
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Still Not Too Late To Sign Up For TODCon! TODCon is an annual event known for its informal, personal feel and for the tremendous amount of information and camaraderie one can find there. If you've ever bought a book on an Adobe or Macromedia product, chances are you'll meet the author of the book at TODCon. Glance over the list of speakers and you'll likely see some familiar names from the Adobe community. There are a huge number of learning tracks available to attendees, and the personal way in which you interact with the instructors is unmatched at events such as this. People who attend TODCon usually come back year after year when they see how unique it really is, and it's great watching everyone evolve together. You're invited to register for this fantastic, one of a kind event. Adobe Not Abandoning ColdFusion Far from it, actually. ColdFusion 8, code-named Scorpio, is now available as a public release candidate from Adobe Labs. It looks like ColdFusion developers are going to have a lot to be happy about, what with all of the new features built into this release. Some definite selling points here, like tighter AJAX integration, an "auto suggest" function built into input fields, being able to invoke .NET assemblies, compatibility with OS X, and a huge gaggle of new CF tags and functions. You can check out most of the new features at the Das Webmart blog. ColdFusion has always been a fantastic scripting tool, but version 8 looks like it's going to insure that ColdFusion sticks around for a good while longer. Bill Gates Scratches The Surface. And Yes, We're The First To Use That Headline. Microsoft Surface is not something you'll be able to use any time soon, but the technology exists in Redmond right now. It's fascinating stuff, and basically goes like this: Instead of using a mouse to perform tasks on your computer, you put your hand on the computer screen to move things around and open documents, or even enlarge a photo using your fingers. You can put your digital camera directly on the screen and your photos will show up on the screen immediately. Want to write a letter in your own handwriting? No problem. It's pretty amazing when you think about what a computer was capable of just a short time ago. Check out this video at Gizmodo.com of Bill Gates demonstrating Surface, then read more about it at Microsoft.com. Hey wait... are they using Flash instead of Silverlight in that demo? So THAT Was The Guy! Robert Alan Soloway, said to be one of the most prolific spammers ever, was arrested this past week for cramming our email boxes with junk. Sorry... "allegedly" cramming our email boxes with junk. We hope he gets an "alleged" life sentence. Soloway was such a huge source of spam that some sources report that we might actually see a decrease in spam since he's out of commission. We have SpamHaus.org to thank for the Federal investigation into Soloway's practices. Read up on this at Yahoo.com. Finally, I Can Stop Asking People If They Want Fries With That Order I've recently been taking the necessary steps to start freelancing. You know, actually quitting the day job and striking out on my own. Working for myself. All that stuff. There are a lot of things to consider when taking that big step: Insurance, steady cash flow, time management, and bunches of other things that almost make me want to just stay in my day job. Almost. I found a few resources that helped me formulate a plan, and they might help you too. Some are more inspirational than plan-driven, but all of them are designed to get you out of your day job and into working for yourself: How to kiss corporate life goodbye Work.com - Plenty of handy advice for your business From cubile to couch Steps To Becoming Gainfully Unemployed How do you know when it's time to quit your job? And of course, you'll have to read our own Derrick Ypenburg's article: Rule #1 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Don't be Everything to Everybody
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "I just wanted to thank you for an excellent article this along with this adobe technote on connecting to MySQL got me set up on IIS7 on my new Vista box so that I can now run CF, PHP and ASP all on their own seperate websites, heaven !" - David B., CMX Subscriber, commenting on Heidi Bautista's free article, Getting ColdFusion MX 7.0.2 Running on Vista and IIS7 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: "I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: Try to please everybody all the time." - Herbert B. Swope Good Going, Genius My friends and I used to put each other down by calling each other "genius." Turns out it's actually a compliment. Who'd a thought it? One kind of genius is the Apple Genius, and he or she hangs out at the Apple store, waiting to answer your questions. MacLife.com tries to get into the collective Apple Genius brain by talking to two resident geniuses. These geniuses offer advice, as well as talk about some of the "certifiably loony people" they get to meet on a day to day basis. Microsoft and Novell Play Nice Together Users of OpenOffice will be pleased to know that it will soon be compatible with Microsoft's Office 2007 software. Microsoft's newest version of Office uses an Open XML file format that is not compatible with the current version of OpenOffice, but Microsoft has been working with Novell as part of the Linux interoperability pact to get Office 2007 files to work in Linux. As this article at PCWorld.com mentions though, it will be up to the open source community to help integrate the Open XML code into OpenOffice. If They Can Play Nice, Anyone Can Steve Jobs and Bill Gates took the stage together this week at the D5 Conference. Predictably, good-natured jabs were thrown by both sides, but the majority of their conversation consisted of remembering how "it all" started and where it's going. AllThingsD.com has a transcript of the discussion, with video to follow. Become a Productive Member Of Society We're suckers for freeware. We will absolutely pay top dollar for software when we need the support and features that come with pricier software, but some freeware is just downright handy and can even make you more productive. Check out LifeHack.org for a list of twenty freeware applications that can speed up your time on the computer. Roll Your Own Firefox Extensions Have you ever been using Firefox and thought "Shoot, it's good, but it would be so much better if I had a Firefox extension that would..." Yeah, we've done that. We typically see something shiny and forget about it, but you may actually want to pursue making that extension. Wanna know how? LifeHacker.com has an article that will show you. While you're using Firefox, you may as well know how to optimize it too. You can find out how to play in the about:config playground at ComputerWorld.com.
CMX Expiration Dates The CMX Expiration Dates extension allows you to set dates for files you work with that expire. If a page is beyond its expiration date, when you next start Dreamweaver this extension will let you know that you have a file to be edited. This functionality can be useful when you need to update a page (or set of pages) on an occasional basis, or even on an ongoing basis. For example, you may manage the company's knowledge management system, and you want to make sure that your content contributors are alerted when their content needs to be checked for "freshness" to ensure that the information contained on the pages they cover does not go stale, then the Expiration Date extension can help you acheive your goals. Or if your home page should be updated on Mondays to reflect the next set of featured products that arrived just this weekend, then you can set the expiration date for the home page for the upcoming Monday; then when you start Dreamweaver up on Monday morning, Dreamweaver will alert you to the fact that you need to update a file (in this case the home page). You can then edit that file, publish it. If desired, you can then set the expiration date for the file for the following Monday, to lather, rinse and repeat the cycle of updates as necessary. Take a look at this Extension by CMX Partner Danilo Celic
Fun and Freebies! Ah, Robot. Vanity Is Thy Name. There are plenty of stories where a robot wants to become human, but this short student film by Andrew Huang tells the story succinctly and beautifully at GoFish.com. Biggest Online Music Store Yet PayPlay.fm has a collection of over one million songs for sale on their website. The only thing is you probably haven't heard of most of them, as PayPlay mostly sells music from Independent artists. However, you can search for bands you like, and PayPlay will suggest Independent artists that you might like to try out. It's cheaper than most online music stores, and worth it for those with an open musical pallette. Haven't You Always Wanted To Be a Hero? Verizon has a new online campaign that lets you put yourself in a hero's shoes. Fun, and only slightly disturbing... especially if you use your Aunt Mildred's picture instead of your own.
Warping Video in a Flash Sometimes video needs to be such an odd shape that using a simple mask in Flash just won't solve the issue. In this video tutorial, I show you how to use the bezier Warp tool in After efects 7 to create a video that wraps around a shape. Then I show you how to output the video in After Effects and use that video in Flash. This free article by CMX Partner Tom Green can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Dynamic Navigation Page Marking Adrian Senior In this article we look at how we can deploy page marking in a dynamic navigation menu by using values returned from a query and matching them to a url variable in order to change the state of a tab with CSS. Bubble, Bubble—No Toil, No Trouble Knut Kubenz If you're at all a Shakespeare fan, you'll recognize the title of this tutorial as a take off from Macbeth, when the witches are stirring up a caldron "—Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble". At any rate, in this tutorial I wanted to demonstrate a very quick and easy way to create realistic looking bubbles without any existing imagery. Along the way you'll pick up some new skills as well as apply some obscure filters which exist in Photoshop. I recently was given a project where the client wanted a few bubbles as a background to a product. When the client started talking about wanting this bubble here and this other bubble there, I became a bit leery and uncomfortable; bubbles are pretty well free spirits, real ones I mean. So we opted for ones Photoshop could provide. Rule #1 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Don't be Everything to Everybody [FREE] Derrick Ypenburg Are you struggling with your personal business in the new age of Web 2.0? Well you're not alone. I've come to a crossroads where I need to re-evaluate what I'm doing, and what I need to change/do to keep up in these busy times. To help me with the growing pains, I will be writing each part of this series as a new rule for me to follow. I hope these rules help you as well in your new media business. The Rules for Busy Freelancers Series: Rule #1 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Don't Be Everything to Everybody Rule #2 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Be Honest with Your Scheduling Coming Soon Rule #3 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Manage Your Client as Well as the Project Coming Soon Flash CS3: What Happened to the Syntax Checker? David Stiller In Flash 8, and even earlier, the Check syntax button of the Actions panel was a little friendlier than it is today. Even in Flash CS3 Professional, if you set the document's publish settings to ActionScript 2.0 (File > Publish Settings, Flash tab), you can get a taste of the "good old days" — but ActionScript 3.0 documents represent a new era, where all is not as it seems; an era that many of you may feel is frustrating. This issue presented in this article affects Flash documents (FLAs) when their publish settings are configured for ActionScript 3.0 and stand-alone classes (AS text files) when edited in the Script window (a full-screen version of the Actions panel that temporarily locks out access to other panels). The following tutorial is slightly modified from an excerpt of the "ActionScript Basics" chapter in Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers, by Tom Green and David Stiller, to be published summer 2007 by friends of ED. Data Binding in Flex 2 - Part 2: Binding in AS3 Steve Schelter Data binding is a central part of the Flex 2 framework, and there are many techniques for implementing it into your application. This lesson will cover the AS 3.0 side of data binding. The Data Binding in Flex 2 Series: Data Binding in Flex 2 - Part 1: Overview Data Binding in Flex 2 - Part 2: Binding in AS3 Making Positioned Elements Obey the Flow - Part One [FREE] John Gallant, Holly Bergevin This series will cover the use of 'auto-positioning' (such as {left: auto;}) and the flow to control the placement of absolute and fixed positioned elements. It's a CSS topic that &nbaffords advanced functionality for your layouts. Take a chance and join us! It is strongly recommended that before reading this article that you read, or have read, Absolute Positioning and the Top Property Happy Memorial Day! Community MX wishes to thank the brave men and women of the Armed Forces, and remember those who have lost their lives defending liberty. Have a safe and happy Memorial Day! Flowing and Positioning: Two Page Models -Revised for IE7 John Gallant, Holly Bergevin In seeking to broaden your web design horizons beyond the use of tables for laying out pages, you may have come across terms such as 'Normal flow' and 'CSS Positioning.' However, you may be slightly hazy concerning what these terms actually mean. If so, it's time to learn some basics on the ways web pages are visually constructed on the screen by current browsers. In this article we'll look at 'the flow' of a web page, and briefly cover each of four position property values, static, absolute, relative and fixed. We'll also talk about some of the bugs you may encounter. When we're done, you should have a much better grasp on the topic at hand. This article is an update (May 2007) to the original article, with special attention paid to the IE7 browser. Working with the Camera Class - Part 8: Recording a Stream Robert Reinhardt In this "Working with" series, you learn how to use the Camera class in Flash Player. The Camera class has been available in Flash Player since version 6, yet many Flash designers and developers don't know much about it. The Camera class gives you access to the user's webcam, to do everything from publishing a live video stream to detecting movement in the camera frame. In this tutorial, you learn how to record a live publisher stream directly to a Flash Media Server application. NOTE: In order to follow along with the tutorials in this series, you should have a webcam and microphone compatible with Flash Player 6 and higher. Just about any webcam and microphone works with the Flash Player. SPECIAL OFFER: The first twenty readers of this tutorial series to send me an e-mail via the feedback link on this tutorial will receive a free time-limited Flash Media Server account at Influxis. You can use this account to publish live video streams. Please allow one to three days for me to verify your subscriber (or pay per use) status with Community MX. (There are still accounts available as of May 24th, 2007!) The Working With the Camera Class Series: Working with the Camera Class - Part 1: Viewing Live Output Working with the Camera Class - Part 2: Detecting Motion Working with the Camera Class - Part 3: Publishing a Live Stream Working with the Camera Class - Part 4: Subscribing to a Live Stream Working with the Camera Class - Part 5: Adding Audio to a Live Stream Working with the Camera Class - Part 6: Controlling Image Quality and Bandwidth Usage Working with the Camera Class - Part 7: Controlling Audio Quality Working with the Camera Class - Part 8: Recording a Stream On Page WYSIWYG Editing! Paul Davis Add this WYSIWYG editor and some JavaScript to your page and create a unique content management system that switches to edit content on your live web pages! Only supports Internet Explorer for Windows and Firefox for Windows and Macintosh.
The Art of Encoding Flash Video: About the FLV Format The process of encoding quality streaming video for Flash (or for any video streaming playback delivery for that matter) is the most important process in creating video streaming applications. Any slick-looking video player that you build will only be as good as the quality of the video streaming through it. This article provides a comprehensive overview of FLV encoding by the encoding software. Understanding this article will help you create higher quality FLV files when it comes to applying settings in an encoder and creating video for encoding. Check out the Article by CMX Partner Derrick Ypenburg
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Chris Flick, Community MX Partner Tame Your PDF My boss just asked me to see if I could do anything to reduce a 70 page User manual PDF for his new digital camera with a couple pages of photos of the camera. It was 2.3MB. This is what I did on my Mac (Color Synch is a Mac-only utility, I believe): 1) Opened the PDF . 2) Opened the Print dialogue box. 3) Added Apple's ColorSync Utility to the PDF button. 4) Chose the Color Synch utility 5) After the Color Synch box came up and processed the PDF, I chose "Export" in Color Synch's dialogue box. 6) In the Quartz Filter drop down section, I chose "Reduce File Size", renamed my PDF and then hit "Save". I was able to knock 1 MB off of the overall file size. I know there are commercial programs that will compress PDFs but if you're in a bind and need something fast, this might work. BUT... This doesn't ALWAYS work. Depending on the original PDF, Color Synch can sometimes end up actually bloating a PDF. 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!

Still Not Too Late To Sign Up For TODCon!

TODCon is an annual event known for its informal, personal feel and for the tremendous amount of information and camaraderie one can find there. If you've ever bought a book on an Adobe or Macromedia product, chances are you'll meet the author of the book at TODCon. Glance over the list of speakers and you'll likely see some familiar names from the Adobe community. There are a huge number of learning tracks available to attendees, and the personal way in which you interact with the instructors is unmatched at events such as this. People who attend TODCon usually come back year after year when they see how unique it really is, and it's great watching everyone evolve together.

You're invited to register for this fantastic, one of a kind event.

Adobe Not Abandoning ColdFusion

Far from it, actually. ColdFusion 8, code-named Scorpio, is now available as a public release candidate from Adobe Labs. It looks like ColdFusion developers are going to have a lot to be happy about, what with all of the new features built into this release. Some definite selling points here, like tighter AJAX integration, an "auto suggest" function built into input fields, being able to invoke .NET assemblies, compatibility with OS X, and a huge gaggle of new CF tags and functions. You can check out most of the new features at the Das Webmart blog. ColdFusion has always been a fantastic scripting tool, but version 8 looks like it's going to insure that ColdFusion sticks around for a good while longer.

Bill Gates Scratches The Surface. And Yes, We're The First To Use That Headline.

Microsoft Surface is not something you'll be able to use any time soon, but the technology exists in Redmond right now. It's fascinating stuff, and basically goes like this: Instead of using a mouse to perform tasks on your computer, you put your hand on the computer screen to move things around and open documents, or even enlarge a photo using your fingers. You can put your digital camera directly on the screen and your photos will show up on the screen immediately. Want to write a letter in your own handwriting? No problem. It's pretty amazing when you think about what a computer was capable of just a short time ago. Check out this video at Gizmodo.com of Bill Gates demonstrating Surface, then read more about it at Microsoft.com. Hey wait... are they using Flash instead of Silverlight in that demo?

So THAT Was The Guy!

Robert Alan Soloway, said to be one of the most prolific spammers ever, was arrested this past week for cramming our email boxes with junk. Sorry... "allegedly" cramming our email boxes with junk. We hope he gets an "alleged" life sentence. Soloway was such a huge source of spam that some sources report that we might actually see a decrease in spam since he's out of commission. We have SpamHaus.org to thank for the Federal investigation into Soloway's practices. Read up on this at Yahoo.com.

Finally, I Can Stop Asking People If They Want Fries With That Order

I've recently been taking the necessary steps to start freelancing. You know, actually quitting the day job and striking out on my own. Working for myself. All that stuff. There are a lot of things to consider when taking that big step: Insurance, steady cash flow, time management, and bunches of other things that almost make me want to just stay in my day job. Almost. I found a few resources that helped me formulate a plan, and they might help you too. Some are more inspirational than plan-driven, but all of them are designed to get you out of your day job and into working for yourself:
How to kiss corporate life goodbye
Work.com - Plenty of handy advice for your business
From cubile to couch
Steps To Becoming Gainfully Unemployed
How do you know when it's time to quit your job?

And of course, you'll have to read our own Derrick Ypenburg's article: Rule #1 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Don't be Everything to Everybody

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"I just wanted to thank you for an excellent article this along with this adobe technote on connecting to MySQL got me set up on IIS7 on my new Vista box so that I can now run CF, PHP and ASP all on their own seperate websites, heaven !"

- David B., CMX Subscriber, commenting on Heidi Bautista's free article, Getting ColdFusion MX 7.0.2 Running on Vista and IIS7

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:

"I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: Try to please everybody all the time." - Herbert B. Swope

Good Going, Genius

My friends and I used to put each other down by calling each other "genius." Turns out it's actually a compliment. Who'd a thought it? One kind of genius is the Apple Genius, and he or she hangs out at the Apple store, waiting to answer your questions. MacLife.com tries to get into the collective Apple Genius brain by talking to two resident geniuses. These geniuses offer advice, as well as talk about some of the "certifiably loony people" they get to meet on a day to day basis.

Microsoft and Novell Play Nice Together

Users of OpenOffice will be pleased to know that it will soon be compatible with Microsoft's Office 2007 software. Microsoft's newest version of Office uses an Open XML file format that is not compatible with the current version of OpenOffice, but Microsoft has been working with Novell as part of the Linux interoperability pact to get Office 2007 files to work in Linux. As this article at PCWorld.com mentions though, it will be up to the open source community to help integrate the Open XML code into OpenOffice.

If They Can Play Nice, Anyone Can

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates took the stage together this week at the D5 Conference. Predictably, good-natured jabs were thrown by both sides, but the majority of their conversation consisted of remembering how "it all" started and where it's going. AllThingsD.com has a transcript of the discussion, with video to follow.

Become a Productive Member Of Society

We're suckers for freeware. We will absolutely pay top dollar for software when we need the support and features that come with pricier software, but some freeware is just downright handy and can even make you more productive. Check out LifeHack.org for a list of twenty freeware applications that can speed up your time on the computer.

Roll Your Own Firefox Extensions

Have you ever been using Firefox and thought "Shoot, it's good, but it would be so much better if I had a Firefox extension that would..." Yeah, we've done that. We typically see something shiny and forget about it, but you may actually want to pursue making that extension. Wanna know how? LifeHacker.com has an article that will show you. While you're using Firefox, you may as well know how to optimize it too. You can find out how to play in the about:config playground at ComputerWorld.com.

CMX Expiration Dates

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

Take a look at this Extension by CMX Partner Danilo Celic

Fun and Freebies!

Ah, Robot. Vanity Is Thy Name.

There are plenty of stories where a robot wants to become human, but this short student film by Andrew Huang tells the story succinctly and beautifully at GoFish.com.

Biggest Online Music Store Yet

PayPlay.fm has a collection of over one million songs for sale on their website. The only thing is you probably haven't heard of most of them, as PayPlay mostly sells music from Independent artists. However, you can search for bands you like, and PayPlay will suggest Independent artists that you might like to try out. It's cheaper than most online music stores, and worth it for those with an open musical pallette.

Haven't You Always Wanted To Be a Hero?

Verizon has a new online campaign that lets you put yourself in a hero's shoes. Fun, and only slightly disturbing... especially if you use your Aunt Mildred's picture instead of your own.

Warping Video in a Flash

Sometimes video needs to be such an odd shape that using a simple mask in Flash just won't solve the issue. In this video tutorial, I show you how to use the bezier Warp tool in After efects 7 to create a video that wraps around a shape. Then I show you how to output the video in After Effects and use that video in Flash.

This free article by CMX Partner Tom Green can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Dynamic Navigation Page Marking

Adrian Senior

In this article we look at how we can deploy page marking in a dynamic navigation menu by using values returned from a query and matching them to a url variable in order to change the state of a tab with CSS.

Bubble, Bubble—No Toil, No Trouble

Knut Kubenz

If you're at all a Shakespeare fan, you'll recognize the title of this tutorial as a take off from Macbeth, when the witches are stirring up a caldron "—Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble". At any rate, in this tutorial I wanted to demonstrate a very quick and easy way to create realistic looking bubbles without any existing imagery. Along the way you'll pick up some new skills as well as apply some obscure filters which exist in Photoshop.

I recently was given a project where the client wanted a few bubbles as a background to a product. When the client started talking about wanting this bubble here and this other bubble there, I became a bit leery and uncomfortable; bubbles are pretty well free spirits, real ones I mean. So we opted for ones Photoshop could provide.

Rule #1 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Don't be Everything to Everybody [FREE]

Derrick Ypenburg

Are you struggling with your personal business in the new age of Web 2.0? Well you're not alone. I've come to a crossroads where I need to re-evaluate what I'm doing, and what I need to change/do to keep up in these busy times. To help me with the growing pains, I will be writing each part of this series as a new rule for me to follow. I hope these rules help you as well in your new media business.

The Rules for Busy Freelancers Series:
Rule #1 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Don't Be Everything to Everybody
Rule #2 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Be Honest with Your Scheduling Coming Soon
Rule #3 For Busy Freelancers to Follow: Manage Your Client as Well as the Project Coming Soon

Flash CS3: What Happened to the Syntax Checker?

David Stiller

In Flash 8, and even earlier, the Check syntax button of the Actions panel was a little friendlier than it is today. Even in Flash CS3 Professional, if you set the document's publish settings to ActionScript 2.0 (File > Publish Settings, Flash tab), you can get a taste of the "good old days" — but ActionScript 3.0 documents represent a new era, where all is not as it seems; an era that many of you may feel is frustrating.

This issue presented in this article affects Flash documents (FLAs) when their publish settings are configured for ActionScript 3.0 and stand-alone classes (AS text files) when edited in the Script window (a full-screen version of the Actions panel that temporarily locks out access to other panels).

The following tutorial is slightly modified from an excerpt of the "ActionScript Basics" chapter in Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers, by Tom Green and David Stiller, to be published summer 2007 by friends of ED.

Data Binding in Flex 2 - Part 2: Binding in AS3

Steve Schelter

Data binding is a central part of the Flex 2 framework, and there are many techniques for implementing it into your application. This lesson will cover the AS 3.0 side of data binding.

The Data Binding in Flex 2 Series:
Data Binding in Flex 2 - Part 1: Overview
Data Binding in Flex 2 - Part 2: Binding in AS3

Making Positioned Elements Obey the Flow - Part One [FREE]

John Gallant, Holly Bergevin

This series will cover the use of 'auto-positioning' (such as {left: auto;}) and the flow to control the placement of absolute and fixed positioned elements. It's a CSS topic that &nbaffords advanced functionality for your layouts. Take a chance and join us!

It is strongly recommended that before reading this article that you read, or have read, Absolute Positioning and the Top Property

Happy Memorial Day!

Community MX wishes to thank the brave men and women of the Armed Forces, and remember those who have lost their lives defending liberty.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day!

Flowing and Positioning: Two Page Models -Revised for IE7

John Gallant, Holly Bergevin

In seeking to broaden your web design horizons beyond the use of tables for laying out pages, you may have come across terms such as 'Normal flow' and 'CSS Positioning.' However, you may be slightly hazy concerning what these terms actually mean. If so, it's time to learn some basics on the ways web pages are visually constructed on the screen by current browsers. In this article we'll look at 'the flow' of a web page, and briefly cover each of four position property values, static, absolute, relative and fixed. We'll also talk about some of the bugs you may encounter. When we're done, you should have a much better grasp on the topic at hand.

This article is an update (May 2007) to the original article, with special attention paid to the IE7 browser.

Working with the Camera Class - Part 8: Recording a Stream

Robert Reinhardt

In this "Working with" series, you learn how to use the Camera class in Flash Player. The Camera class has been available in Flash Player since version 6, yet many Flash designers and developers don't know much about it. The Camera class gives you access to the user's webcam, to do everything from publishing a live video stream to detecting movement in the camera frame. In this tutorial, you learn how to record a live publisher stream directly to a Flash Media Server application.

NOTE: In order to follow along with the tutorials in this series, you should have a webcam and microphone compatible with Flash Player 6 and higher. Just about any webcam and microphone works with the Flash Player.

SPECIAL OFFER: The first twenty readers of this tutorial series to send me an e-mail via the feedback link on this tutorial will receive a free time-limited Flash Media Server account at Influxis. You can use this account to publish live video streams. Please allow one to three days for me to verify your subscriber (or pay per use) status with Community MX. (There are still accounts available as of May 24th, 2007!)

The Working With the Camera Class Series:
Working with the Camera Class - Part 1: Viewing Live Output
Working with the Camera Class - Part 2: Detecting Motion
Working with the Camera Class - Part 3: Publishing a Live Stream
Working with the Camera Class - Part 4: Subscribing to a Live Stream
Working with the Camera Class - Part 5: Adding Audio to a Live Stream
Working with the Camera Class - Part 6: Controlling Image Quality and Bandwidth Usage
Working with the Camera Class - Part 7: Controlling Audio Quality
Working with the Camera Class - Part 8: Recording a Stream

On Page WYSIWYG Editing!

Paul Davis

Add this WYSIWYG editor and some JavaScript to your page and create a unique content management system that switches to edit content on your live web pages!

Only supports Internet Explorer for Windows and Firefox for Windows and Macintosh.

The Art of Encoding Flash Video: About the FLV Format

The process of encoding quality streaming video for Flash (or for any video streaming playback delivery for that matter) is the most important process in creating video streaming applications. Any slick-looking video player that you build will only be as good as the quality of the video streaming through it. This article provides a comprehensive overview of FLV encoding by the encoding software. Understanding this article will help you create higher quality FLV files when it comes to applying settings in an encoder and creating video for encoding.

Check out the Article by CMX Partner Derrick Ypenburg

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Chris Flick, Community MX Partner

Tame Your PDF

My boss just asked me to see if I could do anything to reduce a 70 page User manual PDF for his new digital camera with a couple pages of photos of the
camera. It was 2.3MB.

This is what I did on my Mac (Color Synch is a Mac-only utility, I believe):

1) Opened the PDF .

2) Opened the Print dialogue box.

3) Added Apple's ColorSync Utility to the PDF button.

4) Chose the Color Synch utility

5) After the Color Synch box came up and processed the PDF, I chose "Export" in Color Synch's dialogue box.

6) In the Quartz Filter drop down section, I chose "Reduce File Size", renamed my PDF and then hit "Save".

I was able to knock 1 MB off of the overall file size. I know there are commercial programs that will compress PDFs but if you're in a bind and need something fast, this might work. BUT... This doesn't ALWAYS work. Depending on the original PDF, Color Synch
can sometimes end up actually bloating a PDF.

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!