
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Adobe Updates Are Here. Plenty of Them. Adobe just released the 7.0.2 Updater for ColdFusion, and it's a doozy. Quite a few bugs have been fixed, and a new Reporting engine is present, but the big news is mainly in how ColdFusion can now communicate with the Flex Messaging event gateway, enabling both applications to publish and consume events from the same queue. This is pretty hip. It means that messages sent from Coldfusion can be converted to ActionScript 3.0 values and read by your Flex application. Meanwhile, Flex Beta 3.0 has also just been released, just as Flex 2.0 comes out of beta. As if that weren't enough, the Flash Player has also been updated to version 9. For some great information on these updates and new releases, check out Joe Balderson's blog here at Community MX. Joe Flash Commentary on Flex Joseph Balderson, one of our resident Flash experts, had this to say about the latest developments taking place in the Flex community: Hold on to yer pants, folks, things are about to get reeeeal interesting for Flash. In 2004 we saw the split between Flash Designer and Flash Developer with ActionScript 2.0. Now we are seeing the birth of a new speciality: The Flex Developer. As an example of what you can now do with ActionScript 3.0, theoretically: import an FLV as a raw binary socket data stream, 256-bit encrypted; apply a custom decryption algorithm with a remote key; custom parse the decrypted data for sound frequency information without MIDI; convert the data into a Video object; play the video; run the realtime frequency analysis through a visualization generator using the Bitmap API; AND dynamically stream the whole feed off a custom AMF server without using Media Server. The interesting part about Flash now, is that it's not going to be the designers who will push the envelope for Flash anymore. Not even the designer/developers. That day has passed. It'll be the Java, .Net, C++ programmers who've been stymied for too long, and discover a much more powerful tool for RIA development in ActionScript 3.0. Flex is awesome, but Flash will always hold a special place in my heart, a first love, if you will. It's the end of an era. The beginning of another. Exciting times ahead. Flash The Messenger Along with the new version of Yahoo! Instant Messenger comes the ability to build your own single or multi-user applications into the Messenger interface. For Flash developers, this means they can build a Flash game, or some other collaborative application, and share it with others by packaging it as a plugin and distributing it to whomever they want. This is a good direction for IM. Anything that furthers the functionality and customization of an application that is otherwise fairly stale is liable to increase interest in that application. Thumbs up to Yahoo! for this move. It will be interesting to see what plugins are created and made available.For more information, check out Justin Everett-Church's blog. Justin works at Yahoo! and is also a Flash developer, so he has a pretty good grip on this subject. CMX Shameless Plug of the Week We know, and our subscribers know, that Community MX has the most knowledgeable group of developers and authors this side of... well, we've got a bunch of them. But more and more, we're seeing a trend. The authors here at Community MX are being featured more and more in the DevNet area of Adobe's website. For instance, our own Stephanie Sullivan has just released an article there called "Creating a simple three-column design with CSS and Dreamweaver 8." But she's got several other articles there as well, as do Tom Green, Adrian Senior, Jim Babbage, Kim Cavanaugh, Tom Muck, Heidi Bautista, Danilo Celic and a few others here at Community MX. We're wondering when they're going to build the Community MX wing into Adobe Headquarters... Opera 9 Out of Beta Opera 9 has graduated to full-fledged browser status. Several features built into this latest version of Opera might interest you. Among them are the ability to download a torrent directly within the browser, without needing another application. Opera also supports tabbed browsing, but its tabs can also give you a preview of what's on each tabbed page without having to open that page. The content blocker built into Opera means never having to see ads or images again, if you choose not to. Check out all of the features at Opera.com. Some of our staff had a great time trying to figure out exactly what the marketing folks at Opera were thinking when they decided to put those two girls in the banner of this page, but we're pretty sure it has something to do with Opera helping to get people off drugs.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Thank you! This is a great article on Flash for neophytes" CMX Subscriber John S, Flash neophyte, commenting on Joe Balderson's FREE article "Understanding The Movie Clip Architecture - Part 1: The Almighty Movie Clip" 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: "If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn't ask me, I'd still have to say it." — George Burns So, Do You Want To Cancel That AOL Account or Not? AOL is not shy about letting its users know that they don't want them to stop their service. As a matter of fact, they're perfectly willing to go through mega-denial that you're even thinking of it. Just ask Vincent Ferrari, who tried to cancel AOL, only to have the AOL operator give him a very hard time about it. The operator even went so far as to ask Ferrari if he could talk to his Dad. Ferrari is 30 years old, and his credit card is on the account. Don't you wish Ferrari had recorded the conversation? Oh wait... he did. It's available at PutFile.com. Hey, Look At The Cool Light Show! It's... It's... Uh-Oh. If the amber and green lights on your iPod Shuffle start mysteriously blinking, be careful. These same symptoms appeared on other Shuffles that subsequently petered out. At least one person lucked out and got their iPod back into working order by resetting it to the factory defaults, as shown at Apple's website, but others have not been so lucky. So far, Apple is mum about the problem, and hasn't let on just how many people are experiencing this problem. If you experience this Shuffle Shlock (as we're calling it), check and see if your warranty is still good, as Apple will replace the iPod. More on this at PCWorld.com. PayPal Gets Prepared To Wet Their Pants There has been talk for months now that Google is planning on revealing their much-rumored internet payment system. The rumor now has a name, "GBuy", and it could put PayPal in the position of having to stave off serious competition, which is a rare position for PayPal to be in. Lately, the rumors have gotten stronger, and you can expect to hear news from the Google camp on this real soon. Fueling the rumor mill is Yahoo News. Could there be consequences resulting from Google's GBuy? Possibly, as you'll find out after reading this article at EWeek.com. Let The Fireworks Begin For those thinking this was a blurb about Adobe's Fireworks application, we apologize. Actually, we found an article for anyone who is planning on capturing their Independence Day memories on film by getting snapshots of fireworks. Anyone who has taken pictures of bombs bursting in air may have run into the problem of blurring, fading and lack of color in their photos. This article at Digital-Photography-School.com will show you how to get clearer pictures of all the action. Let's All Go To The Movies With so many websites offering videos on the internet, it's not immediately apparent who offers what, whether they charge anything, whether there is a software download necessary... you know. This article at LightReading.com helps put all of the video sites out there in perspective, and provides links to each website as well. We just noticed that while the article says it outlines who offers what type of content, that information does not actually show up in the chart. You can click the links and find out, but don't blame us if you see anything that irreversibly corrupts you.
CMX Insert FlashObject 1.2 Extension for Dreamweaver FlashObject is an external JavaScript file, created by Geoff Stearns, that enables you to embed Flash movies into web pages using XHTML-compliant code. The CMX Insert FlashObject extension automatically inserts FlashObject code into Dreamweaver documents, and copies flashobject.js into the folder you specify. Now supports major, minor, and revision Flash Player detection. Check out this Extension by CMX Partner Paul Newman
Fun and Freebies We Fall For These Every Time What is it with these lame little games that you would never play unless some fool sent you a link to it?! Like this one at Eskymo.co.uk... The idea is to click on a snowball to keep it from hitting the ground. Your score is based on how many times you can click on the snowball before missing it. Lame yes? Unreasonably addicting? Yes. Typical Breakdown of Time Spent on Web Development If you're easily offended, don't click this link to PoisonedMinds.com, where they've put up a pie chart that details, in an eerily accurate way, how most web development projects can be broken down. Maybe It Should Automatically Call a Taxi, Too Working for a living is one of those necessary things in life, at least if you plan on eating and keeping a roof over your head. Your boss can make a big difference in how you view your job. A bad or just plain lame boss can make your life miserable. If you're one of those with a bad boss, you can at least get some consolation via a free vacation from WorkingAmerica.org. Detail the many ways in which your boss sucks, and if your story is voted as the favorite among readers, you could win a free vacation and get away from that stooge for a couple of weeks.
Retouching Tools in Photoshop - Part One 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. This free article by CMX Partner Jim Babbage can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 3 - Adding Simple Logic and Error Checking Adrian Senior In Part 3 you will learn how to apply simple logic to your pages and look at preventing errors from missing variables. The Let's Learn ColdFusion Series: Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 1 - Installation and the Testing Server Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 2 - The URL Scope, Variable Names and Values Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 3 - Adding Simple Logic and Error Checking Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4a - Creating a Datasource Coming Soon Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4b - Building a Dynamic List Menu Coming Soon What We Don't Account For [FREE] Ray West As web programmers we want the world to think of us as professionals and treat us accordingly. Unfortunately there are dynamics in our industry that often cause us to act in ways that make us less than deserving of that designation. Are we allowing the least common denominator to drive down quality? There are things we don't account for. Using the Crop Tool to Make Your Picture Larger? [FREE] Knut Kubenz It may sound impossible, but you can actually change the Canvas Size of your picture, making it larger, by using Photoshop's Crop Tool, which normally makes the picture smaller, without any fancy calculations or head scratching. The Crop Tool is often used to make pictures smaller. This quick and easy tip takes the guess work out of extending the Canvas size without the need for time consuming calculations. All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part Two John Gallant, Holly Bergevin Continuing our Drop Shadow series, we expand on the simple CSS method described in Part One, showing how to make easy modifications to achieve different effects. Then we'll discuss certain vital considerations when implementing such techniques, in preparation for the more advanced methods to come. The All About CSS Drop Shadows Series: All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part One All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part Two Create a Woven Graphic in Illustrator CS2 Kim Dudley In this tutorial we will use an the Live Paint Bucket tool to create a 3D woven graphic. New to Illustrator CS2 the Live Paint Bucket allows you to work with vector artwork in a whole new way. We will take a quick look at how the Live Paint Bucket works and use it to simplify the creation of a woven graphic. By the end of this tutorial you will create the following graphic, and see how the Live Paint Bucket tool can simplify and speed up the creation of artwork. Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion - Part 1 Ray West For those of us building what are known as Web Applications (web sites that are intended to provide advanced application functionality that often replace desktop programs) there have always been a number of limitation in the web server and browser platform that affect the user experience compared to traditional applications. Modern platforms like Flash (and even DHTML) are answering some of those issues on the client side. On the server side, one of the problems has been generating true banded reporting and creating printable reports from what is displayed on screen. Sure, there was always Crystal Reports or some third-party program that could help out. But they were always problematic, in my experience. I wanted something built into my language that allowed those very important features to be executed natively. ColdFusion now allows exactly that with a number of new capabilities to provide instant PDF and FlashPaper documents and intricate banded business reporting. In this article, we will look at creating simple printed reports from generated HTML using the cfdocument tag. Understanding The Movie Clip Architecture - Part 1: The Almighty Movie Clip [FREE] Joseph Balderson Ever get confused by all of the different ways that Flash organizes assets and information within your FLA and your SWF? Frames and timelines and levels and layers and depths oh my! This series will sort it all out, and give you some great tips. If you ever wanted the skinny on the Flash movie clip architecture, this be da place, mon. In Part 1 of this series we will distinguish the fundamentals of the Flash Movie Clip Architecture: movie clips, the timeline, layers and depths. This article will also reveal the secret of "magic frame rates". Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 2 - The URL Scope, Variable Names and Values Adrian Senior Start to learn and understand the ColdFusion language, step by step. In this tutorial you will begin to work with URL variables and understand how the receiving page interacts with this information. The Let's Learn ColdFusion Series: Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 1 - Installation and the Testing Server Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 2 - The URL Scope, Variable Names and Values Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 3 - Adding Simple Logic and Error Checking Coming Soon Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4a - Creating a Datasource Coming Soon Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4b - Building a Dynamic List Menu Coming Soon Using GUIDs to Verify Registration in ColdFusion: Part 2 Ray West This is Part Two of this article and it explains the use of the verification page to accept a GUID and verify a users account. In the previous article, we created a registration page that accepted a registrants name and email address, generated a strong password, and created and emailed a GUID used to verify that the email address is valid and the person intended to register at your site. Using GUIDs to Verify Registration in ColdFusion: Part 1 Ray West In a previous article, we talked about Globally Unique IDs (GUIDS) and their use in uniquely identifying records across disconnected databases. Another useful aspect of GUIDs is that they are sufficiently complex enough that they are not easily guessable and care be used for processes like verifying that the information (especially the email address) you received in a user registration is valid. In this article, we will take a look at some code that done just that... plus a little more.
Spell Checking HTML Forms with JavaScript and PHP Have you ever had to write a large amount of text into a field on an HTML form and been uncertain of just how reliable your spelling skills are? Wouldn't it be nice if HTML forms, like most other applications, had one of those handy little "Spell Check" buttons? In this article we'll look at how easy it is to implement this functionality using a PHP/JavaScript solution called Speller Pages. 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 subscriber Harlene Finn Debugging With The Help of Color Coding Using Code Coloring in Dreamweaver is a helpful tool for debugging minor problems. You can set tags, attributes, values, etc. with your own color choices or use Dreamweaver¹s default code coloring schemes. You can do this for HTML, CSS, ASP etc. For example, there have been times when I've left out a closing single or double quote for an attribute or deleted it by mistake but didn't notice it until viewing the design and realizing something was wrong. Since the value for an attribute isn't closed without the quote mark(s), everything that follows is affected. If I've set text to be black and everything below a certain point is black, including tags, I can go back to the place in the code where the colors didn't change and look for the cause of the problem. 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!

Adobe Updates Are Here. Plenty of Them.

Adobe just released the 7.0.2 Updater for ColdFusion, and it's a doozy. Quite a few bugs have been fixed, and a new Reporting engine is present, but the big news is mainly in how ColdFusion can now communicate with the Flex Messaging event gateway, enabling both applications to publish and consume events from the same queue. This is pretty hip. It means that messages sent from Coldfusion can be converted to ActionScript 3.0 values and read by your Flex application. Meanwhile, Flex Beta 3.0 has also just been released, just as Flex 2.0 comes out of beta. As if that weren't enough, the Flash Player has also been updated to version 9. For some great information on these updates and new releases, check out Joe Balderson's blog here at Community MX.

Joe Flash Commentary on Flex

Joseph Balderson, one of our resident Flash experts, had this to say about the latest developments taking place in the Flex community:

Hold on to yer pants, folks, things are about to get reeeeal interesting for Flash.

In 2004 we saw the split between Flash Designer and Flash Developer with ActionScript 2.0. Now we are seeing the birth of a new speciality: The Flex Developer. As an example of what you can now do with ActionScript 3.0, theoretically: import an FLV as a raw binary socket data stream, 256-bit encrypted; apply a custom decryption algorithm with a remote key; custom parse the decrypted data for sound frequency information without MIDI; convert the data into a Video object; play the video; run the realtime frequency analysis through a visualization generator using the Bitmap API; AND dynamically stream the whole feed off a custom AMF server without using Media Server. The interesting part about Flash now, is that it's not going to be the designers who will push the envelope for Flash anymore. Not even the designer/developers. That day has passed. It'll be the Java, .Net, C++ programmers who've been stymied for too long, and discover a much more powerful tool for RIA development in ActionScript 3.0. Flex is awesome, but Flash will always hold a special place in my heart, a first love, if you will. It's the end of an era. The beginning of another. Exciting times ahead.

Flash The Messenger

Along with the new version of Yahoo! Instant Messenger comes the ability to build your own single or multi-user applications into the Messenger interface. For Flash developers, this means they can build a Flash game, or some other collaborative application, and share it with others by packaging it as a plugin and distributing it to whomever they want. This is a good direction for IM. Anything that furthers the functionality and customization of an application that is otherwise fairly stale is liable to increase interest in that application. Thumbs up to Yahoo! for this move. It will be interesting to see what plugins are created and made available.For more information, check out Justin Everett-Church's blog. Justin works at Yahoo! and is also a Flash developer, so he has a pretty good grip on this subject.

CMX Shameless Plug of the Week

We know, and our subscribers know, that Community MX has the most knowledgeable group of developers and authors this side of... well, we've got a bunch of them. But more and more, we're seeing a trend. The authors here at Community MX are being featured more and more in the DevNet area of Adobe's website. For instance, our own Stephanie Sullivan has just released an article there called "Creating a simple three-column design with CSS and Dreamweaver 8." But she's got several other articles there as well, as do Tom Green, Adrian Senior, Jim Babbage, Kim Cavanaugh, Tom Muck, Heidi Bautista, Danilo Celic and a few others here at Community MX. We're wondering when they're going to build the Community MX wing into Adobe Headquarters...

Opera 9 Out of Beta

Opera 9 has graduated to full-fledged browser status. Several features built into this latest version of Opera might interest you. Among them are the ability to download a torrent directly within the browser, without needing another application. Opera also supports tabbed browsing, but its tabs can also give you a preview of what's on each tabbed page without having to open that page. The content blocker built into Opera means never having to see ads or images again, if you choose not to. Check out all of the features at Opera.com. Some of our staff had a great time trying to figure out exactly what the marketing folks at Opera were thinking when they decided to put those two girls in the banner of this page, but we're pretty sure it has something to do with Opera helping to get people off drugs.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Thank you! This is a great article on Flash for neophytes"

CMX Subscriber John S, Flash neophyte, commenting on Joe Balderson's FREE article "Understanding The Movie Clip Architecture - Part 1: The Almighty Movie Clip"

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:

"If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn't ask me, I'd still have to say it." — George Burns

So, Do You Want To Cancel That AOL Account or Not?

AOL is not shy about letting its users know that they don't want them to stop their service. As a matter of fact, they're perfectly willing to go through mega-denial that you're even thinking of it. Just ask Vincent Ferrari, who tried to cancel AOL, only to have the AOL operator give him a very hard time about it. The operator even went so far as to ask Ferrari if he could talk to his Dad. Ferrari is 30 years old, and his credit card is on the account. Don't you wish Ferrari had recorded the conversation? Oh wait... he did. It's available at PutFile.com.

Hey, Look At The Cool Light Show! It's... It's... Uh-Oh.

If the amber and green lights on your iPod Shuffle start mysteriously blinking, be careful. These same symptoms appeared on other Shuffles that subsequently petered out. At least one person lucked out and got their iPod back into working order by resetting it to the factory defaults, as shown at Apple's website, but others have not been so lucky. So far, Apple is mum about the problem, and hasn't let on just how many people are experiencing this problem. If you experience this Shuffle Shlock (as we're calling it), check and see if your warranty is still good, as Apple will replace the iPod. More on this at PCWorld.com.

PayPal Gets Prepared To Wet Their Pants

There has been talk for months now that Google is planning on revealing their much-rumored internet payment system. The rumor now has a name, "GBuy", and it could put PayPal in the position of having to stave off serious competition, which is a rare position for PayPal to be in. Lately, the rumors have gotten stronger, and you can expect to hear news from the Google camp on this real soon. Fueling the rumor mill is Yahoo News. Could there be consequences resulting from Google's GBuy? Possibly, as you'll find out after reading this article at EWeek.com.

Let The Fireworks Begin

For those thinking this was a blurb about Adobe's Fireworks application, we apologize. Actually, we found an article for anyone who is planning on capturing their Independence Day memories on film by getting snapshots of fireworks. Anyone who has taken pictures of bombs bursting in air may have run into the problem of blurring, fading and lack of color in their photos. This article at Digital-Photography-School.com will show you how to get clearer pictures of all the action.

Let's All Go To The Movies

With so many websites offering videos on the internet, it's not immediately apparent who offers what, whether they charge anything, whether there is a software download necessary... you know. This article at LightReading.com helps put all of the video sites out there in perspective, and provides links to each website as well. We just noticed that while the article says it outlines who offers what type of content, that information does not actually show up in the chart. You can click the links and find out, but don't blame us if you see anything that irreversibly corrupts you.

CMX Insert FlashObject 1.2 Extension for Dreamweaver

FlashObject is an external JavaScript file, created by Geoff Stearns, that enables you to embed Flash movies into web pages using XHTML-compliant code. The CMX Insert FlashObject extension automatically inserts FlashObject code into Dreamweaver documents, and copies flashobject.js into the folder you specify. Now supports major, minor, and revision Flash Player detection.

Check out this Extension by CMX Partner Paul Newman

Fun and Freebies

We Fall For These Every Time

What is it with these lame little games that you would never play unless some fool sent you a link to it?! Like this one at Eskymo.co.uk... The idea is to click on a snowball to keep it from hitting the ground. Your score is based on how many times you can click on the snowball before missing it. Lame yes? Unreasonably addicting? Yes.

Typical Breakdown of Time Spent on Web Development

If you're easily offended, don't click this link to PoisonedMinds.com, where they've put up a pie chart that details, in an eerily accurate way, how most web development projects can be broken down.

Maybe It Should Automatically Call a Taxi, Too

Working for a living is one of those necessary things in life, at least if you plan on eating and keeping a roof over your head. Your boss can make a big difference in how you view your job. A bad or just plain lame boss can make your life miserable. If you're one of those with a bad boss, you can at least get some consolation via a free vacation from WorkingAmerica.org. Detail the many ways in which your boss sucks, and if your story is voted as the favorite among readers, you could win a free vacation and get away from that stooge for a couple of weeks.

Retouching Tools in Photoshop - Part One

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.

This free article by CMX Partner Jim Babbage can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 3 - Adding Simple Logic and Error Checking

Adrian Senior

In Part 3 you will learn how to apply simple logic to your pages and look at preventing errors from missing variables.

The Let's Learn ColdFusion Series:
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 1 - Installation and the Testing Server
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 2 - The URL Scope, Variable Names and Values
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 3 - Adding Simple Logic and Error Checking
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4a - Creating a Datasource Coming Soon
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4b - Building a Dynamic List Menu Coming Soon

What We Don't Account For [FREE]

Ray West

As web programmers we want the world to think of us as professionals and treat us accordingly. Unfortunately there are dynamics in our industry that often cause us to act in ways that make us less than deserving of that designation. Are we allowing the least common denominator to drive down quality? There are things we don't account for.

Using the Crop Tool to Make Your Picture Larger? [FREE]

Knut Kubenz

It may sound impossible, but you can actually change the Canvas Size of your picture, making it larger, by using Photoshop's Crop Tool, which normally makes the picture smaller, without any fancy calculations or head scratching.

The Crop Tool is often used to make pictures smaller. This quick and easy tip takes the guess work out of extending the Canvas size without the need for time consuming calculations.

All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part Two

John Gallant, Holly Bergevin

Continuing our Drop Shadow series, we expand on the simple CSS method described in Part One, showing how to make easy modifications to achieve different effects. Then we'll discuss certain vital considerations when implementing such techniques, in preparation for the more advanced methods to come.

The All About CSS Drop Shadows Series:
All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part One
All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part Two

Create a Woven Graphic in Illustrator CS2

Kim Dudley

In this tutorial we will use an the Live Paint Bucket tool to create a 3D woven graphic. New to Illustrator CS2 the Live Paint Bucket allows you to work with vector artwork in a whole new way. We will take a quick look at how the Live Paint Bucket works and use it to simplify the creation of a woven graphic.

By the end of this tutorial you will create the following graphic,

and see how the Live Paint Bucket tool can simplify and speed up the creation of artwork.

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion - Part 1

Ray West

For those of us building what are known as Web Applications (web sites that are intended to provide advanced application functionality that often replace desktop programs) there have always been a number of limitation in the web server and browser platform that affect the user experience compared to traditional applications. Modern platforms like Flash (and even DHTML) are answering some of those issues on the client side. On the server side, one of the problems has been generating true banded reporting and creating printable reports from what is displayed on screen.

Sure, there was always Crystal Reports or some third-party program that could help out. But they were always problematic, in my experience. I wanted something built into my language that allowed those very important features to be executed natively. ColdFusion now allows exactly that with a number of new capabilities to provide instant PDF and FlashPaper documents and intricate banded business reporting. In this article, we will look at creating simple printed reports from generated HTML using the cfdocument tag.

Understanding The Movie Clip Architecture - Part 1: The Almighty Movie Clip [FREE]

Joseph Balderson

Ever get confused by all of the different ways that Flash organizes assets and information within your FLA and your SWF? Frames and timelines and levels and layers and depths oh my! This series will sort it all out, and give you some great tips. If you ever wanted the skinny on the Flash movie clip architecture, this be da place, mon. In Part 1 of this series we will distinguish the fundamentals of the Flash Movie Clip Architecture: movie clips, the timeline, layers and depths. This article will also reveal the secret of "magic frame rates".

Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 2 - The URL Scope, Variable Names and Values

Adrian Senior

Start to learn and understand the ColdFusion language, step by step. In this tutorial you will begin to work with URL variables and understand how the receiving page interacts with this information.

The Let's Learn ColdFusion Series:
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 1 - Installation and the Testing Server
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 2 - The URL Scope, Variable Names and Values
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 3 - Adding Simple Logic and Error Checking Coming Soon
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4a - Creating a Datasource Coming Soon
Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4b - Building a Dynamic List Menu Coming Soon

Using GUIDs to Verify Registration in ColdFusion: Part 2

Ray West

This is Part Two of this article and it explains the use of the verification page to accept a GUID and verify a users account. In the previous article, we created a registration page that accepted a registrants name and email address, generated a strong password, and created and emailed a GUID used to verify that the email address is valid and the person intended to register at your site.

Using GUIDs to Verify Registration in ColdFusion: Part 1

Ray West

In a previous article, we talked about Globally Unique IDs (GUIDS) and their use in uniquely identifying records across disconnected databases. Another useful aspect of GUIDs is that they are sufficiently complex enough that they are not easily guessable and care be used for processes like verifying that the information (especially the email address) you received in a user registration is valid. In this article, we will take a look at some code that done just that... plus a little more.

Spell Checking HTML Forms with JavaScript and PHP

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

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 subscriber Harlene Finn

Debugging With The Help of Color Coding

Using Code Coloring in Dreamweaver is a helpful tool for debugging minor problems. You can set tags, attributes, values, etc. with your own color choices or use Dreamweaver¹s default code coloring schemes. You can do this for HTML, CSS, ASP etc.

For example, there have been times when I've left out a closing single or double quote for an attribute or deleted it by mistake but didn't notice it until viewing the design and realizing something was wrong. Since the value for an attribute isn't closed without the quote mark(s), everything that follows is affected. If I've set text to be black and everything below a certain point is black, including tags, I can go back to the place in the code where the colors didn't change and look for the cause of the problem.

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That's it for this week. Stay tuned for the next CMX newsletter!