
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Introducing CMX JumpStart Palm Springs Palm Springs, California, a desert city that is about 110 miles east of Los Angeles, is home to some of the most famous golf courses in the country. With that in mind, we have a new JumpStart that should especially appeal to all the golf fans among us. Welcome to CMX JumpStart Palm Springs! Palm Springs is a three-column, fixed-width layout that includes a dual navigation system. The main navigation consists of horizontal tabs at the top of the design, and vertical sub navigation buttons in the left column. The design also features pre-prepared login and subscribe form layout elements. Of course, Palm Springs uses valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 markup and follows WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design you may wish to use it for. Palm Springs includes an extension, seven tutorials, four style sheets, two PNG documents for branding the graphics, and a starter page. Palm Springs is available for $29.99 to non-members, but is absolutely free to CMX subscribers. Read more about how to make it yours. CMX JumpStart Palm Springs. Free article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about its features and see a modified Palm Springs design. CMX JumpStart Palm Springs article for members and for those who would like to purchase Palm Springs now. It's That Time Again If you want to turn on your PC tomorrow and see it boot up the way you expect, there are two things you need to do. One is to make sure that you've downloaded and installed whatever Windows patches have come out. Microsoft just issued a pretty big bug fix this week that all deal security issues. We recommend going to Windows Update if you don't have automatic updates turned on. What's the other thing? Actually, there is no other thing. But we didn't want the one thing feeling lonely. Just In The Nick Of Time! I'm working on a website for a preschool. On the "Contact Us" page, they asked if they could have a Google map on the page with one of those "cute little pushpins" that people can click and get immediate directions to their building. Google has never made this a simple task, but they're changing that next week. They say they'll be offering a free new service next week that will allow you to drop a simple piece of html into your website to embed a Google map into your web page, much like you'd embed a YouTube video into a web page. Sounds pretty darn simple. A Case For Linux Some of you reading this newsletter are already using Linux, but the majority of users out there are still strapped to Microsoft. I admit that I have not tried Linux, and don't have a great reason for not having done so, other than the fact that... I'm really busy. Yeah... But this blog at the Tokyo Users Linux Group puts things into perspective pretty nicely. Got CFM? Thanks to Ray Camden's blog, we found out that Rey Bango is giving some pretty cool prizes to the 1000th person to submit their ColdFusion website to GotCFM.com. Wait a second... There have already been over 1,000 websites submitted. But that's alright. I'd still recommend submitting your website to Rey's website just so a definitive "all these websites use CF" list exists somewhere. And you should be included.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Nice article, I liked the way have put it, pure css without tool bias. That's the essence of Web 2.0! Keep up the good work guys." - Marcelo S., CMX Subscriber, commenting Adrian Senior's Bitmap Auto-Crop Command for Fireworks 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: "No one can drive us crazy unless we give them the keys." - Doug Horton Fill The Void Photoshop CS3 is able to tell the difference between constant elements within a set of photos versus non-constants and give you a composite that takes out those non-constants, resulting in an unfettered view of the object you want to show. Greg Rewis of Adobe showed off that feature at this year's TODCon and people were floored by it. Now James Hays and Alexei Efros from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a similar type of technology that could allow you to take a photo of an area, compare it to thousands of photos from places like Flickr.com and remove the "undesirable" parts of your photograph. Sound crazy? It is, but we'll probably see it as an online service in the near future. Read more about it at BBC News. And if you want Hey, It Could Happen If you'd said the word "blogosphere" just a year ago, people would look at you like you had just swallowed two eight-pound bunny rabbits. Now it's an accepted term, and will no doubt make it into Merriam-Webster's dictionary pretty darn soon. Blogging is nothing but an online diary at its most basic level, but its a powerful communication tool when used well. Some of the more serious bloggers out there - we're assuming they're on the activist edge of blogging - are proposing a blogger's union. Nyuck-nyuck-no-way-jose you say? When journalism as a profession was young, there was no union for it. Now we take it as a given. The same could be said for virtually every profession that is represented by a union. If it's pulled together properly, we could see a Blogger's Union. And your grandmother's online diary about her cats will finally start to pay off. More on this at TheStar.com. Maybe So, But Forrester's Website Stinks Too... Some websites immediately catch your eye. Some draw you in with their content or beauty, and some elicit an "ACK!" response followed by closing the browser window and ducking under your bed (crying optional). So what it is that makes some websites taste like spinach and others like filet mignon? Check the internet and you'll find literally thousands upon thousands of opinions on the topic. Forrester Research has their own ideas about what makes a website stink, which we happened to find at biztech. We're not sure exactly who this Forrester character is, but they seem to offer sound advice. Another File Sharing App Going The Way of Napster? Napster was once known as one of the biggest, baddest file sharing programs available until the pressure came down on them to pay up or shut down. Now they're a legit "by the rules" file provider, safe from the lawsuits that threatened its owner's pocketbooks and freedom. Limewire has been around for about the same amount of time as Napster, but has not been reformed - yet. They've just announced that they are opening their own digital music store, stocked by the likes of IRIS Distribution and Nettwerk Productions. Who? We're with you... In any case, it doesn't look like Napster is going to be walking the straight and narrow anytime soon, but they may be trying to put their ducks in a row juuuuust in case the RIAA offers them a compelling reason to do so. More on this at News.com. You can see the Limewire press release at Marketwire.com. That Wacky Wickipedia I was talking to a client the other day who was saying that Wikipedia was one of the best resources of information on the internet. Clearly he didn't know how easy it is for anyone to edit a Wikipedia entry, rendering the integrity of the entry null and void in some cases. Sure, edits need to be approved, but in many cases, those who approve the edits don't necessarily know whether or not the edit is deserved. WikiWatch, housed at Wired.com, makes an attempt to keep track of edits that seem a bit suspect. Want to help? Check out the Wiki Scanner, where you can put in the name or domain of a company, and view all edits made to Wikipedia entries from within that organization's IP address range.
CMX Internet Explorer Conditional Comment Extension Rapidly put Internet Explorer conditional comments in your web pages without looking it up every time for the syntax. This extension will insert conditional comments for Internet Explorer in a couple of clicks! Take a look at this Extension by Paul Davis
Fun and Freebies! We'd Rather Believe It's All Real This is some great Photoshop work from around the world, gathered into one video. Become a Simpsons Character Ever wanted to see what you'd look like as a Simpson's character? Now you can, thanks to SimpsonizeMe.com. Smile! Just a collection of faces. Some were posed, but the best ones are the ones snapped at just the right moment...
Motion Tween Effects in Flash CS3 In a series of excerpts from their new book, Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers, Community MX partners Tom Green and David Stiller show you how to apply the Glow effect to Jay Maynard, better known as Tron Guy. This free article by CMX Partners Tom Green and David Stiller can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Introducing CMX JumpStart Palm Springs [FREE] Sheri German Palm Springs, California, a desert city that is about 110 miles east of Los Angeles, is home to some of the most famous golf courses in the country. With that in mind, we have a new JumpStart that should especially appeal to all the golf fans among us. Welcome to CMX JumpStart Palm Springs! Palm Springs is a three-column, fixed-width layout that includes a dual navigation system. The main navigation consists of horizontal tabs at the top of the design, and vertical sub navigation buttons in the left column. The design also features pre-prepared login and subscribe form layout elements. As with all the CMX JumpStarts, Palm Springs meets the W3C standards for CSS and XHTML, as well as for WAI and 508 accessibility. CMX JumpStart: Palm Springs Adrian Senior Palm Springs is a three-column fixed-width layout that incorporates a dual navigation system consisting of a horizontal tab section at the top of the design and a left column vertical sub navigation set. The design includes a pre-prepared log in form, layout elements and a subscribe form layout in the right hand column. As always the JumpStart contains all source files that were generated in its creation, from the CSS files, to the PNGs and of course the XHTML code that lies at the heart of the design. Palm Springs meets the W3C standards for CSS and XHTML as well as the WAI accessibilty requirements. Approximate download size: 2.3MB The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part Twelve Sheri German All hail content - content is King! Continuing where you left off in Part Eleven of the lesson plan series with adding content so that it doesn't break the code. You'll learn to add Microsoft Word content and clean it up to web standards. You'll learn to deal with character entities to avoid those weird characters that some pages display. You'll get deep into the features of Dreamweaver's Find and Replace dialog box to speed up content cleanup and changes. Finally, you'll learn to add images in a way that does not break the layout, especially in Internet Explorer. The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series: The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 1 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 2 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 3 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 4 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 5 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 6 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 7 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 8 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 9 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 10 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 11 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 12 Flex 101: Part 2 - What's New in Flash Player 9 [FREE] Joseph Balderson Learning Flex 2 can seem overwhelming at first glance, considering all the elements that go into the making of a Flex application, from the Flex product line, the development IDE, the source files, the runtime and the APIs, not to mention the abundance of documentation, examples and blog entries to choose from, not all of which are intended for novices. This series aims to take some of the mystery and confusion out of learning Flex 2, providing both a beginner's overview of building applications in Flex, as well as some in-depth examination of the basics for intermediate Flex developers. In this article, we will look at what's new in ActionScript 3.0 and the Flash 9 player, how Flex compiles applications, and where Flex fits in with traditional Flash Development. Using XML in Flash CS3 to Build a Slideshow [FREE] Tom Green, David Stiller In this, the final excerpt from their new book, Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers (friendsofED), Tom Green and David Stiller walk you through the creation of a slideshow that makes exetensive use of many of the new XML-handling features of Flash CS3. Approximate download size: 3MB The Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers Excerpts Motion Tween Effects in Flash CS3 Optimizing Flash Content for Use in Video Adding Audio to Flash CS3 XML Captions for Video Notes from the Photoshop File Importer Create a Soft Mask in Flash CS3 Going Mobile in Flash CS3 Using XML in Flash CS3 to Build a Slideshow Slicing Options in Fireworks CS3 Jim Babbage Many issues can occur when the final Fireworks design and layout is treated as the final step before slicing. That is, the PNG looks JUST like how you want the web page to look. This methodology is very helpful in the creative process and for gaining client approvals with prototypes or mock ups. In many cases, however, the PNG file best suited for slicing and export may not look at all like a page layout. It may more resemble a bunch of small disconnected objects that will be exported and reassembled using CSS and DIV's (or table/cell background images). I also want to take a closer (read exhaustive) look at how slices and web layers work in the new Fireworks CS3 workflow. We'll look at things to watch out for when using slices, frames, pages, symbols and multiple web layers. With the additoion of the Pages feature and the ability to now share web layers and object layers across those pages, we've gained a lot of flexibility, but slicing can get quite complex and the results confusing in designs. While the scenarios I share hear may not be bugs per say, neither are the issues are documented in the help files. Lots of food for thought. Throughout the article, I'll make use of a simple PNG layout and you will find in the source files several different PNG's representing the slicing issues I experienced. The Object Oriented Designer - Part3: Creating Reflective Images with AS 3 Derrick Ypenburg In this segment of the Object Oriented Designer series we will tackle a pretty tricky solution for creating reflective images using AS3.0 and an external image. These reflective image effects and reflective menus are the 'hot' thing to do right now. This tutorial will cover the loading of a single external image, creating a reflection of it by copying the image, flipping it, blurring it, and masking it with a gradient mask so you can get the effect as shown with David Stiller's photo below. No frame and property effects. Just 100% ActionScript! Further installments will include classing out the ActionScript, dynamically populating a menu list with a number of loaded CMX Partner thumbnails, and mouse interactivity. For now, I will pick on David's image for the tutorial. The Object Oriented Designer Series The Object Oriented Designer - Part 1: Animated Buttons The Object Oriented Designer - Part 2: Making the Button Class The Object Oriented Designer - Part 3: Creating Reflective Images with AS 3 Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 2: PHP Tom Muck In the first part of this series, I showed how to create a Master/Detail page set using built-in Dreamweaver tools, and then add a basic search form querying against one field in the database. What if you want more than that though? The Dreamweaver recordset dialog box allows one filter against one field. This is sometimes useful, but usually not. Typically you might also want to allow other HTML fields into the search. You will want to search allowing multiple search words. Finally, you might want to search multiple database fields.. I will address all three situations in this article, which will be targeted to PHP users only. The World's Easiest PHP/MySQL Testing Server Rob Williams Setting up a local testing server can be a real pain at times, especially when you want to do more "complex" testing involving PHP, MySQL and Apache. Although there are some good installation packages out there, they can still at times be difficult and frustrating to work with and maintain. In this article we're going to take a look at what has to be the simplest and easiest "local testing server" set up possible: the Uniform Server. Optimize Images in Dreamweaver Paul Davis You are in Dreamweaver, working hard and heavy in the page and you insert an image that is the wrong size - what do you do? Load Fireworks? Load Photoshop? Change the size in the properties panel? Nope, none of those - you optimize the image in Dreamweaver.
The SQL Case Statement If you are using SQL, you are no doubt familiar with SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE, as well as a few functions that are useful. I've found that not many people are making active use of the CASE statement, although it is one of the most useful SQL keywords in existence. Typically a web application developer will use this type of conditional logic in his page code (using PHP, ColdFusion, or another language) making the business logic part of the presentation of the page. It is more efficient and better programming practice to put this logic in the database using a stored procedure or in the SQL statement so that the presentation of the data can be as clean and unencumbered by business logic as possible. This article will show a few simple uses of the statement and how you can use it to simply web applications. These examples should work in SQL Server or MySQL. I will be using the Northwind database that comes free with SQL Server. Anyone using mySQL can download a Northwind creation script at my site. 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 Chris Flick, Community MX Partner Tame Your PDF My boss just asked me to see if I could do anything to reduce a 70 page User manual PDF for his new digital camera with a couple pages of photos of the camera. It was 2.3MB. This is what I did on my Mac (Color Synch is a Mac-only utility, I believe): 1) Opened the PDF . 2) Opened the Print dialogue box. 3) Added Apple's ColorSync Utility to the PDF button. 4) Chose the Color Synch utility 5) After the Color Synch box came up and processed the PDF, I chose "Export" in Color Synch's dialogue box. 6) In the Quartz Filter drop down section, I chose "Reduce File Size", renamed my PDF and then hit "Save". I was able to knock 1 MB off of the overall file size. I know there are commercial programs that will compress PDFs but if you're in a bind and need something fast, this might work. BUT... This doesn't ALWAYS work. Depending on the original PDF, Color Synch can sometimes end up actually bloating a PDF. 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!

Introducing CMX JumpStart Palm Springs

Palm Springs, California, a desert city that is about 110 miles east of Los Angeles, is home to some of the most famous golf courses in the country. With that in mind, we have a new JumpStart that should especially appeal to all the golf fans among us. Welcome to CMX JumpStart Palm Springs!

Of course, Palm Springs uses valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 markup and follows WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design you may wish to use it for. Palm Springs includes an extension, seven tutorials, four style sheets, two PNG documents for branding the graphics, and a starter page.

Palm Springs is available for $29.99 to non-members, but is absolutely free to CMX subscribers. Read more about how to make it yours.

CMX JumpStart Palm Springs. Free article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about its features and see a modified Palm Springs design.
CMX JumpStart Palm Springs article for members and for those who would like to purchase Palm Springs now.

It's That Time Again

If you want to turn on your PC tomorrow and see it boot up the way you expect, there are two things you need to do. One is to make sure that you've downloaded and installed whatever Windows patches have come out. Microsoft just issued a pretty big bug fix this week that all deal security issues. We recommend going to Windows Update if you don't have automatic updates turned on. What's the other thing? Actually, there is no other thing. But we didn't want the one thing feeling lonely.

Just In The Nick Of Time!

I'm working on a website for a preschool. On the "Contact Us" page, they asked if they could have a Google map on the page with one of those "cute little pushpins" that people can click and get immediate directions to their building. Google has never made this a simple task, but they're changing that next week. They say they'll be offering a free new service next week that will allow you to drop a simple piece of html into your website to embed a Google map into your web page, much like you'd embed a YouTube video into a web page. Sounds pretty darn simple.

A Case For Linux

Some of you reading this newsletter are already using Linux, but the majority of users out there are still strapped to Microsoft. I admit that I have not tried Linux, and don't have a great reason for not having done so, other than the fact that... I'm really busy. Yeah... But this blog at the Tokyo Users Linux Group puts things into perspective pretty nicely.

Got CFM?

Thanks to Ray Camden's blog, we found out that Rey Bango is giving some pretty cool prizes to the 1000th person to submit their ColdFusion website to GotCFM.com. Wait a second... There have already been over 1,000 websites submitted. But that's alright. I'd still recommend submitting your website to Rey's website just so a definitive "all these websites use CF" list exists somewhere. And you should be included.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Nice article, I liked the way have put it, pure css without tool bias. That's the essence of Web 2.0! Keep up the good work guys."

- Marcelo S., CMX Subscriber, commenting Adrian Senior's Bitmap Auto-Crop Command for Fireworks

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:

"No one can drive us crazy unless we give them the keys." - Doug Horton

Fill The Void

Photoshop CS3 is able to tell the difference between constant elements within a set of photos versus non-constants and give you a composite that takes out those non-constants, resulting in an unfettered view of the object you want to show. Greg Rewis of Adobe showed off that feature at this year's TODCon and people were floored by it. Now James Hays and Alexei Efros from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a similar type of technology that could allow you to take a photo of an area, compare it to thousands of photos from places like Flickr.com and remove the "undesirable" parts of your photograph. Sound crazy? It is, but we'll probably see it as an online service in the near future. Read more about it at BBC News. And if you want

Hey, It Could Happen

If you'd said the word "blogosphere" just a year ago, people would look at you like you had just swallowed two eight-pound bunny rabbits. Now it's an accepted term, and will no doubt make it into Merriam-Webster's dictionary pretty darn soon. Blogging is nothing but an online diary at its most basic level, but its a powerful communication tool when used well. Some of the more serious bloggers out there - we're assuming they're on the activist edge of blogging - are proposing a blogger's union. Nyuck-nyuck-no-way-jose you say? When journalism as a profession was young, there was no union for it. Now we take it as a given. The same could be said for virtually every profession that is represented by a union. If it's pulled together properly, we could see a Blogger's Union. And your grandmother's online diary about her cats will finally start to pay off. More on this at TheStar.com.

Maybe So, But Forrester's Website Stinks Too...

Some websites immediately catch your eye. Some draw you in with their content or beauty, and some elicit an "ACK!" response followed by closing the browser window and ducking under your bed (crying optional). So what it is that makes some websites taste like spinach and others like filet mignon? Check the internet and you'll find literally thousands upon thousands of opinions on the topic. Forrester Research has their own ideas about what makes a website stink, which we happened to find at biztech. We're not sure exactly who this Forrester character is, but they seem to offer sound advice.

Another File Sharing App Going The Way of Napster?

Napster was once known as one of the biggest, baddest file sharing programs available until the pressure came down on them to pay up or shut down. Now they're a legit "by the rules" file provider, safe from the lawsuits that threatened its owner's pocketbooks and freedom. Limewire has been around for about the same amount of time as Napster, but has not been reformed - yet. They've just announced that they are opening their own digital music store, stocked by the likes of IRIS Distribution and Nettwerk Productions. Who? We're with you... In any case, it doesn't look like Napster is going to be walking the straight and narrow anytime soon, but they may be trying to put their ducks in a row juuuuust in case the RIAA offers them a compelling reason to do so. More on this at News.com. You can see the Limewire press release at Marketwire.com.

That Wacky Wickipedia

I was talking to a client the other day who was saying that Wikipedia was one of the best resources of information on the internet. Clearly he didn't know how easy it is for anyone to edit a Wikipedia entry, rendering the integrity of the entry null and void in some cases. Sure, edits need to be approved, but in many cases, those who approve the edits don't necessarily know whether or not the edit is deserved. WikiWatch, housed at Wired.com, makes an attempt to keep track of edits that seem a bit suspect. Want to help? Check out the Wiki Scanner, where you can put in the name or domain of a company, and view all edits made to Wikipedia entries from within that organization's IP address range.

CMX Internet Explorer Conditional Comment Extension

Rapidly put Internet Explorer conditional comments in your web pages without looking it up every time for the syntax. This extension will insert conditional comments for Internet Explorer in a couple of clicks!

Take a look at this Extension by Paul Davis

Fun and Freebies!

We'd Rather Believe It's All Real

This is some great Photoshop work from around the world, gathered into one video.

Become a Simpsons Character

Ever wanted to see what you'd look like as a Simpson's character? Now you can, thanks to SimpsonizeMe.com.

Smile!

Just a collection of faces. Some were posed, but the best ones are the ones snapped at just the right moment...

Motion Tween Effects in Flash CS3

In a series of excerpts from their new book, Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers, Community MX partners Tom Green and David Stiller show you how to apply the Glow effect to Jay Maynard, better known as Tron Guy.

This free article by CMX Partners Tom Green and David Stiller can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Introducing CMX JumpStart Palm Springs [FREE]

Sheri German

Palm Springs is a three-column, fixed-width layout that includes a dual navigation system. The main navigation consists of horizontal tabs at the top of the design, and vertical sub navigation buttons in the left column. The design also features pre-prepared login and subscribe form layout elements. As with all the CMX JumpStarts, Palm Springs meets the W3C standards for CSS and XHTML, as well as for WAI and 508 accessibility.

CMX JumpStart: Palm Springs

Adrian Senior

Palm Springs is a three-column fixed-width layout that incorporates a dual navigation system consisting of a horizontal tab section at the top of the design and a left column vertical sub navigation set. The design includes a pre-prepared log in form, layout elements and a subscribe form layout in the right hand column. As always the JumpStart contains all source files that were generated in its creation, from the CSS files, to the PNGs and of course the XHTML code that lies at the heart of the design. Palm Springs meets the W3C standards for CSS and XHTML as well as the WAI accessibilty requirements.

Approximate download size: 2.3MB

The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part Twelve

Sheri German

Flex 101: Part 2 - What's New in Flash Player 9 [FREE]

Joseph Balderson

Learning Flex 2 can seem overwhelming at first glance, considering all the elements that go into the making of a Flex application, from the Flex product line, the development IDE, the source files, the runtime and the APIs, not to mention the abundance of documentation, examples and blog entries to choose from, not all of which are intended for novices. This series aims to take some of the mystery and confusion out of learning Flex 2, providing both a beginner's overview of building applications in Flex, as well as some in-depth examination of the basics for intermediate Flex developers.

In this article, we will look at what's new in ActionScript 3.0 and the Flash 9 player, how Flex compiles applications, and where Flex fits in with traditional Flash Development.

Using XML in Flash CS3 to Build a Slideshow [FREE]

Tom Green, David Stiller

In this, the final excerpt from their new book, Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers (friendsofED), Tom Green and David Stiller walk you through the creation of a slideshow that makes exetensive use of many of the new XML-handling features of Flash CS3.

Approximate download size: 3MB

The Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers Excerpts
Motion Tween Effects in Flash CS3
Optimizing Flash Content for Use in Video
Adding Audio to Flash CS3
XML Captions for Video
Notes from the Photoshop File Importer
Create a Soft Mask in Flash CS3
Going Mobile in Flash CS3
Using XML in Flash CS3 to Build a Slideshow

Slicing Options in Fireworks CS3

Jim Babbage

Many issues can occur when the final Fireworks design and layout is treated as the final step before slicing. That is, the PNG looks JUST like how you want the web page to look. This methodology is very helpful in the creative process and for gaining client approvals with prototypes or mock ups. In many cases, however, the PNG file best suited for slicing and export may not look at all like a page layout. It may more resemble a bunch of small disconnected objects that will be exported and reassembled using CSS and DIV's (or table/cell background images).

I also want to take a closer (read exhaustive) look at how slices and web layers work in the new Fireworks CS3 workflow. We'll look at things to watch out for when using slices, frames, pages, symbols and multiple web layers. With the additoion of the Pages feature and the ability to now share web layers and object layers across those pages, we've gained a lot of flexibility, but slicing can get quite complex and the results confusing in designs. While the scenarios I share hear may not be bugs per say, neither are the issues are documented in the help files. Lots of food for thought.

Throughout the article, I'll make use of a simple PNG layout and you will find in the source files several different PNG's representing the slicing issues I experienced.

The Object Oriented Designer - Part3: Creating Reflective Images with AS 3

Derrick Ypenburg

In this segment of the Object Oriented Designer series we will tackle a pretty tricky solution for creating reflective images using AS3.0 and an external image. These reflective image effects and reflective menus are the 'hot' thing to do right now. This tutorial will cover the loading of a single external image, creating a reflection of it by copying the image, flipping it, blurring it, and masking it with a gradient mask so you can get the effect as shown with David Stiller's photo below. No frame and property effects. Just 100% ActionScript!

Further installments will include classing out the ActionScript, dynamically populating a menu list with a number of loaded CMX Partner thumbnails, and mouse interactivity. For now, I will pick on David's image for the tutorial.

The Object Oriented Designer Series
The Object Oriented Designer - Part 1: Animated Buttons
The Object Oriented Designer - Part 2: Making the Button Class
The Object Oriented Designer - Part 3: Creating Reflective Images with AS 3

Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 2: PHP

Tom Muck

In the first part of this series, I showed how to create a Master/Detail page set using built-in Dreamweaver tools, and then add a basic search form querying against one field in the database. What if you want more than that though? The Dreamweaver recordset dialog box allows one filter against one field. This is sometimes useful, but usually not. Typically you might also want to allow other HTML fields into the search. You will want to search allowing multiple search words. Finally, you might want to search multiple database fields.. I will address all three situations in this article, which will be targeted to PHP users only.

The World's Easiest PHP/MySQL Testing Server

Rob Williams

Setting up a local testing server can be a real pain at times, especially when you want to do more "complex" testing involving PHP, MySQL and Apache. Although there are some good installation packages out there, they can still at times be difficult and frustrating to work with and maintain. In this article we're going to take a look at what has to be the simplest and easiest "local testing server" set up possible: the Uniform Server.

Optimize Images in Dreamweaver

Paul Davis

You are in Dreamweaver, working hard and heavy in the page and you insert an image that is the wrong size - what do you do?

Load Fireworks?
Load Photoshop?
Change the size in the properties panel?

Nope, none of those - you optimize the image in Dreamweaver.

The SQL Case Statement

If you are using SQL, you are no doubt familiar with SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE, as well as a few functions that are useful. I've found that not many people are making active use of the CASE statement, although it is one of the most useful SQL keywords in existence. Typically a web application developer will use this type of conditional logic in his page code (using PHP, ColdFusion, or another language) making the business logic part of the presentation of the page. It is more efficient and better programming practice to put this logic in the database using a stored procedure or in the SQL statement so that the presentation of the data can be as clean and unencumbered by business logic as possible. This article will show a few simple uses of the statement and how you can use it to simply web applications. These examples should work in SQL Server or MySQL. I will be using the Northwind database that comes free with SQL Server. Anyone using mySQL can download a Northwind creation script at my site.

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 Chris Flick, Community MX Partner

Tame Your PDF

My boss just asked me to see if I could do anything to reduce a 70 page User manual PDF for his new digital camera with a couple pages of photos of the
camera. It was 2.3MB.

This is what I did on my Mac (Color Synch is a Mac-only utility, I believe):

1) Opened the PDF .

2) Opened the Print dialogue box.

3) Added Apple's ColorSync Utility to the PDF button.

4) Chose the Color Synch utility

5) After the Color Synch box came up and processed the PDF, I chose "Export" in Color Synch's dialogue box.

6) In the Quartz Filter drop down section, I chose "Reduce File Size", renamed my PDF and then hit "Save".

I was able to knock 1 MB off of the overall file size. I know there are commercial programs that will compress PDFs but if you're in a bind and need something fast, this might work. BUT... This doesn't ALWAYS work. Depending on the original PDF, Color Synch
can sometimes end up actually bloating a PDF.

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!