Spry Repeat List
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So far in our series on Spry (the Ajax Framework), we have taken a look at how to build a Spry XML Data Set and publish the results to a web page using Dreamweaver CS3. Although it is not required to have Dreamweaver CS3 to utilize the Spry Framework, it definitely makes it much easier.

We will continue to look at another subset of the Spry toolbar when it comes to repeating XML data in a list. Spry Repeat List gives us an option to specify our Spry Data Set and output the contents we want repeated within an unordered list, an ordered list, a definition list or a select.

The Spry XML Series:
Spry XML Data Set
Spry Region and Repeat
Spry Repeat List
Spry Table

Spry XML Data Set
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With all the development buzz around AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to provide a rich interface to your web sites, Adobe has injected its Spry Framework into the next version of Dreamweaver CS3. In fact Spry now has an actual toolbar that allows you to drag, drop and wire up Spry widgets into your next web project with little knowledge of what is actually going on behind the scenes. Since XML (Extensible Markup Language) makes up one of the functional pieces of the Spry framework we will start off by taking a look at how to use the Spry XML Data Set.

The Spry XML Series:
Spry XML Data Set
Spry Region and Repeat
Spry Repeat List
Spry Table

Building an Animated Drop-Down Menu: Part 1
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If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me how to make a functional, bug-proof, animated drop-down menu instead of having to resort to using a component, well, you know the old saying.

Creating your own animated drop-down menus can be tricky for a number of reasons: The complexity involved with having numerous buttons to roll-over; The roll-over that triggers the menu to slide down and how it can not interfere with the sub buttons in the drop-down; How does the menu animate back up when the user rolls off?

I'm going to break down the creation of creating an animated, drop-down menu from scratch, into 3 articles. In this article we will build the basic shell for the menu that will include: a button that animates the menu down and up, a container that will be animated and that will hold the buttons for the menu, and the basic code to get the menu responsive and working.

Parts 2 and 3 will cover creating button classes for the menu and configuring and populating the menu using XML.

The Building an Animated Drop-Down Menu Series:
Building an Animated Drop-Down Menu: Part 1
Building an Animated Drop-Down Menu: Part 2
Building an Animated Drop-Down Menu: Part 3

Informing the End User: Part 1 - Handling Errors
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Error handling is one of the biggest oversights in Flash development. There's nothing worse for a user to have something go wrong, or wait for something, and not have a clue what's going on and what to do.

The Informing the End User Series:
Informing the End User: Part 1 - Handling Errors
Informing the End User: Part 2 - Status Messaging and Error Handling for Video Playback

Using Related Fields with the CMX Auto Complete Extension
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The CMX Auto Complete Behavior makes adding basic "auto complete" functionality to your HTML forms fast and easy; when you begin to develop larger forms though you may be ready to start utilizing some of the more advanced features of the extension.

Note: This tutorial requires that you have the CMX Auto Complete Behavior installed on your system and are familiar with its use.

CMX Text Field Auto Complete Extension
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The CMX Auto Complete Behavior for Dreamweaver and Dreamweaver MX 2004 allows you to quickly and easily add fully customizable "auto complete" functionality (think Google Suggest) to any text or textarea input field on a web page. The "auto complete suggestions" box can easily be customized using CSS to integrate seamlessly into your page design and automatically sizes and positions itself for each input/textarea; no knowledge of JavaScript of the complexities of AJAX required!

Parsing XML in Flash
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In this tutorial, you'll learn how to use Flash's XML class to load an XML document, and Alessandro Crugnola's XML2Object class to parse the XML data and convert it to a native Flash object. This enables you to work with the XML data more intuitively using dot notation.

Searching xml Documents with ColdFusion
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In this tutorial, we will investigate how we can search an xml document. We will be looking at creating a dynamic table and populating it from our xml data. We will then look at how we can search that data and return the information we need. Along the way we will also be looking at query of queries, and investigating the XmlParse function.

Working With XSL:apply-templates and XSL:template match
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In this tutorial we will be taking a looking at the apply-templates method of styling an XML document with our XSL style sheet. We will draw on specific information from within our XML document to display to our users and style that information so it is shown in a presentable manner.

XML Namespaces
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In this tutorial we will look at how we can use xml namespaces to prevent element conflicts within our documents.

XSL:Template Filtering and Sorting
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In this tutorial we learn how to filter and sort information in our xml documents by using our xsl:template to filter on the nodes supplied in accordance with our requirements.

Styling our xml documents.
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We take our xml document and transform it with an xsl template, the output is styled with CSS and conditional XSL choose code and when testing.

Creating XML Documents with ColdFusion
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Learn how to create an xml file by passing a cfquery over your data, see how it can be easily exported and written to your machine and then reimported back into access to create a database table.