
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Introducing CMX JumpStart Madrid You've probably heard the debates, and may even have expressed your own point of view. Should you use fluid or fixed-width layouts for your pages? The advocates of fixed-width layouts often cite the width of lines of text as the reason to constrain the layout. When lines of text are too long, they are harder to read. There is another layout technique that circumvents this problem, though, and that is the elastic layout. Text and container increase or decrease together and in proportion, and the line lengths remain more predictable. If this layout type intrigues you, you'll want to try out our newest JumpStart, CMX JumpStart Madrid. Of course, Madrid 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. Madrid is a three-column, elastic layout that includes a background image set to fixed with the background-attachment property, an expandable header region, and a dual navigation system. The package includes an extension, eight tutorials, main and Internet Explorer style sheets, a PNG documents for branding the graphics, and a starter page. Madrid 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 Madrid article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about its features and see a modified Madrid design. CMX JumpStart Madrid article for members and for those who would like to purchase Madrid now. Dreamweaver Cannot Be All Things To All People? Dreamweaver CS3 is packed with sweet and tangy developer goodness, no doubt. Macromedia took a very basic web dev tool and increasingly loaded it with great features that have helped many of us in our careers as developers.When Adobe released DW CS3, they didn't mess with it too much, and even added a few perks. For the next version though, they have decided to reevaluate some features. This announcement from Adobe provides an overview of "depracated features", otherwise known as "features on the chopping block." Layout Mode, a constant troublemaking feature, is being axed. Also being put out to pasture are the ASP.net server behaviors as well as Flash Buttons and Flash Text, among other things. FREE ActionScript 3 and Flex Training Colin Moock, reknowned Flash authority, is touring parts of the US and abroad to give one-day training in using ActionScript 3 and Adobe AIR. AdobeAS3Tour.com says that attendees will leave with "exposure to all major concepts of object programming, an understanding of classes and objects, an understanding of how to structure and write an ActionScript 3.0 Program, exposure to the Flex Builder 2 development environment, a pamphlet reviewing the days major concepts and a discount coupon for Essential ActionScript 3.0. Sounds good to us. You should probably register soon if you're interested. Want more free training? Check Out TotalTraining.com where they're offering 30 days of access to over 17 hours of our Adobe Flex 2 online training titles. ColdFusion 8 Cumulative Hot Fix Released This hotfix released by Adobe for ColdFusion 8 fixes several issues that were recently discovered. Among them are problems with the CFZipParam tag and ColdFusion style sheets. Check out this technote from Adobe. You should really only apply the fix if you're experiencing any of the issues listed in the technote. The Nutty Professor Video Professor has been in business for years, selling their computer training videos on late night infomercials. Like nearly any company that has a fair-sized audience, they get complaints about their product. For instance, there are quite a few customer complaints regarding Video Professor at InfomercialScams.com. Video Professor, like any company would do, expressed concern over their customer's dissatisfaction with their product. Like most companies would not do, Video Professor is attempting to sue all of the folks who have complained about their product. It's an interesting approach to creating return customers, but hey, who are we to say it won't work? Yeah.... Read more at Arstechnica.com.
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 on Adrian Senior's article, CMX JumpStart: Washington, D.C.. 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: "I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers." - Woody Allen Photoshop: See What Logo Is Passable Not a lot of people were on board with Adobe's CS3 logos. But don't fret, because now there is a new Photoshop logo and slogan. The slogan is "See What's Possible." To see the logo, check out this blog post at Adobe.com. While you're there, look at the replies from users and see just how underwhelmed most folks are. One of our favorite responses to the logo is from Eric, who said "On the brighter side, it's slightly less annoying than Clippy." Unfortunately, his reply is not the exception... Big Business To Buy 'Book For Billions? Facebook.com has some major eyeballs focused in its direction. Both Microsoft and Google are said to looking to invest in Facebook, and we're talking about billions of dollars. Facebook is said to be turning a $30 million dollar profit this year, and MS and Google want a piece of it. Of course getting their hands on all of the valuable demographic information from Facebook's community of users wouldn't hurt. Whether or not Facebook even wants either of these companies' money is unknown, but considering the money that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been offered to sell his company, it doesn't sound like he's going to be wowed by a simple offer of cash. More on this at Adotas.com. Amazonian Mp3s Amazon.com has just announced that they will be selling mp3s on their website. Of the over two million DRM-free songs they'll be offering, over half of those will be made available for only 89 cents. How does Amazon's service rank with something like iTunes? HypeBot at TypePad.com gives its opinion on what the Amazon store is and is not. Read the announcement straight from the horse's mouth. Meanwhile, TheStreet.com is hoping that this will be the start of some major mp3 price wars. Interesting Commentary On Open Office vs. Microsoft Office Open Office is a freely distributed likeness of Microsoft's Office suite. While it's most likely to be found on computers equipped with Linux, many open source fans, and Office users looking for a better deal are installing Open Office. Is it as good as Microsoft's version? That's up for debate, since there are several levels to what each application has to offer. TeamBio.com has some thoughts about it, and some of the user comments that follow are at least as good as the editorial. By the way, Cnet.com has an article about a bug found in some versions of Open Office that you'll want to know about if you've got it loaded on your computer. :-) The emoticon is twenty five years old this month. Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman created the smiley emoticon back in 1982 in order to give online users a simple way of conveying positive emotion. Since that time, emoticons have evolved into winks, frowns, mildly amused and plenty of others. So whenever you type a :-) or a :-\| or even a :P, remember to thank Fahlman for giving us the ability to smile online while not quite busting out a complete LOL. Read the full story at CNN.com.
CMX AJAX Form Submit Extension The CMX AJAX Form Submit Behavior for Dreamweaver and Dreamweaver MX 2004 allows you to use AJAX technology to submit form information to a server-side processing script and receive the results back without having to reload the page. Take a look at this Extension by Rob Williams
Fun and Freebies! If I Were Anywhere Near #19, I'd Be Moving At MapOfStrange.com, you'll find some interesting anomolies picked up from Google Maps. Yes, Great Photoshop Skills, But... Whoa. Just because something is very skillfully done, doesn't mean it still won't creep you out. Safe for work, but blech... Too Much Information Tech support is used to asking what you were doing before you experienced your computer problem. Guess some of them should be more specific, because here's what one guy wrote.
Feed Tools in Dreamweaver 8 and CS3: RSS and XSL Adding an RSS feed to a web page is a piece of cake with the XSL features of Dreamweaver 8 and CS3. This article will show the new features of XSL transformation using the freely available Community MX RSS feed, or any other of your choice. The tutorial will require PHP, ColdFusion, or another of the available server models in Dreamweaver, as the XSL functionality uses a server-side file to parse and transform the XML news feed. This free article by CMX Partner Tom Muck can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Hybrid Applications: AIR, Silverlight, et al in Perspective [FREE] Rob Williams Recently there has been a lot of buzz surrounding the idea of "hybrid" applications; programs and sites built for and delivered across the internet, but that act and operate as if they were independant standalone programs. The idea, as we'll explore in this article, really isn't that new but it's receiving a great deal more focus than in the past, due to some key technologies being developed and pushed out by some of the major players in web development. This is not by anymeans an "Adobe VS Microsoft" debate, but rather an investigation into the concepts, technologies and possibilities that surround hybrid applications. Using Video Maru - Part 1: The Basics [FREE] Joseph Balderson Finding ways to make it easy for Flash designers to create a simple FLV video player has been a much sought-after goal for many who work with the Adobe suite of technologies. Nowadays, designers and developers have an array of options available to them, from the new and improved v3 (or 'CS3') FLVPlayback component, to a flurry of third-party video player components, all designed to make a Flash designer's job easier and more productive. One such third-party player is the video.Maru component. In all my years developing with Flash, I have yet to encounter a component which makes it simpler and easier to create a custom FLV video player. We'll show that it's so easy to create a custom player with video.Maru, you'll be looking for the guide wires! In this first tutorial, we'll take a basic look at the Video Maru component, getting a video to play without any controls. And without using a single line of code. A simple player built with the video.Maru component. The Object Oriented Designer - Part 5: Building a Reflective Image Menu with XML and AS3.0 Derrick Ypenburg In this segment of the Object Oriented Designer series, we will build on the previous tutorial and focus on populating our menu with numerous external images that are defined in an external XML file. This will allow our menu to be dynamic and updateable from outside of the FLA file. The final installment in this series will make thumbnails clickable for events or links and make the menu scrollable. If you are not familiar with the previous installments in this series, please read them before you continue with this tutorial starting here. 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 The Object Oriented Designer - Part 4: Building a Reflective Image Menu with AS 3.0 The Object Oriented Designer - Part 5: Building a Reflective Image Menu with XML and AS 3.0 Tables with Style in InDesign CS3 Kim Dudley Styles are collections of formatting attributes that can be applied to items throughout a document. Styles are a real time saver and ensure consistency from page to page. In earlier versions of InDesign styles could only be applied to characters, paragraphs and objects. InDesign CS3's styles can be applied to paragraphs, characters, objects, tables and cells in a table. In this tutorial we will take data from an Excel document and place it in an InDesign table. We will then create styles for the table and add some effects to jazz it up a bit. In my series of articles on InDesign, I discussed the process of setting up a multiple page document that contains graphic elements, text and images. In Part Two of that series, InDesign - Part 2: Adding and Formatting Text, I demonstrated the creation and application of styles for characters and paragraphs. We will now use similar methods to create styles for tables and cells. Like character and paragraph styles, table styles and cell styles mean you no longer need to manually format tables or individual table cells. Once we set up the styles, a few quick clicks will apply those styles to other tables within the document. Approximate download size: 2.3MB Flex 101: Part 10 - Databinding Custom Components Joseph Balderson Learning Flex 2 can be can seem overwhelming at first glance, considering all the elements that go into the making of a Flex application, from 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. Just to name a few. 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 using databinding to exchange data between custom MXML components. We will also touch on the OOP topics of encapsulation and coupling — the good and the not so good ways of creating component relationships with databinding. An example of databinding between ImageChooser and ImageLoader MXML components. The Flex 101 Series: Flex 101: Part 1 - Introducing Adobe Flex 2 Flex 101: Part 2 - What's New In Flash Player 9 Flex 101: Part 3 - Using Flex Builder 2 Flex 101: Part 4 - Building in Design Mode Flex 101: Part 5 - Using MXML Flex 101: Part 6 - Components and Databinding Flex 101: Part 7 - Events Flex 101: Part 8 - AS3 in MXML Flex 101: Part 9 - Custom MXML Components Flex 101: Part 10 - Databinding Custom Components Flex 101: Part 11 - The Event Class Coming Soon Flex 101: Part 12 - Using The Event Classes Coming Soon Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 6 - Effect Triggers Steve Schelter When working in the Flex 2 environment, there are many times where you might find yourself in need of a component that does not exist. The Flex SDK offers plenty of extensibility for building custom UI components that can plug seamlessly into the existing framework. In the sixth lesson of this series, we will define custom effect triggers to our component for applying animated effects. The Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2 Series: Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 1 - Overview Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 2 - Basic Setup Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 3 - Dispatching Events Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 4 - Property Exposure Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 5 - Styles Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 6 - Effect Triggers A Simple Error Handling Function for PHP Tom Muck Error handling is an important aspect of site development, but using PHP there aren't too many clearly defined ways to handle errors. I will present a simple function that handles errors in several ways: records the error in a log, emails the site administrator a copy of the error, and redirects the user to a central error page. Using one or more of these three methods, you can handle errors more gracefully in your PHP pages. Extending the AS3 FLVPlayback Component in Flash CS3: Part 1 - Adding a Background Color [FREE] Robert Reinhardt In this FLVPlayback component series, you'll learn how to enhance the capabilities of the AS3 FLVPlayback component that ships with Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. Over the next several tutorials, you'll learn how to create an arbitrary class called FLVPlaybackPro and add custom methods and properties to accomplish common Flash Video tasks. The FLVPlaybackPro class extends the FLVPlayback class. In this tutorial, you learn how to create the FLVPlaybackPro class and build a background and backgroundColor property. NOTE: This series augments the material discussed in my book, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Video Studio Techniques (Adobe Press). Some of the ActionScript 3.0 (AS3) custom classes I built and included on the book's DVD-ROM are discussed and expanded in this series. Limiting Textarea Characters Paul Davis Limiting the characters for a textarea is a pretty common thing around the web. We are going to create our own script to accomplish this functionality, but with a little twist - using DOM compliant scripting and without putting a single line of JavaScript in the body of the document, not even on the textareas themselves. MovieClip Buttons: Understanding a Few ActionScript 3.0 Nuances David Stiller The first thing that comes to mind when many developers think of buttons in Flash is the common button symbol. It's name, after all, is perfectly apt: this is the symbol — out of the triad Movie Clip, Graphic, and Button — that is primed for making, well, buttons. This symbol has a set of specialized timeline frames that automatically update the visual states of Up, Over, and Down, which correspond to the mouse's movement over the button. No complaints there ... the button symbol is good for the basic widget it describes. The thing is, it's also possible to make buttons from movie clips. Robert Reinhardt describes why and how in the first rate "Building Better Buttons" article from this "Better Practices for Flash Designers" series (in a nutshell, movie clips' timelines can be more powerfully controlled, which allows for smoother transitions between states). Robert's article was written for Flash 8, which means it covers ActionScript 2.0. Even so, the concept holds just as well for Flash CS3 — specifically ActionScript 3.0 — even though the syntax changes a bit. That said, some of the new functionality in the MovieClip class may stump you if you're keen to experiment on your own with movie clip buttons in Flash CS3. Let's examine two possible pitfalls, so you'll know how to sidestep them if they cross your path.
Installing ColdFusion 8 on Mac OS X ColdFusion 8, the latest and greatest, is the first version to be released under Adobe's auspices, and that makes a difference -- installing CF on OS X is easier than ever. Check out the Article by CMX Partner Thomas Pletcher
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of LifeHacker.com See If Your Computer Is Visiting The Internet Behind Your Back OK, it's not a tip having to do with any Adobe products, but hey, it's handy anyway. If you suspect that your computer may be connecting to the internet when it shouldn't, check out this short article at LifeHacker.com to find out for sure. 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 Madrid

You've probably heard the debates, and may even have expressed your own point of view. Should you use fluid or fixed-width layouts for your pages? The advocates of fixed-width layouts often cite the width of lines of text as the reason to constrain the layout. When lines of text are too long, they are harder to read. There is another layout technique that circumvents this problem, though, and that is the elastic layout. Text and container increase or decrease together and in proportion, and the line lengths remain more predictable. If this layout type intrigues you, you'll want to try out our newest JumpStart, CMX JumpStart Madrid.

Of course, Madrid 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. Madrid is a three-column, elastic layout that includes a background image set to fixed with the background-attachment property, an expandable header region, and a dual navigation system. The package includes an extension, eight tutorials, main and Internet Explorer style sheets, a PNG documents for branding the graphics, and a starter page.

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

Dreamweaver Cannot Be All Things To All People?

Dreamweaver CS3 is packed with sweet and tangy developer goodness, no doubt. Macromedia took a very basic web dev tool and increasingly loaded it with great features that have helped many of us in our careers as developers.When Adobe released DW CS3, they didn't mess with it too much, and even added a few perks. For the next version though, they have decided to reevaluate some features. This announcement from Adobe provides an overview of "depracated features", otherwise known as "features on the chopping block." Layout Mode, a constant troublemaking feature, is being axed. Also being put out to pasture are the ASP.net server behaviors as well as Flash Buttons and Flash Text, among other things.

FREE ActionScript 3 and Flex Training

Colin Moock, reknowned Flash authority, is touring parts of the US and abroad to give one-day training in using ActionScript 3 and Adobe AIR. AdobeAS3Tour.com says that attendees will leave with "exposure to all major concepts of object programming, an understanding of classes and objects, an understanding of how to structure and write an ActionScript 3.0 Program, exposure to the Flex Builder 2 development environment, a pamphlet reviewing the days major concepts and a discount coupon for Essential ActionScript 3.0. Sounds good to us. You should probably register soon if you're interested. Want more free training? Check Out TotalTraining.com where they're offering 30 days of access to over 17 hours of our Adobe Flex 2 online training titles.

ColdFusion 8 Cumulative Hot Fix Released

This hotfix released by Adobe for ColdFusion 8 fixes several issues that were recently discovered. Among them are problems with the CFZipParam tag and ColdFusion style sheets. Check out this technote from Adobe. You should really only apply the fix if you're experiencing any of the issues listed in the technote.

The Nutty Professor

Video Professor has been in business for years, selling their computer training videos on late night infomercials. Like nearly any company that has a fair-sized audience, they get complaints about their product. For instance, there are quite a few customer complaints regarding Video Professor at InfomercialScams.com. Video Professor, like any company would do, expressed concern over their customer's dissatisfaction with their product. Like most companies would not do, Video Professor is attempting to sue all of the folks who have complained about their product. It's an interesting approach to creating return customers, but hey, who are we to say it won't work? Yeah.... Read more at Arstechnica.com.

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 on Adrian Senior's article, CMX JumpStart: Washington, D.C..

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:

"I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers." - Woody Allen

Photoshop: See What Logo Is Passable

Not a lot of people were on board with Adobe's CS3 logos. But don't fret, because now there is a new Photoshop logo and slogan. The slogan is "See What's Possible." To see the logo, check out this blog post at Adobe.com. While you're there, look at the replies from users and see just how underwhelmed most folks are. One of our favorite responses to the logo is from Eric, who said "On the brighter side, it's slightly less annoying than Clippy." Unfortunately, his reply is not the exception...

Big Business To Buy 'Book For Billions?

Facebook.com has some major eyeballs focused in its direction. Both Microsoft and Google are said to looking to invest in Facebook, and we're talking about billions of dollars. Facebook is said to be turning a $30 million dollar profit this year, and MS and Google want a piece of it. Of course getting their hands on all of the valuable demographic information from Facebook's community of users wouldn't hurt. Whether or not Facebook even wants either of these companies' money is unknown, but considering the money that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been offered to sell his company, it doesn't sound like he's going to be wowed by a simple offer of cash. More on this at Adotas.com.

Amazonian Mp3s

Amazon.com has just announced that they will be selling mp3s on their website. Of the over two million DRM-free songs they'll be offering, over half of those will be made available for only 89 cents. How does Amazon's service rank with something like iTunes? HypeBot at TypePad.com gives its opinion on what the Amazon store is and is not. Read the announcement straight from the horse's mouth. Meanwhile, TheStreet.com is hoping that this will be the start of some major mp3 price wars.

Interesting Commentary On Open Office vs. Microsoft Office

Open Office is a freely distributed likeness of Microsoft's Office suite. While it's most likely to be found on computers equipped with Linux, many open source fans, and Office users looking for a better deal are installing Open Office. Is it as good as Microsoft's version? That's up for debate, since there are several levels to what each application has to offer. TeamBio.com has some thoughts about it, and some of the user comments that follow are at least as good as the editorial. By the way, Cnet.com has an article about a bug found in some versions of Open Office that you'll want to know about if you've got it loaded on your computer.

:-)

The emoticon is twenty five years old this month. Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman created the smiley emoticon back in 1982 in order to give online users a simple way of conveying positive emotion. Since that time, emoticons have evolved into winks, frowns, mildly amused and plenty of others. So whenever you type a :-) or a :-| or even a :P, remember to thank Fahlman for giving us the ability to smile online while not quite busting out a complete LOL. Read the full story at CNN.com.

CMX AJAX Form Submit Extension

The CMX AJAX Form Submit Behavior for Dreamweaver and Dreamweaver MX 2004 allows you to use AJAX technology to submit form information to a server-side processing script and receive the results back without having to reload the page.

Take a look at this Extension by Rob Williams

Fun and Freebies!

If I Were Anywhere Near #19, I'd Be Moving

At MapOfStrange.com, you'll find some interesting anomolies picked up from Google Maps.

Yes, Great Photoshop Skills, But... Whoa.

Just because something is very skillfully done, doesn't mean it still won't creep you out. Safe for work, but blech...

Too Much Information

Tech support is used to asking what you were doing before you experienced your computer problem. Guess some of them should be more specific, because here's what one guy wrote.

Feed Tools in Dreamweaver 8 and CS3: RSS and XSL

Adding an RSS feed to a web page is a piece of cake with the XSL features of Dreamweaver 8 and CS3. This article will show the new features of XSL transformation using the freely available Community MX RSS feed, or any other of your choice. The tutorial will require PHP, ColdFusion, or another of the available server models in Dreamweaver, as the XSL functionality uses a server-side file to parse and transform the XML news feed.

This free article by CMX Partner Tom Muck can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Hybrid Applications: AIR, Silverlight, et al in Perspective [FREE]

Rob Williams

Recently there has been a lot of buzz surrounding the idea of "hybrid" applications; programs and sites built for and delivered across the internet, but that act and operate as if they were independant standalone programs. The idea, as we'll explore in this article, really isn't that new but it's receiving a great deal more focus than in the past, due to some key technologies being developed and pushed out by some of the major players in web development. This is not by anymeans an "Adobe VS Microsoft" debate, but rather an investigation into the concepts, technologies and possibilities that surround hybrid applications.

Using Video Maru - Part 1: The Basics [FREE]

Joseph Balderson

Finding ways to make it easy for Flash designers to create a simple FLV video player has been a much sought-after goal for many who work with the Adobe suite of technologies. Nowadays, designers and developers have an array of options available to them, from the new and improved v3 (or 'CS3') FLVPlayback component, to a flurry of third-party video player components, all designed to make a Flash designer's job easier and more productive.

One such third-party player is the video.Maru component. In all my years developing with Flash, I have yet to encounter a component which makes it simpler and easier to create a custom FLV video player. We'll show that it's so easy to create a custom player with video.Maru, you'll be looking for the guide wires!

In this first tutorial, we'll take a basic look at the Video Maru component, getting a video to play without any controls. And without using a single line of code.

A simple player built with the video.Maru component.

The Object Oriented Designer - Part 5: Building a Reflective Image Menu with XML and AS3.0

Derrick Ypenburg

In this segment of the Object Oriented Designer series, we will build on the previous tutorial and focus on populating our menu with numerous external images that are defined in an external XML file. This will allow our menu to be dynamic and updateable from outside of the FLA file.

The final installment in this series will make thumbnails clickable for events or links and make the menu scrollable.

If you are not familiar with the previous installments in this series, please read them before you continue with this tutorial starting here.

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
The Object Oriented Designer - Part 4: Building a Reflective Image Menu with AS 3.0
The Object Oriented Designer - Part 5: Building a Reflective Image Menu with XML and AS 3.0

Tables with Style in InDesign CS3

Kim Dudley

Styles are collections of formatting attributes that can be applied to items throughout a document. Styles are a real time saver and ensure consistency from page to page. In earlier versions of InDesign styles could only be applied to characters, paragraphs and objects. InDesign CS3's styles can be applied to paragraphs, characters, objects, tables and cells in a table.

In this tutorial we will take data from an Excel document and place it in an InDesign table. We will then create styles for the table and add some effects to jazz it up a bit.

In my series of articles on InDesign, I discussed the process of setting up a multiple page document that contains graphic elements, text and images. In Part Two of that series, InDesign - Part 2: Adding and Formatting Text, I demonstrated the creation and application of styles for characters and paragraphs. We will now use similar methods to create styles for tables and cells. Like character and paragraph styles, table styles and cell styles mean you no longer need to manually format tables or individual table cells. Once we set up the styles, a few quick clicks will apply those styles to other tables within the document.

Approximate download size: 2.3MB

Flex 101: Part 10 - Databinding Custom Components

Joseph Balderson

Learning Flex 2 can be can seem overwhelming at first glance, considering all the elements that go into the making of a Flex application, from 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. Just to name a few. 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 using databinding to exchange data between custom MXML components. We will also touch on the OOP topics of encapsulation and coupling — the good and the not so good ways of creating component relationships with databinding.

An example of databinding between ImageChooser and ImageLoader MXML components.

The Flex 101 Series:
Flex 101: Part 1 - Introducing Adobe Flex 2
Flex 101: Part 2 - What's New In Flash Player 9
Flex 101: Part 3 - Using Flex Builder 2
Flex 101: Part 4 - Building in Design Mode
Flex 101: Part 5 - Using MXML
Flex 101: Part 6 - Components and Databinding
Flex 101: Part 7 - Events
Flex 101: Part 8 - AS3 in MXML
Flex 101: Part 9 - Custom MXML Components
Flex 101: Part 10 - Databinding Custom Components
Flex 101: Part 11 - The Event Class Coming Soon
Flex 101: Part 12 - Using The Event Classes Coming Soon

Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 6 - Effect Triggers

Steve Schelter

When working in the Flex 2 environment, there are many times where you might find yourself in need of a component that does not exist. The Flex SDK offers plenty of extensibility for building custom UI components that can plug seamlessly into the existing framework. In the sixth lesson of this series, we will define custom effect triggers to our component for applying animated effects.

The Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2 Series:
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 1 - Overview
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 2 - Basic Setup
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 3 - Dispatching Events
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 4 - Property Exposure
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 5 - Styles
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 6 - Effect Triggers

A Simple Error Handling Function for PHP

Tom Muck

Error handling is an important aspect of site development, but using PHP there aren't too many clearly defined ways to handle errors. I will present a simple function that handles errors in several ways: records the error in a log, emails the site administrator a copy of the error, and redirects the user to a central error page. Using one or more of these three methods, you can handle errors more gracefully in your PHP pages.

Extending the AS3 FLVPlayback Component in Flash CS3: Part 1 - Adding a Background Color [FREE]

Robert Reinhardt

In this FLVPlayback component series, you'll learn how to enhance the capabilities of the AS3 FLVPlayback component that ships with Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. Over the next several tutorials, you'll learn how to create an arbitrary class called FLVPlaybackPro and add custom methods and properties to accomplish common Flash Video tasks. The FLVPlaybackPro class extends the FLVPlayback class. In this tutorial, you learn how to create the FLVPlaybackPro class and build a background and backgroundColor property.

NOTE: This series augments the material discussed in my book, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Video Studio Techniques (Adobe Press). Some of the ActionScript 3.0 (AS3) custom classes I built and included on the book's DVD-ROM are discussed and expanded in this series.

Limiting Textarea Characters

Paul Davis

Limiting the characters for a textarea is a pretty common thing around the web. We are going to create our own script to accomplish this functionality, but with a little twist - using DOM compliant scripting and without putting a single line of JavaScript in the body of the document, not even on the textareas themselves.

MovieClip Buttons: Understanding a Few ActionScript 3.0 Nuances

David Stiller

The first thing that comes to mind when many developers think of buttons in Flash is the common button symbol. It's name, after all, is perfectly apt: this is the symbol — out of the triad Movie Clip, Graphic, and Button — that is primed for making, well, buttons. This symbol has a set of specialized timeline frames that automatically update the visual states of Up, Over, and Down, which correspond to the mouse's movement over the button. No complaints there ... the button symbol is good for the basic widget it describes. The thing is, it's also possible to make buttons from movie clips. Robert Reinhardt describes why and how in the first rate "Building Better Buttons" article from this "Better Practices for Flash Designers" series (in a nutshell, movie clips' timelines can be more powerfully controlled, which allows for smoother transitions between states).

Robert's article was written for Flash 8, which means it covers ActionScript 2.0. Even so, the concept holds just as well for Flash CS3 — specifically ActionScript 3.0 — even though the syntax changes a bit. That said, some of the new functionality in the MovieClip class may stump you if you're keen to experiment on your own with movie clip buttons in Flash CS3. Let's examine two possible pitfalls, so you'll know how to sidestep them if they cross your path.

Installing ColdFusion 8 on Mac OS X

ColdFusion 8, the latest and greatest, is the first version to be released under Adobe's auspices, and that makes a difference -- installing CF on OS X is easier than ever.

Check out the Article by CMX Partner Thomas Pletcher

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of LifeHacker.com

See If Your Computer Is Visiting The Internet Behind Your Back

OK, it's not a tip having to do with any Adobe products, but hey, it's handy anyway. If you suspect that your computer may be connecting to the internet when it shouldn't, check out this short article at LifeHacker.com to find out for sure.

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!