
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! TODCon 2007 Announced 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. Introducing CMX JumpStart Detroit We know you're waiting and wondering - where in the world will we travel next to bring you the next great CMX JumpStart? Well, toot your car horn. This one comes from Motor City, also known as Detroit, Michigan. CMX JumpStart Detroit was designed and coded by the talented Adrian Senior, and is a breeze of ease to work with. It is a centered, two-column, fixed-width design that uses background shadows created in Fireworks to present the content as if it were sitting on a raised and tapering canvas. Modify a few graphics, change a few values in the style sheet, and you've got it - a professional looking site your clients will love. Like all CMX JumpStarts, the page is constructed using valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional markup and formatted using valid CSS 2.1 styling. Detroit also follows the WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design. The package includes an extension for installing Detroit into the New Document dialog box, several tutorials, a source PNG, main and Internet Explorer style sheets, and a starter page. Detroit 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 Detroit article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about its features and see a modified Detroit design. CMX JumpStart Detroit article for members and for those who would like to purchase Detroit now. The Suckage They Call Adobe LiveDocs Ever used Adobe LiveDocs? No? If you've ever been tempted to, you might want to read this forum post at WorseThanFailure.com, entitled "Adobe LiveDocs: A World of WTF." If that doesn't convince you, head over to AralBalkin.com and check out his opinion of the LiveDocs where he provides a link to a hilariously true Flash movie that captures the LiveDocs in all of their sluggishness. The Fur is Flying In Flash Blog-Land While we were checking out the LiveDocs link mentioned above, we noticed another link at AralBalkin.com that shows how seriously Aral takes SWX. He lets loose on Theo Hultberg for saying on his blog that SWX was not worth a second look and that people who write the kind of code he saw were unhirable. Unfortunately, the code he was looking at was written by Aral. Oops. In the comments section of Aral's blog post, Theo posts a comment, which inspires a comment from Aral. It's fairly civil, but for Flash developers... it's pretty heady stuff. iStockPhoto.com Getting Competition iStockPhoto.com is one of the least expensive stock photo websites that you'll find on the internet. I use it all the time for websites I develop, as their selection is remarkable for the price. But it looks like competitors are cropping up all the time. News.com has an interview with Bruce Livingstone, CEO of iStockPhoto, where he talks about the future of iStockPhoto.com and the latest group of iStock wannabe's.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "I liked it a lot. I've taken a couple of Macromedia Flash courses and this tutorial helped to improve my confidence --especially in being able to analyse my mistakes and to finally get the banner ad to work properly " CMX Subscriber Dairobi P., commenting on Kim Cavanaugh's article "Overcoming Your Fear of Flash, Part III " 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: "What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it." — Alexander Graham Bell Speed Up Vista If you've made the leap to Windows Vista, you know that it takes a computer with a lot of guts and plain old "oomph" to run Vista efficiently. ExtremeTech.com has an article on speeding up Vista by disabling unnecessary services, cutting down on startup programs and using some built-in Vista applications. Yes, Vista is an extreme resource hog, but you can lighten the load by reading this article and taking some of its tips to heart. Microsoft Takes Lawyers Off of Standby We've mentioned in a previous newsletter that there were many versions of Windows Vista to choose from. But if your computer can't handle some of the more powerful versions, you're stuck with Windows Vista "Basic", which is uh, basically a very stripped down version of Vista - no Aero interface, animation or any other features that rely on strong processing power. Apparently there's been a bit of confusion over this - enough to cause one person to sue Microsoft for five million bucks. She states that computers that say "Vista Capable" should be able to run Vista - any version of Vista. Microsoft says they were clear about the whole "Vista-Capable" thing, and aren't keen on the lawsuit (surprise). Read more about it at Playfuls.com. And You Dress Funny If you're like the rest of us, you've got a boss. Sure, some of you work for yourself, but us regular Joe's have to put up with a supervisor or manager who we may not get along with (No, not YOU Ray... You're great. Honest!). But just as you may look at your boss and wonder how in the world he got his job, he might be looking at you wondering the same thing. Guardian.co.uk has a list of the top ten things your boss might not like about you, like disloyalty, lying and other things that tend to bug your boss. Just The FAQ's You may have heard that EMI plans on releasing their music on iTunes that will be free of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Copyright laws will still disallow you from sharing any of the tunes you download, but you're free to play them on any player that can play .aac files, and make all the copies you want without fear of the RIAA breathing down your neck. EMI's music videos will also be sold in this manner. The price of each song is about thirty cents more than the DRM files currently for sale at iTunes. If you want to find out more about it, read this FAQ at Yahoo.com. Because Failure Is Funny Sometimes Products come and go, but some leave an idelible imprint in your memory... not because of the fantastic impact they made on the world, but because they flopped so badly. ComputerWorld.com has an article that talks about fourteen products that fit this description. Not that these were all bad products. Some of them were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the Apple Newton, the first PDA to make the big-time, which failed due to its price and bad press. Read about the rest of the "flops" at ComputerWorld.com.
CMX Snippets Collection - Part I CSS Positioning layouts are hot, and many people are trying to make the transition from the mostly reliable, but non-semantic, table-based layouts we've all used for years. CSS 2.1 provides great features for laying out pages, and the specs for CSS 3 indicate that some day the future of design on the web will be ever brighter indeed. We here at CMX try to make the learning curve as painless as possible with our many CSS tutorials and articles. Now we'd like to offer you a diagnostic tool that spares you some typing and memorizing. We are proud to introduce the CMX CSS Snippets Collection. Snippets, as you may well be aware, are bits of reusable code that paste as blocks or around selections with the click of an insert button. This article includes an extension for installing part one of the collection into the Dreamweaver Snippets panel, and a tutorial that explains the problems and solutions that the hacks correct. Check Out This Collection of Snippets from CMX Partner Sheri German
Fun and Freebies This Doesn't Hold Water. Oh Wait. Yes It Does. Is your internet connection backed up? Let Google help with Google TiSP. I'm Buzz Saw Hurricane You can find out what your "Action name" is by going to HammerAndCoop.com or just watch some episodes featuring the worst tv action hero ever created. This Rocks A couple in Sweden want to name their new baby girl "Metallica", after the popular metal band by the same name. Swedish authorities, saying the name is "ugly", were not hip to allowing the child to take the name, but the court finally allowed it... only to be curtailed by the tax bureau, who have appealed to a higher court. Read more about baby Metallica at Hosted.AP.Org.
All About CSS Dropshadows - Part I Do you like drop shadows on your page elements, but haven't a clue how to get them on your pages? Maybe you do know a bit about creating drop shadows, but a refresher on the modern methods would be welcome? Do you want to learn the very latest cutting edge tricks? If you are any of these, don't go away because we now begin a series on drop shadows for HTML elements. At the start we'll keep it simple, and as we progress in the series the methods will become more advanced and effective. At the end you will be treated to a brand new method so advanced that it must wait for IE7 to arrive before you can use it properly. Join us, won't you? This free article by CMX Partners Holly Bergevin and John Gallant can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Introducing CMX JumpStart Detroit [FREE] Sheri German We are pleased to introduce our latest CMX JumpStart: Detroit. Created by Adrian "JoJo" Senior, it has all the trademarks of his designs: clean with no-fuss CSS, easy to modify, and always professional looking. This two-column, centered, fixed-width layout includes a shadowed, tapering background image on the main column that gives the effect of a raised platform for the content. Like all JumpStarts, Detroit uses valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 markup and follows WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines. CMX Jumpstart: Detroit Adrian Senior Detroit is a two column design that uses background shadows created in the Fireworks to present the content as if it was sitting on a raised and tapering canvas. As always their are a host of bundled tutorials that discuss each of the techniques used in great depth. I hope you enjoy Detroit and that it will become a useful addition to your design armory. Flash PowerTools: Standalone FLV Players [FREE] Joseph Balderson Out there in the Flash design and development world, there are many tools available to assist in creating projects. These are "power tools" that supercharge the task of designing, coding, compiling, testing and documenting, allowing you to save time and present ideas much more effectively. Some have been around for a few years, and some are pretty new. This series highlights some of the open source tools and techniques which have made my life as a Flash developer much more effective. Many times in the past I found myself wanting to preview an FLV video, either for pre-selection during development, or simply to watch a video I had downloaded from the net. Problem is, Flash does not come with a standalone FLV player out of the box. The solution: use a standalone FLV player. This article will cover three popular, free standalone FLV players, by Martijn Devisser, Nothing Media and Blitz Labs (Windows only). FusionDebug 2.0 - Stepping Through a CFC Chaz Chumley In our last article we took a look at setting breakpoints within ColdFusion templates using FusionDebug 2.0 an interactive debugger for ColdFusion. While we paused code execution on a single page to view the variables contained within the page, I would bet that we have all built more complex applications that involve the use of ColdFusion Components (CFCs). FusionDebug 2.0 is a great tool in that we can set a breakpoint on any page, including CFCs, UDFs (User Defined Functions) and even custom tags. Knowing this we will take a look at what happens when we set a breakpoint on a query contained with a CFC and how we can view the contents of the query prior to actually outputting the results to browser. The AS3 Event System - Part 3: Custom Dispatchers Steve Schelter In the third installment of the AS3 Event System series, we'll be taking the custom Stopwatch class we built in part 2 and turn it into a custom event dispatcher. The AS3 Events System Series: The AS3 Event System - Part 1: The Basics The AS3 Event System - Part 2: Timer Class The AS3 Event System - Part 3: Custom Dispatchers Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 5 Zoe Gillenwater In Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 4, you learned how to modify the widths of individual bands to differ from one another. This tutorial showed how you could use these techniques to mix fixed and fluid values for the various bands. One use for this is fixing the width of a navigation bar so that elements within it do not wrap to more than one line of text, either when the window is narrowed or the text size is larger than the default. Before I go any further, let me state that many usability proponents, myself included, believe that not allowing navigation items to wrap is harming usability by forcing users to scroll to see all the navigation items, when it would serve the users better to allow them to wrap and be able to see all of them at once. Not allowing navigation items to wrap also raises the possibility that users will not notice the scrollbar and will never realize there are more items to choose from, at which point they may decide your site doesn't have what they want and leave. If you can get your client to see how this decision for the sake of design harms his or her business, and thus to allow you to make the more usable choice, that's great. However, I know it is not always possible to persuade clients to choose the best route, so I've written this tutorial on keeping navigation items from wrapping for the sake of real-world practicality. This tutorial uses the same fluid layout built in Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 3, but the techniques used in this article can be applied to any horizontal navigation bar you want to keep from wrapping. The Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout Series: Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 1 Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 2 Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 3 Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 4 Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 5 Acrobat PDF 102: PDF Ground Rules for Press, Print and Web Bevi Chagnon Think of a PDF as a wrapper: it holds together the text, graphics, photos, fonts and other items that make up your source document, and wraps them up into one convenient PDF file that you can send to commercial print shops for printing, or upload to your website, or send to a client for approval. This second article in the series looks under the hood of PDFs and outlines the best practices for creating source documents and PDFs for your particular purpose—press-quality, print-quality, and web-quality PDFs. The Acrobat PDF Series Acrobat PDF 101: What’s a PDF and What Do I Use to Make One? Acrobat PDF 102: PDF Ground Rules for Press, Print and Web CMX Robot File Dreamweaver Extension Paul Davis The CMX Robots.txt Creator will create a robots.txt file formatted according to the standards set for this type of file and save it to your local site. Quickly create your robots.txt files with this extension and stop worrying about the syntax! A Look at The Integration Between Fireworks and Photoshop CS3 Jim Babbage Communication – that’s what this industry is all about. For years, Fireworks and Photoshop have been like those two brothers who never really talked to each other and wouldn’t share their knowledge either. With the release of CS3, these two applications have finally buried the proverbial hatchet and are clasping hands – if somewhat tentatively at times. Many graphics professionals use more than a single application to create their work. Personally, I’m always moving from FW to PS, depending on my client’s needs and the goals of the project. This shuffling back and forth has become much easier with CS3. A great deal of effort was put into making Fireworks and Photoshop more compatible in this release. Here’s the list in brief: Improvements to the Photoshop Import and Export functions within Fireworks Hierarchical Layers panel FW support for Photoshop Layer Effects, with the Live Filters menu. Support for commonly used Photoshop blend modes Bridge/XMP Data Integration Follow along in this Sneak Peek article for more reasons to consider upgrading. Rapid Prototyping in Fireworks CS3 Tom Green When it comes to Fireworks CS3 Adobe is linking the application to the phrase: "Rapid Protoytyping". Here is what they are talking about. Approximate download size: 5.7MB
Automating An Image Gallery with PHP and Your Local Server: Part 1 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. Check out the Article by CMX partner Rob Williams
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Partner Bill Horvath How Fast Are You? This isn't really a software tip, trick or dirty cheat, but it's handy anyway. If you really want to know whether your ISP's promises of a kazillion bajillion megabytes per megasecond is a reality, head over to SpeedTest.net. It's similar to some of the high-end bandwidth testers, but the graphics are much niftier. Besides, it told me my speed was incredible, so who am I to go anywhere else for a speed test? 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 2007 Announced

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.

Introducing CMX JumpStart Detroit

We know you're waiting and wondering - where in the world will we travel next to bring you the next great CMX JumpStart? Well, toot your car horn. This one comes from Motor City, also known as Detroit, Michigan.

CMX JumpStart Detroit was designed and coded by the talented Adrian Senior, and is a breeze of ease to work with. It is a centered, two-column, fixed-width design that uses background shadows created in Fireworks to present the content as if it were sitting on a raised and tapering canvas. Modify a few graphics, change a few values in the style sheet, and you've got it - a professional looking site your clients will love.

Like all CMX JumpStarts, the page is constructed using valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional markup and formatted using valid CSS 2.1 styling. Detroit also follows the WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design.

The package includes an extension for installing Detroit into the New Document dialog box, several tutorials, a source PNG, main and Internet Explorer style sheets, and a starter page.

Detroit 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 Detroit article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about its features and see a modified Detroit design.

CMX JumpStart Detroit article for members and for those who would like to purchase Detroit now.

The Suckage They Call Adobe LiveDocs

Ever used Adobe LiveDocs? No? If you've ever been tempted to, you might want to read this forum post at WorseThanFailure.com, entitled "Adobe LiveDocs: A World of WTF." If that doesn't convince you, head over to AralBalkin.com and check out his opinion of the LiveDocs where he provides a link to a hilariously true Flash movie that captures the LiveDocs in all of their sluggishness.

The Fur is Flying In Flash Blog-Land

While we were checking out the LiveDocs link mentioned above, we noticed another link at AralBalkin.com that shows how seriously Aral takes SWX. He lets loose on Theo Hultberg for saying on his blog that SWX was not worth a second look and that people who write the kind of code he saw were unhirable. Unfortunately, the code he was looking at was written by Aral. Oops. In the comments section of Aral's blog post, Theo posts a comment, which inspires a comment from Aral. It's fairly civil, but for Flash developers... it's pretty heady stuff.

iStockPhoto.com Getting Competition

iStockPhoto.com is one of the least expensive stock photo websites that you'll find on the internet. I use it all the time for websites I develop, as their selection is remarkable for the price. But it looks like competitors are cropping up all the time. News.com has an interview with Bruce Livingstone, CEO of iStockPhoto, where he talks about the future of iStockPhoto.com and the latest group of iStock wannabe's.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"I liked it a lot. I've taken a couple of Macromedia Flash courses and this tutorial helped to improve my confidence --especially in being able to analyse my mistakes and to finally get the banner ad to work properly "

CMX Subscriber Dairobi P., commenting on Kim Cavanaugh's article "Overcoming Your Fear of Flash, Part III "

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:

"What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it." — Alexander Graham Bell

Speed Up Vista

If you've made the leap to Windows Vista, you know that it takes a computer with a lot of guts and plain old "oomph" to run Vista efficiently. ExtremeTech.com has an article on speeding up Vista by disabling unnecessary services, cutting down on startup programs and using some built-in Vista applications. Yes, Vista is an extreme resource hog, but you can lighten the load by reading this article and taking some of its tips to heart.

Microsoft Takes Lawyers Off of Standby

We've mentioned in a previous newsletter that there were many versions of Windows Vista to choose from. But if your computer can't handle some of the more powerful versions, you're stuck with Windows Vista "Basic", which is uh, basically a very stripped down version of Vista - no Aero interface, animation or any other features that rely on strong processing power. Apparently there's been a bit of confusion over this - enough to cause one person to sue Microsoft for five million bucks. She states that computers that say "Vista Capable" should be able to run Vista - any version of Vista. Microsoft says they were clear about the whole "Vista-Capable" thing, and aren't keen on the lawsuit (surprise). Read more about it at Playfuls.com.

And You Dress Funny

If you're like the rest of us, you've got a boss. Sure, some of you work for yourself, but us regular Joe's have to put up with a supervisor or manager who we may not get along with (No, not YOU Ray... You're great. Honest!). But just as you may look at your boss and wonder how in the world he got his job, he might be looking at you wondering the same thing. Guardian.co.uk has a list of the top ten things your boss might not like about you, like disloyalty, lying and other things that tend to bug your boss.

Just The FAQ's

You may have heard that EMI plans on releasing their music on iTunes that will be free of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Copyright laws will still disallow you from sharing any of the tunes you download, but you're free to play them on any player that can play .aac files, and make all the copies you want without fear of the RIAA breathing down your neck. EMI's music videos will also be sold in this manner. The price of each song is about thirty cents more than the DRM files currently for sale at iTunes. If you want to find out more about it, read this FAQ at Yahoo.com.

Because Failure Is Funny Sometimes

Products come and go, but some leave an idelible imprint in your memory... not because of the fantastic impact they made on the world, but because they flopped so badly. ComputerWorld.com has an article that talks about fourteen products that fit this description. Not that these were all bad products. Some of them were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the Apple Newton, the first PDA to make the big-time, which failed due to its price and bad press. Read about the rest of the "flops" at ComputerWorld.com.

CMX Snippets Collection - Part I

CSS Positioning layouts are hot, and many people are trying to make the transition from the mostly reliable, but non-semantic, table-based layouts we've all used for years. CSS 2.1 provides great features for laying out pages, and the specs for CSS 3 indicate that some day the future of design on the web will be ever brighter indeed. We here at CMX try to make the learning curve as painless as possible with our many CSS tutorials and articles. Now we'd like to offer you a diagnostic tool that spares you some typing and memorizing. We are proud to introduce the CMX CSS Snippets Collection. Snippets, as you may well be aware, are bits of reusable code that paste as blocks or around selections with the click of an insert button. This article includes an extension for installing part one of the collection into the Dreamweaver Snippets panel, and a tutorial that explains the problems and solutions that the hacks correct.

Check Out This Collection of Snippets from CMX Partner Sheri German

Fun and Freebies

This Doesn't Hold Water. Oh Wait. Yes It Does.

Is your internet connection backed up? Let Google help with Google TiSP.

I'm Buzz Saw Hurricane

You can find out what your "Action name" is by going to HammerAndCoop.com or just watch some episodes featuring the worst tv action hero ever created.

This Rocks

A couple in Sweden want to name their new baby girl "Metallica", after the popular metal band by the same name. Swedish authorities, saying the name is "ugly", were not hip to allowing the child to take the name, but the court finally allowed it... only to be curtailed by the tax bureau, who have appealed to a higher court. Read more about baby Metallica at Hosted.AP.Org.

All About CSS Dropshadows - Part I

Do you like drop shadows on your page elements, but haven't a clue how to get them on your pages? Maybe you do know a bit about creating drop shadows, but a refresher on the modern methods would be welcome? Do you want to learn the very latest cutting edge tricks? If you are any of these, don't go away because we now begin a series on drop shadows for HTML elements. At the start we'll keep it simple, and as we progress in the series the methods will become more advanced and effective. At the end you will be treated to a brand new method so advanced that it must wait for IE7 to arrive before you can use it properly. Join us, won't you?

This free article by CMX Partners Holly Bergevin and John Gallant can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Introducing CMX JumpStart Detroit [FREE]

Sheri German

We are pleased to introduce our latest CMX JumpStart: Detroit. Created by Adrian "JoJo" Senior, it has all the trademarks of his designs: clean with no-fuss CSS, easy to modify, and always professional looking. This two-column, centered, fixed-width layout includes a shadowed, tapering background image on the main column that gives the effect of a raised platform for the content. Like all JumpStarts, Detroit uses valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 markup and follows WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

CMX Jumpstart: Detroit

Adrian Senior

Detroit is a two column design that uses background shadows created in the Fireworks to present the content as if it was sitting on a raised and tapering canvas.

As always their are a host of bundled tutorials that discuss each of the techniques used in great depth. I hope you enjoy Detroit and that it will become a useful addition to your design armory.

Flash PowerTools: Standalone FLV Players [FREE]

Joseph Balderson

Out there in the Flash design and development world, there are many tools available to assist in creating projects. These are "power tools" that supercharge the task of designing, coding, compiling, testing and documenting, allowing you to save time and present ideas much more effectively. Some have been around for a few years, and some are pretty new. This series highlights some of the open source tools and techniques which have made my life as a Flash developer much more effective.

Many times in the past I found myself wanting to preview an FLV video, either for pre-selection during development, or simply to watch a video I had downloaded from the net. Problem is, Flash does not come with a standalone FLV player out of the box. The solution: use a standalone FLV player. This article will cover three popular, free standalone FLV players, by Martijn Devisser, Nothing Media and Blitz Labs (Windows only).

FusionDebug 2.0 - Stepping Through a CFC

Chaz Chumley

In our last article we took a look at setting breakpoints within ColdFusion templates using FusionDebug 2.0 an interactive debugger for ColdFusion. While we paused code execution on a single page to view the variables contained within the page, I would bet that we have all built more complex applications that involve the use of ColdFusion Components (CFCs). FusionDebug 2.0 is a great tool in that we can set a breakpoint on any page, including CFCs, UDFs (User Defined Functions) and even custom tags. Knowing this we will take a look at what happens when we set a breakpoint on a query contained with a CFC and how we can view the contents of the query prior to actually outputting the results to browser.

The AS3 Event System - Part 3: Custom Dispatchers

Steve Schelter

In the third installment of the AS3 Event System series, we'll be taking the custom Stopwatch class we built in part 2 and turn it into a custom event dispatcher.

The AS3 Events System Series:
The AS3 Event System - Part 1: The Basics
The AS3 Event System - Part 2: Timer Class
The AS3 Event System - Part 3: Custom Dispatchers

Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 5

Zoe Gillenwater

In Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 4, you learned how to modify the widths of individual bands to differ from one another. This tutorial showed how you could use these techniques to mix fixed and fluid values for the various bands. One use for this is fixing the width of a navigation bar so that elements within it do not wrap to more than one line of text, either when the window is narrowed or the text size is larger than the default.

Before I go any further, let me state that many usability proponents, myself included, believe that not allowing navigation items to wrap is harming usability by forcing users to scroll to see all the navigation items, when it would serve the users better to allow them to wrap and be able to see all of them at once. Not allowing navigation items to wrap also raises the possibility that users will not notice the scrollbar and will never realize there are more items to choose from, at which point they may decide your site doesn't have what they want and leave. If you can get your client to see how this decision for the sake of design harms his or her business, and thus to allow you to make the more usable choice, that's great. However, I know it is not always possible to persuade clients to choose the best route, so I've written this tutorial on keeping navigation items from wrapping for the sake of real-world practicality.

This tutorial uses the same fluid layout built in Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 3, but the techniques used in this article can be applied to any horizontal navigation bar you want to keep from wrapping.

The Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout Series:
Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 1
Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 2
Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 3
Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 4
Create a Horizontal Band CSS Layout - Part 5

Acrobat PDF 102: PDF Ground Rules for Press, Print and Web

Bevi Chagnon

Think of a PDF as a wrapper: it holds together the text, graphics, photos, fonts and other items that make up your source document, and wraps them up into one convenient PDF file that you can send to commercial print shops for printing, or upload to your website, or send to a client for approval.

This second article in the series looks under the hood of PDFs and outlines the best practices for creating source documents and PDFs for your particular purpose—press-quality, print-quality, and web-quality PDFs.

The Acrobat PDF Series
Acrobat PDF 101: What’s a PDF and What Do I Use to Make One?
Acrobat PDF 102: PDF Ground Rules for Press, Print and Web

CMX Robot File Dreamweaver Extension

Paul Davis

The CMX Robots.txt Creator will create a robots.txt file formatted according to the standards set for this type of file and save it to your local site. Quickly create your robots.txt files with this extension and stop worrying about the syntax!

A Look at The Integration Between Fireworks and Photoshop CS3

Jim Babbage

Communication – that’s what this industry is all about. For years, Fireworks and Photoshop have been like those two brothers who never really talked to each other and wouldn’t share their knowledge either. With the release of CS3, these two applications have finally buried the proverbial hatchet and are clasping hands – if somewhat tentatively at times.

Many graphics professionals use more than a single application to create their work. Personally, I’m always moving from FW to PS, depending on my client’s needs and the goals of the project. This shuffling back and forth has become much easier with CS3. A great deal of effort was put into making Fireworks and Photoshop more compatible in this release. Here’s the list in brief:

Improvements to the Photoshop Import and Export functions within Fireworks
Hierarchical Layers panel
FW support for Photoshop Layer Effects, with the Live Filters menu.
Support for commonly used Photoshop blend modes
Bridge/XMP Data Integration

Follow along in this Sneak Peek article for more reasons to consider upgrading.

Rapid Prototyping in Fireworks CS3

Tom Green

When it comes to Fireworks CS3 Adobe is linking the application to the phrase: "Rapid Protoytyping". Here is what they are talking about.

Approximate download size: 5.7MB

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

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.

Check out the Article by CMX partner Rob Williams

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Partner Bill Horvath

How Fast Are You?

This isn't really a software tip, trick or dirty cheat, but it's handy anyway. If you really want to know whether your ISP's promises of a kazillion bajillion megabytes per megasecond is a reality, head over to SpeedTest.net. It's similar to some of the high-end bandwidth testers, but the graphics are much niftier. Besides, it told me my speed was incredible, so who am I to go anywhere else for a speed test?

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!