Wednesday, August 24th, 2005
CMX Weekly Newsletter
Check the News!
Google Talk Says Its First Words
Google has just launched their own instant messaging application. Google Talk comes equipped with standard instant messaging features, but also features voice messaging as well, putting them in competition with everyone from Microsoft to AOL to Skype and Vonage. You can find out more about Google Talk from the horse's mouth.
Google Will Take Their Secret To The Grave
Once a year, Google puts on the Google Dance. It's a chance to party and dance, sure, but more importantly, it's a chance for webmasters to tap in on the fountain of knowledge that only Google engineers can provide. While no one at Google gives away secrets to Google's search engine rankings, they do provide helpful tips that could help one to get higher in the search engine rankings. Because Google changes their ranking algorithms every so often, staying at the top of Google's search result list can be a tough job. To make it even more tough, Google's Director of Search Quality, Peter Norvig likes to throw around this very unhelpful advice: "Everything you ever wanted to know about Google is right there on the (online) forums that the webmasters run. There is a lot of truth in there, but there's also a lot of crazy stuff. We just don't tell them which is which." Read more about the Google Dance at CNN.com. By the way, have you ever seen the Google Dance Tool?
I've Been Framed!
You've landed that huge, once-a-year account that pays your rent for the next 6 months, and you're whistling to yourself while floating on air, until you realize that there are quite a few pages to this website, and you're not sure how they're all going to be tied together. Lucky for you there are programs out there that can help you prototype - or wireframe - the website. One good tool for this is Visio from Microsoft, recommended by our own Linda Rathgeber-Stewart. Here's a good article from Guuui.com on how and why to use Visio for planning out websites. Another good option for prototyping your website is SmartDraw, highly recommended by Jim Babbage. Neither of those solutions are free, but if you're looking for something inexpensive (try free), you can check out Denim, self-described as "An Informal Tool For Early Stage Web Site and UI Design"
What? You Dare Smite Me?! I Challenge You To a 64-Bit Dual-Core Duel!!
AMD has mostly been seen as the underdog in the processor wars, but that doesn't mean they're going to take it lying down. They have formally challenged Intel to compete with them in a contest to see whose 64-bit dual-core processor will outperform the others. AMD is even running ads showing an AMD processor in a ring, waiting for an opponent. Place your bets at PCWorld.com.
One More Way To Be Robbed Online
An exchange student in Japan "virtually mugged" players of Lineage II and sold the virtual goods, including the "Earring of Wisdom" or the "Shield of Nightmare", for real money, via an online auction website. The student has been arrested, but it's unknown whether that arrest was also virtual, or a little more hands-on. More information at TheRegister.co.uk.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out!
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"Good job. I enjoyed your tutorial, and have shamelessly incorporated some of this into my application!!!"
- Michael Z, CMX Subscriber, commenting on the Paul Newman's Flash Component Series: PopUpManager
article.
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:
"One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is." — Frank Herbert
I Don't Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello
VoIP providers are rushing to meet a deadline to get their subscribers to formally acknowledge the problems they might experience with their carrier when attempting to dial 911. Customers that don't meet the deadline will likely be cut off from service very soon, due to an FCC ruling. As a result, VoIP providers stand to lose a lot of customers and a lot of money. For instance, Vonage says that the greater percentage of their 800,000 customers have met the deadline, but that still leaves about 30,000 customers that may have their service snipped. Though most of the larger providers have a "kind of" 911 that customers can call, it is not a true emergency line, and wouldn't help much in a crisis situation. More on this at Yahoo!
These Beans Have Plenty of Gas
Sony is coming out with an all-new Sony Walkman. "The Bean" is shaped like... Yeah, you guessed it already, didn't you? The new bean-shaped Walkman can play for three hours on a three-minute charge, or 50 hours straight using its lithium-ion rechargeable battery. You'll be able to get either a 512MB or 1 GB version of this sleek little Mp3 player soon. Check it out at TechTree.com. The inspiration for the bean was provided no doubt, by the great Chicago Bean.
Cnet.com Turns Ten Years Old and Puts Out The Obligatory Top Ten Lists
A couple of neat top 10 lists from CNet.com: The top ten tech news headlines of the past ten years, and the top ten technologies we miss. Napster manages to hit both lists.
Sony and Toshiba Make The Decision To Not Decide Anything Yet
Sony and Toshiba have both been proposing new standards in DVD technology. Both focus around new blue laser techniques that are designed to store more on a DVD than was possible before. After many discussions this past year, neither bigwig would back down from their position, and as a result, there will be no major changes to how we record or watch DVDs anytime soon. That's probably good news, since many of us just bought DVD players and/or recorders, and were thrilled with the idea of having to switch to a new format already. Catch more of the story at Reuters.com.
Apple Extends Their Fix-It Deadline On iMac G5s
Apple said last week that they're extending the window of time that G5 owners have to get their iMac repaired should it suffer from known video and power component problems. You'd know the problem if you saw it: Symptoms include "scrambled or distorted video," no video, or no power. The easiest way to tell if you might have one of the "bum" iMacs is to compare your serial number to the ones shown on this Yahoo! article.
CMX MP3 Player (Flash Extension)
- The CMX MP3 Player component enables you to load external MP3s from an XML playlist. Features include track info display (title, artist), elapsed and remaining time, audio scrubber, volume slider, and playlist navigation.
Take a look at this extension by CMX Partner Paul Newman
Fun and Freebies!
Montage-a-Google and Then Guess The Google
Montage-a-Google takes any search term you want, and finds images that match that search term. It then puts those images into a montage. Sounds goofy and redundant, and it is. But it's also oddly compelling. Guess The Google is a little game that throws some related pictures at you, and you have to figure out - quickly - what search term ties the pictures together.
Watch Me Change
The Gap clothing store has a new online campaign going on, part of which involves WatchMeChange.com, where you can dress a man or woman in Gap clothing, make them a certain age and body thickness, and then watch your creation boogie-oogie-oogie. At the recommendation of a buddy, we took an old guy, made him pretty chunky and gave him a mohawk. The resulting dance was hysterical, yet disturbing. Mostly hysterical though.
Got Icons?
If you're looking for ready-made icons for everything from folders to shoes, check out IconFactory.com. They've got plenty of icons, and lots of information on creating your own.
Do You Want To Do That With CSS? - Multiple Column Lists (Free Article)
- It is generally well known that list items in an <ol> or <ul> will display vertically in their default presentation. For short lists, or navigation menus, this generally isn't considered a problem. But in other cases, having an extensive list display vertically isn't quite as desirable. It might be a better use of screen space to have that list appear as a series of columns, side by side. In the past, this was done by placing separate lists in individual table cells, or by floating the lists. Semantically it is more desirable not to break up a list this way, but is there another choice? Yes, there is! Join us as we explain a new CSS method that uses a single list while displaying that list as multiple columns. Let's go!
This free article by CMX Partners John Gallant and Holly Bergevin can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing
Ubuntu & You, Part 2: Using Today's Most Popular Linux Distribution
Ubuntu has quickly taken its place as the most popular Linux distribution by offering an unmatched combination of power, polish and ease-of-use. This article will walk you through setting up a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) developer's installation on Ubuntu. We'll also show you how to install Java and the excellent open source JEdit programmer's text editor, and how to enable MP3 and DVD playback.
CMX Insert FlashObject 1.2 (Dreamweaver Extension)
FlashObject is an external JavaScript file, created by Geoff Stearns, that enables you to embed Flash movies into web pages using XHTML-compliant code. The CMX Insert FlashObject extension automatically inserts FlashObject code into Dreamweaver documents, and copies flashobject.js into the folder you specify. Now supports major, minor, and revision Flash Player detection.
Requirements: Dreamweaver MX or higher, Flash Player
Bitmap Artwork Versus Vector Artwork: Part I
Vector and bitmap are terms that are often used for describing artwork. At one time applications would either create vector artwork or bitmap artwork. These days many applications like Freehand and Fireworks contain both vector and bitmap tools. Although this can be very convenient it could mean trouble if you are preparing artwork for some types of output.
In Part I of this two-part article we will compare raster and bitmap artwork and look at different types and file formats of each. We will also discuss some issues that may arise when working with vector and bitmap artwork.
Uploading Files with ASP.NET
In this article you'll learn how to upload files to your web server using ASP.NET. Back in the old classic ASP days, this was a fairly difficult job. Not anymore!
Read on to learn how to upload one or multiple files, all files types or just certain kinds (based on the MIME type), and how to save the file using the original name or a user-specified name.
The code is presented in C# and VB.
Photographic Effects with Fireworks: Part 3 - Soft Focus Technique
This is the third installment in this series. In prior articles I demonstrated how to emulate the Orton Effect and Multiple Exposures. In this tutorial, we'll look at creating soft focus filter effect.
This techniques is a fairly simple one, but the reulsts can be very effective. As with the other effects, you only require one image file, which we will duplicate. You can use the supplied source file (name of file) or use your own image just as easily. This technique would be useful for to soften portraits or to add a sense of romance or dreamyness to landscapes or cityscapes.
The Photographic Effects with Fireworks Series:
Photographic Effects with Fireworks: Part 1 - Mimicking the Orton Effect
Photographic Effects with Fireworks: Part 2 - Multiple Exposures
Photographic Effects with Fireworks: Part 3 - Soft Focus Technique
Accessibility and the label tag [FREE]
In this tutorial we will look at how we can build and lay out accessible forms. In particular we will focus on the label element and we will see how the label can be used to not only increase the focus area of any form element but at the same time be utilised to give our form layouts a little more structure than a simple stacking of form elements in a single column.
JavaScript Integration in Flash 8 [FREE]
Flash's ability to integrate with JavaScript just took a huge leap forward with the release of Flash 8. Introducing the External Interface! This is a new feature in Flash 8 that allows for better communication between Flash and its host. Most of us will use this for integration with JavaScript. This article will show you how easy this new feature is to use. It will whet your appetite and get you thinking about how you want to use this in your applications.
How Inline Elements Work - Part Two
In part one we introduced the base concepts behind inline elements, and now we start getting into some details behind text display, which is the primary inline content on the web.
We'll circle around the EM Square a bit, find out about fine tuning of font sizes, and lift the lid on line-height just a little. As always in this series, we attempt to make the arcane world of text and inline elements less confusing to the new and not-so-new coder alike.
The Inline Elements Series:
How Inline Elements Work - Part One
How Inline Elements Work - Part Two
A CSS Web Design Case Study: Constructing a Personal Site - Planning [FREE]
I recently redesigned and rebuilt my personal site from the ground up, featuring an all-CSS, web standards compliant layout. This article is the first in a series of articles describing the web development process that I followed for my site. Not all the steps will be applicable to corporate web design, of course, but you will gain insight into a design process that is centered around CSS, accessibility, and usability.
This first article covers the planning stage of the process. You'll learn how I came up with my site goals, developed a rough site structure, and created a design concept.
Text Effects: Part 3 - 3D Innies and Outies
3D text effects come in two flavors: those that make the text look like it has been engraved or pressed into something, and those that make the text look like it is zooming out of your screen. You'll learn ways to create both innie and outie 3D text effects in Fireworks in this tutorial.
The Easy Text Effects Series:
Easy Text Effects: Part 1
Easy Text Effects: Part 2 - Grunge Text Decollage
Easy Text Effects: Part 3 - 3D Innies and Outies
Access Levels and Login For PHP
- Dreamweaver has many tools to help simplify page creation. Beginning with Dreamweaver MX 2004, Dreamweaver contains Server Behaviors for password protecting PHP pages in your site. This tutorial will show how to password protect your pages using a username, password, and access level defined in a MySQL database.
Check out the Article by CMX Partner Tom Muck
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! Now Twice The Tip!!
This week's first Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Nathan Rohler, CMX devotee. You may notice this is the same tip we used last week, but we attributed the source incorrectly. Ah, smell that? That's the smell of a wrong being made right again.
What Is Your JavaScript Doing?
If you want to view what HTML your javascript is writing out, select some of your page in Firefox and right-click. Select OView Selection Source¹, and the HTML revealed will include whatever content the JavaScript wrote to the page.
Freeware For The Mac
If you type "freeware" into your search engine, hundreds - nay, thousands of hits will come up. The thing is, if you're a Mac owner, you're out of luck with most of them, because freeware for the PC is much more prominent than freeware for your Mac. Check out the collection of Mac-centric freeware at Tucows.com. Some of it is shareware, so you still might have to wade through some muck to find some great free stuff, but we always find time to find great free stuff.
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!