
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Adobe Digital Editions 1.0 Hits The Shelves With a Great Price Tag Adobe Digital Editions is out of beta and gets into the 1.0 territory, and is available as a free download from Adobe. As we've mentioned before, Digital Editions is Adobe's bid to become the de facto reader for eBooks and takes the pdf format one step further than what we've become accustomed to. The main idea behind Digital Editions is to organize your eBooks the same way you'd organize them on your shelf: Any way you like. As simple as that sounds, there is no other program that handles the OPS (Open Publication Standard) format the way that Digital Editions can. Not only that, but it can also handle more than just eBooks. Digital Editions can also read XML, PDF and Flash content. Gizmodo.com has a good overview of Adobe's latest. Dot Net? PHP? Sissies! We say that with part of our tongue firmly planted in our cheek, of course. Arguments over what is the best database programming language have been going on since there was more than one to choose from. The folks here at CMX are experienced in many forms of programming, and don't necessarily endorse any specific coding language - the best tool for the job is up to the person doing that job. But the person at this particular keyboard happens to be partial to ColdFusion, and is extremely excited about ColdFusion 8 and the new wealth of possiblities it brings to CF developers. New Flash and Flex remoting components? Nice. New extensions for Eclipse? Terrific! New Report Builder capabilities? Awesome. Tons of new tags that extend the power of ColdFusion? Well, now we're just drooling. Just look at all of the downloads available for ColdFusion 8. A developer's paradise. Check out ACTFUG.com for more doc's on what ColdFusion 8 has to offer. As if that wasn't enough, increased capability in CF 8 does not mean decreased performance. Quite the opposite. ColdFusion 8 is faster than its predecessors, according to this performance matrix from Adobe. Trouble With Adobe Installers? If you've had problems trying to install some or all of the Adobe components in CS3, this short but sweet blog post at Brain3.net might help. Keep in mind that we have not personally tried this solution and cannot guarantee that it is actually any kind of solution, but we know that some folks have had issues installing CS3 and figured that if folks had their restore points in order and have been banging their heads against the wall trying to instal CS3, they might be desparate enough by now to give anything a try... Bloggers Protected From Revealing Their Sources Thanks to the US House of Representatives, bloggers are being afforded the same rights as reporters with respect to having to reveal confidential sources of information. The Free Flow of Information Act has generally been known as the act that protected reporters from giving away the source of their information, but now it's been updated in such a way that bloggers could be seen as being protected in the same way that reporters are. This is not a "done deal" however. The bill still needs to pass through the Senate in order to be legally binding. Their are many opponents to the bill, so whether or not this goes through is anyone's guess. More info on this at News.com. The "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" Commercials Have It Mostly Right The user access controls built into Vista were parodied very well in the Mac/PC commercials from Apple. You know the one I'm talking about: PC is accompanied by a fellow who asks PC if he'd like to allow this, allow that, etc... Check out the Apple website for the video (click on the one named "security"). As a Vista user, I can verify that this is a pretty frustrating feature. If I didn't want to allow a certain program to run, I wouldn't have started the program in the first place, right? But Vista still has the audacity to second-guess me every time I start an app that it either doesn't recognize or decides is out to ruin my computer. Sheesh. Dale Fraser - among many others - agrees, and provides a link on his blog to get rid of this supposed security feature. Use at your own risk, but frankly, if you didn't miss this feature in XP, you're not going to miss it now.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "I'm almost finished with the site I've been working on for several months. I'm about to put it on the air, knowing that there will be more features added over the next several weeks - one being a way to search the site. I was just visiting Community, and there was this article. You make everything sound so easy - can't wait to give it a try. Now I don't have to wait to add the search feature to my site! When will Part 2 be ready or is it available now? Thanks very much for the timely article!" - Richard H., CMX Subscriber, commenting on the Tom Muck's Create a Simple Database Web Search. Whether you're just starting out or need advanced support, Community MX will give you answers and ideas to work through your tough issues. Don't miss out. Learn more about CMX or sign up for a free trial today!
Great Quotes: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying." — Woody Allen Remember Amazon? Amazon.com was once the golden child of the Internet. When other corporations were still creating a basic web presence, Amazon recognized that the Internet was an unexplored avenue of revenue, and succeeded in setting the money-making example. Amazon is still considered by most as the de facto online store, but some might say that they've been resting on their laurels, no matter how big those laurels might be... until now. Amazon has just announced that they're getting into the online merchant business. Amazon FPS (Flexible Payment Service) competes with the likes of Paypal and Google Checkout and has a couple of interesting tricks up its sleeve. For instance, you can set up different payment rules for different customers. After looking over Amazon's announcement of their new service, we'd liken it very much to how Paypal works. One more serious online merchant can only be a good thing for developers, as it creates healthy competition which could mean savings for all of us. YouTube Mess Cleanup On Aisle One! When Google announced that it was purchasing YouTube, many thought it could be the first major bad move that the internet behemoth had made. After all, YouTube had, according to many critics, built its success on other people's work. Viacom in particular was watching YouTube closely, since much of its content was being streamed through YouTube's website. This week Google announced that they will have new digital fingerprinting in place at YouTube that will prevent the streaming of copyrighted material. Although some - especially the folks at Viacom - have reservations about the effectiveness of Google's proposed solution, lawyers for Google are confident that this should satisfy the needs of all concerned parties. Read all about it at Adotas.com. Freelancers Need Help Too Freelancers have it made, right? They work for themselves, their profits go straight into their own pockets, they are the masters of their own destinies, etc, etc, yeah, yeah, yeah. You freelancers out there know it's not that simple. If it was, everyone would do it. But a lot of folks go into business for themselves without knowing exactly what they're doing or what they're getting into. FreelanceSwitch.com has a great list of articles tailored to those who are thinking of striking out on their own, and those that have already taken the plunge. Because Many Of Us Live The Stereotype J.J. Abrams, who co-wrote and directed Mission Impossible III, has recently announced that he's in the process of casting for the next Star Trek film. For the newest Trek, Abrams is going where no man has gone before: He'll be casting younger actors for the roles of Kirk, Spock and the rest of the Enterprise crew. Zachary Quinto from the television show Heroes has already been cast in the role of Spock. Leonard Nimoy, Abrams and Quinto were interviewed recently by Entertainment Weekly. For All Of Us ~~Tightwads~~ Smart Shoppers A certain staffer of Community MX who shall remain nameless (see Laurie? I wouldn't rat you out) is one of the best bargain shoppers we know. We're constantly amazed at the deals she finds. Now you can be like Laurie and start saving plenty of cash on the stuff you want to buy. Just head over to eBizMBA.com, where they provide you with links to plenty of websites that help you save while you shop online.
CMX Robot File Dreamweaver Extension The CMX Robots.txt Creator will create a robots.txt file formatted according to the standards set for this type of file and save it to your local site. Quickly create your robots.txt files with this extension and stop worrying about the syntax! Take a look at this extension by CMX Partner Paul Davis
Fun and Freebies! Animator vs. Animation If you haven't yet seen the Flash-generated Animator Vs. Animation at DeviantArt.com, you've got to check it out. If you've seen it, then you really need to see the sequel. The first one was hilarious in its own right, but the sequel takes it one step farther. Hilarious. The Reason You Cannot Leave Your Office Supplies Alone If this is what my erasers are up to after-hours, I don't even want to think about my pencil sharpener. All We Know Is That The World Revolves Around Us From the French version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire comes proof that it's not just U.S. game shows that expose how goofy people are.
Yahoo! Pipes: An Introduction Yahoo Pipes has been on my personal radar since it was announced in February of this year. At the time of its rollout there was a great deal of Pipes logo interest around the web design world. Yahoo provided what appeared to be an easy way for anyone (even non-developers like myself) to mash-up RSS feeds into new web services. While that may seem like no big deal, my own experiences and research into current trends indicates that there is a growing demand for data that has been customized and repurposed to fit particular audiences. If you're developing web sites for customers, the ability to provide them with live data that can be displayed on their site will be a valuable service that just may set you apart from your competition. You don't even have to tell anyone how easy Yahoo makes this. This free article by CMX Partner Kim Cavanaugh can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Custom PHP Settings With .htaccess Rob Williams Every now and again I find as a web developer that there are times when the default PHP configuration on my server just isn't working as well as I'd like it to for a given project. This can be especially plaguing when you're dealing with remote web hosts that offer you little to no control over the configuration of PHP itself. Anytime you're running multiple web sites off the same server this can also be a problem as you may want to have different PHP settings for each of the sites. In this article we're going to take a look at one possible solution to these problems by including PHP configuration values within an .htaccess file. Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 2 [FREE] Joseph Balderson Out there in the Flash design and development world, there are many tools available to assist in creating projects. These are "power tools" that supercharge the task of designing, coding, compiling, testing and documenting, allowing you to save time and present ideas much more effectively. Some have been around for a few years, and some are pretty new. This series highlights some of the open source tools and techniques which have made my life as a Flash developer much more effective. This 2-part article covers a nifty addition to any designer's arsenal of colour aids: the Adobe Kuler colour theme creator and sharing portal. In Part 1 we took a look at the photo-to-gif Flash palette technique. We then looked at how Kuler is a much better alternative to palette selection. Here in Part 2 we will look at the Kuler Desktop, an AIR-enabled version of the Kuler application, as well as the Kuler Flash CS3 Panel. The Adobe Kuler application The Flash PowerTools Series: Flash PowerTools: Code Automation with SEPY Flash PowerTools: FlashTracer for Firefox Flash PowerTools: Standalone FLV Players Flash PowerTools: Transition and Tween Explorer Flash PowerTools: Flash Switcher for Firefox Flash PowerTools: Exploring Gradients Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 1 Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 2 Sharing Fonts in ActionScript 3.0 - Part 2: Displaying a Loaded Font in a TextField Instance Robert Reinhardt In this tutorial series, you learn how to use the new Font class in ActionScript 3.0 and Flash Player 9. The Font class enables you to embed one or more fonts in a Flash movie (SWF file), and reuse the font with other SWF files. In this tutorial, you learn how to utilize a font from a loaded font SWF file with a dynamically-created text field. NOTE: In order to follow along with the tutorials in this series, you need to use Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. The font sharing techniques discussed in this series require ActionScript 3.0 and Flash Player 9. The Sharing Fonts in ActionScript 3.0 Series: Sharing Fonts in ActionScript 3.0 - Part 1: Creating a Font SWF Sharing Fonts in ActionScript 3.0 - Part 2: Displaying a Loaded Font in a TextField Instance Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 1 [FREE] Joseph Balderson Out there in the Flash design and development world, there are many tools available to assist in creating projects. These are "power tools" that supercharge the task of designing, coding, compiling, testing and documenting, allowing you to save time and present ideas much more effectively. Some have been around for a few years, and some are pretty new. This series highlights some of the open source tools and techniques which have made my life as a Flash developer much more effective. This 2-part article covers a nifty addition to any designer's arsenal of colour aids: the Adobe Kuler colour theme creator and sharing portal. First we'll take a look at the photo-to-gif Flash palette technique, then we'll look at how Kuler is a much better alternative to palette selection. In Part 2 we will look at the Kuler Desktop, an AIR-enabled version of the Kuler application, as well as the Kuler Flash CS3 Panel. The Adobe Kuler application The Flash PowerTools Series: Flash PowerTools: Code Automation with SEPY Flash PowerTools: FlashTracer for Firefox Flash PowerTools: Standalone FLV Players Flash PowerTools: Transition and Tween Explorer Flash PowerTools: Flash Switcher for Firefox Flash PowerTools: Exploring Gradients Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 1 Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 2 Coming Soon Somewhere Over the Rainbow Knut Kubenz I'm sure there have been many times you've noticed a beautiful rainbow, just after a rain shower or thunderstorm, but you just didn't have your camera to capture the event. Now with Photoshop you can produce a realistic rainbow effect in a previously photographed scene anytime you want. Photoshop has some unique Special Effect Gradients, as well as Layer Masks, to produce exceptionally realistic rainbows in your images. This tutorial will explore the ways you can make a good looking scenic even better and perhaps more dramatic. Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 2 - Basic Setup Steve Schelter When working in the Flex 2 environment, there are many times where you might find yourself in need of a component that does not exist. The Flex SDK offers plenty of extensibility for building custom UI components that can plug seamlessly into the existing framework. In the second lesson of this series, we will set up the foundation for a custom component. The Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2 Series: Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 1 - Overview Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 2 - Basic Setup The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series Part Eleven Sheri German Beware the Properties Inspector. It is after you create your CSS based layout and then troubleshoot and validate its code that your vigilance should really begin. When you start adding content, whether as images, text, or from Word and Excel documents, you can lose that clean code and introduce deprecated elements into the page. In this article, you will learn what to use and what to avoid on the Properties Inspector when it is set to format text, images, or tables. You will learn the meaning of deprecated elements and attributes, why you should avoid formatting text with the Properties Inspector, and when deprecated code might cause validation to fail. You will also learn about the CSS problem of the cellspacing attribute, the use of target="_blank", and some legacy buttons such as "Low Source" on the Properties Inspector. The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series: The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 1 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 2 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 3 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 4 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 5 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 6 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 7 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 8 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 9 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 10 The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 11 Using the Image Processor in Photoshop or Bridge CS3 Jim Babbage Automating repetitive tasks is something that any good production software should do - or allow for. Fireworks and Photoshop are no slouches in this area; they both offer ways to batch process images in a variety of different ways right out of the box, and give you tools to easily create your own custom automation commands (Custom Commands in FW, Actions in PS). If you've been watching my Bridge videos, you see that Bridge gives us access to many of the common batch commands available in Fireworks and Photoshop, so long as those applications are installed on your system. One of the Photoshop tools I use quite often is a command called "Image Processor." This Photoshop script command allows me to select any recognizable graphic file format and batch process it into three other common digital formats; TIF, JPEG and PSD. Follow along in this video tutorial to learn more about how the Image Processor script works. Installing ColdFusion 8 on Vista with Apache [FREE] Chaz Chumley ColdFusion 8 is the latest and greatest version of ColdFusion and as soon as it hit the Adobe Labs I hurried out to download it and install it. I noticed that there are a few new items that get installed with ColdFusion 8, like .NET integration and LiveCycle Data Services Express edition. So those familiar with installing ColdFusion 7, there are some new settings. If you have had the pleasure, or pain, of running Windows Vista then you may know that simply installing applications is not really that simple. I will be taking you through installing ColdFusion 8 on Vista with Apache 2 as my web server. Create a Soft Mask in Flash CS3 [FREE] Tom Green, David Stiller Masks with hard edges are easy to do in Flash. What about masks with feathered edges? That's another story. Learn how in this sixth excerpt written by Community MX partners David Stiller and Tom Green in the new book -Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers- from friendsofED
CMX JumpStart: Washington, D.C. 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. Check out the JumpStart by CMX Partner Adrian Senior
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! Now Twice The Tip!! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX partner Kim Cavanaugh A Tip for Flash Video When designing compositions that include a video player in Flash I like to take a screenshot of the player in a browser window. I can then use that bitmap image in a guide layer to help in designing the rest of the interface and for making decisions on skinning the player. 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 Digital Editions 1.0 Hits The Shelves With a Great Price Tag

Adobe Digital Editions is out of beta and gets into the 1.0 territory, and is available as a free download from Adobe. As we've mentioned before, Digital Editions is Adobe's bid to become the de facto reader for eBooks and takes the pdf format one step further than what we've become accustomed to. The main idea behind Digital Editions is to organize your eBooks the same way you'd organize them on your shelf: Any way you like. As simple as that sounds, there is no other program that handles the OPS (Open Publication Standard) format the way that Digital Editions can. Not only that, but it can also handle more than just eBooks. Digital Editions can also read XML, PDF and Flash content. Gizmodo.com has a good overview of Adobe's latest.

Dot Net? PHP? Sissies!

We say that with part of our tongue firmly planted in our cheek, of course. Arguments over what is the best database programming language have been going on since there was more than one to choose from. The folks here at CMX are experienced in many forms of programming, and don't necessarily endorse any specific coding language - the best tool for the job is up to the person doing that job. But the person at this particular keyboard happens to be partial to ColdFusion, and is extremely excited about ColdFusion 8 and the new wealth of possiblities it brings to CF developers. New Flash and Flex remoting components? Nice. New extensions for Eclipse? Terrific! New Report Builder capabilities? Awesome. Tons of new tags that extend the power of ColdFusion? Well, now we're just drooling. Just look at all of the downloads available for ColdFusion 8. A developer's paradise. Check out ACTFUG.com for more doc's on what ColdFusion 8 has to offer. As if that wasn't enough, increased capability in CF 8 does not mean decreased performance. Quite the opposite. ColdFusion 8 is faster than its predecessors, according to this performance matrix from Adobe.

Trouble With Adobe Installers?

If you've had problems trying to install some or all of the Adobe components in CS3, this short but sweet blog post at Brain3.net might help. Keep in mind that we have not personally tried this solution and cannot guarantee that it is actually any kind of solution, but we know that some folks have had issues installing CS3 and figured that if folks had their restore points in order and have been banging their heads against the wall trying to instal CS3, they might be desparate enough by now to give anything a try...

Bloggers Protected From Revealing Their Sources

Thanks to the US House of Representatives, bloggers are being afforded the same rights as reporters with respect to having to reveal confidential sources of information. The Free Flow of Information Act has generally been known as the act that protected reporters from giving away the source of their information, but now it's been updated in such a way that bloggers could be seen as being protected in the same way that reporters are. This is not a "done deal" however. The bill still needs to pass through the Senate in order to be legally binding. Their are many opponents to the bill, so whether or not this goes through is anyone's guess. More info on this at News.com.

The "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" Commercials Have It Mostly Right

The user access controls built into Vista were parodied very well in the Mac/PC commercials from Apple. You know the one I'm talking about: PC is accompanied by a fellow who asks PC if he'd like to allow this, allow that, etc... Check out the Apple website for the video (click on the one named "security"). As a Vista user, I can verify that this is a pretty frustrating feature. If I didn't want to allow a certain program to run, I wouldn't have started the program in the first place, right? But Vista still has the audacity to second-guess me every time I start an app that it either doesn't recognize or decides is out to ruin my computer. Sheesh. Dale Fraser - among many others - agrees, and provides a link on his blog to get rid of this supposed security feature. Use at your own risk, but frankly, if you didn't miss this feature in XP, you're not going to miss it now.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"I'm almost finished with the site I've been working on for several months. I'm about to put it on the air, knowing that there will be more features added over the next several weeks - one being a way to search the site. I was just visiting Community, and there was this article. You make everything sound so easy - can't wait to give it a try. Now I don't have to wait to add the search feature to my site! When will Part 2 be ready or is it available now? Thanks very much for the timely article!"

- Richard H., CMX Subscriber, commenting on the Tom Muck's Create a Simple Database Web Search.

Whether you're just starting out or need advanced support, Community MX will give you answers and ideas to work through your tough issues. Don't miss out. Learn more about CMX or sign up for a free trial today!

Great Quotes:

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying." — Woody Allen

Remember Amazon?

Amazon.com was once the golden child of the Internet. When other corporations were still creating a basic web presence, Amazon recognized that the Internet was an unexplored avenue of revenue, and succeeded in setting the money-making example. Amazon is still considered by most as the de facto online store, but some might say that they've been resting on their laurels, no matter how big those laurels might be... until now. Amazon has just announced that they're getting into the online merchant business. Amazon FPS (Flexible Payment Service) competes with the likes of Paypal and Google Checkout and has a couple of interesting tricks up its sleeve. For instance, you can set up different payment rules for different customers. After looking over Amazon's announcement of their new service, we'd liken it very much to how Paypal works. One more serious online merchant can only be a good thing for developers, as it creates healthy competition which could mean savings for all of us.

YouTube Mess Cleanup On Aisle One!

When Google announced that it was purchasing YouTube, many thought it could be the first major bad move that the internet behemoth had made. After all, YouTube had, according to many critics, built its success on other people's work. Viacom in particular was watching YouTube closely, since much of its content was being streamed through YouTube's website. This week Google announced that they will have new digital fingerprinting in place at YouTube that will prevent the streaming of copyrighted material. Although some - especially the folks at Viacom - have reservations about the effectiveness of Google's proposed solution, lawyers for Google are confident that this should satisfy the needs of all concerned parties. Read all about it at Adotas.com.

Freelancers Need Help Too

Freelancers have it made, right? They work for themselves, their profits go straight into their own pockets, they are the masters of their own destinies, etc, etc, yeah, yeah, yeah. You freelancers out there know it's not that simple. If it was, everyone would do it. But a lot of folks go into business for themselves without knowing exactly what they're doing or what they're getting into. FreelanceSwitch.com has a great list of articles tailored to those who are thinking of striking out on their own, and those that have already taken the plunge.

Because Many Of Us Live The Stereotype

J.J. Abrams, who co-wrote and directed Mission Impossible III, has recently announced that he's in the process of casting for the next Star Trek film. For the newest Trek, Abrams is going where no man has gone before: He'll be casting younger actors for the roles of Kirk, Spock and the rest of the Enterprise crew. Zachary Quinto from the television show Heroes has already been cast in the role of Spock. Leonard Nimoy, Abrams and Quinto were interviewed recently by Entertainment Weekly.

For All Of Us Tightwads Smart Shoppers

A certain staffer of Community MX who shall remain nameless (see Laurie? I wouldn't rat you out) is one of the best bargain shoppers we know. We're constantly amazed at the deals she finds. Now you can be like Laurie and start saving plenty of cash on the stuff you want to buy. Just head over to eBizMBA.com, where they provide you with links to plenty of websites that help you save while you shop online.

CMX Robot File Dreamweaver Extension

The CMX Robots.txt Creator will create a robots.txt file formatted according to the standards set for this type of file and save it to your local site. Quickly create your robots.txt files with this extension and stop worrying about the syntax!

Take a look at this extension by CMX Partner Paul Davis

Fun and Freebies!

Animator vs. Animation

If you haven't yet seen the Flash-generated Animator Vs. Animation at DeviantArt.com, you've got to check it out. If you've seen it, then you really need to see the sequel. The first one was hilarious in its own right, but the sequel takes it one step farther. Hilarious.

The Reason You Cannot Leave Your Office Supplies Alone

If this is what my erasers are up to after-hours, I don't even want to think about my pencil sharpener.

All We Know Is That The World Revolves Around Us

From the French version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire comes proof that it's not just U.S. game shows that expose how goofy people are.

Yahoo! Pipes: An Introduction

Yahoo Pipes has been on my personal radar since it was announced in February of this year. At the time of its rollout there was a great deal of Pipes logo interest around the web design world. Yahoo provided what appeared to be an easy way for anyone (even non-developers like myself) to mash-up RSS feeds into new web services. While that may seem like no big deal, my own experiences and research into current trends indicates that there is a growing demand for data that has been customized and repurposed to fit particular audiences. If you're developing web sites for customers, the ability to provide them with live data that can be displayed on their site will be a valuable service that just may set you apart from your competition. You don't even have to tell anyone how easy Yahoo makes this.

This free article by CMX Partner Kim Cavanaugh can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Custom PHP Settings With .htaccess

Rob Williams

Every now and again I find as a web developer that there are times when the default PHP configuration on my server just isn't working as well as I'd like it to for a given project. This can be especially plaguing when you're dealing with remote web hosts that offer you little to no control over the configuration of PHP itself. Anytime you're running multiple web sites off the same server this can also be a problem as you may want to have different PHP settings for each of the sites.

In this article we're going to take a look at one possible solution to these problems by including PHP configuration values within an .htaccess file.

Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 2 [FREE]

Joseph Balderson

Out there in the Flash design and development world, there are many tools available to assist in creating projects. These are "power tools" that supercharge the task of designing, coding, compiling, testing and documenting, allowing you to save time and present ideas much more effectively. Some have been around for a few years, and some are pretty new. This series highlights some of the open source tools and techniques which have made my life as a Flash developer much more effective.

This 2-part article covers a nifty addition to any designer's arsenal of colour aids: the Adobe Kuler colour theme creator and sharing portal. In Part 1 we took a look at the photo-to-gif Flash palette technique. We then looked at how Kuler is a much better alternative to palette selection. Here in Part 2 we will look at the Kuler Desktop, an AIR-enabled version of the Kuler application, as well as the Kuler Flash CS3 Panel.

The Adobe Kuler application

The Flash PowerTools Series:
Flash PowerTools: Code Automation with SEPY
Flash PowerTools: FlashTracer for Firefox
Flash PowerTools: Standalone FLV Players
Flash PowerTools: Transition and Tween Explorer
Flash PowerTools: Flash Switcher for Firefox
Flash PowerTools: Exploring Gradients
Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 1
Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 2

Sharing Fonts in ActionScript 3.0 - Part 2: Displaying a Loaded Font in a TextField Instance

Robert Reinhardt

In this tutorial series, you learn how to use the new Font class in ActionScript 3.0 and Flash Player 9. The Font class enables you to embed one or more fonts in a Flash movie (SWF file), and reuse the font with other SWF files. In this tutorial, you learn how to utilize a font from a loaded font SWF file with a dynamically-created text field.

NOTE: In order to follow along with the tutorials in this series, you need to use Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. The font sharing techniques discussed in this series require ActionScript 3.0 and Flash Player 9.

The Sharing Fonts in ActionScript 3.0 Series:
Sharing Fonts in ActionScript 3.0 - Part 1: Creating a Font SWF
Sharing Fonts in ActionScript 3.0 - Part 2: Displaying a Loaded Font in a TextField Instance

Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 1 [FREE]

Joseph Balderson

Out there in the Flash design and development world, there are many tools available to assist in creating projects. These are "power tools" that supercharge the task of designing, coding, compiling, testing and documenting, allowing you to save time and present ideas much more effectively. Some have been around for a few years, and some are pretty new. This series highlights some of the open source tools and techniques which have made my life as a Flash developer much more effective.

This 2-part article covers a nifty addition to any designer's arsenal of colour aids: the Adobe Kuler colour theme creator and sharing portal. First we'll take a look at the photo-to-gif Flash palette technique, then we'll look at how Kuler is a much better alternative to palette selection. In Part 2 we will look at the Kuler Desktop, an AIR-enabled version of the Kuler application, as well as the Kuler Flash CS3 Panel.

The Adobe Kuler application

The Flash PowerTools Series:
Flash PowerTools: Code Automation with SEPY
Flash PowerTools: FlashTracer for Firefox
Flash PowerTools: Standalone FLV Players
Flash PowerTools: Transition and Tween Explorer
Flash PowerTools: Flash Switcher for Firefox
Flash PowerTools: Exploring Gradients
Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 1
Flash PowerTools: Kuler Color - Part 2 Coming Soon

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Knut Kubenz

I'm sure there have been many times you've noticed a beautiful rainbow, just after a rain shower or thunderstorm, but you just didn't have your camera to capture the event. Now with Photoshop you can produce a realistic rainbow effect in a previously photographed scene anytime you want.

Photoshop has some unique Special Effect Gradients, as well as Layer Masks, to produce exceptionally realistic rainbows in your images. This tutorial will explore the ways you can make a good looking scenic even better and perhaps more dramatic.

Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 2 - Basic Setup

Steve Schelter

When working in the Flex 2 environment, there are many times where you might find yourself in need of a component that does not exist. The Flex SDK offers plenty of extensibility for building custom UI components that can plug seamlessly into the existing framework. In the second lesson of this series, we will set up the foundation for a custom component.

The Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2 Series:
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 1 - Overview
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 2 - Basic Setup

The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series Part Eleven

Sheri German

Beware the Properties Inspector. It is after you create your CSS based layout and then troubleshoot and validate its code that your vigilance should really begin. When you start adding content, whether as images, text, or from Word and Excel documents, you can lose that clean code and introduce deprecated elements into the page.

In this article, you will learn what to use and what to avoid on the Properties Inspector when it is set to format text, images, or tables. You will learn the meaning of deprecated elements and attributes, why you should avoid formatting text with the Properties Inspector, and when deprecated code might cause validation to fail. You will also learn about the CSS problem of the cellspacing attribute, the use of target="_blank", and some legacy buttons such as "Low Source" on the Properties Inspector.

The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series:
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 1
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 2
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 3
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 4
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 5
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 6
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 7
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 8
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 9
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 10
The Dreamweaver Web Standards Lesson Plan Series - Part 11

Using the Image Processor in Photoshop or Bridge CS3

Jim Babbage

Automating repetitive tasks is something that any good production software should do - or allow for. Fireworks and Photoshop are no slouches in this area; they both offer ways to batch process images in a variety of different ways right out of the box, and give you tools to easily create your own custom automation commands (Custom Commands in FW, Actions in PS).

If you've been watching my Bridge videos, you see that Bridge gives us access to many of the common batch commands available in Fireworks and Photoshop, so long as those applications are installed on your system.

One of the Photoshop tools I use quite often is a command called "Image Processor." This Photoshop script command allows me to select any recognizable graphic file format and batch process it into three other common digital formats; TIF, JPEG and PSD. Follow along in this video tutorial to learn more about how the Image Processor script works.

Installing ColdFusion 8 on Vista with Apache [FREE]

Chaz Chumley

ColdFusion 8 is the latest and greatest version of ColdFusion and as soon as it hit the Adobe Labs I hurried out to download it and install it. I noticed that there are a few new items that get installed with ColdFusion 8, like .NET integration and LiveCycle Data Services Express edition. So those familiar with installing ColdFusion 7, there are some new settings.

If you have had the pleasure, or pain, of running Windows Vista then you may know that simply installing applications is not really that simple. I will be taking you through installing ColdFusion 8 on Vista with Apache 2 as my web server.

Create a Soft Mask in Flash CS3 [FREE]

Tom Green, David Stiller

Masks with hard edges are easy to do in Flash. What about masks with feathered edges? That's another story. Learn how in this sixth excerpt written by Community MX partners David Stiller and Tom Green in the new book -Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers- from friendsofED

CMX JumpStart: Washington, D.C.

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.

Check out the JumpStart by CMX Partner Adrian Senior

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! Now Twice The Tip!!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX partner Kim Cavanaugh

A Tip for Flash Video

When designing compositions that include a video player in Flash I like to take a screenshot of the player in a browser window. I can then use that bitmap image in a guide layer to help in designing the rest of the interface and for making decisions on skinning the player.

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!