
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Anything Happening With Apple Recently? Steve Jobs made an announcement recently that should make Apple shareholders and Mac addicts very happy. The biggest announcement involved the sweeping changes in the iPod line. The iPod "Touch" was introduced to the world. Looking much like the iPhone, the iPod Touch is an iPod with a touchscreen and wireless capabilities. The iPod Nano now has video-playback capibility. The classic iPod is now being offered with 160 gb drive. Onto the iPhone: The 4 gb model is being dropped, while the price on the 8 gb model is going down by $200, bring the price to just $399. On the horizon is a custom ringtone maker at iTunes. Plenty of stuff to sift through, and as you would expect, MacWorld.com has the lowdown on all of it. Oh- and Gizomodo.com chimes in with the five things they love and the five things they hate about the new iPod lineup. What's All This I Keep Hearing About A Dopey Hair? The possibilities surrounding Adobe AIR are huge. Plenty of desktop applications have been built with AIR and we've pointed to a few in our newsletter. Sure, it's not all peaches and cream, as this post at CodeApollo.com confirms, but we like to keep mentioning it because (1) It does have the potential to change the way we build desktop apps and (2) It's still very new and deserving of a plug from the friendly folks at Community MX from time to time. Still don't quite have a grasp on what AIR is all about? Check out this introduction at DevX.com. Because People Love Controversy Not everyone thinks Adobe Flex is the best thing for creating Rich Internet Applications. For instance, one of the guys who works for Frost Applications, makers of the Gaia Ajax Widgets - an indirect competitor of Flex - makes no secret that he believes there is a better alternative. Could it be... yep: Gaia Ajax Widgets. We can't answer each of his claims, but if you're into Flex, you might be interested in this post at AjaxWidgets.com. The writer apparently caught a lot of flack for what he said, and addresses the naysayers in another post. Warning: obscenity appears near the top of his post, so don't have your kids read the article to you. I Didn't Know There Would Be A Test! The Website Grader was chosen as one of PC Magazine's top 100 undiscovered websites recently, and for good reason. Plug any url into the Website Grader, and you get a wealth of information back: Google ranking, information and advice about your metatags - or lack of - and things like when Google last crawled your site and bunches of other stuff. It derives a score from one to one hundred after weighing what it things you're doing right or wrong. Of course the first website I ran through the Website Grader was CommunityMX.com. Our grade? 99. Out of a possible 100, not too shabby, eh? Advertisers Are Not Gonna Like This... AdBlock Plus is an add-on to Mozilla's Firefox browser that will block all advertising from any given web page. This article from Adotas.com doesn't see AdBlock Plus as a plus. To quote the article: "by taking away the ads themselves the service is technically committing theft since the space is paid for by advertisers." Internet users who are tired of the seemingly endless barrage of ads on their favorite sites would probably disagree. Theft is a strong word, and probably not a fitting description of what AdBlock Plus does. Most users are already paying for an internet connection, and should probably be allowed to filter content as they see fit.
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!" CMX Subscriber Rick H., commenting on Tom Muck's article "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: "Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions." — Thomas Szasz Sour Grapes of Wrath? The ColdFusion Developer's Journal - CFDJ - was once a pretty good resource for anyone wanting to get into or keep up with anything related to ColdFusion. They had some good people writing for them, including our own Tom Muck, but it didn't take long before CFDJ, published by Sys-Con, became a whole bunch of ads mixed with a few articles. CFDJ is now closing shop, and to the contrary of what some folks are saying, it is not due to lack of interest in ColdFusion by developers. According to the Sys-Con press release, "CFDJ was launched 10 years ago as a custom developer magazine with the direct support of Allaire Corporation. This support continued after the acquisition of Allaire by Macromedia. After ColdFusion became part of the Adobe product line Adobe recently decided to discontinue its support of the magazine." A lot of CF developers are telling CFDJ not to let the door hit them in the butt on the way out: Ben Forta, Sean Corfield and heck, even Simon Horwith, editor-in-chief of CFDJ wasn't too sad to hear the news. Since Sys-Con is saying that Adobe has let the ColdFusion community down by discontinuing their support of CFDJ, Ben Forta is setting the record straight. Silverlight Still A Flash In The Pan? When Microsoft first introduced the idea of Silverlight, people dismissed it. When the beta of Silverlight was released, people said "ah, a repackaged Flash Player." Now that version 1.0 has been released, we still can't say that Silverlight is anything for Adobe to worry about. But now that Microsoft has hooked up with partners like Home Shopping Network, the WWE and Entertainment Tonight, Adobe has probably opened up their peripheral vision a bit. Other members of the "Silverlight Initiative" include Netflix and CBS Corps. Surprisingly, Microsoft has not decided to push Siliverlight to users via a Windows update. Will Silverlight catch on? It's impossible to tell just yet, but Microsoft is creating some partnerships that will put the Silverlight player on more computers than Adobe might feel comfortable with. Check out this article from ComputerWorld.com. As our own David Stiller says, "Maybe, at this point, Microsoft will start requiring the Silverlight plugin instead of Flash to showcase their other products online." We Love Good Tech News Technology is mostly a positive thing, used to improve our lives. IBM drives this point home with a new tool they've designed for the deaf. It's called "SiSi", which stands for "See It Say It" and it uses an avatar to interpret human speech and then translate it into sign language. Imagine speaking to a deaf person and having them immediately understand what you're saying. This is what progress is all about, folks. For now, it will only work with British sign language, but that will probably change. Read a bit more about it at Yahoo.com. We Will Now Call Them MpTeensies You like mp3s, right? Us too! We have bunches of them. You too? Wow! They're great, huh? They take up a lot less room on our computers or portable players than they do on our music shelves, for sure. One thing that could make them even better is if we could make the file size even smaller so we could load our players up with even more music. Believe it or not, as small as mp3s are, now you can shrink them down to about half the size using Shrink My Tunes. It's about $40 US, but for those of us who own several kajillion mp3s, it's intriguing. They even have before and after samples you can listen to. Sweeeeet... You can read a review of Shrink My Tunes at Wired.com. OK, You Fooled Us This should go in the Fun and Freebies section, but as usual, that part of our newsletter was filled up before the news section was finished. It's a good article from PCWorld.com on Ten Great (but Fake) Tech and Science Videos. One of the best falls on page three of the article where Tristan Newcomb created a fake game, pre-recorded the action, and then presented a "demo" of the game. He built in plenty of errors to keep our amusement factor up.
CMX Internet Explorer Conditional Comment Extension Rapidly put Internet Explorer conditional comments in your web pages without looking it up every time for the syntax. This extension will insert conditional comments for Internet Explorer in a couple of clicks! Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Paul Davis
Fun and Freebies Animator vs... Bunny? You've probably seen the Animator versus Animation Flash movie. We've linked to it several times here. But you probably haven't seen Vincent's Flash video that combines stop-motion animation with traditional animation. Vincent did a great job here. They're Sumo Wrestlers And They're Drunk. What Else Do You Need To Know? You have to download Sumotori Dreams to your computer if you want to play it, but you've got to try it out. The mechanics are great, and we're sure the makers of this - dare we say lifelike - game had a great time getting the drunken movements of the sumos just right. Pretty Close... Does this picture come close to your web development experience?
Going Mobile In Flash CS3 New to Flash CS3 is Device Central. In this, the seventh of eight excerpts from their new book Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers (friendsofED), Community MX authors Tom Green and David Stiller take you through the mobile pace from content to upload. This free article by CMX Partners Tom Green and David Stiller can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Automatic Code Highlighting in PHP Rob Williams Sometimes it seems that one of the hardest parts of teaching coding to others is simply getting your source coding to display in a properly formatted and easy-to-understand way. In this article we'll look at one of the built in tools that PHP makes available to you, as a web developer, that is designed specifically to address and solve this problem. Fireworks Automation Features in Bridge CS3 Jim Babbage As you are learning in my Bridge CS3 video series, this application does many things and is a great jumping off point for pretty much any users of Adobe products. In this video, we will take a look at the Fireworks Automation features which are available from within Bridge, how to use them and the benefits of accessing those tools via Bridge. Approximate download size: 12.5MB Photoshop Graffiti—Advanced Blending Techniques Knut Kubenz You may already be familiar with some of the basic Blending Modes located at the top left of the Layers Palette, under the sub menu, which allow you to make changes to both type and images on a Layer. This tutorial will cover still another Blending Mode available from the "Blend if" sliders. The "Blend if" sliders tend to have a a great deal of functionality and might be considered to be a bit more advanced than the basic Blending Modes. I'm going to use the "Blend if" sliders and text to put some graffiti on the side of an old oil drum and try to make it look as though the text is actually a part of the drum. Taming the FLVPlayback Component's Need to Download David Stiller Don't get me wrong, the FLVPlayback component that ships with Flash is a good thing. If you want video content on your site and you're not especially into programming, this component makes things very easy. Just drag an instance to the Stage, flip to the Parameters tab of the Property inspector, and enter the path to your FLV (Flash video) file. In the same Parameters area, you can even choose from a number of skins that affect the functionality and appearance of your video player. If you like, go minimal, with no skin and a video that plays automatically. Otherwise, go full bore and give your users a skin that allows pausing, seeking, volume adjustment and muting. The amount of control you give is up to you — all without a shred of ActionScript. So, what's not to like? Two things, the importance of which only you can determine. First, FLVPlayback adds something of a heavy footprint to your SWF. Whatever it weighed before the component, FLVPlayback adds 35KB in ActionScript 2.0 documents and 49KB in ActionScript 3.0 documents. Assuming you're okay with that, the other issue is this: even if you configure it not to autoplay, FLVPlayback always initiates a download of your FLV file. That's right, even if it starts in pause mode, your video file will still be hogging up bandwidth, especially if you have two or three video players on your page. Given that your visitor may not even choose to watch, why put that strain on your server? Here's a clever way to step around the issue. Using HD Video in Flash CS3 [FREE] Tom Green So Adobe gets the Flash community cranked up last week by allowing you to add H.264 encoded video to your Flash movies. Here's a quick "How To"... Flex 101: Part 8 - AS3 in MXML Joseph Balderson Learning Flex 2 can be can seem overwhelming at first glance, considering all the elements that go into the making of a Flex application, from the development IDE, the source files, the runtime and the APIs, not to mention the abundance of documentation, examples and blog entries to choose from, not all of which are intended for novices. Just to name a few. This series aims to take some of the mystery and confusion out of learning Flex 2, providing both a beginner's overview of building applications in Flex, as well as some in-depth examination of the basics for intermediate Flex developers. In this article, we take a look at combining ActionScript 3 and MXML together in the same document. We will examine how to define methods and properties in the MXML, and how to make bindable custom properties. And finally, we'll look at how to include external ActionScript code into an MXML document. The Flex 101 Series: Flex 101: Part 1 - Introducing Adobe Flex 2 Flex 101: Part 2 - What's New In Flash Player 9 Flex 101: Part 3 - Using Flex Builder 2 Flex 101: Part 4 - Building in Design Mode Flex 101: Part 5 - Using MXML Flex 101: Part 6 - Components and Databinding Flex 101: Part 7 - Events Flex 101: Part 8 - AS3 in MXML Flex 101: Part 9 - Custom MXML Components Coming Soon Flex 101: Part 10 - Databinding Custom Components Coming Soon Flex 101: Part 11 - The Event Classes Coming Soon The Secret Art of Cookies: Part 1 Rob Williams Preserving data for an end user can be one of the more challenging tasks when you first start to learn a server-side programming language like PHP. Sessions are a good starting point that allow you to carry information about users across multiple pages of your site, but alone they can fall short of expectations as they are always only limited to the length of a current browsing "session". What about those times when you want to preserve information (such as a user's login) for a longer period of time? This is where the wonderful world of cookies comes in! In this article we'll explore what cookies are, why they're userful, and how to use them in PHP. Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 5 - Styles 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 fifrth lesson of this series, we will add styles to our component for customizing its look and feel. 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 Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 3 - Dispatching Events Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 4 - Property Exposure Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 5 - Styles Flex 101: Part 7 - Events Joseph Balderson Learning Flex 2 can be can seem overwhelming at first glance, considering all the elements that go into the making of a Flex application, from the development IDE, the source files, the runtime and the APIs, not to mention the abundance of documentation, examples and blog entries to choose from, not all of which are intended for novices. Just to name a few. This series aims to take some of the mystery and confusion out of learning Flex 2, providing both a beginner's overview of building applications in Flex, as well as some in-depth examination of the basics for intermediate Flex developers. In this article, we examine the basics of the Flex Event model. The completed "spaceship chaser" application. The Flex 101 Series: Flex 101: Part 1 - Introducing Adobe Flex 2 Flex 101: Part 2 - What's New In Flash Player 9 Flex 101: Part 3 - Using Flex Builder 2 Flex 101: Part 4 - Building in Design Mode Flex 101: Part 5 - Using MXML Flex 101: Part 6 - Components and Databinding Flex 101: Part 7 - Events Flex 101: Part 8 - AS3 in MXML Flex 101: Part 9 - Custom MXML Components Coming Soon Flex 101: Part 10 - Databinding Custom Components Coming Soon Flex 101: Part 11 - The Event Classes Coming Soon Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 2: ColdFusion Tom Muck In the first part of this series, I showed how to create a Master/Detail page set using built in Dreamweaver tools, and then add a basic search form querying against one field in the database. What if you want more than that though? The Dreamweaver recordset dialog box allows one filter against one field. This is sometimes useful, but usually not. Typically you might also want to allow other HTML fields into the search. You will want to search allowing multiple search words. Finally, you might want to search multiple database fields. I will address all three situations in this article, which will be targeted to ColdFusion users only. The Creating A Simple Database Web Search Series: Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 1 Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 2: PHP Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 2: ColdFusion
Create a Table-less Horizontal Looper in PHP Dreamweaver has a Repeat Region server behavior that loops through your data and allows you to display it in a vertical or horizontal manner. If you want to display the data in a grid pattern, however, it requires a little more effort. Typically, a Horizontal Looper extension or code is used to create a table and put your individual data sections in a table cell. In this tutorial, I'll show how to do that using <div> tags and CSS without tables. For this tutorial I'll assume you know how to use MySQL tools to create and manage databases, and how to create connections for PHP in Dreamweaver. 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 Changing Cue Points in Your FLV If you have an overwhelming urge to embed Cue Points into an FLV file's metadata you have most likely discovered that once they are embedded they can't be removed or changed. Here’s a little trick that will bail you out of a rather tricky Cue Point situation: Let’s assume you discover, when testing the video in Flash, you have screwed up the timing for the first Cue Point. Relaunch the Encoder. You will notice that the video just encoded is still in the interface. Select the video and then select Edit >Reset Status. The settings will open and you can then make the change in the Advanced Settings.Recompile the FLV and you have changed a cue point. If the video has been removed - you selected the video in the Encoder and clicked the Remove button - you are out of luck. 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!

Anything Happening With Apple Recently?

Steve Jobs made an announcement recently that should make Apple shareholders and Mac addicts very happy. The biggest announcement involved the sweeping changes in the iPod line. The iPod "Touch" was introduced to the world. Looking much like the iPhone, the iPod Touch is an iPod with a touchscreen and wireless capabilities. The iPod Nano now has video-playback capibility. The classic iPod is now being offered with 160 gb drive. Onto the iPhone: The 4 gb model is being dropped, while the price on the 8 gb model is going down by $200, bring the price to just $399. On the horizon is a custom ringtone maker at iTunes. Plenty of stuff to sift through, and as you would expect, MacWorld.com has the lowdown on all of it. Oh- and Gizomodo.com chimes in with the five things they love and the five things they hate about the new iPod lineup.

What's All This I Keep Hearing About A Dopey Hair?

The possibilities surrounding Adobe AIR are huge. Plenty of desktop applications have been built with AIR and we've pointed to a few in our newsletter. Sure, it's not all peaches and cream, as this post at CodeApollo.com confirms, but we like to keep mentioning it because (1) It does have the potential to change the way we build desktop apps and (2) It's still very new and deserving of a plug from the friendly folks at Community MX from time to time. Still don't quite have a grasp on what AIR is all about? Check out this introduction at DevX.com.

Because People Love Controversy

Not everyone thinks Adobe Flex is the best thing for creating Rich Internet Applications. For instance, one of the guys who works for Frost Applications, makers of the Gaia Ajax Widgets - an indirect competitor of Flex - makes no secret that he believes there is a better alternative. Could it be... yep: Gaia Ajax Widgets. We can't answer each of his claims, but if you're into Flex, you might be interested in this post at AjaxWidgets.com. The writer apparently caught a lot of flack for what he said, and addresses the naysayers in another post. Warning: obscenity appears near the top of his post, so don't have your kids read the article to you.

I Didn't Know There Would Be A Test!

The Website Grader was chosen as one of PC Magazine's top 100 undiscovered websites recently, and for good reason. Plug any url into the Website Grader, and you get a wealth of information back: Google ranking, information and advice about your metatags - or lack of - and things like when Google last crawled your site and bunches of other stuff. It derives a score from one to one hundred after weighing what it things you're doing right or wrong. Of course the first website I ran through the Website Grader was CommunityMX.com. Our grade? 99. Out of a possible 100, not too shabby, eh?

Advertisers Are Not Gonna Like This...

AdBlock Plus is an add-on to Mozilla's Firefox browser that will block all advertising from any given web page. This article from Adotas.com doesn't see AdBlock Plus as a plus. To quote the article: "by taking away the ads themselves the service is technically committing theft since the space is paid for by advertisers." Internet users who are tired of the seemingly endless barrage of ads on their favorite sites would probably disagree. Theft is a strong word, and probably not a fitting description of what AdBlock Plus does. Most users are already paying for an internet connection, and should probably be allowed to filter content as they see fit.

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!"

CMX Subscriber Rick H., commenting on Tom Muck's article "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:

"Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions." — Thomas Szasz

Sour Grapes of Wrath?

The ColdFusion Developer's Journal - CFDJ - was once a pretty good resource for anyone wanting to get into or keep up with anything related to ColdFusion. They had some good people writing for them, including our own Tom Muck, but it didn't take long before CFDJ, published by Sys-Con, became a whole bunch of ads mixed with a few articles. CFDJ is now closing shop, and to the contrary of what some folks are saying, it is not due to lack of interest in ColdFusion by developers. According to the Sys-Con press release, "CFDJ was launched 10 years ago as a custom developer magazine with the direct support of Allaire Corporation. This support continued after the acquisition of Allaire by Macromedia. After ColdFusion became part of the Adobe product line Adobe recently decided to discontinue its support of the magazine." A lot of CF developers are telling CFDJ not to let the door hit them in the butt on the way out: Ben Forta, Sean Corfield and heck, even Simon Horwith, editor-in-chief of CFDJ wasn't too sad to hear the news. Since Sys-Con is saying that Adobe has let the ColdFusion community down by discontinuing their support of CFDJ, Ben Forta is setting the record straight.

Silverlight Still A Flash In The Pan?

When Microsoft first introduced the idea of Silverlight, people dismissed it. When the beta of Silverlight was released, people said "ah, a repackaged Flash Player." Now that version 1.0 has been released, we still can't say that Silverlight is anything for Adobe to worry about. But now that Microsoft has hooked up with partners like Home Shopping Network, the WWE and Entertainment Tonight, Adobe has probably opened up their peripheral vision a bit. Other members of the "Silverlight Initiative" include Netflix and CBS Corps. Surprisingly, Microsoft has not decided to push Siliverlight to users via a Windows update. Will Silverlight catch on? It's impossible to tell just yet, but Microsoft is creating some partnerships that will put the Silverlight player on more computers than Adobe might feel comfortable with. Check out this article from ComputerWorld.com. As our own David Stiller says, "Maybe, at this point, Microsoft will start requiring the Silverlight plugin instead of Flash to showcase their other products online."

We Love Good Tech News

Technology is mostly a positive thing, used to improve our lives. IBM drives this point home with a new tool they've designed for the deaf. It's called "SiSi", which stands for "See It Say It" and it uses an avatar to interpret human speech and then translate it into sign language. Imagine speaking to a deaf person and having them immediately understand what you're saying. This is what progress is all about, folks. For now, it will only work with British sign language, but that will probably change. Read a bit more about it at Yahoo.com.

We Will Now Call Them MpTeensies

You like mp3s, right? Us too! We have bunches of them. You too? Wow! They're great, huh? They take up a lot less room on our computers or portable players than they do on our music shelves, for sure. One thing that could make them even better is if we could make the file size even smaller so we could load our players up with even more music. Believe it or not, as small as mp3s are, now you can shrink them down to about half the size using Shrink My Tunes. It's about $40 US, but for those of us who own several kajillion mp3s, it's intriguing. They even have before and after samples you can listen to. Sweeeeet... You can read a review of Shrink My Tunes at Wired.com.

OK, You Fooled Us

This should go in the Fun and Freebies section, but as usual, that part of our newsletter was filled up before the news section was finished. It's a good article from PCWorld.com on Ten Great (but Fake) Tech and Science Videos. One of the best falls on page three of the article where Tristan Newcomb created a fake game, pre-recorded the action, and then presented a "demo" of the game. He built in plenty of errors to keep our amusement factor up.

CMX Internet Explorer Conditional Comment Extension

Rapidly put Internet Explorer conditional comments in your web pages without looking it up every time for the syntax. This extension will insert conditional comments for Internet Explorer in a couple of clicks!

Check out the Extension by CMX Partner Paul Davis

Fun and Freebies

Animator vs... Bunny?

You've probably seen the Animator versus Animation Flash movie. We've linked to it several times here. But you probably haven't seen Vincent's Flash video that combines stop-motion animation with traditional animation. Vincent did a great job here.

They're Sumo Wrestlers And They're Drunk. What Else Do You Need To Know?

You have to download Sumotori Dreams to your computer if you want to play it, but you've got to try it out. The mechanics are great, and we're sure the makers of this - dare we say lifelike - game had a great time getting the drunken movements of the sumos just right.

Pretty Close...

Does this picture come close to your web development experience?

Going Mobile In Flash CS3

New to Flash CS3 is Device Central. In this, the seventh of eight excerpts from their new book Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers (friendsofED), Community MX authors Tom Green and David Stiller take you through the mobile pace from content to upload.

This free article by CMX Partners Tom Green and David Stiller can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Automatic Code Highlighting in PHP

Rob Williams

Sometimes it seems that one of the hardest parts of teaching coding to others is simply getting your source coding to display in a properly formatted and easy-to-understand way. In this article we'll look at one of the built in tools that PHP makes available to you, as a web developer, that is designed specifically to address and solve this problem.

Fireworks Automation Features in Bridge CS3

Jim Babbage

As you are learning in my Bridge CS3 video series, this application does many things and is a great jumping off point for pretty much any users of Adobe products. In this video, we will take a look at the Fireworks Automation features which are available from within Bridge, how to use them and the benefits of accessing those tools via Bridge.

Approximate download size: 12.5MB

Photoshop Graffiti—Advanced Blending Techniques

Knut Kubenz

You may already be familiar with some of the basic Blending Modes located at the top left of the Layers Palette, under the sub menu, which allow you to make changes to both type and images on a Layer. This tutorial will cover still another Blending Mode available from the "Blend if" sliders. The "Blend if" sliders tend to have a a great deal of functionality and might be considered to be a bit more advanced than the basic Blending Modes. I'm going to use the "Blend if" sliders and text to put some graffiti on the side of an old oil drum and try to make it look as though the text is actually a part of the drum.

Taming the FLVPlayback Component's Need to Download

David Stiller

Don't get me wrong, the FLVPlayback component that ships with Flash is a good thing. If you want video content on your site and you're not especially into programming, this component makes things very easy. Just drag an instance to the Stage, flip to the Parameters tab of the Property inspector, and enter the path to your FLV (Flash video) file. In the same Parameters area, you can even choose from a number of skins that affect the functionality and appearance of your video player. If you like, go minimal, with no skin and a video that plays automatically. Otherwise, go full bore and give your users a skin that allows pausing, seeking, volume adjustment and muting. The amount of control you give is up to you — all without a shred of ActionScript. So, what's not to like?

Two things, the importance of which only you can determine. First, FLVPlayback adds something of a heavy footprint to your SWF. Whatever it weighed before the component, FLVPlayback adds 35KB in ActionScript 2.0 documents and 49KB in ActionScript 3.0 documents. Assuming you're okay with that, the other issue is this: even if you configure it not to autoplay, FLVPlayback always initiates a download of your FLV file. That's right, even if it starts in pause mode, your video file will still be hogging up bandwidth, especially if you have two or three video players on your page. Given that your visitor may not even choose to watch, why put that strain on your server? Here's a clever way to step around the issue.

Using HD Video in Flash CS3 [FREE]

Tom Green

So Adobe gets the Flash community cranked up last week by allowing you to add H.264 encoded video to your Flash movies. Here's a quick "How To"...

Flex 101: Part 8 - AS3 in MXML

Joseph Balderson

Learning Flex 2 can be can seem overwhelming at first glance, considering all the elements that go into the making of a Flex application, from the development IDE, the source files, the runtime and the APIs, not to mention the abundance of documentation, examples and blog entries to choose from, not all of which are intended for novices. Just to name a few. This series aims to take some of the mystery and confusion out of learning Flex 2, providing both a beginner's overview of building applications in Flex, as well as some in-depth examination of the basics for intermediate Flex developers.

In this article, we take a look at combining ActionScript 3 and MXML together in the same document. We will examine how to define methods and properties in the MXML, and how to make bindable custom properties. And finally, we'll look at how to include external ActionScript code into an MXML document.

The Flex 101 Series:
Flex 101: Part 1 - Introducing Adobe Flex 2
Flex 101: Part 2 - What's New In Flash Player 9
Flex 101: Part 3 - Using Flex Builder 2
Flex 101: Part 4 - Building in Design Mode
Flex 101: Part 5 - Using MXML
Flex 101: Part 6 - Components and Databinding
Flex 101: Part 7 - Events
Flex 101: Part 8 - AS3 in MXML
Flex 101: Part 9 - Custom MXML Components Coming Soon
Flex 101: Part 10 - Databinding Custom Components Coming Soon
Flex 101: Part 11 - The Event Classes Coming Soon

The Secret Art of Cookies: Part 1

Rob Williams

Preserving data for an end user can be one of the more challenging tasks when you first start to learn a server-side programming language like PHP. Sessions are a good starting point that allow you to carry information about users across multiple pages of your site, but alone they can fall short of expectations as they are always only limited to the length of a current browsing "session".

What about those times when you want to preserve information (such as a user's login) for a longer period of time? This is where the wonderful world of cookies comes in! In this article we'll explore what cookies are, why they're userful, and how to use them in PHP.

Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 5 - Styles

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 fifrth lesson of this series, we will add styles to our component for customizing its look and feel.

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
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 3 - Dispatching Events
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 4 - Property Exposure
Creating Custom UIComponents in Flex 2: Lesson 5 - Styles

Flex 101: Part 7 - Events

Joseph Balderson

Learning Flex 2 can be can seem overwhelming at first glance, considering all the elements that go into the making of a Flex application, from the development IDE, the source files, the runtime and the APIs, not to mention the abundance of documentation, examples and blog entries to choose from, not all of which are intended for novices. Just to name a few. This series aims to take some of the mystery and confusion out of learning Flex 2, providing both a beginner's overview of building applications in Flex, as well as some in-depth examination of the basics for intermediate Flex developers.

In this article, we examine the basics of the Flex Event model.

The completed "spaceship chaser" application.

The Flex 101 Series:
Flex 101: Part 1 - Introducing Adobe Flex 2
Flex 101: Part 2 - What's New In Flash Player 9
Flex 101: Part 3 - Using Flex Builder 2
Flex 101: Part 4 - Building in Design Mode
Flex 101: Part 5 - Using MXML
Flex 101: Part 6 - Components and Databinding
Flex 101: Part 7 - Events
Flex 101: Part 8 - AS3 in MXML
Flex 101: Part 9 - Custom MXML Components Coming Soon
Flex 101: Part 10 - Databinding Custom Components Coming Soon
Flex 101: Part 11 - The Event Classes Coming Soon

Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 2: ColdFusion

Tom Muck

In the first part of this series, I showed how to create a Master/Detail page set using built in Dreamweaver tools, and then add a basic search form querying against one field in the database. What if you want more than that though? The Dreamweaver recordset dialog box allows one filter against one field. This is sometimes useful, but usually not. Typically you might also want to allow other HTML fields into the search. You will want to search allowing multiple search words. Finally, you might want to search multiple database fields. I will address all three situations in this article, which will be targeted to ColdFusion users only.

The Creating A Simple Database Web Search Series:
Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 1
Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 2: PHP
Creating a Simple Database Web Search - Part 2: ColdFusion

Create a Table-less Horizontal Looper in PHP

Dreamweaver has a Repeat Region server behavior that loops through your data and allows you to display it in a vertical or horizontal manner. If you want to display the data in a grid pattern, however, it requires a little more effort. Typically, a Horizontal Looper extension or code is used to create a table and put your individual data sections in a table cell. In this tutorial, I'll show how to do that using <div> tags and CSS without tables. For this tutorial I'll assume you know how to use MySQL tools to create and manage databases, and how to create connections for PHP in Dreamweaver.

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

Changing Cue Points in Your FLV

If you have an overwhelming urge to embed Cue Points into an FLV file's metadata you have most likely discovered that once they are embedded they can't be removed or changed.

Here’s a little trick that will bail you out of a rather tricky Cue Point situation:

Let’s assume you discover, when testing the video in Flash, you have screwed up the timing for the first Cue Point. Relaunch the Encoder. You will notice that the video just encoded is still in the interface. Select the video and then select Edit >Reset Status. The settings will open and you can then make the change in the Advanced Settings.Recompile the FLV and you have changed a cue point.

If the video has been removed - you selected the video in the Encoder and clicked the Remove button - you are out of luck.

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!