
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Win a Full Year Subscription To Community MX! Create a site from any of our JumpStarts and submit its URL to JScontest@communitymx.com. Anyone can enter to win. Of course, non-members can use any JumpStart they like, but if you want to do it on the cheap, you can use either Santorini or our other free JumpStart, North Pole. You can enter with either a newly created or previously created JumpStart site. A panel of CMX partners will judge the entries by the following criteria: Adaptation of the JumpStart design Suitability of design to the site content Validity of all CSS/XHTML code Accessibility The winner will receive a one year subscription to CMX and have the design featured on the front page of Community MX. We will also display the design of a runner up on our front page. You can read a Santorini/contest article with the contest rules and deadlines, a rubric that clarifies the judging criteria, a Santorini modification, and valuable tips on adapting Santorini for your own designs. Head over to our CMX JumpStarts chart to see all of the great designs that are available to you. JumpStarts range in price from $19.99 to $45.00 and whether or not you win the contest, you'll have a winning JumpStart on your next website! Since announcing this last week, we've received quite a few entries, and we're looking forward to having even more to choose from. Guest Author Tiago Dias at Community MX Tiago Dias has written a fantastic article for us at Community MX this week. If you're an After Effects fan, you'll want to read Tiago's article on creating smoke and fire effects in After Effects. Tiago is currently a video and Flash developer for a corporate television and news production company based in London, and is co-author, along with CMX author Tom Green, of From After Effects to Flash: Poetry in Motion Graphics. In his free time he writes tutorials on Flash and After Effects for various communities, tries to go snowboarding every time the sun is shining in the Swiss Alps or is on a plane visiting new countries. He currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. All Your Shopping Carts Are Belong To Us IBM has filed two lawsuits against Amazon.com for patent infringements. Among other things, IBM alleges that Amazon.com violates IBM's patent on ordering items from an electronic catalog and displaying advertising on an interactive website. An IBM spokesman went so far as to say "We believe that Amazon's entire business model is built upon these patents and that damages could be substantial." That's a significant statement, as it would mean that anyone who ever decided to sell goods on the internet is violating the same patent. It's ridiculous to think that IBM could get anywhere with their lawsuit, but Amazon themselves sued BarnesAndNoble.com a few years back over their "one-click" purchasing technology. That suit was settled out of court, but it helped lay the groundwork for lawsuits like this one. Read more about it Yahoo.com. What's in a Name? A Rose By Any Other... Forget It. Fifty Bucks. According to LeapFish.com, the domain name Adobe.com is worth $35,255,613, while SmellyFeet.com is worth only $9,000. The domain name LookingForOrangeTreeBark.com would only net you abut $20. LeapFish calculates the worth of a domain name using several factors. Using a .com address would be worth more than using a .biz address for instance. The more hits that search engines return on a given domain will also have a big impact on its value. The length of the domain name and the use of non-standard characters also figure into the net worth of the name. Whether or not you have a practical reason to use LeapFish, it's interesting to see how your domain name stacks up to others. Don't Let Vista's Absence Stop You From Buying It When Microsoft kept pushing back the date of Windows Vista ad infinitum, it ticked off PC makers, especially since they had originally planned on the release of Vista to bolster PC sales during the 2006 holiday season. But it turns out that if you purchase a PC loaded with Windows XP between now and March 15th, you'll be eligible for either a free upgrade or a heavy discount to Windows Vista, according to this article at News.com. If you buy a PC through one of the large computer outlets like Dell or HP, your upgrade will be handled through them. If purchased through a smaller dealer, your upgrade will come directly from Microsoft.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Impressive article, sir. I found you through your Ubuntu articles and I really like everything I've read from you so far. Keep up the great work." - Shannon P., CMX Subscriber, commenting on Thomas Pletcher's article, Learning PHP - Part 1: A Gentle Introduction. 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: "Nothing is more discouraging than unappreciated sarcasm." - Unknown Custom Searches, The Google Way This week, Google provided developers the means to put a Google search on their web page that can be customized to search for only the content you specify. For instance, as stated in this article at TechNewsWorld.com, if you run a fishing website, you could make sure that the search term "bass" results in fishy subjects, rather than bass guitars. You can choose which websites will be searched, and use only those websites in a search, or just give those websites the top priority when results are returned. You can read more about it at the aforementioned website, or just go to the Google Custom Search Engine page. Firefox 2.0 Officially Released Firefox 2.0 is out, and it brings a few improvements with it. Among the new features are spell-checking on forms, warnings when landing on a potential phishing website, and the search and tabbed browsing functions are said to be improved as well. For those wondering why their current version of Firefox has not prompted them to upgrade to 2.0, it is not being pushed in that method. Rather than force the Firefox 1.5 users to upgrade unwillingly, they are making this upgrade a voluntary download for now. You can read more about the update at MacWorld.com and Mozilla.org, and you can download 2.0 from GetFirefox.com. Oh, and if you like tweaking your apps, head over to LifeHacker.com and check out their Firefox 2.0 tweaks. Wanna Be a Web Star? The United Talent Agency, which is a big-time agency in Hollywood, is searching for talented creators of internet content. They're more interested in video creation than anything else, because they think that video is the next big frontier on the internet. The way they see it, more and more companies are looking for talented folks to create something special for their online campaigns or web portals. It makes sense that a talent agency would be the place for these companies to go when they need talented web-oriented filmmakers. More on this at NYTimes.com. We Just Updated Our Christmas Lists Dell has just announced that they will begin shipping laptops next month that will go for less than $500. The computers will run on AMD processors, and range in price from $449 to $499 for 15-inch models. This will be quite a boost for AMD sales, and we're sure that Dell will make up for their price reduction by sheer volume of sales. Read more about it at DigiTimes.com. Beats Ask Jeeves... MsDewey.com is a new search engine that seems like a cross between the Subservient Chicken and a very poor search engine. We're still not sure which one it's shooting for... Ms. Dewey is younger, cuter and more interactive than Jeeves ever was, but she's also a bit obnoxious. Do a search on just about anything, and Ms Dewey will have something to say about it. Unfortunately, you don't get to see the results of your search until after she's done talking. On the plus side, you can just not search for anything, and she seems to get pretty upset.
CMX User Password Component This ready-to-use ColdFusion component (CFC) provides a simple mechanism to handle assigning passwords to user accounts, verifying passwords provided by users, and generating random passwords for accounts. Take a look at this Coldfusion Component by CMX Partner Arman Danesh
Fun and Freebies! Steve Irwin's Message in a Nutshell Steve Irwin, also known as "The Crocodile Hunter", could be over the top, but few doubt how passionate he was his in work. This video at YouTube.com shows Irwin describing why he did some of the crazy things he did. It definitely puts the man in perspective. Starbucks Retains its Caffeine Crown For those of us who have been told by our doctors to cut down on caffeine, it's difficult to know where to begin, since so many drinks and sodas contain that little energy ingredient. Thanks to EnergyFiend.com, you can browse a caffeine database that will show you how many milligrams of caffeine are in each of your favorite beverages. Starbucks Grande Coffee holds onto the lead with 372 milligrams in one cup. Oh- and for those who use coffee to fuel their work, just look at the chart the other way and it will work for you too. For People Who Like The Movie "Office Space" If you like Office Space you'll love this video at YouTube.com. If you enjoyed the Super Friends cartoons as a youngster, you'll dig it even more,
Persistent Page Indicator When developing Web sites using good principles of usability, it is good practice to use an indicator showing what page the person is on as they surf through your site. Some people use bread crumbs as well as a persistent page indicator (many times like the down state of the button) indicating that "you are here." This page indication can be acheived by simply placing a class on the proper navigation item (and changing the item it's placed on from page to page). However, when using server-side includes, templates or library items in Dreamweaver, since the same menu is used on each instance of the page, it can be a more challenging process. Don't worry though -- CSS and the descendant selector handle the challenge quite nicely. Come along as we walk through the steps needed to create this effect. This free article by CMX Partner Stephanie Sullivan can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Editable Select Lists Using CMX AutoComplete Rob Williams One of the most surprising aspects of HTML forms is that there is no way to natively create an editable select list. Developers are forced to either present a fixed value list for the user to choose from, or provide an additional text box to allow the user to enter a new value. Fortunately with a bit of help from the latest version of the CMX Auto Complete Extension we can finally solve this problem quite easily! Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 3 Adrian Senior In this tutorial we will build on the administration area that we created earlier in the series, you will begin to build the functionality required for page creation and the construction of a central control area. The Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin Series: Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 1 Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 2 Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 3 Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 4 Coming Soon Switching CSS Based on Time of Day with PHP Gordon Mackay Sometimes dynamic code can have advantages when it comes to adding some aesthetic features to a web design. In this example we will build a small PHP function that will output a different CSS link to your pages depending on what time of the day it is. We will also have a look at the best way to deploy this technique in terms of CSS. We will take advantage of PHP's date function and switch statements to make our function work. The support files download for this tutorial contain a nice looking example of a CSS header image rotation based on the time of day. It's complete with the 4 PNG files used, CSS files, PHP function and test page. Approximate download size: 658k A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 2 Tom Muck There are various ways to create a data-driven multi-language site, but the method I will show in this article series uses an underused technique involving ColdFusion custom tags. Basically, the technique shown will turn any simple, well-formed HTML or XHTML page into a content management system with only one tag required on the page. This first part of this series showed the principles behind the custom tag technique. This part will implement the database tables and custom ColdFusion functionality to turn HTML tags into database-driven dynamic tags to implement the multi-language aspect. The third part will create a simple administrative interface to administer the system. The Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System Series: A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 1 A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 2 A Simple Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 3 Coming Soon Fire and Smoke in After Effects [FREE] Tiago Dias After Effects from Adobe is capable of some fantastic video effects right out of the box, but there are also some great plug-ins with the Pro version that can help you put some extra pizazz into your video. This tutorial will show you how to create realistic Fire & Smoke effects using only the bundled plugins which you get when buying the Pro Version of After Effects 7. Tiago Dias works at a corporate television and news production company based in London with subsidiaries around the world, as a video producer and Flash developer — this is Tiago's ideal job, as it combines 2 of his favorite technologies! In his free time he writes tutorials on Flash and After Effects for various communities. Good Behavior Paul Davis Learn to make a simple Dreamweaver Behavior. Multiple Column CSS Layouts that Fill the Browser Window Zoe Gillenwater In Create Pages that Fill the Browser with CSS, I introduced the CSS rules necessary to make a div stretch to fill the height of the browser viewport. The principles in that article can be applied to multiple divs to create a multiple column layout where each column stretches to fill the viewport. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to make a two column layout with a header stretch to fill the browser viewport, regardless of the amount of content in the divs or the height of the header. Note: This tutorial assumes you are familiar with how to create a basic two column layout using floats and does not cover how to create the columns themselves. Instead, it focuses on how to take those existing columns and stretch them to fill a window. Technology in Music Education [FREE] Sheri German This article will look at some of the ways that the music department of Howard County, MD is integrating computers and technology into music education. Software programs, the Web, Flash video, and other technologies team up with teachers, kids, and parents to form a perfect partnership. Playing with Radial Gradients in Flash [FREE] Tom Green Ever wondered what mayhem you can unleash with a Radial Gradient in Flash? read on... ColdFusion Code-Behind: Mimicking .NET's Page Directive Chaz Chumley Microsoft's ASP.NET has given the development community a nice object oriented programming model with its introduction of Code-Behind files. Simply spoken, these are C# or VB.NET files that contain the physical code for wiring up events or actions such as Page Load, button clicks, etc. that the ASP.NET template calls from the very first line of code called a Page Directive. The power of separating the presentational layout from the actual framework allows developers and designers to work separately from one another. This is very useful in large development teams. Taking a page from this concept we can achieve the same flexibility in ColdFusion by using CFCs and invoking them from the ColdFusion template on every page request. Join me as I take you through an explanation of how this concept works and hopefully bridge the gap between any Microsoft .NET developers wanting to learn ColdFusion in creating a ColdFusion Code-Behind.
Creating Daily Stats Pages A stat page can be used for an e-store, blog, ad rotater, or any other type of application where you want to track a specific series of "things" that happen each day. For example, on a blog you might track blog hits. In an e-store, you might track daily sales. For an ad rotator you might track click-throughs. This article will show how to write a query to group the daily activity in the first section, and how to display that as a graph using ColdFusion in the second section. The article will use SQL Server syntax, but could be adapted to any database. Also, the SQL code is applicable to any server model—not only ColdFusion. This is part 1 of 2. 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 Danilo Celic, CMX Partner. Cut and Paste Your Error Messages If you run into an error within Dreamweaver, and you need help fixing it, you can help your helper by providing the exact error message. Now, some of those messages can get pretty long, and trying to type them perfectly is just plain asking for trouble. Have no fear, there is an easier way. When the error dialog is open, click on it with your mouse (not the OK button) to make sure it is in focus, and then hit CTRL+C (CMD+C mac?) and you now have the error on your clipboard, so you can paste it whereever you need to. 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!

Win a Full Year Subscription To Community MX!

Create a site from any of our JumpStarts and submit its URL to JScontest@communitymx.com. Anyone can enter to win. Of course, non-members can use any JumpStart they like, but if you want to do it on the cheap, you can use either Santorini or our other free JumpStart, North Pole. You can enter with either a newly created or previously created JumpStart site.

A panel of CMX partners will judge the entries by the following criteria:

Adaptation of the JumpStart design
Suitability of design to the site content
Validity of all CSS/XHTML code
Accessibility

The winner will receive a one year subscription to CMX and have the design featured on the front page of Community MX. We will also display the design of a runner up on our front page.

You can read a Santorini/contest article with the contest rules and deadlines, a rubric that clarifies the judging criteria, a Santorini modification, and valuable tips on adapting Santorini for your own designs.

Head over to our CMX JumpStarts chart to see all of the great designs that are available to you. JumpStarts range in price from $19.99 to $45.00 and whether or not you win the contest, you'll have a winning JumpStart on your next website! Since announcing this last week, we've received quite a few entries, and we're looking forward to having even more to choose from.

Guest Author Tiago Dias at Community MX

Tiago Dias has written a fantastic article for us at Community MX this week. If you're an After Effects fan, you'll want to read Tiago's article on creating smoke and fire effects in After Effects. Tiago is currently a video and Flash developer for a corporate television and news production company based in London, and is co-author, along with CMX author Tom Green, of From After Effects to Flash: Poetry in Motion Graphics. In his free time he writes tutorials on Flash and After Effects for various communities, tries to go snowboarding every time the sun is shining in the Swiss Alps or is on a plane visiting new countries. He currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.

All Your Shopping Carts Are Belong To Us

IBM has filed two lawsuits against Amazon.com for patent infringements. Among other things, IBM alleges that Amazon.com violates IBM's patent on ordering items from an electronic catalog and displaying advertising on an interactive website. An IBM spokesman went so far as to say "We believe that Amazon's entire business model is built upon these patents and that damages could be substantial." That's a significant statement, as it would mean that anyone who ever decided to sell goods on the internet is violating the same patent. It's ridiculous to think that IBM could get anywhere with their lawsuit, but Amazon themselves sued BarnesAndNoble.com a few years back over their "one-click" purchasing technology. That suit was settled out of court, but it helped lay the groundwork for lawsuits like this one. Read more about it Yahoo.com.

What's in a Name? A Rose By Any Other... Forget It. Fifty Bucks.

According to LeapFish.com, the domain name Adobe.com is worth $35,255,613, while SmellyFeet.com is worth only $9,000. The domain name LookingForOrangeTreeBark.com would only net you abut $20. LeapFish calculates the worth of a domain name using several factors. Using a .com address would be worth more than using a .biz address for instance. The more hits that search engines return on a given domain will also have a big impact on its value. The length of the domain name and the use of non-standard characters also figure into the net worth of the name. Whether or not you have a practical reason to use LeapFish, it's interesting to see how your domain name stacks up to others.

Don't Let Vista's Absence Stop You From Buying It

When Microsoft kept pushing back the date of Windows Vista ad infinitum, it ticked off PC makers, especially since they had originally planned on the release of Vista to bolster PC sales during the 2006 holiday season. But it turns out that if you purchase a PC loaded with Windows XP between now and March 15th, you'll be eligible for either a free upgrade or a heavy discount to Windows Vista, according to this article at News.com. If you buy a PC through one of the large computer outlets like Dell or HP, your upgrade will be handled through them. If purchased through a smaller dealer, your upgrade will come directly from Microsoft.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Impressive article, sir. I found you through your Ubuntu articles and I really like everything I've read from you so far. Keep up the great work."

- Shannon P., CMX Subscriber, commenting on Thomas Pletcher's article, Learning PHP - Part 1: A Gentle Introduction.

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:

"Nothing is more discouraging than unappreciated sarcasm." - Unknown

Custom Searches, The Google Way

This week, Google provided developers the means to put a Google search on their web page that can be customized to search for only the content you specify. For instance, as stated in this article at TechNewsWorld.com, if you run a fishing website, you could make sure that the search term "bass" results in fishy subjects, rather than bass guitars. You can choose which websites will be searched, and use only those websites in a search, or just give those websites the top priority when results are returned. You can read more about it at the aforementioned website, or just go to the Google Custom Search Engine page.

Firefox 2.0 Officially Released

Firefox 2.0 is out, and it brings a few improvements with it. Among the new features are spell-checking on forms, warnings when landing on a potential phishing website, and the search and tabbed browsing functions are said to be improved as well. For those wondering why their current version of Firefox has not prompted them to upgrade to 2.0, it is not being pushed in that method. Rather than force the Firefox 1.5 users to upgrade unwillingly, they are making this upgrade a voluntary download for now. You can read more about the update at MacWorld.com and Mozilla.org, and you can download 2.0 from GetFirefox.com. Oh, and if you like tweaking your apps, head over to LifeHacker.com and check out their Firefox 2.0 tweaks.

Wanna Be a Web Star?

The United Talent Agency, which is a big-time agency in Hollywood, is searching for talented creators of internet content. They're more interested in video creation than anything else, because they think that video is the next big frontier on the internet. The way they see it, more and more companies are looking for talented folks to create something special for their online campaigns or web portals. It makes sense that a talent agency would be the place for these companies to go when they need talented web-oriented filmmakers. More on this at NYTimes.com.

We Just Updated Our Christmas Lists

Dell has just announced that they will begin shipping laptops next month that will go for less than $500. The computers will run on AMD processors, and range in price from $449 to $499 for 15-inch models. This will be quite a boost for AMD sales, and we're sure that Dell will make up for their price reduction by sheer volume of sales. Read more about it at DigiTimes.com.

Beats Ask Jeeves...

MsDewey.com is a new search engine that seems like a cross between the Subservient Chicken and a very poor search engine. We're still not sure which one it's shooting for... Ms. Dewey is younger, cuter and more interactive than Jeeves ever was, but she's also a bit obnoxious. Do a search on just about anything, and Ms Dewey will have something to say about it. Unfortunately, you don't get to see the results of your search until after she's done talking. On the plus side, you can just not search for anything, and she seems to get pretty upset.

CMX User Password Component

This ready-to-use ColdFusion component (CFC) provides a simple mechanism to handle assigning passwords to user accounts, verifying passwords provided by users, and generating random passwords for accounts.

Take a look at this Coldfusion Component by CMX Partner Arman Danesh

Fun and Freebies!

Steve Irwin's Message in a Nutshell

Steve Irwin, also known as "The Crocodile Hunter", could be over the top, but few doubt how passionate he was his in work. This video at YouTube.com shows Irwin describing why he did some of the crazy things he did. It definitely puts the man in perspective.

Starbucks Retains its Caffeine Crown

For those of us who have been told by our doctors to cut down on caffeine, it's difficult to know where to begin, since so many drinks and sodas contain that little energy ingredient. Thanks to EnergyFiend.com, you can browse a caffeine database that will show you how many milligrams of caffeine are in each of your favorite beverages. Starbucks Grande Coffee holds onto the lead with 372 milligrams in one cup. Oh- and for those who use coffee to fuel their work, just look at the chart the other way and it will work for you too.

For People Who Like The Movie "Office Space"

If you like Office Space you'll love this video at YouTube.com. If you enjoyed the Super Friends cartoons as a youngster, you'll dig it even more,

Persistent Page Indicator

When developing Web sites using good principles of usability, it is good practice to use an indicator showing what page the person is on as they surf through your site. Some people use bread crumbs as well as a persistent page indicator (many times like the down state of the button) indicating that "you are here." This page indication can be acheived by simply placing a class on the proper navigation item (and changing the item it's placed on from page to page). However, when using server-side includes, templates or library items in Dreamweaver, since the same menu is used on each instance of the page, it can be a more challenging process. Don't worry though -- CSS and the descendant selector handle the challenge quite nicely. Come along as we walk through the steps needed to create this effect.

This free article by CMX Partner Stephanie Sullivan can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Editable Select Lists Using CMX AutoComplete

Rob Williams

One of the most surprising aspects of HTML forms is that there is no way to natively create an editable select list. Developers are forced to either present a fixed value list for the user to choose from, or provide an additional text box to allow the user to enter a new value. Fortunately with a bit of help from the latest version of the CMX Auto Complete Extension we can finally solve this problem quite easily!

Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 3

Adrian Senior

In this tutorial we will build on the administration area that we created earlier in the series, you will begin to build the functionality required for page creation and the construction of a central control area.

The Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin Series:
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 1
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 2
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 3
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Building a Simple Admin - Part 4 Coming Soon

Switching CSS Based on Time of Day with PHP

Gordon Mackay

Sometimes dynamic code can have advantages when it comes to adding some aesthetic features to a web design. In this example we will build a small PHP function that will output a different CSS link to your pages depending on what time of the day it is. We will also have a look at the best way to deploy this technique in terms of CSS.

We will take advantage of PHP's date function and switch statements to make our function work.

The support files download for this tutorial contain a nice looking example of a CSS header image rotation based on the time of day. It's complete with the 4 PNG files used, CSS files, PHP function and test page.

Approximate download size: 658k

A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 2

Tom Muck

There are various ways to create a data-driven multi-language site, but the method I will show in this article series uses an underused technique involving ColdFusion custom tags.

Basically, the technique shown will turn any simple, well-formed HTML or XHTML page into a content management system with only one tag required on the page. This first part of this series showed the principles behind the custom tag technique.

This part will implement the database tables and custom ColdFusion functionality to turn HTML tags into database-driven dynamic tags to implement the multi-language aspect.

The third part will create a simple administrative interface to administer the system.

The Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System Series:
A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 1
A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 2
A Simple Multi-Language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 3 Coming Soon

Fire and Smoke in After Effects [FREE]

Tiago Dias

After Effects from Adobe is capable of some fantastic video effects right out of the box, but there are also some great plug-ins with the Pro version that can help you put some extra pizazz into your video. This tutorial will show you how to create realistic Fire & Smoke effects using only the bundled plugins which you get when buying the Pro Version of After Effects 7.

Tiago Dias works at a corporate television and news production company based in London with subsidiaries around the world, as a video producer and Flash developer — this is Tiago's ideal job, as it combines 2 of his favorite technologies! In his free time he writes tutorials on Flash and After Effects for various communities.

Good Behavior

Paul Davis

Learn to make a simple Dreamweaver Behavior.

Multiple Column CSS Layouts that Fill the Browser Window

Zoe Gillenwater

In Create Pages that Fill the Browser with CSS, I introduced the CSS rules necessary to make a div stretch to fill the height of the browser viewport. The principles in that article can be applied to multiple divs to create a multiple column layout where each column stretches to fill the viewport. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to make a two column layout with a header stretch to fill the browser viewport, regardless of the amount of content in the divs or the height of the header. Note: This tutorial assumes you are familiar with how to create a basic two column layout using floats and does not cover how to create the columns themselves. Instead, it focuses on how to take those existing columns and stretch them to fill a window.

Technology in Music Education [FREE]

Sheri German

This article will look at some of the ways that the music department of Howard County, MD is integrating computers and technology into music education. Software programs, the Web, Flash video, and other technologies team up with teachers, kids, and parents to form a perfect partnership.

Playing with Radial Gradients in Flash [FREE]

Tom Green

Ever wondered what mayhem you can unleash with a Radial Gradient in Flash? read on...

ColdFusion Code-Behind: Mimicking .NET's Page Directive

Chaz Chumley

Microsoft's ASP.NET has given the development community a nice object oriented programming model with its introduction of Code-Behind files. Simply spoken, these are C# or VB.NET files that contain the physical code for wiring up events or actions such as Page Load, button clicks, etc. that the ASP.NET template calls from the very first line of code called a Page Directive.

The power of separating the presentational layout from the actual framework allows developers and designers to work separately from one another. This is very useful in large development teams. Taking a page from this concept we can achieve the same flexibility in ColdFusion by using CFCs and invoking them from the ColdFusion template on every page request.

Join me as I take you through an explanation of how this concept works and hopefully bridge the gap between any Microsoft .NET developers wanting to learn ColdFusion in creating a ColdFusion Code-Behind.

Creating Daily Stats Pages

A stat page can be used for an e-store, blog, ad rotater, or any other type of application where you want to track a specific series of "things" that happen each day. For example, on a blog you might track blog hits. In an e-store, you might track daily sales. For an ad rotator you might track click-throughs. This article will show how to write a query to group the daily activity in the first section, and how to display that as a graph using ColdFusion in the second section. The article will use SQL Server syntax, but could be adapted to any database. Also, the SQL code is applicable to any server model—not only ColdFusion. This is part 1 of 2.

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 Danilo Celic, CMX Partner.

Cut and Paste Your Error Messages

If you run into an error within Dreamweaver, and you need help fixing it, you can help your helper by providing the exact error message. Now, some of those messages can get pretty long, and trying to type them perfectly is just plain asking for trouble. Have no fear, there is an easier way. When the error dialog is open, click on it with your mouse (not the OK button) to make sure it is in focus, and then hit CTRL+C (CMD+C mac?) and you now have the error on your clipboard, so you can paste it whereever you need to.

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!