
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! TODcon 2006 in Orlando - Getting Closer Every Day For the few who haven't experienced it yet, TODCon is the most informative yet informal Macromedia/Adobe-related event you're going to find. Whether you're a seasoned veteran of Macromedia or Adobe products or you're 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. Your registration (with the rooming option) includes three nights (May 18th, 19th and 20th) at the Wyndham plus a 3-day trolley pass that covers transportation throughout the International Drive attractions area. You're invited to register for this fantastic, one-of-a-kind event. Do it quick, while the early bird pricing is still effect. Be a Playa CMX JumpStart Playacar is a modification of Paris, our first CMX JumpStart. When we switched hemispheres, we also switched column and tab sides. With our growing repertoire of JumpStarts, there are now layouts to fit a wide range of design requirements. Sometimes a particular JumpStart isn't quite what you are looking for - if only you could fix one or two little details. If only the navigation had been on the right instead of left. Or what if that left DIV had been floated rather than set to position absolute? And what if instead of a fixed-width, centered layout, the JumpStart had been fluid? We often read such sentiments on the forums, and thought it might be helpful to respond with articles that show how to modify some of our existing JumpStarts. We would thus give you a wider variety of options while sparing you from having to code the tweaks yourself. Towards that end, we give you CMX JumpStart Playacar, Mexico. Playacar is part of the Playa del Carmen and the Mayan Riviera, and has beautiful beaches and glorious golf courses. CMX JumpStart Playacar was designed by CMX Fireworks expert Jim Babbage. Holly Bergevin coded the Paris CSS modifications, including some future-proofing for Internet Explorer 7. It is a centered, two-column, fixed-width design that positions its navigation on the right and tabs on the left. The page is constructed using valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional markup and formatted using valid CSS 2 styling. Playacar also follows the WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design. The package includes the following: * An extension for installing Playacar into the New Document dialog box * Twelve tutorials * A source PNG * Main, Internet Explorer, and Design-Time style sheets * Home page * Form page * Article that documents the CSS changes and graphics creation Playacar is available for $29.99 to non-members, but is absolutely free to CMX subscribers. Read more about how to make it yours. CMX JumpStart Playacar article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about the JumpStart modification program. CMX JumpStart Playacar article for members and for those who would like to purchase Playacar now. Still Sounds Like a Broken Television To Us We hadn't heard the term "Video Mashup" until we ran across this article at Adotas.com. A "video mashup", as far as we can tell, is a type of viral marketing, but with a twist. You get a chance to make your own commercial using preset clips, sounds, music, etc., and the commercial is for a specific product. For instance, at ChevyApprentice.com, they supply you with a simple video editor and some other tools to help you create a commercial for their Chevy Tahoe. You could possibly win a prize after posting it on their website. Not only do these companies get some great ideas through their customers this way, but the publicity by way of word-of-mouth is probably very good for business. A New Meaning For CSS This is one of those "Arrrgghhh!!! Why didn't I think of that?!!" type of websites. At CascadingStyleShirts.com, you can get a t-shirt for yourself or your favorite CSS-Junkie with CSS-related sayings like "Respect the Dom" and "(XSL) Transformer." Some folks would say that anyone could have taken shirts and put these sayings on them, but CascadingStyleShirts.com did it, and they'll probably be wildly successful. Will They Have Really Tall Female Hosts? Amazon.com, not satisfied with being the world's largest online retailer, is looking to branch out into other avenues while still staying within familiar territory. Starting in June, Amazon will run a 12-episode webcast hosted by Bill Maher that will feature TV, movie and music personalities as guests. Those guests of course will plug their latest work, and that work will be available for purchase during the webcast from Amazon. Ah, the QVC version of the circle of life. More on this story at NWSource.com.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Thanks for the incredible series. I adopted this style of templating after reading the first three articles, which greatly increased my productivity and made whole site changes a breeze. Since then I have built my own home-grown framework of commonly requested elements such as login protection and contact forms using a combination of custom tags and CFCs configured from a XML file. It used to take me hours or days to incorporate a full-blown permission based login system into a website: now I can do it in about an hour. Again, thanks for this series, it has revolutionized the way I architect sites. CMX Subscriber Adrian S., commenting on Tom Muck's tutorial "Using a ColdFusion Custom Tag as a Site Template: Part 4 - JumpStarts" 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: "Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus." — David Hockney What's That? I Can't Hear... Oh Wait. I CAN Hear You... It's no secret that personal music players can cause hearing loss. People love their music, and sometimes the only way to make sure everyone knows it is to turn that mp3 player up all the way. Apple apparently doesn't want to become known as the company that made hearing-aid companies rich, and has made available a free download that lets users set a maximum volume level on the iPod Nano and any video-capable iPod. The setting can be applied and then locked, stopping anyone from changing the volume level. We can hear kids screaming about it already. Actually, we can't... But you can read more on this at CNN.com. Microsoft Offers a Good Deal For Slow Internet Anyone signing up for MSN's dial-up service now will get a break for a year. The price is being knocked down from $21.95 to $17.95, and new subscribers get the first month for free. After the year is up, your price goes back up to $21.95/month. Of course, you could pay just $10.95/month at PeoplePC.com, with the first three months costing $5.47, and it's companies like People PC that are probably causing MS to start offering more appealing rates to its customers. Heck, you can get DSL from SBCGlobal.net for less than Microsoft's dialup offer. More on the price cut at News.com. Community MX Will Never Last That's one of many predictions made by people that could not have been more wrong. We don't know about you, but reading stuff like "Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future" at 2spare.com is just really enjoyable. One of our favorites, from Bill Gates, is "This antitrust thing will blow over." WARNING: Anyone with kids nearby should be careful, considering the personal ads on the website. Apple Markets To Aliens Apple is celebrating their 30th anniversary next month, and they're doing it up big. We mean, really big. Apple is in the process of finishing up a huge billboard that can be seen from space. The advertisement, which can already be seen at Google Earth, is about 555 square miles in size and depicts one huge iPod. If you don't see it a first, just zoom in a bit. The land used for the project was reportedly won by Steve Jobs in a poker game. Read more on this really, really big iPod at Boakes.org. For Anyone Keeping Score... Not sure who to love or hate at Apple? Wired.com wrote this article that separates Apple's heroes from the villains. Steve Jobs shows up twice as a hero, but a villain during his non-Apple years, mostly for his foibles connected to his "NeXT" computer. It's good to at least see that the heroes outnumber the villains.
CMX Email Any Form Server Behavior CMX Email Any Form is a server behavior for ColdFusion MX or ASP/VB. You can use it one of two ways: 1.Use it on an asp or cfm page that has a form on it, and it will automatically gather all of your form fields and email the form to whoever you specify. 2. Apply it to a blank asp or cfm page and it can email all of the forms on your site. Example for scenario 2: If you have a Contact Us form, a Survey form and a User Feedback form all on separate pages, you can submit any or all of those pages to the blank page you apply the server behavior to. Something like a 'Catch-All' for your forms. This extension will work with CFMAIL and CDONTS. Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Bill Horvath
Fun and Freebies How Do We Say This Without Sounding Filthy? Last week we posted a link to a fellow who juggled balls to the tune of the Beatles' Golden Slumbers. This week, we give you a man who can play a giant keyboard with his balls. Brought to you by Funny-Base.com. The Title Says It All DeadTroll.com explains to everyone why every OS sucks. BlondeStar If you've heard those OnStar emergency commercials where an OnStar operator helps out a driver by unlocking their car for them remotely, you'll appreciate this commercial parody from ExtremeFunnyHumor.com.
Flash, DHTML Menus and Accessibility It's not uncommon to hear developers complaining that their DHTML menus, when triggered, have dropped behind the Flash movie below them. It's also not uncommon to hear, "that's just how they work." Before Flash Player 6, that was true in many browsers. But nowadays, it's become urban legend. With Flash Player 6, Macromedia introduced windowless mode for Netscape and Mac OS X (previously it was supported only for Windows). In the process, this also gave developers a way to completely hide Flash from older screen readers and the focus issues they can have with it. In fact, when Flash is purely used as eye candy, it's wise to remove it from the flow of the screen reader's page so that they don't have to listen to Flash without a purpose. This free article by CMX Partner Stephanie Sullivan can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing DesignBits Volume 1 - Fireworks Symbols For Your Designs Gordon Mackay Welcome to the first in a series of exciting new aids for your design workflow. In this article I will introduce you to using CMX "DesignBits" in your Fireworks compositions. The DesignBits are a series of editable Fireworks symbols that will cover various graphical elements commonly used in modern web site designs, for example: bullets, form buttons, gallery controls — all the little parts of a design that take up a lot of your time, but at the same time are critical to a detailed and good looking page. By creating DesignBits for our subscribers we hope that we can save you time and assist you in creating some wonderful client projects. If that appeals to you, please read on… Streaming a Flash Video Through Captivate Tom Green Not being a huge fan of embedding video into a SWF, when I discovered that was exactly the way it is done in Captivate I thought, "Gosh, there has to be a better way!" There is: embed a SWF into your Captivate movie that calls an FLV into Captivate. Turns out, the bandwidth hit is minimal and Captivate does the preloading duties to boot. Does it get any better than that? You can beat the "video bloat" of an embedded AVI in Captivate simply by using an FLV instead. Approximate download size: 2.8MB Low Cost Developer Tools: Part Three - Screen Rulers John Gallant, Holly Bergevin Time for more reviews of low cost developer tools. This time we will look at applications called 'screen rulers,' which are tools designed to measure spaces, objects, and angles that appear on the computer screen. These measured values are critical for many aspects of web design and everyone will need to measure something at some time. We'll check out five free and low-cost Pro versions of screen rulers for Windows operating systems. So join us as we check out some of the best rulers the web has to offer. The Low Cost Developer Tools Series: Low Cost Developer Tools: Part One - Firefox Extensions Low Cost Developer Tools: Part Two - Toolbars Low Cost Developer Tools: Part Three - Screen Rulers Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 5: Customizing the asp:CreateUserWizard Control Heidi Bautista In this tutorial you'll learn about the CreateUserWizard control. Specifically, you'll see how this control is part of Microsoft's answer to handling navigation and state management in multi-step forms. You'll learn how to customize the contents in each of the two steps of the CreateUserWizard control, as well as how to customize the submit buttons in both steps. You'll see a real-life example of styling these forms using CSS. And you'll learn how to use many of the CreateUserWizard control's attributes; how to incorporate ASP.NET validator controls to ensure that the user enters proper information in each textbox; how to require a unique user name (a common feature of registration forms); how to automatically generate strong passwords (always a good idea); and how to create disabled user accounts and then enable those accounts using VWD's ASP.NET web site administration tool. The Exploring ASP.NET v2 Series: Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 1: Membership Tags, VWD, and Cassini Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 2: VWD's ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 3: Graduate to SQL Server 2000 and IIS Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 4: Customizing the asp:Login control Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 5: Customizing the asp:CreateUserWizard control Spell Checking HTML Forms with JavaScript and PHP Rob Williams Have you ever had to write a large amount of text into a field on an HTML form and been uncertain of just how reliable your spelling skills are? Wouldn't it be nice if HTML forms, like most other applications, had one of those handy little "Spell Check" buttons? In this article we'll look at how easy it is to implement this functionality using a PHP/JavaScript solution called Speller Pages. Teaming up Fireworks and Flash to Create a Custom Video Player Tom Green When the Flash Video components or pre-rolled buttons don't fit the the project spec, what's a developer to do? How about using Fireworks 8 and Flash 8 to create a custom video player? In this article I will show you how the drawing tools in both Flash and Fireworks can be used to create a custom video player. We've also included some sweet little buttons created by CMX Partner Gordon Mackay. In the next article, we will wire the whole thing up using ActionScript. Approximate download size: 563k Wiring up the Custom Video Player Tom Green Wiring up the buttons that control video playback isn't all that difficult to accomplish. You just need to think a bit differently. In the previous installment of this series we created the Player. In this part, we will deal with the ActionScript that makes it all work. Approximate download size: 1.8MB Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 1 [FREE] Zoe Gillenwater "Teaser thumbnail lists" are those lists of items made up of a title, short description, and thumbnail. They're often used to provide short teasers that link to more information about the products, articles, or sections of the site being listed. This tutorial will go over one way to structure the XHTML and CSS to create such a list that maximizes flexibility for the site owner and accessibility for the end user. The resulting list will feature a fixed-width, grid-like design, with the thumbnails aligned to the left and the title and description for each item sitting to the right. All with only 18 lines of CSS! The Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Series: Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 1 Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 2 Coming Soon Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 3 Coming Soon Using SourceGear Vault for Source Control [FREE] Joel Martinez I was busy finishing up a feature on our company's intranet while the rest of the IT department scrambled to do a full backup in anticipation of a hurricane. I just had a few more lines of code to write before I could finish up and go home to prepare. As I typed the last few characters and did some testing, I declared the feature done! Gushing with happiness that I was finally ready to go home, I checked the relevant files into Visual SourceSafe. But elation was not what the fates had planned for me. No, panic ... panic was the order of the day. The check-in process threw some error which my brain has long since purged at this point. The check-in operation was a failure, along with every subsequent attempt to try it again. As I went back into Visual Studio to look at my code, to bask in the warm glow of success, I was horrified to find the files empty ... completely devoid of content. Nooooooooooooo! In desperation, I figured I would simply get the code from the repository again and re-implement my changes. Sadly, all history for the files were nowhere to be found in SourceSafe. Turns out that at the exact moment that I tried to check-in my code, IT was backing up that server. Because Visual SourceSafe is a file-based source control tool, it apparently was not happy about trying to change the files while the backup was in process. Needless to say, I suggested we migrate to another source control tool ASAP. This is a review of SourceGear's Vault, a source control tool designed to be a compelling replacement for Visual SourceSafe. New Uses for the History Brush and the Layers Palette: Part 1 Knut Kubenz You don't always have to use Levels and Curves to adjust image brightness. The Layers mode functions, along with the History Brush, can almost do the same work without being complicated and technical.
Designing a Logo, Part I - Getting Started 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. Check out the Article by CMX Partner Kim Dudley
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Associate Tom Green Copying Files and Folders in Dreamweaver If you have graphics or other Dreamweaver files or content that are used across a number of sites and directories you don't have to copy and paste them in Dreamweaver from the computer's desktop. Simply right click on a file in DW8's Files Panel and copy and paste the file, and even a folder, into the new directory right from Dreamweaver. 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 in Orlando - Getting Closer Every Day

For the few who haven't experienced it yet, TODCon is the most informative yet informal Macromedia/Adobe-related event you're going to find. Whether you're a seasoned veteran of Macromedia or Adobe products or you're 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. Your registration (with the rooming option) includes three nights (May 18th, 19th and 20th) at the Wyndham plus a 3-day trolley pass that covers transportation throughout the International Drive attractions area.

You're invited to register for this fantastic, one-of-a-kind event. Do it quick, while the early bird pricing is still effect.

Be a Playa

CMX JumpStart Playacar is a modification of Paris, our first CMX JumpStart. When we switched hemispheres, we also switched column and tab sides.

With our growing repertoire of JumpStarts, there are now layouts to fit a wide range of design requirements. Sometimes a particular JumpStart isn't quite what you are looking for - if only you could fix one or two little details. If only the navigation had been on the right instead of left. Or what if that left DIV had been floated rather than set to position absolute? And what if instead of a fixed-width, centered layout, the JumpStart had been fluid?

We often read such sentiments on the forums, and thought it might be helpful to respond with articles that show how to modify some of our existing JumpStarts. We would thus give you a wider variety of options while sparing you from having to code the tweaks yourself. Towards that end, we give you CMX JumpStart Playacar, Mexico.

Playacar is part of the Playa del Carmen and the Mayan Riviera, and has beautiful beaches and glorious golf courses. CMX JumpStart Playacar was designed by CMX Fireworks expert Jim Babbage. Holly Bergevin coded the Paris CSS modifications, including some future-proofing for Internet Explorer 7. It is a centered, two-column, fixed-width design that positions its navigation on the right and tabs on the left. The page is constructed using valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional markup and formatted using valid CSS 2 styling. Playacar also follows the WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design.

The package includes the following:

* An extension for installing Playacar into the New Document dialog box
* Twelve tutorials
* A source PNG
* Main, Internet Explorer, and Design-Time style sheets
* Home page
* Form page
* Article that documents the CSS changes and graphics creation

Playacar is available for $29.99 to non-members, but is absolutely free to CMX subscribers. Read more about how to make it yours.

CMX JumpStart Playacar article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about the JumpStart modification program.
CMX JumpStart Playacar article for members and for those who would like to purchase Playacar now.

Still Sounds Like a Broken Television To Us

We hadn't heard the term "Video Mashup" until we ran across this article at Adotas.com. A "video mashup", as far as we can tell, is a type of viral marketing, but with a twist. You get a chance to make your own commercial using preset clips, sounds, music, etc., and the commercial is for a specific product. For instance, at ChevyApprentice.com, they supply you with a simple video editor and some other tools to help you create a commercial for their Chevy Tahoe. You could possibly win a prize after posting it on their website. Not only do these companies get some great ideas through their customers this way, but the publicity by way of word-of-mouth is probably very good for business.

A New Meaning For CSS

This is one of those "Arrrgghhh!!! Why didn't I think of that?!!" type of websites. At CascadingStyleShirts.com, you can get a t-shirt for yourself or your favorite CSS-Junkie with CSS-related sayings like "Respect the Dom" and "(XSL) Transformer." Some folks would say that anyone could have taken shirts and put these sayings on them, but CascadingStyleShirts.com did it, and they'll probably be wildly successful.

Will They Have Really Tall Female Hosts?

Amazon.com, not satisfied with being the world's largest online retailer, is looking to branch out into other avenues while still staying within familiar territory. Starting in June, Amazon will run a 12-episode webcast hosted by Bill Maher that will feature TV, movie and music personalities as guests. Those guests of course will plug their latest work, and that work will be available for purchase during the webcast from Amazon. Ah, the QVC version of the circle of life. More on this story at NWSource.com.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Thanks for the incredible series. I adopted this style of templating after reading the first three articles, which greatly increased my productivity and made whole site changes a breeze. Since then I have built my own home-grown framework of commonly requested elements such as login protection and contact forms using a combination of custom tags and CFCs configured from a XML file. It used to take me hours or days to incorporate a full-blown permission based login system into a website: now I can do it in about an hour. Again, thanks for this series, it has revolutionized the way I architect sites.

CMX Subscriber Adrian S., commenting on Tom Muck's tutorial "Using a ColdFusion Custom Tag as a Site Template: Part 4 - JumpStarts"

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:

"Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus." — David Hockney

What's That? I Can't Hear... Oh Wait. I CAN Hear You...

It's no secret that personal music players can cause hearing loss. People love their music, and sometimes the only way to make sure everyone knows it is to turn that mp3 player up all the way. Apple apparently doesn't want to become known as the company that made hearing-aid companies rich, and has made available a free download that lets users set a maximum volume level on the iPod Nano and any video-capable iPod. The setting can be applied and then locked, stopping anyone from changing the volume level. We can hear kids screaming about it already. Actually, we can't... But you can read more on this at CNN.com.

Microsoft Offers a Good Deal For Slow Internet

Anyone signing up for MSN's dial-up service now will get a break for a year. The price is being knocked down from $21.95 to $17.95, and new subscribers get the first month for free. After the year is up, your price goes back up to $21.95/month. Of course, you could pay just $10.95/month at PeoplePC.com, with the first three months costing $5.47, and it's companies like People PC that are probably causing MS to start offering more appealing rates to its customers. Heck, you can get DSL from SBCGlobal.net for less than Microsoft's dialup offer. More on the price cut at News.com.

Community MX Will Never Last

That's one of many predictions made by people that could not have been more wrong. We don't know about you, but reading stuff like "Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future" at 2spare.com is just really enjoyable. One of our favorites, from Bill Gates, is "This antitrust thing will blow over." WARNING: Anyone with kids nearby should be careful, considering the personal ads on the website.

Apple Markets To Aliens

Apple is celebrating their 30th anniversary next month, and they're doing it up big. We mean, really big. Apple is in the process of finishing up a huge billboard that can be seen from space. The advertisement, which can already be seen at Google Earth, is about 555 square miles in size and depicts one huge iPod. If you don't see it a first, just zoom in a bit. The land used for the project was reportedly won by Steve Jobs in a poker game. Read more on this really, really big iPod at Boakes.org.

For Anyone Keeping Score...

Not sure who to love or hate at Apple? Wired.com wrote this article that separates Apple's heroes from the villains. Steve Jobs shows up twice as a hero, but a villain during his non-Apple years, mostly for his foibles connected to his "NeXT" computer. It's good to at least see that the heroes outnumber the villains.

CMX Email Any Form Server Behavior

CMX Email Any Form is a server behavior for ColdFusion MX or ASP/VB. You can use it one of two ways:
1.Use it on an asp or cfm page that has a form on it, and it will automatically gather all of your form fields and email the form to whoever you specify.
2. Apply it to a blank asp or cfm page and it can email all of the forms on your site. Example for scenario 2: If you have a Contact Us form, a Survey form and a User Feedback form all on separate pages, you can submit any or all of those pages to the blank page you apply the server behavior to. Something like a 'Catch-All' for your forms. This extension will work with CFMAIL and CDONTS.

Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Bill Horvath

Fun and Freebies

How Do We Say This Without Sounding Filthy?

Last week we posted a link to a fellow who juggled balls to the tune of the Beatles' Golden Slumbers. This week, we give you a man who can play a giant keyboard with his balls. Brought to you by Funny-Base.com.

The Title Says It All

DeadTroll.com explains to everyone why every OS sucks.

BlondeStar

If you've heard those OnStar emergency commercials where an OnStar operator helps out a driver by unlocking their car for them remotely, you'll appreciate this commercial parody from ExtremeFunnyHumor.com.

Flash, DHTML Menus and Accessibility

It's not uncommon to hear developers complaining that their DHTML menus, when triggered, have dropped behind the Flash movie below them. It's also not uncommon to hear, "that's just how they work." Before Flash Player 6, that was true in many browsers. But nowadays, it's become urban legend. With Flash Player 6, Macromedia introduced windowless mode for Netscape and Mac OS X (previously it was supported only for Windows). In the process, this also gave developers a way to completely hide Flash from older screen readers and the focus issues they can have with it. In fact, when Flash is purely used as eye candy, it's wise to remove it from the flow of the screen reader's page so that they don't have to listen to Flash without a purpose.

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

Weekly Content Listing

DesignBits Volume 1 - Fireworks Symbols For Your Designs

Gordon Mackay

Welcome to the first in a series of exciting new aids for your design workflow. In this article I will introduce you to using CMX "DesignBits" in your Fireworks compositions.

The DesignBits are a series of editable Fireworks symbols that will cover various graphical elements commonly used in modern web site designs, for example: bullets, form buttons, gallery controls — all the little parts of a design that take up a lot of your time, but at the same time are critical to a detailed and good looking page.

By creating DesignBits for our subscribers we hope that we can save you time and assist you in creating some wonderful client projects. If that appeals to you, please read on…

Streaming a Flash Video Through Captivate

Tom Green

Not being a huge fan of embedding video into a SWF, when I discovered that was exactly the way it is done in Captivate I thought, "Gosh, there has to be a better way!" There is: embed a SWF into your Captivate movie that calls an FLV into Captivate. Turns out, the bandwidth hit is minimal and Captivate does the preloading duties to boot. Does it get any better than that? You can beat the "video bloat" of an embedded AVI in Captivate simply by using an FLV instead.

Approximate download size: 2.8MB

Low Cost Developer Tools: Part Three - Screen Rulers

John Gallant, Holly Bergevin

Time for more reviews of low cost developer tools. This time we will look at applications called 'screen rulers,' which are tools designed to measure spaces, objects, and angles that appear on the computer screen. These measured values are critical for many aspects of web design and everyone will need to measure something at some time. We'll check out five free and low-cost Pro versions of screen rulers for Windows operating systems. So join us as we check out some of the best rulers the web has to offer.

The Low Cost Developer Tools Series:
Low Cost Developer Tools: Part One - Firefox Extensions
Low Cost Developer Tools: Part Two - Toolbars
Low Cost Developer Tools: Part Three - Screen Rulers

Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 5: Customizing the asp:CreateUserWizard Control

Heidi Bautista

In this tutorial you'll learn about the CreateUserWizard control. Specifically, you'll see how this control is part of Microsoft's answer to handling navigation and state management in multi-step forms. You'll learn how to customize the contents in each of the two steps of the CreateUserWizard control, as well as how to customize the submit buttons in both steps. You'll see a real-life example of styling these forms using CSS. And you'll learn how to use many of the CreateUserWizard control's attributes; how to incorporate ASP.NET validator controls to ensure that the user enters proper information in each textbox; how to require a unique user name (a common feature of registration forms); how to automatically generate strong passwords (always a good idea); and how to create disabled user accounts and then enable those accounts using VWD's ASP.NET web site administration tool.

The Exploring ASP.NET v2 Series:
Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 1: Membership Tags, VWD, and Cassini
Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 2: VWD's ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool
Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 3: Graduate to SQL Server 2000 and IIS
Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 4: Customizing the asp:Login control
Exploring ASP.NET v2 - Part 5: Customizing the asp:CreateUserWizard control

Spell Checking HTML Forms with JavaScript and PHP

Rob Williams

Have you ever had to write a large amount of text into a field on an HTML form and been uncertain of just how reliable your spelling skills are? Wouldn't it be nice if HTML forms, like most other applications, had one of those handy little "Spell Check" buttons? In this article we'll look at how easy it is to implement this functionality using a PHP/JavaScript solution called Speller Pages.

Teaming up Fireworks and Flash to Create a Custom Video Player

Tom Green

When the Flash Video components or pre-rolled buttons don't fit the the project spec, what's a developer to do? How about using Fireworks 8 and Flash 8 to create a custom video player?

In this article I will show you how the drawing tools in both Flash and Fireworks can be used to create a custom video player. We've also included some sweet little buttons created by CMX Partner Gordon Mackay.

In the next article, we will wire the whole thing up using ActionScript.

Approximate download size: 563k

Wiring up the Custom Video Player

Tom Green

Wiring up the buttons that control video playback isn't all that difficult to accomplish. You just need to think a bit differently. In the previous installment of this series we created the Player. In this part, we will deal with the ActionScript that makes it all work.

Approximate download size: 1.8MB

Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 1 [FREE]

Zoe Gillenwater

"Teaser thumbnail lists" are those lists of items made up of a title, short description, and thumbnail. They're often used to provide short teasers that link to more information about the products, articles, or sections of the site being listed. This tutorial will go over one way to structure the XHTML and CSS to create such a list that maximizes flexibility for the site owner and accessibility for the end user. The resulting list will feature a fixed-width, grid-like design, with the thumbnails aligned to the left and the title and description for each item sitting to the right. All with only 18 lines of CSS!

The Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Series:
Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 1
Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 2 Coming Soon
Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 3 Coming Soon

Using SourceGear Vault for Source Control [FREE]

Joel Martinez

I was busy finishing up a feature on our company's intranet while the rest of the IT department scrambled to do a full backup in anticipation of a hurricane. I just had a few more lines of code to write before I could finish up and go home to prepare. As I typed the last few characters and did some testing, I declared the feature done! Gushing with happiness that I was finally ready to go home, I checked the relevant files into Visual SourceSafe.

But elation was not what the fates had planned for me. No, panic ... panic was the order of the day. The check-in process threw some error which my brain has long since purged at this point. The check-in operation was a failure, along with every subsequent attempt to try it again. As I went back into Visual Studio to look at my code, to bask in the warm glow of success, I was horrified to find the files empty ... completely devoid of content.

Nooooooooooooo!

In desperation, I figured I would simply get the code from the repository again and re-implement my changes. Sadly, all history for the files were nowhere to be found in SourceSafe. Turns out that at the exact moment that I tried to check-in my code, IT was backing up that server. Because Visual SourceSafe is a file-based source control tool, it apparently was not happy about trying to change the files while the backup was in process.

Needless to say, I suggested we migrate to another source control tool ASAP. This is a review of SourceGear's Vault, a source control tool designed to be a compelling replacement for Visual SourceSafe.

New Uses for the History Brush and the Layers Palette: Part 1

Knut Kubenz

You don't always have to use Levels and Curves to adjust image brightness. The Layers mode functions, along with the History Brush, can almost do the same work without being complicated and technical.

Designing a Logo, Part I - Getting Started

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.

Check out the Article by CMX Partner Kim Dudley

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Associate Tom Green

Copying Files and Folders in Dreamweaver

If you have graphics or other Dreamweaver files or content that are used across a number of sites and directories you don't have to copy and paste them in Dreamweaver from the computer's desktop. Simply right click on a file in DW8's Files Panel and copy and paste the file, and even a folder, into the new directory right from Dreamweaver.

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!