Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

CMX Weekly Newsletter

• News
• Fun and Freebies
• Recent CMX Content
• Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats

Check the News!

TODCon 2007 Getting Closer...

For the few who haven't experienced it yet, TODCon is the most informative yet informal Adobe-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 Las Vegas, Nevada. We predict that this year's turnout will be even bigger than last year's.

You're invited to register for this fantastic, one of a kind event. Hurry, so you can get the early bird registration fee.

Adobe's Been Busy, And So Has Community MX

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've already heard about the release of Adobe's CS3 suite of products. Many, many choices for desktop publishers, Flash developers and web developers. Between Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, Web Standard, Production Premium and Master Collection editions, you could hurt your brain deciding which one's right for you. This chart at Adobe.com might help. While we can't really help you decide which one to upgrade to, Community MX can help you learn the ins and outs of the new features for all of the upgraded products. We've already got several free sneak peeks and tutorials on our website, and there's plenty more to come, for just about all of the Adobe products. For now, you can check out Adrian Senior's Dreamweaver CS3 Sneak Preview: The CSS Panel article, and Jim Babbage's Fireworks CS3 Sneak Peek - Multiple Pages and Hierarchical Layers article. We also have an article from Kim Dudley on The New and the Improved in Illustrator CS3 and another article by Adrian Senior entitled CS3 Sneak Preview: Device Central.

Plenty Of Vacation Time, But You've Got To Work? Hmmm...

Netflix has a vacation policy that might drive some company's nuts, but it makes sense to some of us over here at CMX. Actually, their vacation policy is not much different than ours: Take all of the vacation time you want - just make sure all of your work is done. Very simple, but that's not how it's typically done, as most of us know from experience. Netflix only has to worry about three hundred or so employees taking advantage of their generosity, and perhaps their policy will change should it become a logistical problem to keep track of who's minding the store, but for now, it's a really smart policy if it's monitored properly. More on this at HireDiversity.com.

Moral Of The Story: Host Your Own Images

Politicians are not immune to the foibles that can occur on their websites. US Senator John McCain's webmaster apparently used a well-known template to build the the Senator's website, but left the template author's images and locations intact, so the website was pulling the images from the template author's server. The template author switched the images as a prank, and the result made McCain look like he'd really changed his philosophy on certain matters. TechCrunch.com has the before and after.

But What's The Product Cycle For The Article?

MacRumors.com has some helpful information if you're thinking of buying in Apple-related hardware anytime soon. They've posted the product cycle for the main Apple products, like their mp3 players, laptops and desktops, so you can get a feel for when Apple typically replaces their old stuff with new stuff. You'll see a trend with many of the products, which could help you know if you should hold off a few more months before making a purchase.

Great Quotes:

"If you write a post and put it on a blog, that's a historical document. If you change your template, then that entry looks completely different. It's the same words, but not the same meaning. This all depends on what historical questions that people will be asking and we can't know what they will want." — Josh Greenberg

For The Girl Who Has Everything And Wants Something Really Lame

Just when you think you've seen how low company's will go to market to a stereotype, along comes something new, like this computer we found at Gizmodo.com. Take a look, we'll wait. Dum de dum... back already? How sad was that? OK, we're sorry if any women saw that and immediately wanted one, but wow... It's the Hello Kitty of computers. Do people really buy this stuff?

Stay Sharp

As professionals, we have to stay alert and aware. We can't forget to... forget to... do... oh, heck. In any case, the mind doesn't stay active on its own. We have to feed it the right stuff and keep it busy with stimuli that will nurture it. Yahoo.com has a quickie article that gives you some advice on keeping your mind... keeping your mind... well, keeping your mind. We particularly liked the tip on hanging upside down. While it didn't seem to improve our brain's cognitive abilities, it made for some great laughs at a recent party.

Some JavaScript Snippets You Might Want

Whenever I want a particular piece of javascript, I typically go to Google, type in Javascript "whatever effect" and then go from site to site looking for the one that will do what I'm looking for. Igglo.co.uk has put together a list of "15 Javascript Snippets You Can’t Live Without" along with the code, of course. There are some handy scripts here - everything from drag and drop shopping carts to draggable windows.

Yahoo Declares "Unlimited Storage" For Email

Yahoo just announced unlimited email space for new and old users of their email service. They previously put a one gigabyte cap on their email accounts, but that's all a thing of the past. Since their email accounts are free, they have to make sure to get as many email subscribers as possible so that they can get a maximum number of eyeballs looking their ads. Gmail is also free, and while it currently has a two gigabyte cap, Gmail is still a more attractive email client to those needing Pop3 capabilities. More on this at TechCrunch.com.

Just In Case Plane Ticket Prices Are Keeping You From Attending TODCon

At MoneyForTheRestOfUs.com, they've posted fifteen great tips on getting the lowest possible airfare to anywhere you might like to travel... like Vegas... for TODCon. In June. They've got tips on considering not only the days that you travel, but the time of day you travel, as well as buying your tickets directly through the airlines, since the airlines typically offer better prices than most online travel agents.

Fun and Freebies

MySpace Catches Crook

A law enforcement officer in Arkansas decided to create a MySpace account with video and pictures of a man caught on tape robbing several banks. The page was made to look like it was created by the robber, and was titled "Have you seen me?" Apparently, someone out there actually had seen the man in question, and now the robber is behind bars. I don't know about you, but this just seems like a remarkably good idea. Kudos to the Arkansas police. Read about it at WeirdTechNewsHub.com.

Why Oh Why Do Thieves Do This?

No one likes criminals, except for other criminals. But even we feel bad that they're so incredibly stupid sometimes. When will they learn not to film themselves with other people's stuff, bragging about their crimes? Here's a story from WFTV.com about another goofball who filmed himself in a compromising position and got thrown in the slammer as a result.

Computer Cases With Personality

Just as clothes can help define our personality to other people, a computer case can be an extension of your personality as well. Don't believe us? Take a look at these pictures at TechFrenzy.net.

Weekly Content Listing

The New and the Improved in Illustrator CS3 [FREE]

Kim Dudley

Adobe Illustrator is a vector drawing tool that has always been quite flexible in terms of creating artwork. Using Illustrator's drawing tools and effects, an unlimited variety of graphics can be created and saved or exported for use in many different mediums. In addition, Illustrator's layout, typographic and prepress tools make it possible to create complete layouts within the application.

With the introduction of Illustrator CS3 Adobe expands Illustrator's flexibility and most importantly, streamlines the way you work in Illustrator. This upgrade is all about productivity and the updates are a welcome enhancement to Illustrator's existing toolset.

Illustrator CS3 has many updates and additions, in this article we will look at 10 of my favorites.

CS3 Sneak Preview: Device Central [FREE]

Adrian Senior

Integrated with Dreamweaver CS3 as well as throughout the family of Creative Suite 3 software, Adobe Device Central simplifies the creation of mobile content with built-in mobile device skins and regularly updated device profiles. Besides the ability to quickly access essential technical specifications for each device, Adobe Device Central displays HTML content and allows you to scroll using the buttons on the device. The Small Screen Rendering (SSR) mode will shrink the text and images to show accurate rendering as it would appear on the device. Now you can easily design, preview, and test engaging mobile content and rich user interfaces.

CS3 Sneak Preview: The CSS Panel [FREE]

Adrian Senior

Not everyone can create the right CSS rules, in the right place, on the first try. To get things right, it’s often necessary to move, rename, or otherwise change the structure of your CSS. Additionally, many people like to introduce CSS changes incrementally to a site, first by getting the CSS working on a single page, and then working on the entire site. Others prefer to step back further and get the CSS working on a single element before trying to make it work for a whole page. The Manage CSS feature makes it easier for you to move CSS rules from document to document, from the head of a document to an external sheet, between external CSS files, and more. You can also convert inline CSS to CSS rules, and place them where you need them—just by dragging and dropping.

A Fireworks CS3 Sneak Peek - Multiple Pages and Hierarchical Layers [FREE]

Jim Babbage

Presented for your consideration; a world where there is no more:

• Showing and hiding different sized and/or colored overlapping web slices
• Hiding and showing layers on specific frames to ensure your overlapping slices are exported correctly
• Juggling web layer hierarchy for the same reason
• Using frames as a comping tool for multiple designs
• Creating multiple PNG files for each different web interface design

You haven't entered the Twilight Zone. You've been warped into the Adobe Zone, and specifically (big surprise for those of you who read my articles) Fireworks CS3.

Fireworks CS3 includes many updates. It's probably the biggest feature release in years for Fireworks. And while those features don't include much needed changes to the main bitmap or vector tool set, other very significant tools have been added. Indeed, Adobe has put Fireworks on a path that I believe will keep the app around for a long time.

The addition of hierarchical layers, multiple page and multiple web layers support are only a few of the features that put Fireworks on the path as one of the best graphical rapid prototyping tools out there.

Flash Video: Move Over? [FREE]

Robert Reinhardt

In November 2006, I wrote an article title "Flash Video: Why the Other Players Don't Get It", wherein I made a case for Flash Video on the web. Indeed, Flash Video is everywhere on the web, from Google to YouTube to Blip.tv. However, within the last couple of weeks, Flash Video suffered a casualty: ABC.com replaced Flash Video as the video player technology on their showcase Full Episode Streaming site. I initially blogged about the event, chiding Adobe for not moving faster to address widely known concerns about Flash Video streaming on the web, especially by providers who want to protect their content. After my post received over 1000 web views within 12 hours, I got the feeling that I should write more about my thoughts on Flash Video, and how it might suffer more casualties if Adobe doesn't take their customers (especially their big customers, like ABC.com) more seriously. (Or should I be so bold as to say they shouldn't take them for granted?)

NOTE: This article is an editorial reflecting my personal concerns about Flash Video technology, and does not reflect the views and opinions of any other entity.

Using the Bell Character—Parsing Lists in ColdFusion

Tom Muck

What is the bell character, you might ask? In the old days of computing, before there was surround sound, you could "print" a character to the screen that made a "beep" sound. If you put a bell character (ASCII 7) in a string, it would beep to the screen. These days, the bell character is not used for much...if anything. As a ColdFusion programmer, you can make use of this not-often-used character for different situations. Some lists seem like they are unparseable using regular ColdFusion functions, and some strings might not even seem like lists. This article will show a couple ways to parse otherwise difficult lists.

XML and AJAX: A New Paradigm - Part 2

Rob Williams

When it comes to web development there are often a lot of technologies that people are aware of but never really understand or come to use in their daily tasks. XML tends to be one such technology; most developers have heard of it, and usually have a genearl idea of what it is, but on the same level most have also almost never used it or understood the purpose of it for their usual projects. In this series we're going to explore how we can use XML in a practical way to help us develop rather interesting and uniquely controlled/flexible web applications by combining it with AJAX.

In the second part of the series we'll look at how to use actually load XML data into JavaScript, how that data is interpretted by the JS engine, and some basic examples of how we can use it from within the scripting environment.

The XML and AJAX Series:
XML and AJAX: A New Paradigm - Part 1
XML and AJAX: A New Paradigm - Part 2

The Beaming Bride

Knut Kubenz

I don't know about you, but every time I make a portrait of someone I'm always looking for ways to enhance and introduce lighting accents to the portrait to both isolate and emphasize some of its attributes. Last time I looked at Photoshop there were about a million ways to do this, here's just one more.

This technique works well if you have a window for a source or background as a part of the image. The concept is to produce a beam of light generated from the window so as to further draw attention or spotlight the subject. A few simple tools in Photoshop such as the Polygonal Lasso Tool, Layer Mode Blends and a Layer Mask are all you'll need to make this work.

Coloring Your World - Part 2: Two Worlds of Color - Digital vs. Print

Derrick Ypenburg

In my last article on color, we talked about the hexadecimal and RGB color models and how to interpret colors in your code. Now we will talk about what happens when you will be asked to work from printed material and turn it into an online color palette that looks consistent and will please your clients.

The Coloring Your World Series
Coloring Your World - Part 1: Color Basics
Coloring Your World - Part 2: Two Worlds of Color - Digital vs Print
Coloring Your World - Part 3: Color Trends and Possibilities Coming Soon

Flowing Text Around an Object in Fireworks by Using Freehand and Fireworks

Jim Babbage

If there is one weak area in Fireworks, it's in the text handling. I've seen many posts on the user groups asking how to flow text around an object in Fireworks. Attaching text on a path won't do the trick. The only way to do this in FW is through a tedious manual process of either creating multiple text objects, or using the space bar to customize the indenting of each line. The functionality is just not in Fireworks at this time. But it is in Freehand. Freehand allows you to flow text inside a path, or around a path or a bitmap object.

You can't do this easily in Fireworks:



But Freehand makes this type of thing simple to do.

This article will how you how to create the wrapped text in Freehand and then how to bring the result over to Fireworks. We'll also look at the limitations of this technique.

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

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

Sort Through Your Conditional Logic

When writing server side code (using any language) using IF statements, put the condition within a comment after the end of the conditional code block so that nested conditional logic is easier to read -- especially when the code is long and involved. For example:

PHP
<?php
if($something == 'yada yada') {
  echo("Bada bing");
  if($somethingElse == 'Who's your daddy?') {
    echo("Go away");
  } /* END  if($somethingElse == 'Who's your daddy?') */
} /* END if($something == 'yada yada') */
?>

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!