
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! TODcon 2006 Announced! For the few who haven't experienced it yet, TODCon is the most informative yet informal Macromedia-related event you're going to find. Whether you're a seasoned veteran of Macromedia products or just starting out, you will have a great time learning a great deal from many knowledgeable speakers about CSS, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, ColdFusion, Flash, Central and even about running your business properly. Those who attend usually end up coming back every year because of the unique and informal atmosphere. You don't want to miss out on this event. This year, TODcon will take place in beautiful Orlando, Florida, just a hop, skip and jump from Disney World. You're invited to register for this fantastic, one of a kind event. Internet Explorer 7 Beta Is Out I've downloaded and used the beta that Microsoft has made available at Microsoft.com. My review is short, as you'll see in a bit. I immediately downloaded IE7 upon hearing about it and I was hoping for great things. After installing it, I can tell you I liked the look of it, and immediately tested out the tabbed browsing that IE7 offers. It worked well, just as you'd expect after using browsers like Firefox, Safari and Opera. Then I got an email in Outlook Express. I clicked on a link in the email. Unfortunately, doing so opened my Documents and Settings folder. That happened a few times, and then the links wouldn't respond at all. After looking at Microsoft's beta newsgroup, I found that I wasn't the only one who experienced that problem when using Firefox as the default browser. After uninstalling IE7, the links in Outlook Express were behaving normally again. I'll be keeping an eye on the newsgroup, but I won't be reinstalling a beta for IE7 again anytime soon. For a slightly more positive and lengthier review (with pictures even!) see Geekzone.co.nz. Web 2.0, The "Where's Waldo" Way Google Maps and Web 2.0 have finally met head-on, as we knew they would someday, in the form of a Google map, nicknamed the "Web 2.0 Innovation Map, at Fourio.com that pinpoints the location of companies and organizations who figure prominently in Web 2.0 trends and innovations. For instance, it appears that MediaMax is located in sunny San Diego. What good is this bit of geographical knowledge, you ask? Well, none really. But the makers of the map admit that they just wanted to see how Web 2.0 innovation was distributed geographically. There are still many companies unaccounted for, so if you know the location of some of the companies listed in Fourio's to-do list, maybe you can help them out. Why The Third? Why Not The First Or Something? A new virus is weaving its way around the internet but it doesn't have an immediate payoff. Instead, it will wait until the third day of each month to delete as many of your Word, Excel, PDF, Powerpoint and other files as it can. This particular virus is sent via email, and you can't be infected if you don't click on the pif attachment that accompanies the email. The virus goes by several names, such as Nyxem, Blackdoom, W32.Blackmal.E@mm, Tearec, and Kama Sutra. Microsoft has named it Win32/Mywife.E@mm, and we're not sure what kind of statement Bill Gates is trying to make with that... Read more about his wife... er, Mywife at PCWorld.com. ...And They Went On To Very Lucrative Jobs At The Weekly World News Some tabloid publications continue to thrive because they keep coming up with photos that no one else seems able to get, like a boy with bat ears and ten legs. Of course the photos aren't real, and are generally understood to be fakes - we hope. Doctored photos have been around for a long time, and have typically been employed to change the public's perception of a certain thing. News.com has an interesting article that touches on the history of fake and retouched photos, the reasons why doctored photos can be effective, and the methods that exist to detect photo frauds.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "If I get the chance I always recommend this site. I cannot believe that I spent about 3 weeks deciding whether to purchase the year subscription. The tutorials that I have worked through and the knowledge that I have picked up since joining a month ago is immense. I think that I can quite confidently say that I will be a yearly CMX subscriber for many years to come. Thanks for providing such a great service, I'll recommend you guys to whoever I can as you guys are well worth recommending." - SkaterStu, CMX Subscriber, commenting on the help he's received in the Community MX forums 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: "Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road." — Stewart Brand Great, Now We Can Ask JK Rowling Who Else She's Going To Kill Off Amazon.com has enrolled about one thousand authors in a new program that lets authors communicate directly with Amazon customers. The authors will post information in a blog format, but that's where the communication ends. Customers can't reply to the blog entries, but they can at least get some extra information from the authors this way. Some of the entries made by the authors so far include book recommendations and tips to aspiring writers. More on this at Yahoo.com. Google Denies Their Quest For Total World Domination Google denies recent speculation that they are developing their own operating system. Google has replaced all of their Microsoft-driven networks with Ubuntu, a variation of the Linux operating system. Shortly after, the rumor mill started saying that Google was going to start distributing Ubuntu under the name of Goobuntu. The way Google has been so public about wanting to compete with other Microsoft products, seeing them offer an alternative OS would not be a stretch or a surprise. Read more about the rumor at NewsFactor.com. It Just Doesn't Pay To Be a Pirate Software developers cheered a Federal grand jury's recent decision to indict nineteen people on charges of piracy involving over 6.5 million dollars worth of software, movies and video games. The defendants are all members of a group they call "RISCISO", which is a warez community that dates back to 1993. They could be sentenced to anywhere from three to five years in prison, plus fines. This is a good news for most of us, since the software makers contend that piracy is responsible for the rising prices of software, video games and movies. If more people get jail time over piracy, fewer people may want to risk the jail time, and the tech industry reaps the benefits. At least, that's how it should work... More on this at Yahoo.com. Some People Have Too Much Time On Their Hands Leave a true geek alone for a while, and he or she is bound to work on something geeky. In this case, the folks at WinHistory.de decided they would put the Windows XP minimum requirements to the test. Most of us are satisfied with the minimum requirements needed to run XP, but some folks, well, they want to see if they can make XP run on a 76 MhZ computer with 18 megs of RAM just for the heck of it. Does it work? Read all about the experiment at WinHistory.de. We're Betting He's Not Using Money 2006, Either According to Bill Gates, no normal computer can handle all of the data required to hold his tax information. Gates says that his financial data has to be stored on a "special computer" because the amount of data is so vast, it can't be stored on a regular computer. We're dying to know if that special computer is an iMac... Read more about it at News.com.
CMX Expiration Dates The CMX Expiration Dates extension allows you to set dates for files you work with that expire. If a page is beyond its expiration date, when you next start Dreamweaver this extension will let you know that you have a file to be edited. This functionality can be useful when you need to update a page (or set of pages) on an occasional basis, or even on an ongoing basis. For example, you may manage the company's knowledge management system, and you want to make sure that your content contributors are alerted when their content needs to be checked for "freshness" to ensure that the information contained on the pages they cover does not go stale, then the Expiration Date extension can help you acheive your goals. Or if your home page should be updated on Mondays to reflect the next set of featured products that arrived just this weekend, then you can set the expiration date for the home page for the upcoming Monday; then when you start Dreamweaver up on Monday morning, Dreamweaver will alert you to the fact that you need to update a file (in this case the home page). You can then edit that file, publish it. If desired, you can then set the expiration date for the file for the following Monday, to lather, rinse and repeat the cycle of updates as necessary. Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Danilo Celic
Fun and Freebies Interesting Site, No Bones About It There are approximately one hundred and sixty four gazillion muscles in your face. Possibly less. We haven't officially counted, and we're awful at anatomy. Thankfully there is a website like artnatomy.net out there that will show you all of the muscles in your face, how they relate to the bone structure of your head and tell you where and what the OrbicularisOris is. Of Course You Still Have To Know How To Use a Slide Rule How many times have you been sitting around debating Pythagorean Theorem with a friend, only to find that you're missing your slide rule? No problem anymore. Just head over to Taswegian.com and use their free "Java Slide", and applet that puts a virtual slide rule in your hands... or on your monitor. For Many, There Is No Gadget Greater Than This One Asahi Beer has come out with a robot that will not only keep your beer cool, but will pour you a frosty mug as well. Genius? Oh, yes...Check it out at OhGizmo.com.
CSS: An Introduction In this tutorial we will take a look at the very basics of CSS, if you are new to cascading style sheets this is the place to start... This free article by CMX Partner Adrian Senior can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Creating Design Concepts from Photographs Kim Cavanaugh One of the questions we see pretty frequently at the Community MX forums is a simple one, but one that is difficult to answer definitively: "Where do you get your design inspirations from?" If you're blessed with an innate sense of color and style, perhaps you are one of the rare few that can sit down in front of the computer or with a sketch pad and come up with something that is not only pleasing to the eye, but catches and holds the attention of the person viewing your design. But most of us need some help in this area. We look at designs that we see on the Web, that we see in magazines, and that we encounter all around us. But one of the places that we often fail to look is even more common place in our lives—nature. Using Events in ActionScript - Part 1: Listening for Events Paul Newman In this three-part series, you'll learn how to use events in Flash. In Part 1, you'll learn how to define event handlers for Flash UI components. In Part 2, you'll use the EventDispatcher class to dispatch events from an AS2 class. In Part 3, you'll learn how to implement Danny Patterson's event framework. Part 1: Listening for Events Part 2: Dispatching Events from Classes Part 3: Implementing Danny Patterson's Event Framework Creating A Swear Filter in ASP.NET Joel Martinez Lets face it, the web is a jungle. If your site allows end users to supply content (such as message boards, or blog comments), you must assume that anything and everything will be supplied. This is obviously an issue depending on what/who your site is about. One of the most common solutions for this issue is to filter out swear words. Unfortunately, most of the implementations I've seen (and sadly, done) have mostly been hacked together at the last minute and certainly not reusable. This article shows you how to create an ASP.NET control that is as simple to use as placing a tag around your content. Regardless of how your content was generated, whether dynamic, or a collection of other controls, anything. The filter is easily maintained in the web.config file so maintenance is a breeze. Code is presented in C#. Using the Default Documents to Speed Up Your Work Flow [FREE] Adrian Senior Have you wished for ways to speed up your workflow? Do you want more ideas for removing repetitive coding tasks? In this article we will look at using the Edit Document Templates extension (by Danilo Celic) to customise the New Document Templates. Talk about a Dreamweaver time-saver! Matching Numbers in an Online PDF and its Printed Counterpart Les Greenburg When someone looking at a printed book speaks to someone looking at an online PDF of that same book and tells them to delete the last paragraph on Page 19, they may both be looking at Page 19 but actually be seeing different pages. In this tutorial we will look at how PDF page numbers differ from printed page numbers, and follow along with the sample files to learn how to reconcile them. Flash Video Cue Points: Part 3 - Building a List of Embedded Cue Points [FREE] Robert Reinhardt Are you looking for a way to read cue point data from an FLV file you created with the Flash 8 Video Encoder or the Flash Pro 8 Video Import wizard? In this tutorial, learn how to populate a List component with cue point names from a sample FLV file, as shown in the completed Flash movie below. As the video plays, the appropriate cue point highlights in the List component. This text is replaced by the Flash movie. The Flash Video Cue Points Series: Flash Video Cue Points: Part 1 - Overview of Cue Points Flash Video Cue Points: Part 2 - Embedded Navigation Cue Points with Flash Pro 8 Flash Video Cue Points: Part 3 - Building a List of Embedded Cue Points Approximate download: 3MB Automating An Image Gallery with PHP and Your Local Server: Part 1 Rob Williams Many developers have local testing servers running on their development machines to allow for quick offline tests of materials before they are sent to the live server. If you happen to be running a local server on your development machine though there's no reason that it's functionality should be limited to mere page testing. In this article we'll take a look at how you can utilize your local server as a scripting engine to increase your efficiency and perform common tasks more quickly then ever before. The Automating an Image Gallery with PHP and Your Local Server Series: Automating An Image Gallery with PHP and Your Local Server: Part 1 Automating An Image Gallery with PHP and Your Local Server: Part 2 Coming Soon Emulate a Table-Based Layout with the CSS Display Property Zoe Gillenwater If you've already read Introduction to CSS Table-Related Display Values, you know that you can use the table-related values of the display property of CSS 2.1 to make any non-table HTML element act like any table element. In this article, you'll use this knowledge to tell divs to act like table cells in order to create a pure CSS layout that emulates the behavior of a table layout: each column will automatically expand to hold its content (even horizontally) and adjacent columns will match each other in height. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer (IE) doesn't support the CSS values that make this possible. But it doesn't need to: as you've already seen in CSS Negative Margins - Part Four: Three Column Liquid Layouts, negative margins can be used to emulate table behavior pretty closely in IE. Thus, after covering how to build a table-like layout for standards-compliant browsers, I'll show how to combine this new CSS with the CSS from the negative margins series to keep IE's successful layout intact without disturbing more modern browsers. Using ASP.NET 2.0's ObjectDataSource Joel Martinez ASP.NET 2.0 has introduced a slew of new functionality. One of the most compelling features is the new bindable DataSources. Using a declarative programming model that has in the past made ColdFusion developers very popular, the new DataSource controls allow you to expose data from various sources including Databases, XML, and the focus of this article -- Custom objects. The ObjectDataSource allows you to point at a custom object, which subsequently lets other bindable controls such as DropDownList and GridView controls automatically bind and manipulate your objects just by setting a few properties on a tag. The range of options available to you makes this declarative programming model quite an attractive option. This article will show you how to create a custom class, and subsequently link that to GridView and FormView controls. These controls will give you full create, read, update, and delete functionality, all with just no code written. Designing a Logo: Part 1 - Getting Started Kim Dudley Logos are at the heart of a company's corporate identity program. Their design and staying power can play a very important role in the success or failure of a company. But with so many logos out there why do we remember some and not others? Are there steps for creating logos and how do you turn a logo concept into a useable piece of artwork? In this series of three articles we will attempt to answer these and other questions as well as discover some interesting logo related facts along the way. Since this topic is such a large one I have broken it down into three separate articles; Part 1 will look at some successful logos and discuss what has allowed them to last throughout the years. Part 2 will discuss the creative side of developing a logo and Part 3 takes a look at the very important technical side of developing a logo. The Designing a Logo Series: Designing a Logo: Part 1 - Getting Started Designing a Logo: Part 2 - Getting Creative Coming Soon Designing a Logo: Part 3 - Getting Technical Coming Soon
Using DTS Packages With ColdFusion Many people use SQL Server to store their data, however SQL Server is much more involved than simply a server that allows storage for data. Data Transformation Services (DTS) is part of SQL Server and allows you to import and export data, manipulate files on the system, use FTP, among other things. Using some of SQL Server's built-in DTS functionality along with ColdFusion gives your web application access to some of this functionality. 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 Bill Horvath and InformationWeek.com Be Secure Want to make sure your wireless network is as secure as it can be? Check out this article in InformationWeek.com that explains WPA2, the latest security standard for WiFi networks. 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!

TODcon 2006 Announced!

For the few who haven't experienced it yet, TODCon is the most informative yet informal Macromedia-related event you're going to find. Whether you're a seasoned veteran of Macromedia products or just starting out, you will have a great time learning a great deal from many knowledgeable speakers about CSS, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, ColdFusion, Flash, Central and even about running your business properly. Those who attend usually end up coming back every year because of the unique and informal atmosphere. You don't want to miss out on this event. This year, TODcon will take place in beautiful Orlando, Florida, just a hop, skip and jump from Disney World. You're invited to register for this fantastic, one of a kind event.

Internet Explorer 7 Beta Is Out

I've downloaded and used the beta that Microsoft has made available at Microsoft.com. My review is short, as you'll see in a bit. I immediately downloaded IE7 upon hearing about it and I was hoping for great things. After installing it, I can tell you I liked the look of it, and immediately tested out the tabbed browsing that IE7 offers. It worked well, just as you'd expect after using browsers like Firefox, Safari and Opera. Then I got an email in Outlook Express. I clicked on a link in the email. Unfortunately, doing so opened my Documents and Settings folder. That happened a few times, and then the links wouldn't respond at all. After looking at Microsoft's beta newsgroup, I found that I wasn't the only one who experienced that problem when using Firefox as the default browser. After uninstalling IE7, the links in Outlook Express were behaving normally again. I'll be keeping an eye on the newsgroup, but I won't be reinstalling a beta for IE7 again anytime soon. For a slightly more positive and lengthier review (with pictures even!) see Geekzone.co.nz.

Web 2.0, The "Where's Waldo" Way

Google Maps and Web 2.0 have finally met head-on, as we knew they would someday, in the form of a Google map, nicknamed the "Web 2.0 Innovation Map, at Fourio.com that pinpoints the location of companies and organizations who figure prominently in Web 2.0 trends and innovations. For instance, it appears that MediaMax is located in sunny San Diego. What good is this bit of geographical knowledge, you ask? Well, none really. But the makers of the map admit that they just wanted to see how Web 2.0 innovation was distributed geographically. There are still many companies unaccounted for, so if you know the location of some of the companies listed in Fourio's to-do list, maybe you can help them out.

Why The Third? Why Not The First Or Something?

A new virus is weaving its way around the internet but it doesn't have an immediate payoff. Instead, it will wait until the third day of each month to delete as many of your Word, Excel, PDF, Powerpoint and other files as it can. This particular virus is sent via email, and you can't be infected if you don't click on the pif attachment that accompanies the email. The virus goes by several names, such as Nyxem, Blackdoom, W32.Blackmal.E@mm, Tearec, and Kama Sutra. Microsoft has named it Win32/Mywife.E@mm, and we're not sure what kind of statement Bill Gates is trying to make with that... Read more about his wife... er, Mywife at PCWorld.com.

...And They Went On To Very Lucrative Jobs At The Weekly World News

Some tabloid publications continue to thrive because they keep coming up with photos that no one else seems able to get, like a boy with bat ears and ten legs. Of course the photos aren't real, and are generally understood to be fakes - we hope. Doctored photos have been around for a long time, and have typically been employed to change the public's perception of a certain thing. News.com has an interesting article that touches on the history of fake and retouched photos, the reasons why doctored photos can be effective, and the methods that exist to detect photo frauds.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"If I get the chance I always recommend this site. I cannot believe that I spent about 3 weeks deciding whether to purchase the year subscription. The tutorials that I have worked through and the knowledge that I have picked up since joining a month ago is immense. I think that I can quite confidently say that I will be a yearly CMX subscriber for many years to come.

Thanks for providing such a great service, I'll recommend you guys to whoever I can as you guys are well worth recommending."

- SkaterStu, CMX Subscriber, commenting on the help he's received in the Community MX forums

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:

"Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road." — Stewart Brand

Great, Now We Can Ask JK Rowling Who Else She's Going To Kill Off

Amazon.com has enrolled about one thousand authors in a new program that lets authors communicate directly with Amazon customers. The authors will post information in a blog format, but that's where the communication ends. Customers can't reply to the blog entries, but they can at least get some extra information from the authors this way. Some of the entries made by the authors so far include book recommendations and tips to aspiring writers. More on this at Yahoo.com.

Google Denies Their Quest For Total World Domination

Google denies recent speculation that they are developing their own operating system. Google has replaced all of their Microsoft-driven networks with Ubuntu, a variation of the Linux operating system. Shortly after, the rumor mill started saying that Google was going to start distributing Ubuntu under the name of Goobuntu. The way Google has been so public about wanting to compete with other Microsoft products, seeing them offer an alternative OS would not be a stretch or a surprise. Read more about the rumor at NewsFactor.com.

It Just Doesn't Pay To Be a Pirate

Software developers cheered a Federal grand jury's recent decision to indict nineteen people on charges of piracy involving over 6.5 million dollars worth of software, movies and video games. The defendants are all members of a group they call "RISCISO", which is a warez community that dates back to 1993. They could be sentenced to anywhere from three to five years in prison, plus fines. This is a good news for most of us, since the software makers contend that piracy is responsible for the rising prices of software, video games and movies. If more people get jail time over piracy, fewer people may want to risk the jail time, and the tech industry reaps the benefits. At least, that's how it should work... More on this at Yahoo.com.

Some People Have Too Much Time On Their Hands

Leave a true geek alone for a while, and he or she is bound to work on something geeky. In this case, the folks at WinHistory.de decided they would put the Windows XP minimum requirements to the test. Most of us are satisfied with the minimum requirements needed to run XP, but some folks, well, they want to see if they can make XP run on a 76 MhZ computer with 18 megs of RAM just for the heck of it. Does it work? Read all about the experiment at WinHistory.de.

We're Betting He's Not Using Money 2006, Either

According to Bill Gates, no normal computer can handle all of the data required to hold his tax information. Gates says that his financial data has to be stored on a "special computer" because the amount of data is so vast, it can't be stored on a regular computer. We're dying to know if that special computer is an iMac... Read more about it at News.com.

CMX Expiration Dates

The CMX Expiration Dates extension allows you to set dates for files you work with that expire. If a page is beyond its expiration date, when you next start Dreamweaver this extension will let you know that you have a file to be edited. This functionality can be useful when you need to update a page (or set of pages) on an occasional basis, or even on an ongoing basis. For example, you may manage the company's knowledge management system, and you want to make sure that your content contributors are alerted when their content needs to be checked for "freshness" to ensure that the information contained on the pages they cover does not go stale, then the Expiration Date extension can help you acheive your goals. Or if your home page should be updated on Mondays to reflect the next set of featured products that arrived just this weekend, then you can set the expiration date for the home page for the upcoming Monday; then when you start Dreamweaver up on Monday morning, Dreamweaver will alert you to the fact that you need to update a file (in this case the home page). You can then edit that file, publish it. If desired, you can then set the expiration date for the file for the following Monday, to lather, rinse and repeat the cycle of updates as necessary.

Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Danilo Celic

Fun and Freebies

Interesting Site, No Bones About It

There are approximately one hundred and sixty four gazillion muscles in your face. Possibly less. We haven't officially counted, and we're awful at anatomy. Thankfully there is a website like artnatomy.net out there that will show you all of the muscles in your face, how they relate to the bone structure of your head and tell you where and what the OrbicularisOris is.

Of Course You Still Have To Know How To Use a Slide Rule

How many times have you been sitting around debating Pythagorean Theorem with a friend, only to find that you're missing your slide rule? No problem anymore. Just head over to Taswegian.com and use their free "Java Slide", and applet that puts a virtual slide rule in your hands... or on your monitor.

For Many, There Is No Gadget Greater Than This One

Asahi Beer has come out with a robot that will not only keep your beer cool, but will pour you a frosty mug as well. Genius? Oh, yes...Check it out at OhGizmo.com.

CSS: An Introduction

In this tutorial we will take a look at the very basics of CSS, if you are new to cascading style sheets this is the place to start...

This free article by CMX Partner Adrian Senior can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Creating Design Concepts from Photographs

Kim Cavanaugh

One of the questions we see pretty frequently at the Community MX forums is a simple one, but one that is difficult to answer definitively: "Where do you get your design inspirations from?"

If you're blessed with an innate sense of color and style, perhaps you are one of the rare few that can sit down in front of the computer or with a sketch pad and come up with something that is not only pleasing to the eye, but catches and holds the attention of the person viewing your design.

But most of us need some help in this area. We look at designs that we see on the Web, that we see in magazines, and that we encounter all around us. But one of the places that we often fail to look is even more common place in our lives—nature.

Using Events in ActionScript - Part 1: Listening for Events

Paul Newman

In this three-part series, you'll learn how to use events in Flash. In Part 1, you'll learn how to define event handlers for Flash UI components. In Part 2, you'll use the EventDispatcher class to dispatch events from an AS2 class. In Part 3, you'll learn how to implement Danny Patterson's event framework.

Part 1: Listening for Events

Part 2: Dispatching Events from Classes

Part 3: Implementing Danny Patterson's Event Framework

Creating A Swear Filter in ASP.NET

Joel Martinez

Lets face it, the web is a jungle. If your site allows end users to supply content (such as message boards, or blog comments), you must assume that anything and everything will be supplied. This is obviously an issue depending on what/who your site is about. One of the most common solutions for this issue is to filter out swear words. Unfortunately, most of the implementations I've seen (and sadly, done) have mostly been hacked together at the last minute and certainly not reusable.

This article shows you how to create an ASP.NET control that is as simple to use as placing a tag around your content. Regardless of how your content was generated, whether dynamic, or a collection of other controls, anything. The filter is easily maintained in the web.config file so maintenance is a breeze.

Code is presented in C#.

Using the Default Documents to Speed Up Your Work Flow [FREE]

Adrian Senior

Have you wished for ways to speed up your workflow? Do you want more ideas for removing repetitive coding tasks? In this article we will look at using the Edit Document Templates extension (by Danilo Celic) to customise the New Document Templates. Talk about a Dreamweaver time-saver!

Matching Numbers in an Online PDF and its Printed Counterpart

Les Greenburg

When someone looking at a printed book speaks to someone looking at an online PDF of that same book and tells them to delete the last paragraph on Page 19, they may both be looking at Page 19 but actually be seeing different pages. In this tutorial we will look at how PDF page numbers differ from printed page numbers, and follow along with the sample files to learn how to reconcile them.

Flash Video Cue Points: Part 3 - Building a List of Embedded Cue Points [FREE]

Robert Reinhardt

Are you looking for a way to read cue point data from an FLV file you created with the Flash 8 Video Encoder or the Flash Pro 8 Video Import wizard? In this tutorial, learn how to populate a List component with cue point names from a sample FLV file, as shown in the completed Flash movie below. As the video plays, the appropriate cue point highlights in the List component.

This text is replaced by the Flash movie.

The Flash Video Cue Points Series:

Flash Video Cue Points: Part 1 - Overview of Cue Points
Flash Video Cue Points: Part 2 - Embedded Navigation Cue Points with Flash Pro 8
Flash Video Cue Points: Part 3 - Building a List of Embedded Cue Points

Approximate download: 3MB

Automating An Image Gallery with PHP and Your Local Server: Part 1

Rob Williams

Many developers have local testing servers running on their development machines to allow for quick offline tests of materials before they are sent to the live server. If you happen to be running a local server on your development machine though there's no reason that it's functionality should be limited to mere page testing. In this article we'll take a look at how you can utilize your local server as a scripting engine to increase your efficiency and perform common tasks more quickly then ever before.

The Automating an Image Gallery with PHP and Your Local Server Series:
Automating An Image Gallery with PHP and Your Local Server: Part 1
Automating An Image Gallery with PHP and Your Local Server: Part 2 Coming Soon

Emulate a Table-Based Layout with the CSS Display Property

Zoe Gillenwater

If you've already read Introduction to CSS Table-Related Display Values, you know that you can use the table-related values of the display property of CSS 2.1 to make any non-table HTML element act like any table element.

In this article, you'll use this knowledge to tell divs to act like table cells in order to create a pure CSS layout that emulates the behavior of a table layout: each column will automatically expand to hold its content (even horizontally) and adjacent columns will match each other in height.

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer (IE) doesn't support the CSS values that make this possible. But it doesn't need to: as you've already seen in CSS Negative Margins - Part Four: Three Column Liquid Layouts, negative margins can be used to emulate table behavior pretty closely in IE. Thus, after covering how to build a table-like layout for standards-compliant browsers, I'll show how to combine this new CSS with the CSS from the negative margins series to keep IE's successful layout intact without disturbing more modern browsers.

Using ASP.NET 2.0's ObjectDataSource

Joel Martinez

ASP.NET 2.0 has introduced a slew of new functionality. One of the most compelling features is the new bindable DataSources. Using a declarative programming model that has in the past made ColdFusion developers very popular, the new DataSource controls allow you to expose data from various sources including Databases, XML, and the focus of this article -- Custom objects.

The ObjectDataSource allows you to point at a custom object, which subsequently lets other bindable controls such as DropDownList and GridView controls automatically bind and manipulate your objects just by setting a few properties on a tag. The range of options available to you makes this declarative programming model quite an attractive option.

This article will show you how to create a custom class, and subsequently link that to GridView and FormView controls. These controls will give you full create, read, update, and delete functionality, all with just no code written.

Designing a Logo: Part 1 - Getting Started

Kim Dudley

Logos are at the heart of a company's corporate identity program. Their design and staying power can play a very important role in the success or failure of a company. But with so many logos out there why do we remember some and not others? Are there steps for creating logos and how do you turn a logo concept into a useable piece of artwork?

In this series of three articles we will attempt to answer these and other questions as well as discover some interesting logo related facts along the way. Since this topic is such a large one I have broken it down into three separate articles; Part 1 will look at some successful logos and discuss what has allowed them to last throughout the years. Part 2 will discuss the creative side of developing a logo and Part 3 takes a look at the very important technical side of developing a logo.

The Designing a Logo Series:
Designing a Logo: Part 1 - Getting Started
Designing a Logo: Part 2 - Getting Creative Coming Soon
Designing a Logo: Part 3 - Getting Technical Coming Soon

Using DTS Packages With ColdFusion

Many people use SQL Server to store their data, however SQL Server is much more involved than simply a server that allows storage for data. Data Transformation Services (DTS) is part of SQL Server and allows you to import and export data, manipulate files on the system, use FTP, among other things. Using some of SQL Server's built-in DTS functionality along with ColdFusion gives your web application access to some of this functionality.

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 Bill Horvath and InformationWeek.com

Be Secure

Want to make sure your wireless network is as secure as it can be? Check out this article in InformationWeek.com that explains WPA2, the latest security standard for WiFi networks.

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!