
Wednesday, August 9th, 2006
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Introducing The Latest Community MX JumpStart: Greenville We hope that you are enjoying the summer season and the outdoor life. With that theme in mind, we decided to travel to Greenville, NC for our next JumpStart. The name Greenville itself evokes the radiant ambiance of gardens, nurseries, and summer landscapes. And that is just how we paint it in our latest CMX JumpStart: Greenville. Let's take a closer look at this bloomingly lovely design to see what new treasure we've added to our JumpStart collection. CMX JumpStart Greenville was designed and coded by Heidi Bautista. It is a centered, two-column, fixed-width design with header and footer that makes use of teaser text lists and transparent background images. It includes the use of the Microsoft AlphaImageLoader filter to make Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6 recognize the transparent PNGs. The page is constructed using valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional markup and formatted using valid CSS 2.1 styling. Greenville also follows the WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design. The package includes an extension for installing Greenville into the New Document dialog box, eleven tutorials, a source PNG, main and Internet Explorer style sheets, a print style sheet, and a starter page. Greenville is available for $29.99 to non-members, but is absolutely free to CMX subscribers. CMX JumpStart Greenville article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about its features and see a modified Greenville design. CMX JumpStart Greenville article for members and for those who would like to purchase Greenville now. Community MX Rocks!! Oh, and Flash Turns Ten Years Old Flash turns ten years old this month, and to celebrate, and TheFWA is having a contest to celebrate our Flashy friend. They're taking votes on the best Flash sites starting with 1998. They'll do each year in two-day increments. Some of the staff here at CMX noticed that a few influential Flash sites were left out of the voting, and we're pretty sure they're going to boycott the whole voting deal... Meanwhile, Adobe has gathered input about Flash and its relevance from ten Flash users around the world. Included in those ten are two Community MX partners: Tom Green and Robert Reinhardt. Mr. Green would not have it any other way... Hi, You Don't Mind If I Take Your Smell, Do You? Japanese Scientists have developed a device that will record the smell of different fruits, and can then reproduce that smell. It sounds (or smells?) like it only works on fruit for now, but just imagine the potential of a gizmo like this. You could take the smell of your spouse and children on business trips with you, along with the smell of your favorite home-cooked meal. Conversely, you could capture the smell of your favorite restaurant, and "play it back" while you're eating your sister's pungent "Liver Surprise" dinner... Not much here to read, but we got the story from TechNewsworld.com. Gotta Take The Bad With The Good Steve Jobs announced that the Apple line of computers and servers are now all Intel-based. The Mac Pro and XServe were the last two holdouts, and are probably worth the wait. The Mac Pro has a 3 GHz Intel processor, While the XServe server sports quad Xeon processors, running at up to 3 GHz each, and can support up to 32 gigs of memory. Read more about it at InformationWeek.com, where you can also read up on this article, which states that Windows Vista is a fantastic operating system, with a bunch of small bugs that cause it to freeze up a lot. A contradiction? Yes, not at all. You can also get more information at ComputerWorld.com about Apple's newest "stuff", including the upcoming Leopard OS. Now You Virtual PC It, Now You Don't Microsoft has discontinued the development of Virtual PC for the Mac. They admit that programs like Bootcamp and Virtual Machine from Parallels are actually better than VPC for running Windows on your Mac. MS says they will continue to support Mac users who already own Virtual PC, but they've obviously seen that it's a program who's time has run out... for the Mac platform anyway. More about this at MacWorld.com.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Absolutely fabulous tutorial on jello layout!!" Absolutely Fabulous CMX Subscriber Simon D., commenting on Holly Bergevin and John Gallant's article "The Jello Mold: A New Look at Min- and Max-width For Web Pages - Part Two" 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: "Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm" — Earl Nightingale Maybe He Could Rename It "MegaTorrent" Bram Cohen is the brains that came up with BitTorrent. For those who don't know, BitTorrent is pretty much the defacto way of sharing/distributing files these days. Rather than downloading one file from one person, you download separate bits of a file from several people at once, and it all gets reassembled on your computer. But now Cohen realizes that he's reached a dead end distributing BitTorrent for free, and wants to make some cash. He's now involved with Warner Brothers Studios, and is looking to create a paid service using BitTorrent technology to distribute Warner's movies. Some might call him a sellout, but we like to think of it is technologically maturing... Read the full story at SFGate.com. Where, Oh Where, Have My Old Apps Gone? Roaming forums from time to time, we see people requesting old versions of current applications, or applications that simply don't exist any longer. Now we have an answer for them. Just go to OldApps.com, where old apps go to live on. It's kind of like a retirement community for useful applications that aren't available anymore anywhere else. They've even got older versions of browsers that aren't available directly from the source anymore. Standalone FLV Players You don't have open Flash to view your flv files. You can use one of several standalone players that will open your flv as handily as the Flash Player opens your swf files. Fluffy is available from Nothing.ch, and the aptly named Flv Player is available from MartijnDevisser.com. Don't Upset Anyone On eBay Apparently, it's quite difficult to get negative feedback removed from your profile on eBay, even if it's completely false. You can ask Kiel Sturm, who sold a piece of Quartz for a little over two dollars, only to have the buyer post negative feedback. Sturm tried to get eBay to remove the feedback, but they would not, despite many communications back and forth. Naturally, Sturm got lawyers involved, and all in all, it took about a year to finally get some satisfaction. Let this be a lesson to you. Never sell anything on eBay. Actually, that's not the lesson. We're not sure what the lesson is. But we're sure if there is one, Sturm knows what it is. You can read about his foibles at SiliconValley.com. Why Is Tom Green Searching For "Sexy Angels"? The old saying "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it", could be changed to "Be careful what you search for... because AOL will tell everybody." By now you might have heard that AOL published the search habits of its customers in the interest of "science." AOL says it was an oversight... Maybe you don't use AOL, but what about the search engine you do use. Are you in danger of having your search habits published to the world? Do you care? Some may not, and that's perfectly legitimate. But others may find it... off-putting. Good question and answer on this subject can be found at News.com.
Image Preview 2 For Dreamweaver Previewing an image in Dreamweaver can be a chore, you can waste some time firing up Fireworks or Photoshop to see what it looks like, or try using Insert Image and then browsing to the image you're interested in. Not any more...Image Preview 2, adds a menu item to the context menu of the Site panel, allowing you to easily preview an image. The updated version of Preview Image 2 adds multi-image preview as well as open in image editor functionality. Check Out This Extension from CMX Partner Danilo Celic
Fun and Freebies Ted Stevens Can't Get a Break Ever since Ted Stevens, a US Senator, described the internet as a "series of tubes", and called email an "internet", he's been getting pretty well razzed from all sides. Now someone's done a mashup of a horror movie, with Stevens as the monster. Check it out at SeriesOfTubesMovie. Realistic Vector Images in Illustrator It's no secret that you can do a lot with Illustrator. But some people have taken it farther than we've seen in a while. Take this image at Flickr.com. At first glance, it looks like a photo. Maybe an airbrushed photo. But it's not. It's all done in Illustrator. You can see the progress of this picture in pieces at DeviantArt.com. Dumb Criminal. Really, Really Dumb. I don't know how many times we have to tell people: If you're going to rob a 7-11, make sure you've got gas in your getaway vehicle. Maybe David Booth of Michigan didn't get the memo. For your reading pleasure, from ABC.com.
Understanding Classpaths All objects in recent versions of ActionScript are defined by something called classes. Think of classes as blueprints that determine the unique combination of characteristics, actions, and reactions that comprises a particular object of a certain type. By "object," we are talking about the familiar things a Flash developer deals with every day: movie clips (the MovieClip class), text fields (the TextField class), buttons, sounds, math functions, components, you name it. They are all defined by classes. Out of the box, Flash provides hundreds of built-in ActionScript classes. The great part is, you can even write your own! But there's a catch: the Flash compiler, which converts ActionScript into Flash Player bytecode, must be told where new classes are located, or it won't be able to find them. That's what this article is about. This free article by CMX Partner David Stiller can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Turning a Tile Image into a Fireworks Pattern [FREE] Jim Babbage There are lots of tile images available on the web for free, or you may be keen on creating your own. But once you've got the image, how do you set it up so that it displays in the Property Inspector's patterns menu to use for filling vector shapes? You could do a lot of copying and pasting to manually repeat the image, but that is way too much work. And there is a much easier way; Fireworks Patterns. You can apply patterns to fill any vector shape, thus giving the shape a more textured, organic or photo-realistic appearance. This brief tutorial will show you how to take a seamless tile image and add it to the Fireworks Patterns menu. Handling Double-Clicks in Flash - Part 3 David Stiller As anyone who uses Windows or Macintosh can attest, the double-click is among the most familiar of user interface actions. Curiously, neither buttons nor movie clips in Flash raise an onDoubleClick event in ActionScript 1.0 or 2.0. Despite the many events they do raise, they cannot be instructed to handle double-clicks without custom programming. In Part 1 of this three-part series, we looked at a basic solution to this strange omission. In Part 2, we expanded on that original work to produce a configurable version of the same solution. Here in Part 3, we will conclude by providing for triple-clicks and more. The Handling Double-Clicks in Flash Series: Handling Double-Clicks in Flash - Part 1 Handling Double-Clicks in Flash - Part 2 Handling Double-Clicks in Flash - Part 3 All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part Four John Gallant, Holly Bergevin In the last part of our series, we introduced a drop shadow method that employs a background image to simulate the shadow on a box element. This time we will introduce a slightly different method that produces a superior shadow, using some additional markup and images. The All About CSS Drop Shadows Series: All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part One All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part Two All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part Three All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part Four Flash Printing Tasks - Part 8: Printing Filter Effects Robert Reinhardt In the last installment of this series, you added alpha and color mode effects to the printable certificate. In this tutorial, you learn how to print filter effects added to the certificate, enabling you to create more enhanced graphics. During the process, you learn how to use the new BitmapData class to create a pixel-by-pixel copy of the CourseCert clip. You can preview the finished version of the Flash movie here. Approximate download size: 1.4MB The Flash Printing Task Series: Flash Printing Tasks - Part 1: Building a Certificate Template in Illustrator and Flash Flash Printing Tasks - Part 2: Basic Printing of the Certificate Flash Printing Tasks - Part 3: Adding Dynamic Text to the Certificate Flash Printing Tasks - Part 4: Creating a Form for Certificate Information Flash Printing Tasks - Part 5: Building a Preview for the Certificate Flash Printing Tasks - Part 6: Creating a Color/Grayscale Toggle for the Certificate Preview Window Flash Printing Tasks - Part 7: Printing Alpha and Color Mode Effects Flash Printing Tasks - Part 8: Printing Filter Effects InDesign - Part 2: Adding and Formatting Text Kim Dudley InDesign is a great tool for setting up multiple page layouts or documents that have a combination of text and graphics. In this series of four tutorials, we will follow the process of creating a multiple page document in InDesign. The techniques explained in these tutorials can be used to set up any document and are a good starting point for learning InDesign. In the first tutorial we set up the document and created master pages. In this, the second tutorial, we will look at the tools and options available in InDesign for importing and working with text. We will import text from a word processing file, set up paragraph styles and use some of InDesigns formatting tools. This tutorial will demonstrate one of InDesign's greatest assets, its ability to work with large amounts of text. The InDesign Series: InDesign - Part 1: Setting up a Document InDesign - Part 2: Adding and Formatting Text InDesign - Part 3: Working with Graphics Coming Soon InDesign - Part 4: Publishing a Document Coming Soon Multiple Insert/Update in ColdFusion Tom Muck Dreamweaver has some built-in tools for doing database inserts and updates, but they only handle basic inserts/updates of one record. What if you want to insert multiple records at a time, or update multiple records? Dreamweaver is no help in this case, but using ColdFusion the process is simple. This tutorial will show two often-used methods for doing a multiple insert and multiple update, and the reasons not to use the first method. Flash Printing Tasks - Part 7: Printing Alpha and Color Mode Effects Robert Reinhardt In the last installment of this series, you created a color toggle to the preview window for a printable certificate. In this tutorial, you learn how to correctly print alpha and color mode effects added to graphic elements of the certificate. During the process, you learn how to use the printAsBitmap feature of the PrintJob class to faithfully reproduce your certificate on the printed page. You can preview the finished version of the Flash movie here. The Flash Printing Task Series: Flash Printing Tasks - Part 1: Building a Certificate Template in Illustrator and Flash Flash Printing Tasks - Part 2: Basic Printing of the Certificate Flash Printing Tasks - Part 3: Adding Dynamic Text to the Certificate Flash Printing Tasks - Part 4: Creating a Form for Certificate Information Flash Printing Tasks - Part 5: Building a Preview for the Certificate Flash Printing Tasks - Part 6: Creating a Color/Grayscale Toggle for the Certificate Preview Window Flash Printing Tasks - Part 7: Printing Alpha and Color Mode Effects Flash Printing Tasks - Part 8: Printing Filter Effects Coming Soon Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4 Ray West In Part 2 of this series, we looked at the filename attribute of the cfdocument tag and discussed how it will allow you to save a generated document rather than streaming it directly to the browser. It this installment, we will look at how you can take advantage of that functionality to save and email a document to your user. The Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion Series: Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 1 Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 2 Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 3 Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4 Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 5 Coming Soon Learning PHP - Part 5: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming Thomas Pletcher This article provides an introduction to object-oriented programming (OOP) in PHP 5, as well as a brief overview of the new object-oriented (OO) features introduced since PHP 4. You'll learn how to define classes, instantiate objects and pass object references, and also how to use PHP 5's new clone operator. Additional OO techniques and topics, including inheritance, will be covered in a follow-up article. The Learning PHP Series: Learning PHP - Part 1: A Gentle Introduction Learning PHP - Part 2: All About Arrays Learning PHP - Part 3: Basic Content Management Learning PHP - Part 4: Focus on Functions Learning PHP - Part 5: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming Fireworks to Photoshop - Converting the CMX Venice JumpStart PNG to a PSD File Jim Babbage I will do my level best not to bore you with why I like Fireworks in this, the third in my series of CMX JumpStart PNG's conversion articles. But I have to say, for rapid prototyping and flexibility, Fireworks can't be beat. By using Frames, you can create completely separate designs and where there are common elements in each design, you can share specific layers throughout the frames. This is just the case with the Venice JumpStart which has two complete layout designs, each on its own frame. That said, PhotoShop is no slouch in this area either. While there is no way to directly port over this multi-frame document to Photoshop, by using Layer Comps we can emulate the PNG file quite nicely. For detailed information and steps on converting flattened vector objects into editable Shape Layers be sure to read Fireworks to Photoshop - Rebuilding the CMX Vienna JumpStart PNG as a PSD file. For details on creating and working with Smart Objects, or working with an exported Adobe Illustrator file see Converting the CMX Orlando JumpStart PNG to a PSD and AI file. Because these steps have already been covered, I will not be covering them again in this article in any great detail. The focus in this piece will be exporting the two-frame PNG file as individual PSD files. We will then merge those two files in to one and use Layer Comps to emulate the original two-frame design. Several other workflow techniques will be discussed as well: PNG layer hierarchy to PSD layer hierarchy Creating Layer Comps Creating new, editable layer masks Creating and working with Work Paths Working with Slices Working with the Gradient Editor The instructions in this article, along with the two previously mentioned articles, are meant as a guide if you choose to do the conversion on your own. Remember, as with all the articles in this series, a final, editable PSD file is part of the support documents download. Approximate download size: 1.8MB
Extract Links From a Web Page using ColdFusion ColdFusion provides a lot of functionality in the form of tags, but some of the more powerful features require a bit of programming knowledge, like the use of regular expressions, XML functions, and the recursive function construct. This tutorial will show how to use a regular expression to find all given elements in a string, then use an XML function to extract HTML attributes, and use a recursive function (calling a function from within the function until finished) to streamline the coding. In this case, we'll be searching for all links within a page, but the technique could be used to find email addresses, HTML tags, phone numbers, or other formatted pieces of text. Check out the Article by CMX partner Tom Muck
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Partner Tom Green Use Video To Captivate Your Audience Who says you can't use video in Captivate. Embed a short (less than 2-minute) video in a .swf file and publish it as a Flash 6 .swf. Place that in a Captivate frame and you have video in Captivate. 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!

Introducing The Latest Community MX JumpStart: Greenville

We hope that you are enjoying the summer season and the outdoor life. With that theme in mind, we decided to travel to Greenville, NC for our next JumpStart. The name Greenville itself evokes the radiant ambiance of gardens, nurseries, and summer landscapes. And that is just how we paint it in our latest CMX JumpStart: Greenville. Let's take a closer look at this bloomingly lovely design to see what new treasure we've added to our JumpStart collection.

CMX JumpStart Greenville was designed and coded by Heidi Bautista. It is a centered, two-column, fixed-width design with header and footer that makes use of teaser text lists and transparent background images. It includes the use of the Microsoft AlphaImageLoader filter to make Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6 recognize the transparent PNGs. The page is constructed using valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional markup and formatted using valid CSS 2.1 styling. Greenville also follows the WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for any design.

The package includes an extension for installing Greenville into the New Document dialog box, eleven tutorials, a source PNG, main and Internet Explorer style sheets, a print style sheet, and a starter page.

Greenville is available for $29.99 to non-members, but is absolutely free to CMX subscribers.

CMX JumpStart Greenville article for nonmembers and members who would like to read more about its features and see a modified Greenville design.

CMX JumpStart Greenville article for members and for those who would like to purchase Greenville now.

Community MX Rocks!! Oh, and Flash Turns Ten Years Old

Flash turns ten years old this month, and to celebrate, and TheFWA is having a contest to celebrate our Flashy friend. They're taking votes on the best Flash sites starting with 1998. They'll do each year in two-day increments. Some of the staff here at CMX noticed that a few influential Flash sites were left out of the voting, and we're pretty sure they're going to boycott the whole voting deal... Meanwhile, Adobe has gathered input about Flash and its relevance from ten Flash users around the world. Included in those ten are two Community MX partners: Tom Green and Robert Reinhardt. Mr. Green would not have it any other way...

Hi, You Don't Mind If I Take Your Smell, Do You?

Japanese Scientists have developed a device that will record the smell of different fruits, and can then reproduce that smell. It sounds (or smells?) like it only works on fruit for now, but just imagine the potential of a gizmo like this. You could take the smell of your spouse and children on business trips with you, along with the smell of your favorite home-cooked meal. Conversely, you could capture the smell of your favorite restaurant, and "play it back" while you're eating your sister's pungent "Liver Surprise" dinner... Not much here to read, but we got the story from TechNewsworld.com.

Gotta Take The Bad With The Good

Steve Jobs announced that the Apple line of computers and servers are now all Intel-based. The Mac Pro and XServe were the last two holdouts, and are probably worth the wait. The Mac Pro has a 3 GHz Intel processor, While the XServe server sports quad Xeon processors, running at up to 3 GHz each, and can support up to 32 gigs of memory. Read more about it at InformationWeek.com, where you can also read up on this article, which states that Windows Vista is a fantastic operating system, with a bunch of small bugs that cause it to freeze up a lot. A contradiction? Yes, not at all. You can also get more information at ComputerWorld.com about Apple's newest "stuff", including the upcoming Leopard OS.

Now You Virtual PC It, Now You Don't

Microsoft has discontinued the development of Virtual PC for the Mac. They admit that programs like Bootcamp and Virtual Machine from Parallels are actually better than VPC for running Windows on your Mac. MS says they will continue to support Mac users who already own Virtual PC, but they've obviously seen that it's a program who's time has run out... for the Mac platform anyway. More about this at MacWorld.com.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Absolutely fabulous tutorial on jello layout!!"

Absolutely Fabulous CMX Subscriber Simon D., commenting on Holly Bergevin and John Gallant's article "The Jello Mold: A New Look at Min- and Max-width For Web Pages - Part Two"

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:

"Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm" — Earl Nightingale

Maybe He Could Rename It "MegaTorrent"

Bram Cohen is the brains that came up with BitTorrent. For those who don't know, BitTorrent is pretty much the defacto way of sharing/distributing files these days. Rather than downloading one file from one person, you download separate bits of a file from several people at once, and it all gets reassembled on your computer. But now Cohen realizes that he's reached a dead end distributing BitTorrent for free, and wants to make some cash. He's now involved with Warner Brothers Studios, and is looking to create a paid service using BitTorrent technology to distribute Warner's movies. Some might call him a sellout, but we like to think of it is technologically maturing... Read the full story at SFGate.com.

Where, Oh Where, Have My Old Apps Gone?

Roaming forums from time to time, we see people requesting old versions of current applications, or applications that simply don't exist any longer. Now we have an answer for them. Just go to OldApps.com, where old apps go to live on. It's kind of like a retirement community for useful applications that aren't available anymore anywhere else. They've even got older versions of browsers that aren't available directly from the source anymore.

Standalone FLV Players

You don't have open Flash to view your flv files. You can use one of several standalone players that will open your flv as handily as the Flash Player opens your swf files. Fluffy is available from Nothing.ch, and the aptly named Flv Player is available from MartijnDevisser.com.

Don't Upset Anyone On eBay

Apparently, it's quite difficult to get negative feedback removed from your profile on eBay, even if it's completely false. You can ask Kiel Sturm, who sold a piece of Quartz for a little over two dollars, only to have the buyer post negative feedback. Sturm tried to get eBay to remove the feedback, but they would not, despite many communications back and forth. Naturally, Sturm got lawyers involved, and all in all, it took about a year to finally get some satisfaction. Let this be a lesson to you. Never sell anything on eBay. Actually, that's not the lesson. We're not sure what the lesson is. But we're sure if there is one, Sturm knows what it is. You can read about his foibles at SiliconValley.com.

Why Is Tom Green Searching For "Sexy Angels"?

The old saying "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it", could be changed to "Be careful what you search for... because AOL will tell everybody." By now you might have heard that AOL published the search habits of its customers in the interest of "science." AOL says it was an oversight... Maybe you don't use AOL, but what about the search engine you do use. Are you in danger of having your search habits published to the world? Do you care? Some may not, and that's perfectly legitimate. But others may find it... off-putting. Good question and answer on this subject can be found at News.com.

Image Preview 2 For Dreamweaver

Previewing an image in Dreamweaver can be a chore, you can waste some time firing up Fireworks or Photoshop to see what it looks like, or try using Insert Image and then browsing to the image you're interested in. Not any more...Image Preview 2, adds a menu item to the context menu of the Site panel, allowing you to easily preview an image. The updated version of Preview Image 2 adds multi-image preview as well as open in image editor functionality.

Check Out This Extension from CMX Partner Danilo Celic

Fun and Freebies

Ted Stevens Can't Get a Break

Ever since Ted Stevens, a US Senator, described the internet as a "series of tubes", and called email an "internet", he's been getting pretty well razzed from all sides. Now someone's done a mashup of a horror movie, with Stevens as the monster. Check it out at SeriesOfTubesMovie.

Realistic Vector Images in Illustrator

It's no secret that you can do a lot with Illustrator. But some people have taken it farther than we've seen in a while. Take this image at Flickr.com. At first glance, it looks like a photo. Maybe an airbrushed photo. But it's not. It's all done in Illustrator. You can see the progress of this picture in pieces at DeviantArt.com.

Dumb Criminal. Really, Really Dumb.

I don't know how many times we have to tell people: If you're going to rob a 7-11, make sure you've got gas in your getaway vehicle. Maybe David Booth of Michigan didn't get the memo. For your reading pleasure, from ABC.com.

Understanding Classpaths

All objects in recent versions of ActionScript are defined by something called classes. Think of classes as blueprints that determine the unique combination of characteristics, actions, and reactions that comprises a particular object of a certain type. By "object," we are talking about the familiar things a Flash developer deals with every day: movie clips (the MovieClip class), text fields (the TextField class), buttons, sounds, math functions, components, you name it. They are all defined by classes. Out of the box, Flash provides hundreds of built-in ActionScript classes. The great part is, you can even write your own! But there's a catch: the Flash compiler, which converts ActionScript into Flash Player bytecode, must be told where new classes are located, or it won't be able to find them. That's what this article is about.

This free article by CMX Partner David Stiller can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Turning a Tile Image into a Fireworks Pattern [FREE]

Jim Babbage

There are lots of tile images available on the web for free, or you may be keen on creating your own. But once you've got the image, how do you set it up so that it displays in the Property Inspector's patterns menu to use for filling vector shapes?

You could do a lot of copying and pasting to manually repeat the image, but that is way too much work. And there is a much easier way; Fireworks Patterns. You can apply patterns to fill any vector shape, thus giving the shape a more textured, organic or photo-realistic appearance.

This brief tutorial will show you how to take a seamless tile image and add it to the Fireworks Patterns menu.

Handling Double-Clicks in Flash - Part 3

David Stiller

As anyone who uses Windows or Macintosh can attest, the double-click is among the most familiar of user interface actions. Curiously, neither buttons nor movie clips in Flash raise an onDoubleClick event in ActionScript 1.0 or 2.0. Despite the many events they do raise, they cannot be instructed to handle double-clicks without custom programming. In Part 1 of this three-part series, we looked at a basic solution to this strange omission. In Part 2, we expanded on that original work to produce a configurable version of the same solution. Here in Part 3, we will conclude by providing for triple-clicks and more.

The Handling Double-Clicks in Flash Series:
Handling Double-Clicks in Flash - Part 1
Handling Double-Clicks in Flash - Part 2
Handling Double-Clicks in Flash - Part 3

All About CSS Drop Shadows - Part Four

John Gallant, Holly Bergevin

In the last part of our series, we introduced a drop shadow method that employs a background image to simulate the shadow on a box element. This time we will introduce a slightly different method that produces a superior shadow, using some additional markup and images.

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

Flash Printing Tasks - Part 8: Printing Filter Effects

Robert Reinhardt

InDesign - Part 2: Adding and Formatting Text

Kim Dudley

InDesign is a great tool for setting up multiple page layouts or documents that have a combination of text and graphics. In this series of four tutorials, we will follow the process of creating a multiple page document in InDesign. The techniques explained in these tutorials can be used to set up any document and are a good starting point for learning InDesign.

In the first tutorial we set up the document and created master pages. In this, the second tutorial, we will look at the tools and options available in InDesign for importing and working with text. We will import text from a word processing file, set up paragraph styles and use some of InDesigns formatting tools. This tutorial will demonstrate one of InDesign's greatest assets, its ability to work with large amounts of text.

The InDesign Series:
InDesign - Part 1: Setting up a Document
InDesign - Part 2: Adding and Formatting Text
InDesign - Part 3: Working with Graphics Coming Soon
InDesign - Part 4: Publishing a Document Coming Soon

Multiple Insert/Update in ColdFusion

Tom Muck

Dreamweaver has some built-in tools for doing database inserts and updates, but they only handle basic inserts/updates of one record. What if you want to insert multiple records at a time, or update multiple records? Dreamweaver is no help in this case, but using ColdFusion the process is simple. This tutorial will show two often-used methods for doing a multiple insert and multiple update, and the reasons not to use the first method.

Flash Printing Tasks - Part 7: Printing Alpha and Color Mode Effects

Robert Reinhardt

In the last installment of this series, you created a color toggle to the preview window for a printable certificate. In this tutorial, you learn how to correctly print alpha and color mode effects added to graphic elements of the certificate. During the process, you learn how to use the printAsBitmap feature of the PrintJob class to faithfully reproduce your certificate on the printed page. You can preview the finished version of the Flash movie here.

The Flash Printing Task Series:
Flash Printing Tasks - Part 1: Building a Certificate Template in Illustrator and Flash
Flash Printing Tasks - Part 2: Basic Printing of the Certificate
Flash Printing Tasks - Part 3: Adding Dynamic Text to the Certificate
Flash Printing Tasks - Part 4: Creating a Form for Certificate Information
Flash Printing Tasks - Part 5: Building a Preview for the Certificate
Flash Printing Tasks - Part 6: Creating a Color/Grayscale Toggle for the Certificate Preview Window
Flash Printing Tasks - Part 7: Printing Alpha and Color Mode Effects
Flash Printing Tasks - Part 8: Printing Filter Effects Coming Soon

Creating Simple Printed Reports in ColdFusion: Part 4

Ray West

In Part 2 of this series, we looked at the filename attribute of the cfdocument tag and discussed how it will allow you to save a generated document rather than streaming it directly to the browser. It this installment, we will look at how you can take advantage of that functionality to save and email a document to your user.

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

Learning PHP - Part 5: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming

Thomas Pletcher

This article provides an introduction to object-oriented programming (OOP) in PHP 5, as well as a brief overview of the new object-oriented (OO) features introduced since PHP 4. You'll learn how to define classes, instantiate objects and pass object references, and also how to use PHP 5's new clone operator. Additional OO techniques and topics, including inheritance, will be covered in a follow-up article.

The Learning PHP Series:
Learning PHP - Part 1: A Gentle Introduction
Learning PHP - Part 2: All About Arrays
Learning PHP - Part 3: Basic Content Management
Learning PHP - Part 4: Focus on Functions
Learning PHP - Part 5: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming

Fireworks to Photoshop - Converting the CMX Venice JumpStart PNG to a PSD File

Jim Babbage

I will do my level best not to bore you with why I like Fireworks in this, the third in my series of CMX JumpStart PNG's conversion articles. But I have to say, for rapid prototyping and flexibility, Fireworks can't be beat. By using Frames, you can create completely separate designs and where there are common elements in each design, you can share specific layers throughout the frames. This is just the case with the Venice JumpStart which has two complete layout designs, each on its own frame.

That said, PhotoShop is no slouch in this area either. While there is no way to directly port over this multi-frame document to Photoshop, by using Layer Comps we can emulate the PNG file quite nicely.

For detailed information and steps on converting flattened vector objects into editable Shape Layers be sure to read Fireworks to Photoshop - Rebuilding the CMX Vienna JumpStart PNG as a PSD file.

For details on creating and working with Smart Objects, or working with an exported Adobe Illustrator file see Converting the CMX Orlando JumpStart PNG to a PSD and AI file.

Because these steps have already been covered, I will not be covering them again in this article in any great detail. The focus in this piece will be exporting the two-frame PNG file as individual PSD files. We will then merge those two files in to one and use Layer Comps to emulate the original two-frame design.

Several other workflow techniques will be discussed as well:

PNG layer hierarchy to PSD layer hierarchy
Creating Layer Comps
Creating new, editable layer masks
Creating and working with Work Paths
Working with Slices
Working with the Gradient Editor

The instructions in this article, along with the two previously mentioned articles, are meant as a guide if you choose to do the conversion on your own. Remember, as with all the articles in this series, a final, editable PSD file is part of the support documents download.

Approximate download size: 1.8MB

Extract Links From a Web Page using ColdFusion

ColdFusion provides a lot of functionality in the form of tags, but some of the more powerful features require a bit of programming knowledge, like the use of regular expressions, XML functions, and the recursive function construct. This tutorial will show how to use a regular expression to find all given elements in a string, then use an XML function to extract HTML attributes, and use a recursive function (calling a function from within the function until finished) to streamline the coding. In this case, we'll be searching for all links within a page, but the technique could be used to find email addresses, HTML tags, phone numbers, or other formatted pieces of text.

Check out the Article by CMX partner Tom Muck

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of CMX Partner Tom Green

Use Video To Captivate Your Audience

Who says you can't use video in Captivate. Embed a short (less than 2-minute) video in a .swf file and publish it as a Flash 6 .swf. Place that in a Captivate frame and you have video in Captivate.

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!