Thursday, November 29th, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter
Check the News!
Community MX Newsletter: Still Ad-Free!
When Tivo came out, advertisers worried that people would skip through commercials. Now that digital video recorders are commonplace, advertisers know people skip through their commercials. So who can blame them for seeking alternative methods of getting their products and services out to the public? The internet is a natural choice, but Google Adwords only does so much. Let's see... what else do internet users view a lot of on the internet? Sure, porn. But what else? Ah, PDFs! Yes, thanks to Adobe and Yahoo!, you'll soon be seeing dynamic advertising showing up in online newsletters and other pdf documents. The advertising content will be geared toward the content that you intended on viewing in the first place, and because the advertising is dynamic, will change each time the document is viewed. But wait, there's more! OK, there's not more. We just love that Ginsu knife line. Read more on this at TechGeekNews.com as well as Reuters.com.
Several Updates To Adobe Products This Week
Updates became available this week for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom. The update to Photoshop addresses several issues, not the least of which involve print matching and proper CMYK conversion. As for Lightroom, you'll find support for OS X Leopard and additional camera support for the 1Ds Mark III, Nikon D3, Nikon D300, Olympus E-3. The update for Lightroom can be found here and the update for Photoshop is available here.
New Adobe Air Logo. It Does Not Look Like A Toilet Seat. Honestly.
Mike Chambers posted the new Adobe Air logo on his blog. Chambers says that the three points of the logo represent HTML, Flash and PDF, three core web technologies. At the moment, there are about one hundred comments on the logo. Nancy Gill didn't mince words: "I hate to say this .. but it reminds me of a toilet seat." Meanwhile, Judah said "It should be filled like a filled donut and topped with chocolate icing and sprinkles." Most folks seem to like the logo just fine.
What If You Threw An Apology And Nobody Came?
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized on his blog this week for the way Beacon was introduced into Facebook. Beacon broadcasts your friends online buying habits, and was set up as an opt-out feature rather than opt-in. Needless to say, this raised some major privacy concerns from Facebook users and privacy advocates. Zuckerberg admitted that the implementation of Beacon was flawed from the start, but rather than uplugging Beacon altogether, Facebook will allow you turn it off in your profile. Of Facebook's fify million users, about seventy thousand complained about Beacon. While that may sound like a lot of people, it represents less than one half of one percent of Facebook users. Looks like Beacon will probably be around for a while. More on this at Forbes.com.
Vista Service Pack 1 Available Next Week
Microsoft's release candidate for Vista SP1 will be made publicly available next week. The only people who will get their hands on it are the ones who beta tested it and anyone in the MSDN and TechNet developer programs. When SP1 is rolled out to everyone, even those with pirated copies will be able to get it. In Windows XP, Microsoft established a new policy of disallowing pirated versions of Windows from being updated. That's no longer the case, probably due to Microsoft not wanting vulnerable Windows machines out there, giving them a bad name. According to this article at enGadget.com, not too many people have pirated copies of Vista anyway... More on Vista SP1 at News.com.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out!
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"Thanks! This was an important complement. I thought it was not possible too solve it. Now I am really glad to see your solution."
CMX Subscriber Cay L., commenting on Adrian Senior's tutorial "JumpStarts Fix: IE7 Zoom Body Background Image Bug"
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:
"Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried." — Unknown
The First "Best Of 2007" List We've Come Across So Far
"Best Of" lists are usually not meant to be taken too seriously, but this list of the Best CSS Desings of 2007 is a serious collection of beautiful CSS-based websites gathered by Nick La from WebDesignerWall.com. Nick apparently has a really good eye for spotting top-level design and shares them on his website. Although the designs are deemed to be the best of 2007, many - if not all - of them will certainly be contenders for the 2008 list as well. The websites on the list are inspiring, modern and just fun to look at.
If You Don't Promote Yourself, Who Will?
When it comes to self-promotion, our own Tom Green is the King. For those of you not familiar with Tom, we can only say that you must be keeping your home locked up well. It's no surprise that Tom offered us a link to IniciativaColectiva.com. Their website is not done yet, and even appears to be a bit cryptic, but their magazine, which is geared toward creating a community of artists from every type of artistic medium, is a thing of beauty. Artists are not known as tenacious self-promoters, so any outlet they can find where their work can be noticed is a good thing. If you contact Iniciativa, tell them Tom Green sent you. They've probably heard of him.
Don't Let This Happen To You
If you run your own business, or if you're responsible for communicating with your company's clients, you've experienced some of the issues covered in this article we found at YouthDesigner.com. They've listed "20 Horrible Habits of Clients" and they offer suggestions on how to deal with those habits. Those habits include not wanting to pay you what you're worth, setting unrealistic deadlines, giving you bad artwork and logos, and plenty of other habits that drive us nuts, make us want to change our names to Jane and move to the middle of Montana and... eh, just read the article.
Take Two Guitar Heroes And Call Me In The Morning
File this one under "Is it pathetic, or the best thing to ever happen?" Physical therapists at Ohio State University Medical Center are providing a somewhat unorthodox form of physical therapy: Playing video games. Specifically, they're advocating the use of the Nintendo Wii, as it promotes rehabilitative joint movement in a fun atmosphere. If you're looking to improve the mobility of just your thumbs, you could play any old video game console. But if you're looking for a way to fix what ails you and have fun at the same time, just grab a Wii controller, rock like Slash and you'll feel better in no time. Keep in mind we're not doctors. We just love to read stories like this that allow us to justify the time we put into video games. It's good for us. Yeah... More on this at News.com.
It Was Fun While It Lasted
According to Google, spam is down. According to Chenxi Wang, an analyst at Forrester Research, it's still growing in numbers. Who's right? It's a mix of both. While spam hasn't gone down and may still be increasing every day, the advanced algorithms built into most spam filters has greatly reduced the number of unwanted emails from user's inboxes. On a somewhat bright note, David Daniels, vice president of Jupiter Research, believes that you'll be seeing less scam spam and more "legitimate" spam in the form of offers from bonafide advertisers. More on this at Wired.com.
CMX Insert Flash Object
- FlashObject is an external JavaScript file, created by Geoff Stearns, that enables you to embed Flash movies into web pages using XHTML-compliant code. The CMX Insert FlashObject extension automatically inserts FlashObject code into Dreamweaver documents, and copies flashobject.js into the folder you specify.
Check out the Extension by CMXpert Paul Newman
Fun and Freebies
What's Their Angle?
When taking pictures, timing is everything. These pictures at Sawse.com back that up.
Quick! Call Techy The Giant!
I love New York. Windows doesn't appear to get along well with it though, if these pictures are any indication.
Free File Utilities
LifeHacker.com has posted a list of file utilities that will help you recover from damaged files, hide and secure files, detect and delete duplicate files and other useful things.
Importing Native AI Files into Flash CS3
- Importing Illustrator files is easier than ever with Flash CS3. Flash's new ability to import an AI file by its layers, sub layers and un-used objects and be able to import them on their own layers, in their own MovieClips and as flattened bitmaps, is extremely convenient for anyone who develops their interfaces in Illustrator. I always start my Flash interface development in Illustrator. Even with the new and improved drawing tools in Flash CS3, nothing beats the drawing capabilities of Illustrator.
This free article by CMX Partner Derrick Ypenburg can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing
Smoking Out After Effects: Part 3
Now that you have created the smoke effect, how do you run it through the FLVPlayback component or a video object in Flash and have it loop? Read on...
Approximate download size: 7.6 MB
The Smoking Out After Effects Series
Smoking Out After Effects: Part 1
Smoking Out After Effects: Part 2
Smoking Out After Effects: Part 3
Tools for Designers: del.icio.us and Flickr' [FREE]
This article is the result of me trying to put together a design and idea resource system for my growing company. I want all of our associates to use and share their ideas, inspiration and bank of design bookmarks that inspire them. I find it extremely important for myself, and my team, to take time every day to find inspiration, new code, products and designs and share them. In our constant search for these gems, ideas and inspirations, the best ones and those rare finds make it to our bookmark list for future reference. The problem is, these bookmarks are in one browser only. How do we share these bookmarks and design gems with our peers? Further and most importantly, how can I do this without spending money and having to maintain some kind internal server, wiki, collaboration, crap app that no one will use after a week. This is when I found valuable uses for del.icio.us and Flickr'.
CSS Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 2
In this tutorial we will continue to build our navigation list with the use of Conditionally Commented CSS files where appropriate. We will look at how we can filter specific values for specific versions of IE from within a single style sheet and put this to good affect to fix a problem in an older version of IE.
The CSS Problems and Fixes Series:
Css Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 1
CSS Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 2
CSS Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 3 Coming Soon
How to Make a Popup with a Translucent Background
Displaying a larger image to a thumbnail can be accomplished many ways, in this article we will go over how to do it with apDIVs and a translucent background.
Building a Reservation System From Discovery to Deployment - Part 2
Making a reservation system is a complex task. This article series will walk you through the four D's of projects, Discovery, Design, Develop and Deploy.
This article is on the discovery and design process, a dialog between the decision makers and stakeholders to uncover what the project should entail and start to get the scope down as well as the first look at the SQL
Smoking Out After Effects: Part 2
Did you know you can "bend" smoke? It can be done if you take a different approach to the Puppet tool in After Effects CS3.
Approximate download size: 10.4MB
The Smoking Out After Effects Series
Smoking Out After Effects: Part 1
Smoking Out After Effects: Part 2
Smoking Out After Effects: Part 3
Using Quotes in PHP
One of the confusing things for beginning PHP developers is how to use single and double quotes. Unlike some other languages, like ColdFusion, single and double quotes in PHP are treated differently. This article will show how to use quotes in different situations in PHP.
Using JQuery - Part 1: Introduction [FREE]
Developing AJAX applications can often be more complicated than you initially expect. Although working through tutorials and learning about the code involved to do various tasks is beneficial in helping you develop new possibilites, the stark reality these days is that as you begin to develop more and more AJAX-based sites you'll end up becoming less and less enthusiastic about having to hand-write all of the basic AJAX functionality over and over again. This is where JavaScript Libraries come into play.
In this series we're going to take a look at one of the more interesting and widely used JavaScript AJAX library: jQuery.
In the first part of this series we're going to take a look at what libraries are, how they can help, and how to implement them. From there we'll also take a first glance at jQuery and examine some of the reasons that you may choose to use it as your library of choice.
HDR—It's Everywhere You Look
The hottest new imaging method around since the digital camera, has got to be High Dynamic Range imagery or HDR for short. Photographers of every ilk are trying out this new method of producing images and filling their web sites with them.
What is HDR? HDR simply put, is a way of combing at least three images of the same scene into one. One image of the scene is over exposed, another is under exposed and the last of the three is an average exposure of the scene. The exposures can be over and under exposed by as much as three stops depending the brightness range of the scene. It's important to note however, you almost always will need a camera tripod to photograph the scene, the exposures are only done by changing the shutter speed not the aperture setting (which would change your depth of field) and lastly the subject matter you photograph must be still to prevent a ghosting effect.
So what does all this do you ask? Well it's almost impossible to get all the detail in both highlights and shadows with just one exposure, especially if the scene is contrasty and overly bright. The best way to retain almost all the highlight and shadow detail pre digital, was using Ansel Adam's Zone system together with something called either push or pull processing. Then was then, now is now. The past has been replaced with Photoshop's brilliant automated HDR feature. Let's see how it works.
JumpStarts Fix: IE7 Zoom Body Background Image Bug [FREE]
This is a fix for all JumpStarts [and any other web page design] that use background images set against the body tag.
The zoom bug only exists in IE7 and therefore the fix is only required for IE7. The bug manifests itself when the keyboard short-cut ctrl + + is used to zoom the web page, this is very different to altering text size in IE7 via the view menu.
Using CSS to Create a Scrolling Content Area
- Sometimes, CSS makes things so easy you have to smile. Such was the case when several of my students posed the question, "How can I make a long page of content fit in a short area on my web page? In a few quick steps, I demonstrated how to set up a generic div to act as a scrollable content area. They were surprised (and relieved) the process was so quick and easy. The following video shows the steps I took to create such a scrollable area within a web site mock up
Check out the Article by CMX author Jim Babbage
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!
This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Jim Babbage, CMX Partner
Editing Objects That Have Blend Modes Applied
In FW 8, when you group objects that have blend modes applied, it's not easy to edit the blend modes anymore, even though they remain applied. In order to alter the blend modes on grouped objects in FW 8, use the sub selection tool to access the various objects on the canvas and edit the modes via the Layers Panel or Property In
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!