
Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Community MX Author Goes Hollywod Our own Robert Reinhardt will be speaking at FITC Hollywood 2006. This rich media entertainment festival focuses on "cutting edge Rich Media trends and developments within the Entertainment Industry." As if Robert being there wasn't enough, rich media application developers from Warner Brothers, Sony, Adobe, Lynda.com and a host of others will be speaking at the event as well. The event takes place October 5th thru October 7th, and as a CMX newsletter subscriber, you're eligible for a 10% discount on the event. Just use this code when buying your tickets: cmx3344. Taking The Guesswork Out of IE7 and Safari Previews Dan Vine has put up an extremely handy utility for Mac and PC users who want to see what their websites look like in Internet Explorer 7 or Safari. If you're in a Mac environment and want to see your website in Internet Explorer 7, check out IE Capture, which allows you to get snapshots of your website in IE7. For PC users wanting to test their sites in Safari, use ICapture. As mentioned in OneDigitalLife.com, you may have to try the capture several times, since the capture can sometimes occur before the page is loaded. Thanks go out to subscriber Judy Kiel for giving us the link to these excellent utilities. Maximum Reasons To Attend MAX If you've attended Macromedia's MAX conference before, you know the reasons you should go again. If you haven't attended, Ben Forta has ten solid reasons why you should consider going. We can think of a couple off the top of our heads: Several CMX authors will be speaking, and this will be the first year that Adobe and Macromedia products will be cohabitating at MAX, which means you've got a much wider range of products being displayed, and the scope of the sessions has widened to include more products than has ever been possible at MAX. Besides, look at Ben. Would he lie to you? Just MXML and AS3 Ted Patrick, a Flex Evangelist for Adobe Systems, has come up with a simple way to help folks learn Flex hand-on by allowing the Flex community to share their knowledge - actually, sharing their code. CMX partner Joseph Balderson says it reminds him of the old Prototype Portal Format: Just code, Just MXML and AS3. Just real simple. Ted explains Just MXML in his blog at OnFlex.org. Meanwhile, you can see the collection of code, also at OnFlex.org, that is available for testing. Who Owns Your YouTube Video? When you post that video of your cousin Frank falling off his skateboard on YouTube.com, you should realize that you fully own that video. You retain the rights, absolutely. Well, kind of. The wording in YouTube's licensing information can be interpreted several ways, and not much of it is in your favor if you're posting video. Robert Cringely from PBS.org dissects the ins and outs of YouTube video ownership for you. Seems to us, with the way everything's worded, that you'd stand a fighting chance if having to take YouTube to court over the ownership of the video. But is cousin Frank really worth the trouble?
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "First, thank you for all the great work you do that benefits all of us. Your articles and tutorials are always excellent. I have used the Venice Jumpstart as the basis for many sites that I have designed. They have always drawn praise. For that I thank you." CMX Subscriber Klaus G., commenting on CMX Jumpstart "Venice" 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: "Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night... without the satisfaction." — Lynn Johnston But What If The Story About The Fake Interview is a Fake? If you're going to fake an interview in a newspaper, for God's sake people, don't pretend to have interviewed someone famous. It will catch up with you. Case in point: Bjoern Benkow, a Norwegian journalist, sold an interview he didn't have with Bill Gates to Norwegian magazine Mann and top-selling Swedish tabloid daily Aftonbladet. According to Gates' personal assisant, the interview never happened. Not a bit of it. Of course, we at CMX know the truth, because we also did not interview Bill Gates, and that was months before Beknow's interview never happened. Read about it at FoxNews.com. The AOL Implosion Begins AOL has decided to give away email accounts and software for free. These are services that subscribers typically pay over twenty dollars a month for. They're hoping that the money they lose when the mass exodus occurs can be made up in advertising. Basically, they're chasing the model that Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft have been successful with. "You've Got Mail!" just became "You've got absolutely no reason to subscribe to AOL!" Subscribers will still be supported, and new subscribers are still being taken, but now they have a choice of a $10/month plan with fewer features, unless they still want to pay the $26/month for a plan with more features. We suspect the "more" features include receiving a "You're Quite Gullible" award at the end of each month. Read more on this at Yahoo.com. Apple Has Security Flaws? Believe It Or Not, Yes. Apple has released a patch for twenty six security flaws that exist in OS X. Seventeen of those flaws are extremely serious, in that they could allow code to be run on your computer without your go-ahead, and without your knowledge. Some of the flaws are strikingly similar to recent holes that were plugged in Windows. Read about it at ITWeek.co.uk, and then get the patch from Apple's website. Or, vice versa. eMusic Riding The Coat Tails of the iPod's Success Wading through the menagerie of music download services is no simple task, what with the number of services there are to consider, like iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, and bunches of others. iTunes tops the list of course, because of its immediate compatibility with the iPod. But eMusic.com is gaining some major ground. They're currently the #2 download service, and they've done it without offering downloads from major labels. What makes them so popular (and currently 200,000 subscribers strong)? eMusic allows you to download unencoded, unprotected mp3 files, which means you can put them on your iPod. Because of their business model, the labels aren't keen on licensing their music to eMusic, but the independent labels can't deny the success they've experienced with eMusic. Some of the music available at eMusic includes songs from folks from Johnny Cash to CCR to White Stripes to Diana Krall. Corporate Butt Puckering For Fun And Profit Rick Segal, in his blog at TypePad.com, illustrates how simple it is to get some corporate big wigs riled up in no time flat. Recipe: Take one CEO. Mix with "yes" men. Vigorously point out flaws in their system. Watch the entire contents come to a boil. Enjoy.
The Polaroidizer for Fireworks 8 If you had a chance to read my recent article, Create a Polaroid Photograph in Fireworks, you saw how (relatively) easy it is to do this on your own. You can create two simple rectangles, punch the smaller rectangle through a larger rectangle, apply some simple drop-shadows, and Voila! Fairly easy frames that can be applied over the top of a photograph to give the appearance that the picture was snapped with a Polaroid camera like you see in the collage below. While the techniques described in the earlier tutorial were fairly easy, wouldn't it be even better if you could automate the process? Since you might not remember all the things that need to be done to achieve the effect how about it you could just run a command and have the frames created for you? You could then scale and place your own images and get the final outcome you see above with a minimum of muss and fuss. Now you can. When you download the support files for this article you'll find three commands for Fireworks 8 that will create the Polaroid frames for you. Just unzip the files and save into the Commands folder in your copy of Fireworks 8 and instant Polaroid frames are just a few clicks away. Check Out This Set of Fireworks Commands from CMX Partner Kim Cavanaugh
Fun and Freebies If You See a Link To This Website In Your Inbox... It's Over At BeMyEx.com, you'll get great advice on how to break up with the former object of your desire without being hated or shot for your efforts. You'll learn that one of the best spots to break up with a woman is at Chippendale's, since she really won't care about much except what's on the stage anyway. You'll also learn that it's ok to use the "It's not you, it's me" line, as long as you don't use it while on a bridge, balcony or rooftop. One More Thing To Squeeze Into a Swiss Army Knife USB memory is so small, it could practically fit into a Swiss Army Knife. Actually, it does fit, and SwissKnifeShop.com has got them. Memory goes from 128 megs up to a gig. Now you can use that knife the way it was meant to be used: Out camping, in the great outdoors, cutting your food, filing your nails and exchanging data. Of Breakfast Cereals and Movies Summer blockbusters can only mean one thing. Marketing the bejeebers out of youngsters. Kid's cereal boxes are full of advertising for the latest movies like Superman, Cars, Ice Age 2, etc... Check out what movies Cap'n Crunch and Count Chocula are hawking this season at Wired.com.
Let's Learn ColdFusion, Part I - Installation and the Testing Server Welcome to the first in a series of articles aimed at providing an extensive overview of the ColdFusion language to newcomers to server-side development. The series will start at the beginnning with a look at the make-up of the language and progress to basic server-side development allowing you to build on your knowledge with each new addition to the series. This free article by CMX Partner Adrian Senior can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Clever CSS Menus with PHP Gordon Mackay In this tutorial we will explore making an intelligent CSS menu system using a very simple PHP function. ,br /> While techniques exist in CSS that allow people to add current page indication based on body tags with classes applied to them they involve the editing of the individual pages to make them function. They also do not remove the current page's link from the navigation list. This menu will automatically remove the link from the current page navigation list item and add an ID that will allow it to be styled with a current page indicator of some sort via CSS. Let's get started. The Real Story Behind Web 2.0 [FREE] Kim Cavanaugh There's little doubt that the hottest buzz word to hit the Web in recent memory is the now ubiquitous Web 2.0. The term was originally coined as the name for a conference held in 2004 as Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Publishing fame explains in this article. Built around the idea that there is a new paradigm on the web, O'Reilly wonders in the referenced article (that many cite as the definitive explanation of what Web 2.0 is) if "the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as "Web 2.0" might make sense?" Since the launch of the conference and the discussion that O'Reilly's article sparked, everyone and their brother or sister seems to be trying to get a handle on exactly what Web 2.0 is. In many cases the notion that there is a new version of the Web may have become marketing hype in some cases, but you can't escape the fact that the idea of Web 2.0 resonated with enough people that there must be some authenticity in its existence. I have my own take on that definition, and I find that my thinking runs more towards what these emerging technologies allow people to do, rather than what applications and services are being developed. In that context, I see Web 2.0 as something I like to call Web 4C. A set of technologies that allow vast numbers of people to Connect, Communicate, Collaborate, and Create. In this article I'll take a look at each of those broad themes and relate them to how people are actually using the new technologies that are available. Understanding The Movie Clip Architecture - Part 3: Scenes 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 3 of this series we will look at Scenes: what they are, when to use and not to use them, and what the alternatives are when building your Flash application. The Understanding the Movie Clip Architecture Series: Understanding the Movie Clip Architecture - Part 1: The Almighty Movie Clip Understanding the Movie Clip Architecture - Part 2: Levels Understanding the Movie Clip Architecture - Part 3: Scenes Making a Poll in PHP Paul Davis Create a quick poll using PHP, MySQL and Dreamweaver. Using Timeouts in JavaScript Rob Williams Web sites, like many technological devices these days, can often be regarded as having a "hurry up and wait" type of experience. That is, the user clicks a link, waits for the page to load, finally gets all of the relavent information and then takes their time going through the entire page until they find another link to follow, repeating the process once more. Unfortunately, this type of approach can be quite limiting for web developers, especially when trying to create a site where time and updated information can be critical to the overall experience. In this article we'll take a look at some simple JavaScript that can give you the ability to keep the events and "action" on your web page going, even when the user is not following a link or refreshing the page. Float Images Within Text Zoe Gillenwater Before the days of CSS-based layouts, we used the align attribute of an image to make text wrap around it on the left or right. Now, with the separation of content and presentation, we should use the CSS float property to achieve this same effect. In this tutorial, you'll apply the theory from Float: The Theory to a real-world content layout technique in order to see how floats work. You'll learn how to float images left and right and have text wrap around them, as well as give them captions that match them in width. ASP.NET and Several Methods for Updating a "Page Modified" Date and Simply Getting the Current Date [FREE] Joann Lavrich "Created on" and "Last modified" dates are commonly included objects on web pages. This can be quite useful in determining when the last time content was added to a web site. On the other hand, determining when the page was modified may be specifically for the information within the page itself either being entered or modified from a database or some other data source. Tracking changes to a web page can be from a variety of sources. The following methods are discussed: setting the last modified in Dreamweaver; using SQL queries to return the last modified date or current date; using the DateTime object; and setting the file timestamps in code. Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 5 - Working with cfincludes Adrian Senior In this lesson we will look at code reuse within your web site design. Specifically you will learn about the cfinclude tag and how you can put this tag to good use with what you have learned in the previous lessons. To work through this lesson we will be using the North Pole JumpStart. 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 Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4b - Building a Dynamic List Menu Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4c - Filtering Your Queries and the cfqueryparam Tag Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 4d - Error Checking Your ColdFusion Queries Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 5 - Working with cfincludes Throw Away Your Burning and Dodging Tools Knut Kubenz Throw away those old Burning and Dodging tools and opt for a more professional method which doesn't damage image pixels. Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3 Ray West In this installment of this series, we are going to look at some of the additional ColdFusion tags that can be used within the cfdocument tag to give you more control over the layout and appearance of your PDF of Flashpaper document. The Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion Series: Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 1 Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 2 Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3 Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4 Coming Soon Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 5 Coming Soon
Full-Text Searching with MySQL and PHP - Part 2: Search Term Highlighting In the last tutorial of this series I showed you how to create a FULLTEXT index in MySQL and created a query with PHP that allowed you to search through dynamic content using a simple form. In this tutorial I will show you how to style keywords found in content so that they are highlighted for easy reading. Google is one such search engine that highlights keywords that the user searched for in the pages generated by the search. This is very useful as it directs the user's eyes directly to the piece of text they are searching for even when it's jumbled up among lots of other words. In this tutorial we will create the same effect with a tiny addition to the code from the last part of the tutorial. Check out the Article by CMX partner Gordon Mackay
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Partner Stephanie Sullivan Improve Your DW8 Files Panel Performance To improve performance in the Files panel, it can help to turn off the "Enable Column Sharing" preference in the File View Columns category of your site definitions. Unless you're currently using this feature, disable it and it will speed things up a bit. 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!

Community MX Author Goes Hollywod

Our own Robert Reinhardt will be speaking at FITC Hollywood 2006. This rich media entertainment festival focuses on "cutting edge Rich Media trends and developments within the Entertainment Industry." As if Robert being there wasn't enough, rich media application developers from Warner Brothers, Sony, Adobe, Lynda.com and a host of others will be speaking at the event as well. The event takes place October 5th thru October 7th, and as a CMX newsletter subscriber, you're eligible for a 10% discount on the event. Just use this code when buying your tickets: cmx3344.

Taking The Guesswork Out of IE7 and Safari Previews

Dan Vine has put up an extremely handy utility for Mac and PC users who want to see what their websites look like in Internet Explorer 7 or Safari. If you're in a Mac environment and want to see your website in Internet Explorer 7, check out IE Capture, which allows you to get snapshots of your website in IE7. For PC users wanting to test their sites in Safari, use ICapture. As mentioned in OneDigitalLife.com, you may have to try the capture several times, since the capture can sometimes occur before the page is loaded. Thanks go out to subscriber Judy Kiel for giving us the link to these excellent utilities.

Maximum Reasons To Attend MAX

If you've attended Macromedia's MAX conference before, you know the reasons you should go again. If you haven't attended, Ben Forta has ten solid reasons why you should consider going. We can think of a couple off the top of our heads: Several CMX authors will be speaking, and this will be the first year that Adobe and Macromedia products will be cohabitating at MAX, which means you've got a much wider range of products being displayed, and the scope of the sessions has widened to include more products than has ever been possible at MAX. Besides, look at Ben. Would he lie to you?

Just MXML and AS3

Ted Patrick, a Flex Evangelist for Adobe Systems, has come up with a simple way to help folks learn Flex hand-on by allowing the Flex community to share their knowledge - actually, sharing their code. CMX partner Joseph Balderson says it reminds him of the old Prototype Portal Format: Just code, Just MXML and AS3. Just real simple. Ted explains Just MXML in his blog at OnFlex.org. Meanwhile, you can see the collection of code, also at OnFlex.org, that is available for testing.

Who Owns Your YouTube Video?

When you post that video of your cousin Frank falling off his skateboard on YouTube.com, you should realize that you fully own that video. You retain the rights, absolutely. Well, kind of. The wording in YouTube's licensing information can be interpreted several ways, and not much of it is in your favor if you're posting video. Robert Cringely from PBS.org dissects the ins and outs of YouTube video ownership for you. Seems to us, with the way everything's worded, that you'd stand a fighting chance if having to take YouTube to court over the ownership of the video. But is cousin Frank really worth the trouble?

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"First, thank you for all the great work you do that benefits all of us. Your articles and tutorials are always excellent. I have used the Venice Jumpstart as the basis for many sites that I have designed. They have always drawn praise. For that I thank you."

CMX Subscriber Klaus G., commenting on CMX Jumpstart "Venice"

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:

"Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night... without the satisfaction." — Lynn Johnston

But What If The Story About The Fake Interview is a Fake?

If you're going to fake an interview in a newspaper, for God's sake people, don't pretend to have interviewed someone famous. It will catch up with you. Case in point: Bjoern Benkow, a Norwegian journalist, sold an interview he didn't have with Bill Gates to Norwegian magazine Mann and top-selling Swedish tabloid daily Aftonbladet. According to Gates' personal assisant, the interview never happened. Not a bit of it. Of course, we at CMX know the truth, because we also did not interview Bill Gates, and that was months before Beknow's interview never happened. Read about it at FoxNews.com.

The AOL Implosion Begins

AOL has decided to give away email accounts and software for free. These are services that subscribers typically pay over twenty dollars a month for. They're hoping that the money they lose when the mass exodus occurs can be made up in advertising. Basically, they're chasing the model that Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft have been successful with. "You've Got Mail!" just became "You've got absolutely no reason to subscribe to AOL!" Subscribers will still be supported, and new subscribers are still being taken, but now they have a choice of a $10/month plan with fewer features, unless they still want to pay the $26/month for a plan with more features. We suspect the "more" features include receiving a "You're Quite Gullible" award at the end of each month. Read more on this at Yahoo.com.

Apple Has Security Flaws? Believe It Or Not, Yes.

Apple has released a patch for twenty six security flaws that exist in OS X. Seventeen of those flaws are extremely serious, in that they could allow code to be run on your computer without your go-ahead, and without your knowledge. Some of the flaws are strikingly similar to recent holes that were plugged in Windows. Read about it at ITWeek.co.uk, and then get the patch from Apple's website. Or, vice versa.

eMusic Riding The Coat Tails of the iPod's Success

Wading through the menagerie of music download services is no simple task, what with the number of services there are to consider, like iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, and bunches of others. iTunes tops the list of course, because of its immediate compatibility with the iPod. But eMusic.com is gaining some major ground. They're currently the #2 download service, and they've done it without offering downloads from major labels. What makes them so popular (and currently 200,000 subscribers strong)? eMusic allows you to download unencoded, unprotected mp3 files, which means you can put them on your iPod. Because of their business model, the labels aren't keen on licensing their music to eMusic, but the independent labels can't deny the success they've experienced with eMusic. Some of the music available at eMusic includes songs from folks from Johnny Cash to CCR to White Stripes to Diana Krall.

Corporate Butt Puckering For Fun And Profit

Rick Segal, in his blog at TypePad.com, illustrates how simple it is to get some corporate big wigs riled up in no time flat. Recipe: Take one CEO. Mix with "yes" men. Vigorously point out flaws in their system. Watch the entire contents come to a boil. Enjoy.

The Polaroidizer for Fireworks 8

If you had a chance to read my recent article, Create a Polaroid Photograph in Fireworks, you saw how (relatively) easy it is to do this on your own. You can create two simple rectangles, punch the smaller rectangle through a larger rectangle, apply some simple drop-shadows, and Voila! Fairly easy frames that can be applied over the top of a photograph to give the appearance that the picture was snapped with a Polaroid camera like you see in the collage below. While the techniques described in the earlier tutorial were fairly easy, wouldn't it be even better if you could automate the process? Since you might not remember all the things that need to be done to achieve the effect how about it you could just run a command and have the frames created for you? You could then scale and place your own images and get the final outcome you see above with a minimum of muss and fuss. Now you can. When you download the support files for this article you'll find three commands for Fireworks 8 that will create the Polaroid frames for you. Just unzip the files and save into the Commands folder in your copy of Fireworks 8 and instant Polaroid frames are just a few clicks away.

Check Out This Set of Fireworks Commands from CMX Partner Kim Cavanaugh

Fun and Freebies

If You See a Link To This Website In Your Inbox... It's Over

At BeMyEx.com, you'll get great advice on how to break up with the former object of your desire without being hated or shot for your efforts. You'll learn that one of the best spots to break up with a woman is at Chippendale's, since she really won't care about much except what's on the stage anyway. You'll also learn that it's ok to use the "It's not you, it's me" line, as long as you don't use it while on a bridge, balcony or rooftop.

One More Thing To Squeeze Into a Swiss Army Knife

USB memory is so small, it could practically fit into a Swiss Army Knife. Actually, it does fit, and SwissKnifeShop.com has got them. Memory goes from 128 megs up to a gig. Now you can use that knife the way it was meant to be used: Out camping, in the great outdoors, cutting your food, filing your nails and exchanging data.

Of Breakfast Cereals and Movies

Summer blockbusters can only mean one thing. Marketing the bejeebers out of youngsters. Kid's cereal boxes are full of advertising for the latest movies like Superman, Cars, Ice Age 2, etc... Check out what movies Cap'n Crunch and Count Chocula are hawking this season at Wired.com.

Let's Learn ColdFusion, Part I - Installation and the Testing Server

Welcome to the first in a series of articles aimed at providing an extensive overview of the ColdFusion language to newcomers to server-side development. The series will start at the beginnning with a look at the make-up of the language and progress to basic server-side development allowing you to build on your knowledge with each new addition to the series.

This free article by CMX Partner Adrian Senior can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Clever CSS Menus with PHP

Gordon Mackay

In this tutorial we will explore making an intelligent CSS menu system using a very simple PHP function.
,br /> While techniques exist in CSS that allow people to add current page indication based on body tags with classes applied to them they involve the editing of the individual pages to make them function. They also do not remove the current page's link from the navigation list.

This menu will automatically remove the link from the current page navigation list item and add an ID that will allow it to be styled with a current page indicator of some sort via CSS.

Let's get started.

The Real Story Behind Web 2.0 [FREE]

Kim Cavanaugh

There's little doubt that the hottest buzz word to hit the Web in recent memory is the now ubiquitous Web 2.0. The term was originally coined as the name for a conference held in 2004 as Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Publishing fame explains in this article. Built around the idea that there is a new paradigm on the web, O'Reilly wonders in the referenced article (that many cite as the definitive explanation of what Web 2.0 is) if "the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as "Web 2.0" might make sense?"

Since the launch of the conference and the discussion that O'Reilly's article sparked, everyone and their brother or sister seems to be trying to get a handle on exactly what Web 2.0 is. In many cases the notion that there is a new version of the Web may have become marketing hype in some cases, but you can't escape the fact that the idea of Web 2.0 resonated with enough people that there must be some authenticity in its existence.

I have my own take on that definition, and I find that my thinking runs more towards what these emerging technologies allow people to do, rather than what applications and services are being developed. In that context, I see Web 2.0 as something I like to call Web 4C. A set of technologies that allow vast numbers of people to Connect, Communicate, Collaborate, and Create.

In this article I'll take a look at each of those broad themes and relate them to how people are actually using the new technologies that are available.

Understanding The Movie Clip Architecture - Part 3: Scenes

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 3 of this series we will look at Scenes: what they are, when to use and not to use them, and what the alternatives are when building your Flash application.

The Understanding the Movie Clip Architecture Series:
Understanding the Movie Clip Architecture - Part 1: The Almighty Movie Clip
Understanding the Movie Clip Architecture - Part 2: Levels
Understanding the Movie Clip Architecture - Part 3: Scenes

Making a Poll in PHP

Paul Davis

Create a quick poll using PHP, MySQL and Dreamweaver.

Using Timeouts in JavaScript

Rob Williams

Web sites, like many technological devices these days, can often be regarded as having a "hurry up and wait" type of experience. That is, the user clicks a link, waits for the page to load, finally gets all of the relavent information and then takes their time going through the entire page until they find another link to follow, repeating the process once more. Unfortunately, this type of approach can be quite limiting for web developers, especially when trying to create a site where time and updated information can be critical to the overall experience.

In this article we'll take a look at some simple JavaScript that can give you the ability to keep the events and "action" on your web page going, even when the user is not following a link or refreshing the page.

Float Images Within Text

Zoe Gillenwater

Before the days of CSS-based layouts, we used the align attribute of an image to make text wrap around it on the left or right. Now, with the separation of content and presentation, we should use the CSS float property to achieve this same effect. In this tutorial, you'll apply the theory from Float: The Theory to a real-world content layout technique in order to see how floats work. You'll learn how to float images left and right and have text wrap around them, as well as give them captions that match them in width.

ASP.NET and Several Methods for Updating a "Page Modified" Date and Simply Getting the Current Date [FREE]

Joann Lavrich

"Created on" and "Last modified" dates are commonly included objects on web pages. This can be quite useful in determining when the last time content was added to a web site. On the other hand, determining when the page was modified may be specifically for the information within the page itself either being entered or modified from a database or some other data source. Tracking changes to a web page can be from a variety of sources. The following methods are discussed: setting the last modified in Dreamweaver; using SQL queries to return the last modified date or current date; using the DateTime object; and setting the file timestamps in code.

Let's Learn ColdFusion: Part 5 - Working with cfincludes

Adrian Senior

Throw Away Your Burning and Dodging Tools

Knut Kubenz

Throw away those old Burning and Dodging tools and opt for a more professional method which doesn't damage image pixels.

Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3

Ray West

In this installment of this series, we are going to look at some of the additional ColdFusion tags that can be used within the cfdocument tag to give you more control over the layout and appearance of your PDF of Flashpaper document.

The Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion Series:
Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 1
Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 2
Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3
Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4 Coming Soon
Creating Simple Reports in ColdFusion: Part 5 Coming Soon

Full-Text Searching with MySQL and PHP - Part 2: Search Term Highlighting

In the last tutorial of this series I showed you how to create a FULLTEXT index in MySQL and created a query with PHP that allowed you to search through dynamic content using a simple form. In this tutorial I will show you how to style keywords found in content so that they are highlighted for easy reading. Google is one such search engine that highlights keywords that the user searched for in the pages generated by the search. This is very useful as it directs the user's eyes directly to the piece of text they are searching for even when it's jumbled up among lots of other words. In this tutorial we will create the same effect with a tiny addition to the code from the last part of the tutorial.

Check out the Article by CMX partner Gordon Mackay

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Partner Stephanie Sullivan

Improve Your DW8 Files Panel Performance

To improve performance in the Files panel, it can help to turn off the "Enable Column Sharing" preference in the File View Columns category of your site definitions. Unless you're currently using this feature, disable it and it will speed things up a bit.

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!