
Wednesday, April 12th, 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. Introducing CMX Design Elements It's 2 A.M. You promised to send a site design comp to the client by the time she opens for business tomorrow morning. For days inspiration has eluded you. And now that deadline looms. What to do, what to do? If only a sorcerer would throw a few elemental ingredients into a beaker and whip up something fantastic just for you. A little gold, a little silver, a pinch of oxygen, and poof! It emerges through the hissing mist - a mesmerizing design. Well, the sorcerer is here at CMX, and his name is Gordon Mackay. Gordon is an artist who taps a nearly bottomless well of design wizardry. He has concocted the first of our CMX Design Elements - a fully developed Fireworks design comp that you can slice and code any way you please. We are proud to present element C, CMX Design Element Carbon, an ultra-modern design with clean lines and curves. The CMX Design Element Carbon package comes with the following: * The complete design, organized into logical layers in a Fireworks source PNG * A separate color scheme layer that you can use to develop your own matching color swatches * Miscellaneous buttons and form controls that match the design's style exactly * An .STL file that will allow you to re-apply colors, fills and other styles directly from Firework's Assets panel * An article that includes documentation on how to use the design * Six bundled articles that will guide you in the use of included design techniques such as slicing and exporting, using fills and strokes, applying styles and using frames CMX Design Element Carbon article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about this exciting new CMX feature. CMX Design Element Carbon article and file download for members and those who would like to purchase Carbon now. From Our "When Geeks Get Bored" Department One look at this page from Splasho.com and you'd think that someone got invaded by rogue Firefox extensions. But Splasho says that he just wanted to find out what would happen if he installed one hundred different FF extensions all at the same time. Besides making a huge mess and making web pages virtually disappear from the screen, apparently not much happened, meaning the browser didn't blow up or anything. You can read about Splasho's extension overload on his blog. At least one of our staff members enjoyed this comment on Splasho's blog: "Not impressive. IE runs with a 100 spyware extensions everywhere." Step Away From The Computer If you own a Mac PowerBook Pro and you feel leery about leaving it alone even for a second, you may want to download iAlertU from SlappingTurtle.com. The iAlertU application can be set when you walk away from your Powerbook, and if anyone moves your computer, the effect is not unlike a car alarm being triggered. The screen will flash, an alarm will go off, and only you can make it stop - short of the would-be thief throwing the computer on the ground, but that kind of defeats the purpose. The beta of iAlertU is free, and is getting pretty good reviews. Download it at SlappingTurtle.com. If This is Thursday, It Must Be Update Time Head over to Windows Update soon if you haven't done so recently, and download the very big, but very necessary update they've made available. This udpate fixes flaws in Internet Explorer, FrontPage, SharePoint and Outlook Express. The update can help prevent your system from being taken over by hackers. More information on the patch is available at Sci-Tech-Today.com.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "I just want to let you know that I LOVE this series! It makes me feel like I'm really learning something very valuable about semantic markup. I've been wanting to learn more about this, but it's very complex if you go on the W3C site and just try to start reading. Your articles are so explicative. I even changed one of the tables on a client's site to be semantically appropriate for screen readers with the th scope="col" and the td scope="row". I have 8 articles in this series. Are there anymore? I don't want to miss one of them!" CMX Subscriber PJ, commenting on Zoe Gillenwater's tutorial "Semantic (X)HTML Markup: Using Tables Appropriately" 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: "Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it." — Steve Jobs But What If You're Selling Your Phone? PayPal, always eager to help people spend their money, as well as receive it from others, just made it easier to pay folks - right through their cell phone. You can text message or use an 800 number to send money to any other cell phone number. As long that phone number is attached to a PayPal account, the transaction will take place. PayPal.com has more information on this... of course. This Guy Is NOT Your Pal A new PayPal scam is making the rounds. By now, most of you have received an email purportedly from PayPal, asking you to log in to your account because something dire needs your attention. Of course the link provided in the email does not take you to PayPal, but rather, a website set up by an antagonistic third party who are eagerly anticipating your login details. The newest scam is an email that tells you that you're the winning bidder on a set of speakers. In order to refute it, you have to click on what looks like a PayPal link in the email. Feel safe to delete it. More on this at NewsFactor.com. No One Ever Said Bootcamp Was Easy If you're thinking of installing Apple's BootCamp software to be able to boot into Windows on your Mac, keep in mind that it is beta software. That being the case, there are liable to be bugs. As is the case with some people, these bugs can cause damage to your computer. When you come across a thread on Apple's disccusion groups with the subject heading "boot camp hosed my os x partition", you take notice. In that thread, about a dozen users are saying that while XP installed just fine, they could not boot into their Mac partition after leaving the XP partition. If you've installed Bootcamp and are having issues, you might want to check out the thread at Apple.com. Wear Your Tinfoil Hat While Reading This Do violent video games make you paranoid? In a recent study, researchers concluded that folks who played violent video games were more apt to be paranoid than those who did not play video games, or who played non-violent games. The study also indicated that those who play violent video games are more prone to accepting bad behavior as being alright, like smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol. Read up more about it at ABC.net. Then get drunk and go give these researchers a piece of your mind. But watch out for the bug they'll plant in your brain. Oh- and if you love violent video games, and don't want to feel bad about it, read this article at Wired.com, where Clive Thompson rejoices in the gore of video games. ...Take The Internet... Please. A new approach to offline browsing has shown up on the scene in the form of Webaroo. With Webaroo, you can download a kazillion (give or a take a kazill) super-compressed web pages and associated images and then do searches on that content when you're offline. When you go online again, any of the content you've downloaded is updated for you. Check out PCMag.com or Webaroo.com to learn more.
CMX AJAX Loader Extension The CMX AJAX Loader behavior allows you to dynamically load new XHTML/XML from your web server and insert it into any element on the current page without requiring the user to perform a full refresh. By eliminating full page refreshes you can improve both the performance of your site and the end user's experience. Now you can start enjoying the benefits of AJAX technology without having to worry about the complicated scripting that makes it work! Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Rob Williams
Fun and Freebies Ohhhh... Independent Films. We Thought They Were All Indiana Jones Movies... Madville.com has a list of what they consider to be the greatest fifty Indie films in existence. Some are questionable, but others are worthy of being on the list. Of course, any list with Evil Dead and THX-1138 can't be all bad. Haven't Posted a StrongBad Link in a While StrongBad is celebrating his 150th email in fashion: By visiting not one, but several alternate universes. While away some time at HomeStarRunner.com. You Too Can Be MacGyver At least you'll be on your way once you learn how to make a flashlight out of a Tic Tac box, a stong LED light and a couple of batteries. Freshen up and see the light at Grynx.com.
Flash Video Deployment: A Case Study with TEACHnow.org, Part 1: Video Requirements Since the release of Flash Player 8, a lot of buzz has been generating about the new and improved quality of Flash Video, thanks to the On2 VP6 codec that is part of the Flash Player 8 plug-in. In Part 1 of this series, the process of deploying a 35-minute documentary with Flash Video is examined. This free article by CMX Partner Robert Reinhardt can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Precisely Positioning div Tags in Your Page From Design View [FREE] Adrian Senior Not everybody likes working in code view, indeed I would guess that many folks purchase Dreamweaver just so they don't have to work in code view. In this article we will look at how you can insert div tags into your code, precisely. We will do this from Dreamweaver's design view by making good use of the insert div tag function that can be found on the insert bar. JavaScript 101 - Part 1: The Basics [FREE] Rob Williams One of the primary aspects of effective web experiences is interactivity. Although most Flash developers will try to state otherwise, the reality of the fact is that the majority of non-standard interactivity, that is interactivity beyond what the broswer provides automatically, is driven by JavaScript. Over the last few years the acceptance of both standards and some new JavaScript technologies such as XMLHttpRequest, or AJAX to the masses, has opened up a whole new realm of possibilites that have helped to bring JavaScript back into the mainstream focus as an important and leading-edge technology. The purpose of this series of articles is to introduce newcomers to the concepts and fundamentals of JavaScript, so that you can begin to leverage the power of this technology in your own web projects. Showing the Loading Progress of a Video Tom Green Loading progress and visual clues that a video is actually playing are the focus of this article. Approximate download size: 14.8MB CMX MapLink v1.0 - Server Behavior Joel Martinez The CMX MapLink Server Behavior creates a link to Google Maps. You can use static values, or dynamic values from the data sources palette. The behavior creates a link around a selection (text, image, etc...) The only parameters are: Address, City, State, Zip. US Addresses only (sorry international users). ASP Server Behavior Only Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 2 Arman Danesh In this second article on working with ID3 tags in MP3 files from within ColdFusion, you will learn how to set and update the values stored in ID3 tags. This article is an update of an earlier article which used the jd3lib library which has changed considerably and no longer retains its original functionality. This article replaces the jd3lib with jid3lib. The Updated Manipulating ID3 Tags Series: Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 1 Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 2 Protecting Sections of a Control Panel by Using Access Levels Adrian Senior When building administration areas it is often necessary to create multi-level access to the control panel. Often users are re-directed to a page that matches their particular administration rights. In this tutorial we will look at how we can streamline this process by setting the administration level and implementing the required logic directly in the Application.cfm template. Once this is in place you can then show and hide sections of the control panel to specific users. Retouching Tools in Photoshop CS2 [FREE] Jim Babbage It's pretty much an undisputed fact that Photoshop is the king of bitmap editing tools — especially for high resolution, print-destined images. Photoshop CS2 has some very cool and useful tools and features that can help you fix or clean up almost any image that is supplied to you. In this article (Part 1) we will look at several tools — some of which you will recognize if you are a veteran Fireworks user — and some which you will probably say, "Holy Moly! this is cool!" Not every image requires that you use all the tools available. The tools we'll focus on are the Spot Healing Brush (new for CS2), the Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, Patch, Dodge and Burn tools. Approximate download size: 1.8MB Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 1 Arman Danesh This is the first of two articles on manipulating ID3 tags from within ColdFusion. ID3 tags provide meta information about MP3 and other music files. This article outlines how to install the necessary Java classes and then outlines the basics of reading ID3 tags. This article is a revision of an earlier Community MX article. That article used an older version of jd3lib, a Java library for manipulating MP3 files. However, that original version has been discontinued and cannot be downloaded and the new Alpha version has seriously limited functionality which makes it hard to use for the purposes of this article. This update is rewritten to use a newer, more robust Java library. The Updated Manipulating ID3 Tags Series: Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 1 Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 2 Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 2 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. In Part 1, you learned how to structure the XHTML and CSS to create such a list, featuring 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. In this tutorial, you will learn how to restructure the XHTML in a way that offers even more styling possibilities, such as boxing in each item with background colors and borders. Once again, the resulting list is flexible, accessible, and built with a minimum of markup and 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 Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 3 Coming Soon Importing Tabular Data Into Dreamweaver Adrian Senior In this article we will look at how we can import tabular data from an external source file such as a csv file and lay it out in Dreamweaver's design view. We will achieve this by using the Tabular Data option from the Layout tab of the Insert bar.
Text On a Path in Fireworks 8 The release of Fireworks 8 brought with it many enhancements from both creative and production perspectives. This article focuses on one of the old FW features that was revamped for Fireworks 8 — editing text on a path. Adding text to a path breaks you out of the rigid formality of text blocks and gives you the freedom to make the text fit into your design in an almost organic fashion. In the old days, changing the shape of a path that was attached to text was a multiple step process, and not a very intuitive one. In order to edit the path, you had to detach the text, change the path and then re-attach the text. Very much a trial and error process. In FW 8, it's just as easy to edit the path shape as it is to add text to a path. This makes it easier — and more fun — to create what you want. Control like this has been asked for many times in Fireworks, I'm happy to say it's finally arrived. Check out the Article by CMX Partner Jim Babbage
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Associate John Gallant Find Your Way Through The Div Tags When working on complex CSS pages with lots of DIV elements, it's all too easy to get confused. DIV opening tags are usually supplied with classes or id's, so telling them apart by eye is easy, but DIV closing tags all look alike. It's very common for coders to accidentally lose a DIV closing tag, or somehow end up with one too many. This problem can drastically alter how the layout is rendered, and non-experts may have real difficulty finding the cause. Avoid this fate by always inserting identifying comments alongside each DIV closing tag. That way it becomes obvious when tag pairs don't add up. 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.

Introducing CMX Design Elements

It's 2 A.M. You promised to send a site design comp to the client by the time she opens for business tomorrow morning. For days inspiration has eluded you. And now that deadline looms. What to do, what to do? If only a sorcerer would throw a few elemental ingredients into a beaker and whip up something fantastic just for you. A little gold, a little silver, a pinch of oxygen, and poof! It emerges through the hissing mist - a mesmerizing design.

Well, the sorcerer is here at CMX, and his name is Gordon Mackay. Gordon is an artist who taps a nearly bottomless well of design wizardry. He has concocted the first of our CMX Design Elements - a fully developed Fireworks design comp that you can slice and code any way you please. We are proud to present element C, CMX Design Element Carbon, an ultra-modern design with clean lines and curves.

The CMX Design Element Carbon package comes with the following:

* The complete design, organized into logical layers in a Fireworks source PNG
* A separate color scheme layer that you can use to develop your own matching color swatches
* Miscellaneous buttons and form controls that match the design's style exactly
* An .STL file that will allow you to re-apply colors, fills and other styles directly from Firework's Assets panel
* An article that includes documentation on how to use the design
* Six bundled articles that will guide you in the use of included design techniques such as slicing and exporting, using fills and strokes, applying styles and using frames

CMX Design Element Carbon article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about this exciting new CMX feature.

CMX Design Element Carbon article and file download for members and those who would like to purchase Carbon now.

From Our "When Geeks Get Bored" Department

One look at this page from Splasho.com and you'd think that someone got invaded by rogue Firefox extensions. But Splasho says that he just wanted to find out what would happen if he installed one hundred different FF extensions all at the same time. Besides making a huge mess and making web pages virtually disappear from the screen, apparently not much happened, meaning the browser didn't blow up or anything. You can read about Splasho's extension overload on his blog. At least one of our staff members enjoyed this comment on Splasho's blog: "Not impressive. IE runs with a 100 spyware extensions everywhere."

Step Away From The Computer

If you own a Mac PowerBook Pro and you feel leery about leaving it alone even for a second, you may want to download iAlertU from SlappingTurtle.com. The iAlertU application can be set when you walk away from your Powerbook, and if anyone moves your computer, the effect is not unlike a car alarm being triggered. The screen will flash, an alarm will go off, and only you can make it stop - short of the would-be thief throwing the computer on the ground, but that kind of defeats the purpose. The beta of iAlertU is free, and is getting pretty good reviews. Download it at SlappingTurtle.com.

If This is Thursday, It Must Be Update Time

Head over to Windows Update soon if you haven't done so recently, and download the very big, but very necessary update they've made available. This udpate fixes flaws in Internet Explorer, FrontPage, SharePoint and Outlook Express. The update can help prevent your system from being taken over by hackers. More information on the patch is available at Sci-Tech-Today.com.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"I just want to let you know that I LOVE this series! It makes me feel like I'm really learning something very valuable about semantic markup. I've been wanting to learn more about this, but it's very complex if you go on the W3C site and just try to start reading. Your articles are so explicative. I even changed one of the tables on a client's site to be semantically appropriate for screen readers with the th scope="col" and the td scope="row".

I have 8 articles in this series. Are there anymore? I don't want to miss one of them!"

CMX Subscriber PJ, commenting on Zoe Gillenwater's tutorial "Semantic (X)HTML Markup: Using Tables Appropriately"

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:

"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it." — Steve Jobs

But What If You're Selling Your Phone?

PayPal, always eager to help people spend their money, as well as receive it from others, just made it easier to pay folks - right through their cell phone. You can text message or use an 800 number to send money to any other cell phone number. As long that phone number is attached to a PayPal account, the transaction will take place. PayPal.com has more information on this... of course.

This Guy Is NOT Your Pal

A new PayPal scam is making the rounds. By now, most of you have received an email purportedly from PayPal, asking you to log in to your account because something dire needs your attention. Of course the link provided in the email does not take you to PayPal, but rather, a website set up by an antagonistic third party who are eagerly anticipating your login details. The newest scam is an email that tells you that you're the winning bidder on a set of speakers. In order to refute it, you have to click on what looks like a PayPal link in the email. Feel safe to delete it. More on this at NewsFactor.com.

No One Ever Said Bootcamp Was Easy

If you're thinking of installing Apple's BootCamp software to be able to boot into Windows on your Mac, keep in mind that it is beta software. That being the case, there are liable to be bugs. As is the case with some people, these bugs can cause damage to your computer. When you come across a thread on Apple's disccusion groups with the subject heading "boot camp hosed my os x partition", you take notice. In that thread, about a dozen users are saying that while XP installed just fine, they could not boot into their Mac partition after leaving the XP partition. If you've installed Bootcamp and are having issues, you might want to check out the thread at Apple.com.

Wear Your Tinfoil Hat While Reading This

Do violent video games make you paranoid? In a recent study, researchers concluded that folks who played violent video games were more apt to be paranoid than those who did not play video games, or who played non-violent games. The study also indicated that those who play violent video games are more prone to accepting bad behavior as being alright, like smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol. Read up more about it at ABC.net. Then get drunk and go give these researchers a piece of your mind. But watch out for the bug they'll plant in your brain. Oh- and if you love violent video games, and don't want to feel bad about it, read this article at Wired.com, where Clive Thompson rejoices in the gore of video games.

...Take The Internet... Please.

A new approach to offline browsing has shown up on the scene in the form of Webaroo. With Webaroo, you can download a kazillion (give or a take a kazill) super-compressed web pages and associated images and then do searches on that content when you're offline. When you go online again, any of the content you've downloaded is updated for you. Check out PCMag.com or Webaroo.com to learn more.

CMX AJAX Loader Extension

The CMX AJAX Loader behavior allows you to dynamically load new XHTML/XML from your web server and insert it into any element on the current page without requiring the user to perform a full refresh. By eliminating full page refreshes you can improve both the performance of your site and the end user's experience. Now you can start enjoying the benefits of AJAX technology without having to worry about the complicated scripting that makes it work!

Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Rob Williams

Fun and Freebies

Ohhhh... Independent Films. We Thought They Were All Indiana Jones Movies...

Madville.com has a list of what they consider to be the greatest fifty Indie films in existence. Some are questionable, but others are worthy of being on the list. Of course, any list with Evil Dead and THX-1138 can't be all bad.

Haven't Posted a StrongBad Link in a While

StrongBad is celebrating his 150th email in fashion: By visiting not one, but several alternate universes. While away some time at HomeStarRunner.com.

You Too Can Be MacGyver

At least you'll be on your way once you learn how to make a flashlight out of a Tic Tac box, a stong LED light and a couple of batteries. Freshen up and see the light at Grynx.com.

Flash Video Deployment: A Case Study with TEACHnow.org, Part 1: Video Requirements

Since the release of Flash Player 8, a lot of buzz has been generating about the new and improved quality of Flash Video, thanks to the On2 VP6 codec that is part of the Flash Player 8 plug-in. In Part 1 of this series, the process of deploying a 35-minute documentary with Flash Video is examined.

This free article by CMX Partner Robert Reinhardt can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Precisely Positioning div Tags in Your Page From Design View [FREE]

Adrian Senior

Not everybody likes working in code view, indeed I would guess that many folks purchase Dreamweaver just so they don't have to work in code view.

In this article we will look at how you can insert div tags into your code, precisely. We will do this from Dreamweaver's design view by making good use of the insert div tag function that can be found on the insert bar.

JavaScript 101 - Part 1: The Basics [FREE]

Rob Williams

One of the primary aspects of effective web experiences is interactivity. Although most Flash developers will try to state otherwise, the reality of the fact is that the majority of non-standard interactivity, that is interactivity beyond what the broswer provides automatically, is driven by JavaScript. Over the last few years the acceptance of both standards and some new JavaScript technologies such as XMLHttpRequest, or AJAX to the masses, has opened up a whole new realm of possibilites that have helped to bring JavaScript back into the mainstream focus as an important and leading-edge technology.

The purpose of this series of articles is to introduce newcomers to the concepts and fundamentals of JavaScript, so that you can begin to leverage the power of this technology in your own web projects.

Showing the Loading Progress of a Video

Tom Green

Loading progress and visual clues that a video is actually playing are the focus of this article.

Approximate download size: 14.8MB

CMX MapLink v1.0 - Server Behavior

Joel Martinez

The CMX MapLink Server Behavior creates a link to Google Maps. You can use static values, or dynamic values from the data sources palette. The behavior creates a link around a selection (text, image, etc...)

The only parameters are: Address, City, State, Zip. US Addresses only (sorry international users).

ASP Server Behavior Only

Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 2

Arman Danesh

In this second article on working with ID3 tags in MP3 files from within ColdFusion, you will learn how to set and update the values stored in ID3 tags.

This article is an update of an earlier article which used the jd3lib library which has changed considerably and no longer retains its original functionality. This article replaces the jd3lib with jid3lib.

The Updated Manipulating ID3 Tags Series:
Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 1
Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 2

Protecting Sections of a Control Panel by Using Access Levels

Adrian Senior

When building administration areas it is often necessary to create multi-level access to the control panel. Often users are re-directed to a page that matches their particular administration rights.

In this tutorial we will look at how we can streamline this process by setting the administration level and implementing the required logic directly in the Application.cfm template. Once this is in place you can then show and hide sections of the control panel to specific users.

Retouching Tools in Photoshop CS2 [FREE]

Jim Babbage

It's pretty much an undisputed fact that Photoshop is the king of bitmap editing tools — especially for high resolution, print-destined images. Photoshop CS2 has some very cool and useful tools and features that can help you fix or clean up almost any image that is supplied to you. In this article (Part 1) we will look at several tools — some of which you will recognize if you are a veteran Fireworks user — and some which you will probably say, "Holy Moly! this is cool!"

Not every image requires that you use all the tools available. The tools we'll focus on are the Spot Healing Brush (new for CS2), the Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, Patch, Dodge and Burn tools.

Approximate download size: 1.8MB

Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 1

Arman Danesh

This is the first of two articles on manipulating ID3 tags from within ColdFusion. ID3 tags provide meta information about MP3 and other music files. This article outlines how to install the necessary Java classes and then outlines the basics of reading ID3 tags.

This article is a revision of an earlier Community MX article. That article used an older version of jd3lib, a Java library for manipulating MP3 files. However, that original version has been discontinued and cannot be downloaded and the new Alpha version has seriously limited functionality which makes it hard to use for the purposes of this article. This update is rewritten to use a newer, more robust Java library.

The Updated Manipulating ID3 Tags Series:
Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 1
Manipulating ID3 Tags - The Updated Version: Part 2

Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 2

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.

In Part 1, you learned how to structure the XHTML and CSS to create such a list, featuring 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. In this tutorial, you will learn how to restructure the XHTML in a way that offers even more styling possibilities, such as boxing in each item with background colors and borders. Once again, the resulting list is flexible, accessible, and built with a minimum of markup and 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
Create a Teaser Thumbnail List Using CSS: Part 3 Coming Soon

Importing Tabular Data Into Dreamweaver

Adrian Senior

In this article we will look at how we can import tabular data from an external source file such as a csv file and lay it out in Dreamweaver's design view. We will achieve this by using the Tabular Data option from the Layout tab of the Insert bar.

Text On a Path in Fireworks 8

The release of Fireworks 8 brought with it many enhancements from both creative and production perspectives. This article focuses on one of the old FW features that was revamped for Fireworks 8 — editing text on a path. Adding text to a path breaks you out of the rigid formality of text blocks and gives you the freedom to make the text fit into your design in an almost organic fashion. In the old days, changing the shape of a path that was attached to text was a multiple step process, and not a very intuitive one. In order to edit the path, you had to detach the text, change the path and then re-attach the text. Very much a trial and error process. In FW 8, it's just as easy to edit the path shape as it is to add text to a path. This makes it easier — and more fun — to create what you want. Control like this has been asked for many times in Fireworks, I'm happy to say it's finally arrived.

Check out the Article by CMX Partner Jim Babbage

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Associate John Gallant

Find Your Way Through The Div Tags

When working on complex CSS pages with lots of DIV elements, it's all too easy to get confused. DIV opening tags are usually supplied with classes or id's, so telling them apart by eye is easy, but DIV closing tags all look alike. It's very common for coders to accidentally lose a DIV closing tag, or somehow end up with one too many.

This problem can drastically alter how the layout is rendered, and non-experts may have real difficulty finding the cause. Avoid this fate by always inserting identifying comments alongside each DIV closing tag. That way it becomes obvious when tag pairs don't add up.

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!