Windows users were accustomed to upgrading to the next version of Windows on a freshly formatted hard drive. To the chagrin of those aforementioned "many", Windows Vista will require that XP or Windows 2000 be present on your computer when you upgrade. Upgrades from MS have always been iffy at best, especially when upgrading on top of the old OS. Arstechnica.com speculates about why MS is heading this direction after so many years of offering a more open-ended upgrade. TechRoom.com also has an informative article on the upgrade situation. When you do get around to upgrading though, head over to HowToGeek.com to get some great Windows Vista tips.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Finally, What I have been waiting for, I cannot wait till the next parts, this is worth my money, Keep Up The Great Work Mate."

CMX Subscriber Faisal A., commenting on Adrian Senior's FREE article "Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 1 - Installation and the Testing Server"

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:

"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it." — Samuel Johnson

You Mean Google's Not "IT"?

Yes Virginia, there are other search engines out there besides Google. Some darn good ones too. Google, MSN and Yahoo! do a great job, but depending on what you're looking for, you may find that another search tool does the job better. ReadWriteWeb.com has posted a list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines. Looking through the list, we found a lot of search engines we'd never even heard of. You'll want to read the descriptions for each one, because many of them search for specific types of things, which could make your job easier.

This Just In: Second Life Is Not a Game

If you play Sims Online, you're playing a game. If you play World of Warcraft, that's a game too. Second Life? Not a game. At least, not according to eBay, who have decided to ban the selling of virtual goods on eBay. Players of games like Everquest II had grown used to being able to buy items to improve their gameplay, but because eBay is unsure of the legalities of acting as the middleman for buying and/or selling virtual goods, those players will now, probably, be flooding Craigslist - unless they play Second Life, which apparently you cannot really "play" because again, according to eBay, Second Life is not a game. This article at ITWire.com has more news on the subject, including the quick mention that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar is an investor in Second Life...

Spammers Take Note

If you send out a weekly newsletter, or send out offers to registered users of a website, you're probably aware of the spam laws and etiquette involved in these types of mass mailings. For instance, Community MX does not send this newsletter to anyone who doesn't want it. You have to sign up for it, and once you have, we use your email address for that purposee, and only that purpose, as opposed to selling it to someone that is going to spam the borscht out of you. DarkReading.com has a pretty good article on making sure you're not mistaken for a spammer anytime soon.

Is SEO a Waste Of Your Money?

At MarketingPilgrim.com, Jordan McCollum got a bit irked about a newspaper that was knocking search engine optimization services. The article seems to have been a bit too black and white, not leaving much room for SEO's who do a good job for their clients. Jordan's rebuttal contains some good tips for anyone who currently uses, or is thinking of using a SEO service.

We're Not Playing Games Here. At Least, Not Any PS3 Games

The anticipation over the Playstation 3 console was massive in the last quarter of 2006. We waited. Then we saw pictures. Ooooh! Ahhh!! Then we heard about the price? "What?! Not me," you said. "Let some other joker pay that kind of cash for a gaming console that's getting pretty poor reviews anyway." Well, you weren't the only one thinking that way, and as a result, Sony's projected earnings toppled while Nintendo's skyrocketed. The idea that the Wii could surpass the PS3 in sales is amazing, considering how different the playing field was up until recently. TechNewsWorld.com explains how this might have happened.

CMX Mp3 Player

The CMX MP3 Player component enables you to load external MP3s from an XML playlist. Features include track info display (title, artist), elapsed and remaining time, audio scrubber, volume slider, and playlist navigation.

Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Paul Newman

Fun and Freebies

Geeky Guy Gets Girl

We don't throw the term "geek" around lightly, but if a guy proposes to his girlfriend using a Dashboard Widget, well... that my friends, is a geek. Check out his blog to see if she said yes.

Cursing For Fun and Profit. Or Just For Fun.

Do not play the Profane Game if you're not good at swearing. However, if you've got a lot of bad words stored up that you've just been dying to use, why not make it fun?

Hi Mark! I'm Like Totally Doing My Cheerleading Right Now! I Know! Isn't That Cool?!

OK, we know teenagers like their cell phones. Some can't live without them. But it's time to reflect on your dependence to gadgets when you're a cheerleader who talks on the phone at the same time she's cheering her team on. This cheerleader unabashedly chats through the entire cheer. Miraculously, none of her fellow cheerleaders kick her in the butt. Check out the YouTube video.

All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part One

Do you like drop shadows on your page elements, but haven't a clue how to get them on your pages? Maybe you do know a bit about creating drop shadows, but a refresher on the modern methods would be welcome? Do you want to learn the very latest cutting edge tricks? If you are any of these, don't go away because we now begin a series on drop shadows for HTML elements. At the start we'll keep it simple, and as we progress in the series the methods will become more advanced and effective. At the end you will be treated to a brand new method so advanced that it must wait for IE7 to arrive before you can use it properly.

This free article by CMX Partners Holly Bergevin and John Gallant can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part Two

Sheri German

Welcome to Part two in the Dreamweaver web standards lesson plan series. In Part one you guided students through exercises in floating images and setting page areas with divs. In this lesson. you will teach your students about two models for creating side-by-side columns, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

This lesson plan includes the files for all three exercises in this part.

The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series:
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 1
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan - Part 2

The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part One [FREE]

Sheri German

There is a concern among educators that web design is often being taught poorly - even at the college level - and without regard for standards. In some cases it is because the instructor has not updated her skills since the turn of the century. In other cases it is because there is a perception that it is too hard to teach and learn CSS. Yes, it is true that one must go slowly, start simple, and build skills in a systematic way. Still, after some experimentation and a few of my own lessons learned the hard way, I came up with some beginning exercises that seem to instill the essential concepts without overwhelming the students. In this series I would like to share some of these lesson plans with my fellow educators who, like me, would like to start their students out with "best practices". Each lesson plan includes step-by-step exercises along with the starter and completed exmple files for each.

In this first tutorial in the series, the students will construct a simple page, learn to wrap text around an image, and learn how to divide the page into a series of divs that will later provide the hooks for positioning page areas with CSS.

The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series:
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 1
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan - Part 2

Shut Off Your Site -- ColdFusion Maintenance

Tom Muck

There is frequently a need for page maintenance or database maintenance, without turning off a server. If you are at a remote location, wouldn't it be nice to be able to shut down access to your pages without having to call someone or pull up a remote desktop? With a couple simple variables and the Application.cfc file (or Application.cfm), you can create the functionality to shut off access to your site and return a simple message to any user that happens across your site while the maintenance is underway.

The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 6: Resource Pointers and One Last Trick

Rob Williams

One of the key components of any scripting or programming language are control structures; statements that tell a language interpretter to stop reading code in a linear line-by-line fashion and start to make more complex operations based on simple logic. While most developers are aware of the common "if else" and "for" structures, there are many others available in PHP (and other languages I might add) that allow you to save a great deal of time and make your coding more efficient and easier to understand.

In this series we're going to take a look at some of those "forgotten" structures and some practical examples of how they can be used to clean up your coding techniques. In the final part of this series we'll tie up some loose ends and take a look at one last neat little trick: resource pointers.

The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures Series:
The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 1: Switch Statements
The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 2: The Break Command
The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 3: Advanced Loops and Arrays
The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 4: Internal Array Pointers
The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 5: Variables by Reference
The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 6:Resource Pointers and One Last Trick

Google Analytics Part 2: Examining Analytical Data [FREE]

Kim Cavanaugh

There are two fundamental questions regarding web site design and functionality that every site designer needs to answer: Who is your target audience and what is it that you want them to do at your site? The answers to those two questions go a long way towards driving site design as they affect everything from the colors you choose, the kind of navigation you select, and the services that you offer. During the design process the savvy designer/developer keeps these questions firmly in mind as they make their decisions, making assumptions based on what they think people will do at the site.

You can take the guess work out of this process by using the new, and completely free service offered by Google called Google Analytics.

In this article you'll see how data is organized by Google Analytics for your quick review and how you can drill down to get even more information. Be forewarned though. The kinds of data analysis you can do on a site can be somewhat addictive, and you may find yourself spending a considerable amount of time looking at all the information Google Analytics provides on your sites.

Working with the Camera Class - Part 2: Detecting Motion

Robert Reinhardt

In this "Working with" series, you learn how to use the Camera class in Flash Player. The Camera class has been available in Flash Player since version 6, yet many Flash designers and developers don't know much about it. The Camera class gives you access to the user's webcam, to do everything from publishing a live video stream to detecting movement in the camera frame. In this tutorial, you learn how to use the Camera.onActivity event handler to detect motion in the video feed.

The Working With the Camera Class Series:
Working with the Camera Class - Part 1: Viewing Live Output
Working With the Camera Class - Part 2: Detecting Motion

Peronalized E-cards with Flash

Derrick Ypenburg

I know the busy season for sending out greeting cards to your clients and friends has passed, but you can plan ahead for next year as well as using this tutorial for sending out any customized info and greetings throughout the rest of the year.

Nicely designed e-cards using Flash can send an effective, fully animated-greeting and message to your clients/friends. It also saves you a bundle in printing and mailing costs that come with hard-copy cards and mail-outs. If you're like me and you wait to the last minute with things, you can send them out much later and not have to worry about the time mail takes to get to places on-time!

This tutorial covers using PHP, URL encoded strings, FlahVars, and Flash to send out an address to a simple Flash e-card template that is personalized for each recipients name.

Bulletproof Your Home Business Deduction [FREE]

Paul Davis

If you are in the USA and you have a home office, but you are afraid to deduct it or you would like to see how to deduct it more effectively, without fearing an IRA audit, check out the tips in this article

(Please note: The author is not a tax lawyer or accountant and the advice that is given should not be considered as legal or accounting advice. Discuss all of these suggestions with your accountant or legal adviser. Your state laws may be substantially different)

The Displacement Map Filter Demystified: Part 1 - How It Ticks [FREE]

David Stiller

Flash Professional 8 introduced a number of exciting new visual filters — such as drop shadow, blur, glow, and bevel — which reproduce many of the corresponding filters of Photoshop and Fireworks. Of these, most are available via the Property inspector's Filters tab. All filters are accessible to ActionScript, but a few actually require programming. One of these is the DisplacementMapFilter class, which distorts images based on the colors or transparency in a special reference map.

Here in Part 1 of this series, you will learn how the displacement map filter works and how to use it to reposition pixels in an imported graphic file. In future installments, you will learn how to produce a handful of very cool visual effects that are only possible with ActionScript, including a magnifying class, fisheye lens, and ripples.

Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 1

Zoe Gillenwater

One of the stereotypical types of CSS layouts is known as a toilet paper roll layout: a centered, fixed-width column of content, usually subdivided into two or three columns, with a header and footer spanning them all. It became known as the toilet paper roll layout because the content seemed to spill down the page as if paper coming off a roll. It has a very vertical feel to it.

Another type of CSS layout that is now popular, however, is what I call a horizontal band layout. Its content can still be fixed-width and centered, but instead of the vertical feel of the toilet paper roll layouts it has a horizontal one because of the background colors or images applied to the stacked divs that stretch across the entire width of the viewport. Sometimes these horizontal bands are just restricted to the header and footer areas. Other times the entire layout is made up of stacked bands.

Despite the many different looks of these horizontal band layouts, the markup and CSS required for forming their basic shape is quite similar throughout. In this tutorial, you'll learn what separates them from vertically oriented layouts by modifying the markup and CSS of a simple vertical layout and turning it into a basic horizontal band layout.

This tutorial assumes you have an intermediate understanding of CSS, specifically backgrounds, margins, and floats.

Making Full Use of Bindings

The Dreamweaver bindings panel has a lot of uses beyond a place to build recordsets and stored procedures. Many people don't realize that when you add session, request, and application variables to the panel manually, you get some visual advantages — the ability to drag items to the page into design view, the ability to use variables as filters, and the ability to add formatting functions to design view. This article will explore the bindings panel and its advantages. Because we are discussing core Dreamweaver functionality, the article will apply equally to all server models in Dreamweaver, although some server models have better bindings panel support than others.

Check out the Article by CMX partner Tom Muck

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX partner Tom Green

Changing Cue Points in Your FLV

If you have an overwhelming urge to embed Cue Points into an FLV file's metadata you have most likely discovered that once they are embedded they can't be removed or changed.

Here’s a little trick that will bail you out of a rather tricky Cue Point situation:

Let’s assume you discover, when testing the video in Flash, you have screwed up the timing for the first Cue Point. Relaunch the Encoder. You will notice that the video just encoded is still in the interface. Select the video and then select Edit >Reset Status. The settings will open and you can then make the change in the Advanced Settings.Recompile the FLV and you have changed a cue point.

If the video has been removed - you selected the video in the Encoder and clicked the Remove button - you are out of luck.

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!