
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Mr. CMX Goes To Washington If you have ever been to Washington, D.C., you know that sometimes it's difficult to find your way around. Navigating one-way streets, traffic circles, and the overwhelming number of honking vehicles can frustrate even the year-round residents. Web navigation can be just as difficult. One of the kindest things you can do for your visitors is to provide clear and easy to use navigation on your site. And so, with our newest JumpStart, CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C., it's all about navigation. Washington, D.C. includes these navigation features: two levels, horizontal main and vertical sub navigation, the use of tabs with the sliding door navigation technique, and the deployment of current page markers for better usability. Of course, Washington, D.C. uses valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 markup and follows WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design you may wish to use it for. Washington, D.C. is a two column fixed-width layout, and includes an extension, five tutorials, three style sheets, five PNG documents for branding the graphics, and a starter page. Washington, D.C. is available for $29.99 to non-members, but is absolutely free to CMX subscribers. Read more about how to make it yours. CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C. article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about its features and see a modified Washington, D.C. design. CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C. article for members and for those who would like to purchase Washington, D.C. now. Interview With An AIR Evangelist Ryan Stewart, and Evangelist for Adobe's AIR, describes exactly what AIR is, why you should be excited about it and what you can do with it. He also mentions the free SDK that helps you to build Air applications with Flex Builder, Dreamweaver or - eventually - Flash. Ryan will be a part of Adobe's live cross-country bus tour to promote AIR. Will you be at the bus stop? Ok, that was bad... we admit it. Read the interview at DownloadSquad.com. Oh, and we found another cool AIR application today called BuzzWord. Makeovers, Courtesy Of Photoshop We've all seen photos that were touched up with photoshop, and we're aware of all of the magazine covers displaying glamour shots that don't resemble the original photo, thanks to clever Photoshop doctoring. But we're still impressed when we see someone go above and beyond in showing us how powerful a tool Photoshop can be in this respect. ComnetSlash.com has two amazing samples of how a Photoshop wiz can take a photo and do just about anything they want with it. Check out the videos. Gotta Love Those Well-Founded Juicy Rumors Google is a behemoth that likes to buy things. Lots of things. Like companies. Coincidentally enough, you can search Google for "Google buys" and read about many of their acquisitions. The latest big purchase of course was YouTube. The rumor mill is now buzzing about Google's possible purchase of Facebook, an extremely popular online social network. Adotas.com has an article describing the reasons why this rumor is pretty solid, and the challenges that Google faces - no pun intended - if Facebook takes them up on their rumored offer. Hmmm... then again, it could be that Microsoft is trying to buy Facebook... If both rumors are true, Facebook's asking price probably just shot up by quite a bit. iPhone News Of A Different Sort There's plenty of news about the iPhone. We've linked to news reports, reviews and stories of people's love/hate relationship with the iPhone. But no one seems to ask the important question, the one that every current or potential iPhone owner wants to know: Will it blend?
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Wow that was a really good article. Thanks a lot!" - Adam P., CMX Subscriber, commenting on Joseph Balderson's FREE article, TodCon 2007 Session: Introduction to Design Patterns for Flash and Flex 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: "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live." - Mark Twain Flash Is Sensitive AND Vulnerable. Just Like Us. Who wants vulnerable software? Not us. This week, Adobe announced an update to Flash Player that fixes a couple of bugs. Thankfully they're not of the "Apply this fix or people can hack into your computer!" variety. Oh wait... yeah they are. Let's pause this newsletter and check out Adobe's bulletin about the bug and their update recommendations. Free Photoshop Plugins Who knew there were so many cool and free plugins for Photoshop? Apparently Photo-Mentor.com does, and they've got a list of what they believe are the top ten free plugins for Photoshop. One of them, JPEG Enhancer, claims it will take the compression artifacts out of a jpeg image. Other plugins are for enhancing your images with effects, blurs, film grain and even a "romantic" feel. Can't beat that for free... Now's The Time To Choose Your Favorite Browser You can have Internet Explorer and Firefox on the same computer, but it turns out, it's not a good idea. In fact, it can be hazardous to your PC's health. Security researchers say that having IE and FF 2 running on your computer, you're risking a remote attack from hackers. According to this article at ZDNet.com, "The trouble begins when browsing a malicious site while using IE and it registers a 'firefoxurl://' URI (uniform resource identifier) handler, which allows the browser to interact with specific resources on the Web." We understood part of that... especially the "trouble" part. The experts say that IE is mostly to blame, but they also say the safest way to avoid the problem in the first place is to stay away from "risky" websites. Gentlemen, Come Out Fighting! Now that Safari is available for the PC, users will be looking very closely at the differences between Firefox and Safari to determine which browser will give them the ultimate browsing experience. Ok, maybe that may be a bit dramatic, but PC users have typically had nothing to choose from browser-wise except for IE, Firefox and Opera. So the availability of a browser from a major player is a novelty that should not be overlooked. To that end, we give you this article from MostOfMyMac.com that pits Firefox against Safari in several categories, including speed, tabbed browsing, interface and several other categories in order to determine "the winner." Safari ends up on top, but we'll be doing our own tests and let you in on the details next week. It's Like Thunder... And Lightenin'... My iPod Really Is Frightenin'... The good news is that wearing an iPod does not increase your chances of being hit by lightening. The bad news is that if you are hit by lightening while let's say, jogging, having an iPod on could make the "sting" from that lightening just a bit more painful. A 37-year old Canadian man can attest to that. He was jogging while wearing his iPod, got hit by lightening and lost a lot of his hearing while also leaving him with significant burns and a broken jaw. Hmmm... we see a market for some kind of iPod condom. Read more on this story at Yahoo.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! Who Could Ever Get Tired Of This? Whether you love or hate Chuck Norris, you'll probably get a kick out of the Chuck Norris Random Fact Generator. Samples: "When Chuck Norris breaks the law, the law doesn't heal. " and "Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Not because Chuck Norris is afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris " Tom Green's Dream Job It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. If you live in Australia, you can be an official condom tester. Just apply, and explain why you'd be the best person for uh... the position. More on this at MSNBC.com. I Say Let The Cows Run Madrid has an annual bull-run where hundreds of people, mostly men, run with the bulls down the streets of Pamplona. The women want their own bull-run, but not with bulls. Estudiln.net wants it to be known that "Cows want to run" too. This is an unfortunate campaign slogan. We're hoping their campaign posters do not show a bunch of women standing under a sign with that motto printed on it... More on this from Reuters.com.
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 Sound Visualization in Flash CS3 [FREE] Tom Green Sometimes a little foreknowledge is a good thing. Let's all take a deep breath and explore a sound visualization exercise in Flash Professional CS3. Preparing Source Video for Flash Video, Part 1: Converting MPEG Files [FREE] Robert Reinhardt In this Flash Video series, you learn how to process source video files before you encode the content to the Flash Video (FLV) format. Source video can be saved in a wide range of formats across Windows and Macintosh platforms, and each format can use specific audio and video codecs. In this tutorial, you learn how to prepare an MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 file for Flash Video encoding. NOTE: All of the tutorials in this series require Apple QuickTime Player. I recommended purchasing Apple QuickTime Player Pro directly from Apple. The Pro version enables you to export audio and video files. This series augments the material discussed in my forthcoming book, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Video Studio Techniques (Adobe Press). CMX JumpStart: Washington, D.C. Adrian Senior The Washington, D.C. JumpsStart is a two-column fixed-width design. It uses the sliding doors method for presenting the navigation as a nice horizontal tabbed menu, which acts as a main navigation for the page-level vertical sub-navigation set. Washington, D.C. makes good use of background images and, as always, meets the standards for CSS, XHTML and Accessibility, thus ensuring you have a good solid layout in which to begin your conversion to a client site. Approximate download size: 2.6MB Introducing CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C. [FREE] Sheri German Washington, D.C. is, of course, significant for being the capital of the United States, but it has also been my "hometown" since I was seventeen years old. I have lived in the city or one of its suburbs for all of my adult life. It is with the greatest pleasure, therefore, that I introduce the newest JumpStart, designed and coded by Adrian Senior, CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. is a two-column, fixed-width design that employs a horizontal band method for the header and footer areas. It has a main navigation level that uses the popular tabbed sliding doors technique. CSS based buttons on the left form the secondary navigation. Washington, D.C. meets the standards for CSS, XHTML and Accessibility, thus ensuring that you have a good solid layout on which to base a client site. The SQL CASE Statement Tom Muck If you are using SQL, you are no doubt familiar with SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE, as well as a few functions that are useful. I've found that not many people are making active use of the CASE statement, although it is one of the most useful SQL keywords in existence. Typically a web application developer will use this type of conditional logic in his page code (using PHP, ColdFusion, or another language) making the business logic part of the presentation of the page. It is more efficient and better programming practice to put this logic in the database using a stored procedure or in the SQL statement so that the presentation of the data can be as clean and unencumbered by business logic as possible. This article will show a few simple uses of the statement and how you can use it to simply web applications. These examples should work in SQL Server or MySQL. I will be using the Northwind database that comes free with SQL Server. Anyone using mySQL can download a Northwind creation script at my site. Bridge CS3 Overview - Part 3 - Tools Menu Jim Babbage With the launch of Adobe CS3, many former Macromedia users are now being exposed to a wider range of software applications. One of these applications is Adobe Bridge. To better demonstrate the usefulness of Bridge, I thought a series of videos was in order. This video, the third in the series, gives an overview of the Bridge tools menu. The tools menu is a hub of automation and productivity and I go into each menu item in detail. If you're new to Bridge - or even if you'd just like a refresher, check out this article series. If you haven't had the chance, make sure to watch Adobe Bridge Overview, Part 1 and Bridge Overview, Part 2. Approximate download size: 20MB The Adobe Bridge CS3 Series: Bridge CS3 Overview - Part 1: The Bridge Interface Bridge CS3 Overview - Part 2: Bridge Functionality Bridge CS3 Overview - Part 3: Tools Menu Triple Threat II: Tiger, Vista & Ubuntu [FREE] Thomas Pletcher Are you using Parallels to run Windows on your Mac, or thinking about it? Then why not a Linux virtual machine as well? The Triple Threat Series: Triple Threat: Adding a Third OS to Your Dual-Boot Mac Triple Threat II: Tiger, Vista & Ubuntu Optimizing Flash Content for Use in Video [FREE] Tom Green, David Stiller In this, the second of eight excerpts from Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers by friendsofEd, Community MX partners, Tom Green and David Stiller, show you how to convert a Flash movie into a Quicktime movie. This exercise doesn't just think "outside of the box", it moves to the room where the box is located. Approximate download size: 31MB Tips & Tricks for Illustrator: Guides and Measuring Tools Kim Dudley I am lucky to have a job that I enjoy doing but I still don't want to spend any more time working than is absolutely necessary, so I love learning any little tricks that can speed up my day-to-day tasks. When you have worked with an application, such as Illustrator, for a long time you learn many shortcuts and handy little tools along the way. On the other hand, sometimes when you do something a certain way you keep doing it that way, not knowing there may be an easier and quicker method. In this tutorial I will highlight some of the tips and tricks I use almost every day. I will focus on tips and tricks that involve guides and measuring. Some of them are specific just to Illustrator, while others can be used in some of the other Adobe applications. The following list is an outline of the topics we will cover. Entering Measurements Change the Units of Measurements Changing the 0, 0 Position Any Guide from any Ruler Custom Guides Restore a Dialog's Defaults Hide and Show Guides Aligning Guides The Control Palette as a Calculator Resizing Images and Text Flash CS3: The Document Class - Part 2 Steve Schelter The document class is a powerful new feature in Flash CS3 that utilizes the new IDE's integration into ActionScript 3.0. After the previous lesson, we've covered what the document class is and how it works. In this lesson, we will explore just how powerful the document class can be for building complex, modular applications. The Flash CS3 Document Class Series: Flash CS3: The Document Class - Part 1 Flash CS3: The Document Class - Part 2
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 Tom Green, Community MX Partner Take Out The Garbage If you have a lot of working files and clutter that don't need to be uploaded to your site, why not get rid of them right in DW? Simply select the file to be "deep sixed" in the DW File Panel and and press the Delete key. Ciao! 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!

Mr. CMX Goes To Washington

If you have ever been to Washington, D.C., you know that sometimes it's difficult to find your way around. Navigating one-way streets, traffic circles, and the overwhelming number of honking vehicles can frustrate even the year-round residents. Web navigation can be just as difficult. One of the kindest things you can do for your visitors is to provide clear and easy to use navigation on your site. And so, with our newest JumpStart, CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C., it's all about navigation. Washington, D.C. includes these navigation features: two levels, horizontal main and vertical sub navigation, the use of tabs with the sliding door navigation technique, and the deployment of current page markers for better usability.

Of course, Washington, D.C. uses valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 markup and follows WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design you may wish to use it for. Washington, D.C. is a two column fixed-width layout, and includes an extension, five tutorials, three style sheets, five PNG documents for branding the graphics, and a starter page.

Washington, D.C. is available for $29.99 to non-members, but is absolutely free to CMX subscribers. Read more about how to make it yours.

CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C. article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about its features and see a modified Washington, D.C. design.
CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C. article for members and for those who would like to purchase Washington, D.C. now.

Interview With An AIR Evangelist

Ryan Stewart, and Evangelist for Adobe's AIR, describes exactly what AIR is, why you should be excited about it and what you can do with it. He also mentions the free SDK that helps you to build Air applications with Flex Builder, Dreamweaver or - eventually - Flash. Ryan will be a part of Adobe's live cross-country bus tour to promote AIR. Will you be at the bus stop? Ok, that was bad... we admit it. Read the interview at DownloadSquad.com. Oh, and we found another cool AIR application today called BuzzWord.

Makeovers, Courtesy Of Photoshop

We've all seen photos that were touched up with photoshop, and we're aware of all of the magazine covers displaying glamour shots that don't resemble the original photo, thanks to clever Photoshop doctoring. But we're still impressed when we see someone go above and beyond in showing us how powerful a tool Photoshop can be in this respect. ComnetSlash.com has two amazing samples of how a Photoshop wiz can take a photo and do just about anything they want with it. Check out the videos.

Gotta Love Those Well-Founded Juicy Rumors

Google is a behemoth that likes to buy things. Lots of things. Like companies. Coincidentally enough, you can search Google for "Google buys" and read about many of their acquisitions. The latest big purchase of course was YouTube. The rumor mill is now buzzing about Google's possible purchase of Facebook, an extremely popular online social network. Adotas.com has an article describing the reasons why this rumor is pretty solid, and the challenges that Google faces - no pun intended - if Facebook takes them up on their rumored offer. Hmmm... then again, it could be that Microsoft is trying to buy Facebook... If both rumors are true, Facebook's asking price probably just shot up by quite a bit.

iPhone News Of A Different Sort

There's plenty of news about the iPhone. We've linked to news reports, reviews and stories of people's love/hate relationship with the iPhone. But no one seems to ask the important question, the one that every current or potential iPhone owner wants to know: Will it blend?

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Wow that was a really good article. Thanks a lot!"

- Adam P., CMX Subscriber, commenting on Joseph Balderson's FREE article, TodCon 2007 Session: Introduction to Design Patterns for Flash and Flex

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:

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live." - Mark Twain

Flash Is Sensitive AND Vulnerable. Just Like Us.

Who wants vulnerable software? Not us. This week, Adobe announced an update to Flash Player that fixes a couple of bugs. Thankfully they're not of the "Apply this fix or people can hack into your computer!" variety. Oh wait... yeah they are. Let's pause this newsletter and check out Adobe's bulletin about the bug and their update recommendations.

Free Photoshop Plugins

Who knew there were so many cool and free plugins for Photoshop? Apparently Photo-Mentor.com does, and they've got a list of what they believe are the top ten free plugins for Photoshop. One of them, JPEG Enhancer, claims it will take the compression artifacts out of a jpeg image. Other plugins are for enhancing your images with effects, blurs, film grain and even a "romantic" feel. Can't beat that for free...

Now's The Time To Choose Your Favorite Browser

You can have Internet Explorer and Firefox on the same computer, but it turns out, it's not a good idea. In fact, it can be hazardous to your PC's health. Security researchers say that having IE and FF 2 running on your computer, you're risking a remote attack from hackers. According to this article at ZDNet.com, "The trouble begins when browsing a malicious site while using IE and it registers a 'firefoxurl://' URI (uniform resource identifier) handler, which allows the browser to interact with specific resources on the Web." We understood part of that... especially the "trouble" part. The experts say that IE is mostly to blame, but they also say the safest way to avoid the problem in the first place is to stay away from "risky" websites.

Gentlemen, Come Out Fighting!

Now that Safari is available for the PC, users will be looking very closely at the differences between Firefox and Safari to determine which browser will give them the ultimate browsing experience. Ok, maybe that may be a bit dramatic, but PC users have typically had nothing to choose from browser-wise except for IE, Firefox and Opera. So the availability of a browser from a major player is a novelty that should not be overlooked. To that end, we give you this article from MostOfMyMac.com that pits Firefox against Safari in several categories, including speed, tabbed browsing, interface and several other categories in order to determine "the winner." Safari ends up on top, but we'll be doing our own tests and let you in on the details next week.

It's Like Thunder... And Lightenin'... My iPod Really Is Frightenin'...

The good news is that wearing an iPod does not increase your chances of being hit by lightening. The bad news is that if you are hit by lightening while let's say, jogging, having an iPod on could make the "sting" from that lightening just a bit more painful. A 37-year old Canadian man can attest to that. He was jogging while wearing his iPod, got hit by lightening and lost a lot of his hearing while also leaving him with significant burns and a broken jaw. Hmmm... we see a market for some kind of iPod condom. Read more on this story at Yahoo.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!

Who Could Ever Get Tired Of This?

Whether you love or hate Chuck Norris, you'll probably get a kick out of the Chuck Norris Random Fact Generator. Samples: "When Chuck Norris breaks the law, the law doesn't heal. " and "Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Not because Chuck Norris is afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris "

Tom Green's Dream Job

It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. If you live in Australia, you can be an official condom tester. Just apply, and explain why you'd be the best person for uh... the position. More on this at MSNBC.com.

I Say Let The Cows Run

Madrid has an annual bull-run where hundreds of people, mostly men, run with the bulls down the streets of Pamplona. The women want their own bull-run, but not with bulls. Estudiln.net wants it to be known that "Cows want to run" too. This is an unfortunate campaign slogan. We're hoping their campaign posters do not show a bunch of women standing under a sign with that motto printed on it... More on this from Reuters.com.

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

Sound Visualization in Flash CS3 [FREE]

Tom Green

Sometimes a little foreknowledge is a good thing. Let's all take a deep breath and explore a sound visualization exercise in Flash Professional CS3.

Preparing Source Video for Flash Video, Part 1: Converting MPEG Files [FREE]

Robert Reinhardt

In this Flash Video series, you learn how to process source video files before you encode the content to the Flash Video (FLV) format. Source video can be saved in a wide range of formats across Windows and Macintosh platforms, and each format can use specific audio and video codecs. In this tutorial, you learn how to prepare an MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 file for Flash Video encoding.

NOTE: All of the tutorials in this series require Apple QuickTime Player. I recommended purchasing Apple QuickTime Player Pro directly from Apple. The Pro version enables you to export audio and video files. This series augments the material discussed in my forthcoming book, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Video Studio Techniques (Adobe Press).

CMX JumpStart: Washington, D.C.

Adrian Senior

The Washington, D.C. JumpsStart is a two-column fixed-width design. It uses the sliding doors method for presenting the navigation as a nice horizontal tabbed menu, which acts as a main navigation for the page-level vertical sub-navigation set.

Washington, D.C. makes good use of background images and, as always, meets the standards for CSS, XHTML and Accessibility, thus ensuring you have a good solid layout in which to begin your conversion to a client site.

Approximate download size: 2.6MB

Introducing CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C. [FREE]

Sheri German

Washington, D.C. is, of course, significant for being the capital of the United States, but it has also been my "hometown" since I was seventeen years old. I have lived in the city or one of its suburbs for all of my adult life. It is with the greatest pleasure, therefore, that I introduce the newest JumpStart, designed and coded by Adrian Senior, CMX JumpStart Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C. is a two-column, fixed-width design that employs a horizontal band method for the header and footer areas. It has a main navigation level that uses the popular tabbed sliding doors technique. CSS based buttons on the left form the secondary navigation. Washington, D.C. meets the standards for CSS, XHTML and Accessibility, thus ensuring that you have a good solid layout on which to base a client site.

The SQL CASE Statement

Tom Muck

If you are using SQL, you are no doubt familiar with SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE, as well as a few functions that are useful. I've found that not many people are making active use of the CASE statement, although it is one of the most useful SQL keywords in existence. Typically a web application developer will use this type of conditional logic in his page code (using PHP, ColdFusion, or another language) making the business logic part of the presentation of the page. It is more efficient and better programming practice to put this logic in the database using a stored procedure or in the SQL statement so that the presentation of the data can be as clean and unencumbered by business logic as possible.

This article will show a few simple uses of the statement and how you can use it to simply web applications. These examples should work in SQL Server or MySQL. I will be using the Northwind database that comes free with SQL Server. Anyone using mySQL can download a Northwind creation script at my site.

Bridge CS3 Overview - Part 3 - Tools Menu

Jim Babbage

With the launch of Adobe CS3, many former Macromedia users are now being exposed to a wider range of software applications. One of these applications is Adobe Bridge.

To better demonstrate the usefulness of Bridge, I thought a series of videos was in order. This video, the third in the series, gives an overview of the Bridge tools menu. The tools menu is a hub of automation and productivity and I go into each menu item in detail.

If you're new to Bridge - or even if you'd just like a refresher, check out this article series.

If you haven't had the chance, make sure to watch Adobe Bridge Overview, Part 1 and Bridge Overview, Part 2.

Approximate download size: 20MB

The Adobe Bridge CS3 Series:
Bridge CS3 Overview - Part 1: The Bridge Interface
Bridge CS3 Overview - Part 2: Bridge Functionality
Bridge CS3 Overview - Part 3: Tools Menu

Triple Threat II: Tiger, Vista & Ubuntu [FREE]

Thomas Pletcher

Are you using Parallels to run Windows on your Mac, or thinking about it? Then why not a Linux virtual machine as well?

The Triple Threat Series:
Triple Threat: Adding a Third OS to Your Dual-Boot Mac
Triple Threat II: Tiger, Vista & Ubuntu

Optimizing Flash Content for Use in Video [FREE]

Tom Green, David Stiller

In this, the second of eight excerpts from Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers by friendsofEd, Community MX partners, Tom Green and David Stiller, show you how to convert a Flash movie into a Quicktime movie. This exercise doesn't just think "outside of the box", it moves to the room where the box is located.

Approximate download size: 31MB

Tips & Tricks for Illustrator: Guides and Measuring Tools

Kim Dudley

I am lucky to have a job that I enjoy doing but I still don't want to spend any more time working than is absolutely necessary, so I love learning any little tricks that can speed up my day-to-day tasks. When you have worked with an application, such as Illustrator, for a long time you learn many shortcuts and handy little tools along the way. On the other hand, sometimes when you do something a certain way you keep doing it that way, not knowing there may be an easier and quicker method.

In this tutorial I will highlight some of the tips and tricks I use almost every day. I will focus on tips and tricks that involve guides and measuring. Some of them are specific just to Illustrator, while others can be used in some of the other Adobe applications. The following list is an outline of the topics we will cover.

Entering Measurements
Change the Units of Measurements
Changing the 0, 0 Position
Any Guide from any Ruler
Custom Guides
Restore a Dialog's Defaults
Hide and Show Guides
Aligning Guides
The Control Palette as a Calculator
Resizing Images and Text

Flash CS3: The Document Class - Part 2

Steve Schelter

The document class is a powerful new feature in Flash CS3 that utilizes the new IDE's integration into ActionScript 3.0. After the previous lesson, we've covered what the document class is and how it works. In this lesson, we will explore just how powerful the document class can be for building complex, modular applications.

The Flash CS3 Document Class Series:
Flash CS3: The Document Class - Part 1
Flash CS3: The Document Class - Part 2

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 Tom Green, Community MX Partner

Take Out The Garbage

If you have a lot of working files and clutter that don't need to be uploaded to your site, why not get rid of them right in DW? Simply select the file to be "deep sixed" in the DW File Panel and and press the Delete key. Ciao!

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!