
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! CMX JumpStart Contest Winners Announced! We are very pleased to announce the winners of the JumpStart contest. The JumpStart judges had a tough job - the enthusiastic response to the challenge exceeded even our expectations. We received multiple representatives of almost every one of our JumpStarts. We were thrilled to see how many of our subscribers have taken advantage of the accessible, valid, CSS-based JumpStart layouts to create engaging sites for clients or personal use. The first place entry was created by Dave Buchholz for Special Vehicle Solutions, and is a design based on CMX JumpStart Machu Picchu. Dave's entry scored well for each category that we outlined on our rules page. The adaptation of the design, its suitability, CSS and markup validation, and accessibility were all part of the winning equation. Congratulations on winning a year's subscription to CMX, Dave! Dave had this to say about his design: "I chose Machu Picchu as the base for the site of Special Vehicle Solutions, a start up company. They were looking for a fresh clean design that would put the focus on their content as their target audience are decision makers looking for distinct services rather than shoppers browsing. I think the site achieved all of the goals I set. Certainly when the site was signed off, they were very happy and have since told me the site has gotten a very positive reaction from their customers." Barbara ONeal created the runner up, which is a site for Zaitz Photography. It is based on CMX JumpStart Cairo and was an immediate hit with all of the judges, who were impressed with its sense of design, color, and composition. Great work, Barbara! Adobe and Mozilla Team Up to Advance Flash Adobe is letting Mozilla leaf through its code for Adobe's ActionScript virtual machine, hoping that it will be included in a future build of Firefox. Mozilla has taken this bull by the horns by creating the Tamarin Project, which is aimed at developing an ECMAScript 4 implementation based on Adobe's virtual machine. Out of all this, Adobe is planning on getting their javascript engine up to par with other browsers, and perhaps start a trend towards using JavaScript 2. You can read more about this at arstechnica.com. Is Your Website Web 2.0 Material? Web2.0Validator.com will allow you to run your website through a validator that judges whether or not it qualifies as "web 2.0" or not. Don't be surprised if your website doesn't cut the mustard though, as the rules are tough, change every day and are pretty much made up. For instance, in order to qualify, your website (today, anyway) would have to mention cool words, use extra punctuation and mention that "less is more." Since the site uses the same criteria to judge 2.0-worthiness as the professionals do, it seems no more or less valid, and is just as good a crock as any other measure you might find. Want more information on Web 2.0 in general? Check out the Web 2.0 summit articles at News.com. To Spec Or Not To Spec? Spec work, if you're unfamiliar with the term, is work done for a company without benefit of a contract, and without pay - until you can "prove" to potential customer that you can create whatever it is they're looking for. Many designers and developers do spec work in the hopes that it will lead to a signed contract and cash. If you're doing this type of work, which is basically unpaid work, you might want to read up on the negative aspects of it at PainterCreativy.com and No-Spec.com. If you do spec work, and it's working out for you, by all means keep it up. But if you're just starting out, it's good to be informed about the possible "ugly" side of spec work. Microsoft Wants My Living Room In their bid to make the Xbox the end-all, beat-all to gamers and couch potatoes alike, Microsoft has built the capability of downloading video into the Xbox. This service, which will run through Microsoft's Xbox Marketplace, will start on the 22nd of this month, and promises to offer 1,000 hours of content from sources like Warner Brothers, the Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim", Paramount, CBS and others. Read about it at AdAge.com.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Absolutely fabulous tutorial on jello layout!!" - Simon D., CMX Subscriber, regarding 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: "For Client so loved the work, that he told his one and only Developer, that whosoever listens to him shall not finish, but have eternal changes."" - Project 3:16 Just In Case You're Not Using All Your Cell Phone Minutes Already For anyone who has used their cell phone to browse YouTube.com, you've probably noticed that while you might see a bunch of links to videos, you can't actually watch YouTube videos through your cell phone. Google hopes to change that, at least for Verizon subscribers. Google plans on working with Verizon to get YouTube content to the Verizon masses. There's an interesting article at MediaPost.com that talks about the need for content providers to work with cell phone providers who wish to push broadband content to their customers, and how a middleman might be what they need to get the job done. Google Takes a Position on Kama Sutra Imagine being one of about 50,000 people who are part of a discussion list for the Google Video Blog, and you open your email and find that a virus has landed in your inbox from the list. Not only that, but the virus was sent by an employee of Google. That happened this week, as a Google employee accidentally sent all the members of this list the Kama Sutra virus as an attachment. Once discovered, Google promptly emailed each list member with the usual "we recommend you run your antivirus program to remove it", forgetting to add the words "Ooops" and/or "Duh!" According to this article at PCWorld.com, this is not a frequent occurence, but Google isn't the first company to pull this kind of bonehead move. I'm a Mac, And Apparently You All Hate Me Apple has decided to drop Justin Long, the guy who plays the "Mac" in the now-famous "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads, from their upcoming ads. Why? This article at RadarOnline.com speculates that it could be because people who watch those ads ended up wanting to push the Mac guy under a bus. Seth Stevenson of Slate.com concurs, by saying that the Mac guy is "just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we've always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast." Not big praise. A representative for Justin explains the situation thusly: "Justin's a movie star, not a commercial guy." Mm-hmm... Skype 3.0 Beta Released It seems like it was just yesterday that Skype 2.0 was released, but the beta for Skype 3.0 is available at Skype.com as I type this. New in 3.0 are several features meant to make your VoIP experience simpler. For instance, using plugins for IE or Firefox, you can now click on a phone number in a web page and Skype will automatically call that number. They call this feature "Click to Call." You can also use Skype as a chat application, bringing several people into whatever conversation you're having. The interface has also been changed a bit, enhancing the usability of the application. Read more about the beta at BetaNews.com or ITWire.com. Microsoft Maps Get Much Cooler Microsoft has built some 3-D wizardry into their online maps at Live.com. It will only work in Explorer 6 or 7 - sorry Mac users - but if you're using IE, then it's worth checking out. After installing some software, you can plug in an address, or just a city name and you'll be faced with a map looking down at your chosen location. Hold down your control key and move your mouse, and the perspective of the 3-D map changes. It's almost like flying across the terrain, like Superman! Sorry... got carried away. But it is pretty neat. Check it out at Live.com.
CMX CF Row Style Server Behavior CMX CF Row Style is a Server Behavior for ColdFusion that takes your repeat region and changes the style of every other row to match a style from your Cascading Style Sheet, or the embedded styles on your page. This allows you to have not only a different color for every other row, but different colored text/font in every other row as well. Take a look at this extension by CMX Partner Bill Horvath
Fun and Freebies! PlayStation 3 Already Giving Us The Creeps Shouldn't an advertisement for a product entice you into using said product? Apparently Sony didn't get that memo. Check out this creepy ad on YouTube.com for Playstation 3. Still got the willies from that one... We Demand a Recount! Alexa.com has a list of the current top 100 visited websites. It's no surprise that sites like Yahoo!, MySpace, YouTube, Google and Amazon are at the top of the list, along with Microsoft. The Official Site of Major League Baseball came in at #99. so it appears that we are a people who read, search, post and play baseball... and somehow involve Microsoft in the process. This Is Just Awful I'm not even going to describe it. Just look at this image posted at TheMot.org.
Turning a Tile Image Into a Fireworks Pattern 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. This free article by CMX Partner Jim Babbage can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Newly Supported CSS Selectors in IE7 [FREE] John Gallant, Holly Bergevin If you know a little about CSS selectors, you have probably discovered how limiting they can be in some ways. Well get ready to expand your CSS horizons, because IE7 has extended its selector support quite a bit, and we want you to become aware of the things these newly supported CSS combinator tools will do for you. All too soon we coders will be expected to know and use this stuff, so put on that thinking-cap and set the selector to "Combinators." Here we go... Why You Should Use HeaderTemplate and FooterTemplate in a Repeater [FREE] Heidi Bautista When it's possible to accomplish a goal in multiple ways, how do you decide which pattern to follow? In this article we'll explore one such conundrum: Let's say you have an asp:repeater than repeats the data using an unordered list. The question is: Where do you put the open and close ul elements? Do you really need a header and footer template? The answer is: yes! Sure, it sounds simple (and it is) but the example demonstrates an important coding practice that good programmers should recognize. Creating Neon in a Flash Tom Green Have you ever wondered how to create a flickering neon sign in Flash? Read on.... Hand-Coded User Authentication Gordon Mackay One of Dreamweaver's most treasured features is its ability to allow developers a quick and painless way to authenticate users via a login form. While this is pretty cool if you don't want to dirty your hands with code, it doesn't allow you much insight into how it actually works. In this tutorial we will explore hand-coding a small PHP script that allows you to restrict access to pages, and also redirect users to their own personal page when they log into your application. We will use MySQL to store user information. So, if you're not frightened of some code, and you want to see how sessions can be used to help developers deliver user-specific content please read on. Now That's A House of A Different Color Knut Kubenz Ever get stuck with the question, "What color should it be"? Great looking house, but the white on the siding is too bright and I know I'm going to have to paint it every year just so it doesn't look dirty. Here's a quick and simple Photoshop way to change the color of a house's siding or any image, over and over again, interactively, with any color, using Adjustment Layers. The Complete (Almost) Vectorized Webding Catalog [FREE] Kim Cavanaugh Way back in December 2003 I wrote a free article here at Community MX called Fun with Webdings and Wingdings which is consistently in the Top Ten of our most viewed tutorials. As of this writing the tutorial has been viewed over 55,000 times. And why not? First of all, the tutorial is free, and secondly, Webdings and Wingdings are lots of fun to play around with. They can also serve some really useful purposes. Depending on the font in that family of "Dings" you can get all sorts of little miniature pictures by just typing in the correct character using the Fireworks Text tool. Recently I needed some small icons for a design project so I started up Fireworks and created my own reference library for the Webding font family. And while I was at it, I decided to go ahead and convert all of the text objects into vector shapes. What you'll find here is a somewhat later version of the same file that is a tad better organized. You can use this file for your own design purposes or use it as a reference for creating your own library of characters. What do you get in terms of images? Well, you'll have to open the file up to see all of the little pictures that Webdings create, but here are a few samples. In addition there are two source files included in this download—both a Flash and a Fireworks source file that make use of the webding vector shapes included in the library for your examination. The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 1: Switch Statements Rob Williams One of the key components of any scripting or programming language are control structures, statements that tell a language interpretter to stop reading code in a linear line-by-line fashion and start to make more complex operations based on simple logic. While most developers are aware of the common "if else" and "for" structures, there are many others available in PHP (and other languages I might add) that allow you to save a great deal of time and make your coding more efficient and easier to understand. In this series we're going to take a look at some of those "forgotten" structures and some practical examples of how they can be used to clean up your coding techniques. First up in the spotlight: the switch structure. From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Six - Completing the Screen Media Type Layout Adrian Senior In Part 6 of this series you will complete the screen media type layout and discover what is meant by elements being in and out of the document flow. You will also learn about clearing floats and using techniques that allow you to see your design evolve as you work. The Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility Series: From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part One - Building the Header From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Two - Building the Content Area From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Three - Buidling the Footer and Exporting the Slices From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Four - Site Structure and Image Preparation From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Five - Building the Screen Media Type Layout From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Six - Completing the Screen Media Type Layout Working with Shared Libraries - Part 5: Sharing Fonts with Runtime-Created Text Fields Robert Reinhardt In this "Working with" series, you learn how to create and use shared libraries with your Flash movies. Shared libraries can help you optimize your workflow, making it easier to update assets across several Flash movies used for any type of project. In the last tutorial of this series, you learned how to reuse fonts with dynamic text fields in other Flash movies. However, those text fields were placed in the movie at authortime, not with ActionScript at runtime. In this tutorial, you learn how to reuse shared fonts with dynamic text fields created in ActionScript. Sharing fonts is one of the best ways to trim down SWF file sizes for large projects involving many SWF files. The Working with Shared Libraries Series: Working with Shared Libraries - Part 1: Sharing Symbols in Authortime Libraries Working with Shared Libraries - Part 2: Sharing Symbols in a Runtime Shared Library Working with Shared Libraries - Part 3: Sharing Fonts with Static Text Working with Shared Libraries - Part 4: Sharing Fonts with Dynamic Text Working with Shared Libraries - Part 5: Sharing Fonts with Runtime-Created Text Fields Working with Shared Libraries - Part 6: Using CSS with Shared Fonts Coming Soon Working with Shared Libraries - Part 7: Sharing Components Coming Soon Creating a Digital Photo Matte in Fireworks Jim Babbage So you've got that cool digital camera and you've been making some pretty awesome photos with it. Wouldn't it be nice to dress them up a bit with a nice matte, to frame the image? Then off you go to add them to flickr or put them on your own website to show the world. In this tutorial, we'll use Fireworks 8 to create a textured digital matte to frame a photo. We'll be making use of both bitmap and vector tools, and we'll also save the matte settings as a style so they are easy to reuse for other images. Below is one example of the finished image. One thing I'd like to do is make this process as automated as possible. This way, we can combine a series of steps into a custom command that could be applied to multiple images.
Build a Dashboard Widget Widgets and the new Dashboard feature introduced some serious eye candy with the debut of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" last year. But widgets can be seriously useful, too — not to mention great fun. This tutorial walks you through a fully functional CMX RSS feed reader widget created for Tiger. You'll see how it works...and how you can modify it to create your own Dashboard widget. Check out the Article by CMX Partner Thomas Pletcher
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Joseph Balderson, CMX Partner. Precise Coordinates for Ruler Guides in Flash Rather than positioning your ruler guides according to the ruler, which can lend itself to inaccuracy as you squint trying to hit that perfect pixel, use the Info panel to help. As you drag a guide from the Ruler, watch your cursor coordinates in the Info panel. Where you let go of the mouse is the precise vertical or horizontal position of the ruler. This ensures that your ruler guides are pixel perfectly positioned (say that fast five times!) 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!

CMX JumpStart Contest Winners Announced!

We are very pleased to announce the winners of the JumpStart contest. The JumpStart judges had a tough job - the enthusiastic response to the challenge exceeded even our expectations. We received multiple representatives of almost every one of our JumpStarts. We were thrilled to see how many of our subscribers have taken advantage of the accessible, valid, CSS-based JumpStart layouts to create engaging sites for clients or personal use.

The first place entry was created by Dave Buchholz for Special Vehicle Solutions, and is a design based on CMX JumpStart Machu Picchu. Dave's entry scored well for each category that we outlined on our rules page. The adaptation of the design, its suitability, CSS and markup validation, and accessibility were all part of the winning equation. Congratulations on winning a year's subscription to CMX, Dave! Dave had this to say about his design:

"I chose Machu Picchu as the base for the site of Special Vehicle Solutions, a start up company. They were looking for a fresh clean design that would put the focus on their content as their target audience are decision makers looking for distinct services rather than shoppers browsing. I think the site achieved all of the goals I set. Certainly when the site was signed off, they were very happy and have since told me the site has gotten a very positive reaction from their customers."

Barbara ONeal created the runner up, which is a site for Zaitz Photography. It is based on CMX JumpStart Cairo and was an immediate hit with all of the judges, who were impressed with its sense of design, color, and composition. Great work, Barbara!

Adobe and Mozilla Team Up to Advance Flash

Adobe is letting Mozilla leaf through its code for Adobe's ActionScript virtual machine, hoping that it will be included in a future build of Firefox. Mozilla has taken this bull by the horns by creating the Tamarin Project, which is aimed at developing an ECMAScript 4 implementation based on Adobe's virtual machine. Out of all this, Adobe is planning on getting their javascript engine up to par with other browsers, and perhaps start a trend towards using JavaScript 2. You can read more about this at arstechnica.com.

Is Your Website Web 2.0 Material?

Web2.0Validator.com will allow you to run your website through a validator that judges whether or not it qualifies as "web 2.0" or not. Don't be surprised if your website doesn't cut the mustard though, as the rules are tough, change every day and are pretty much made up. For instance, in order to qualify, your website (today, anyway) would have to mention cool words, use extra punctuation and mention that "less is more." Since the site uses the same criteria to judge 2.0-worthiness as the professionals do, it seems no more or less valid, and is just as good a crock as any other measure you might find. Want more information on Web 2.0 in general? Check out the Web 2.0 summit articles at News.com.

To Spec Or Not To Spec?

Spec work, if you're unfamiliar with the term, is work done for a company without benefit of a contract, and without pay - until you can "prove" to potential customer that you can create whatever it is they're looking for. Many designers and developers do spec work in the hopes that it will lead to a signed contract and cash. If you're doing this type of work, which is basically unpaid work, you might want to read up on the negative aspects of it at PainterCreativy.com and No-Spec.com. If you do spec work, and it's working out for you, by all means keep it up. But if you're just starting out, it's good to be informed about the possible "ugly" side of spec work.

Microsoft Wants My Living Room

In their bid to make the Xbox the end-all, beat-all to gamers and couch potatoes alike, Microsoft has built the capability of downloading video into the Xbox. This service, which will run through Microsoft's Xbox Marketplace, will start on the 22nd of this month, and promises to offer 1,000 hours of content from sources like Warner Brothers, the Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim", Paramount, CBS and others. Read about it at AdAge.com.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Absolutely fabulous tutorial on jello layout!!"

- Simon D., CMX Subscriber, regarding 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:

"For Client so loved the work, that he told his one and only Developer, that whosoever listens to him shall not finish, but have eternal changes."" - Project 3:16

Just In Case You're Not Using All Your Cell Phone Minutes Already

For anyone who has used their cell phone to browse YouTube.com, you've probably noticed that while you might see a bunch of links to videos, you can't actually watch YouTube videos through your cell phone. Google hopes to change that, at least for Verizon subscribers. Google plans on working with Verizon to get YouTube content to the Verizon masses. There's an interesting article at MediaPost.com that talks about the need for content providers to work with cell phone providers who wish to push broadband content to their customers, and how a middleman might be what they need to get the job done.

Google Takes a Position on Kama Sutra

Imagine being one of about 50,000 people who are part of a discussion list for the Google Video Blog, and you open your email and find that a virus has landed in your inbox from the list. Not only that, but the virus was sent by an employee of Google. That happened this week, as a Google employee accidentally sent all the members of this list the Kama Sutra virus as an attachment. Once discovered, Google promptly emailed each list member with the usual "we recommend you run your antivirus program to remove it", forgetting to add the words "Ooops" and/or "Duh!" According to this article at PCWorld.com, this is not a frequent occurence, but Google isn't the first company to pull this kind of bonehead move.

I'm a Mac, And Apparently You All Hate Me

Apple has decided to drop Justin Long, the guy who plays the "Mac" in the now-famous "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads, from their upcoming ads. Why? This article at RadarOnline.com speculates that it could be because people who watch those ads ended up wanting to push the Mac guy under a bus. Seth Stevenson of Slate.com concurs, by saying that the Mac guy is "just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we've always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast." Not big praise. A representative for Justin explains the situation thusly: "Justin's a movie star, not a commercial guy." Mm-hmm...

Skype 3.0 Beta Released

It seems like it was just yesterday that Skype 2.0 was released, but the beta for Skype 3.0 is available at Skype.com as I type this. New in 3.0 are several features meant to make your VoIP experience simpler. For instance, using plugins for IE or Firefox, you can now click on a phone number in a web page and Skype will automatically call that number. They call this feature "Click to Call." You can also use Skype as a chat application, bringing several people into whatever conversation you're having. The interface has also been changed a bit, enhancing the usability of the application. Read more about the beta at BetaNews.com or ITWire.com.

Microsoft Maps Get Much Cooler

Microsoft has built some 3-D wizardry into their online maps at Live.com. It will only work in Explorer 6 or 7 - sorry Mac users - but if you're using IE, then it's worth checking out. After installing some software, you can plug in an address, or just a city name and you'll be faced with a map looking down at your chosen location. Hold down your control key and move your mouse, and the perspective of the 3-D map changes. It's almost like flying across the terrain, like Superman! Sorry... got carried away. But it is pretty neat. Check it out at Live.com.

CMX CF Row Style Server Behavior

CMX CF Row Style is a Server Behavior for ColdFusion that takes your repeat region and changes the style of every other row to match a style from your Cascading Style Sheet, or the embedded styles on your page. This allows you to have not only a different color for every other row, but different colored text/font in every other row as well.

Take a look at this extension by CMX Partner Bill Horvath

Fun and Freebies!

PlayStation 3 Already Giving Us The Creeps

Shouldn't an advertisement for a product entice you into using said product? Apparently Sony didn't get that memo. Check out this creepy ad on YouTube.com for Playstation 3. Still got the willies from that one...

We Demand a Recount!

Alexa.com has a list of the current top 100 visited websites. It's no surprise that sites like Yahoo!, MySpace, YouTube, Google and Amazon are at the top of the list, along with Microsoft. The Official Site of Major League Baseball came in at #99. so it appears that we are a people who read, search, post and play baseball... and somehow involve Microsoft in the process.

This Is Just Awful

I'm not even going to describe it. Just look at this image posted at TheMot.org.

Turning a Tile Image Into a Fireworks Pattern

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.

This free article by CMX Partner Jim Babbage can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Newly Supported CSS Selectors in IE7 [FREE]

John Gallant, Holly Bergevin

If you know a little about CSS selectors, you have probably discovered how limiting they can be in some ways. Well get ready to expand your CSS horizons, because IE7 has extended its selector support quite a bit, and we want you to become aware of the things these newly supported CSS combinator tools will do for you. All too soon we coders will be expected to know and use this stuff, so put on that thinking-cap and set the selector to "Combinators." Here we go...

Why You Should Use HeaderTemplate and FooterTemplate in a Repeater [FREE]

Heidi Bautista

When it's possible to accomplish a goal in multiple ways, how do you decide which pattern to follow? In this article we'll explore one such conundrum: Let's say you have an asp:repeater than repeats the data using an unordered list. The question is: Where do you put the open and close ul elements? Do you really need a header and footer template? The answer is: yes! Sure, it sounds simple (and it is) but the example demonstrates an important coding practice that good programmers should recognize.

Creating Neon in a Flash

Tom Green

Have you ever wondered how to create a flickering neon sign in Flash? Read on....

Hand-Coded User Authentication

Gordon Mackay

One of Dreamweaver's most treasured features is its ability to allow developers a quick and painless way to authenticate users via a login form. While this is pretty cool if you don't want to dirty your hands with code, it doesn't allow you much insight into how it actually works.

In this tutorial we will explore hand-coding a small PHP script that allows you to restrict access to pages, and also redirect users to their own personal page when they log into your application. We will use MySQL to store user information.

So, if you're not frightened of some code, and you want to see how sessions can be used to help developers deliver user-specific content please read on.

Now That's A House of A Different Color

Knut Kubenz

Ever get stuck with the question, "What color should it be"?

Great looking house, but the white on the siding is too bright and I know I'm going to have to paint it every year just so it doesn't look dirty.

Here's a quick and simple Photoshop way to change the color of a house's siding or any image, over and over again, interactively, with any color, using Adjustment Layers.

The Complete (Almost) Vectorized Webding Catalog [FREE]

Kim Cavanaugh

Way back in December 2003 I wrote a free article here at Community MX called Fun with Webdings and Wingdings which is consistently in the Top Ten of our most viewed tutorials. As of this writing the tutorial has been viewed over 55,000 times. And why not? First of all, the tutorial is free, and secondly, Webdings and Wingdings are lots of fun to play around with. They can also serve some really useful purposes. Depending on the font in that family of "Dings" you can get all sorts of little miniature pictures by just typing in the correct character using the Fireworks Text tool.

Recently I needed some small icons for a design project so I started up Fireworks and created my own reference library for the Webding font family. And while I was at it, I decided to go ahead and convert all of the text objects into vector shapes. What you'll find here is a somewhat later version of the same file that is a tad better organized. You can use this file for your own design purposes or use it as a reference for creating your own library of characters.

What do you get in terms of images? Well, you'll have to open the file up to see all of the little pictures that Webdings create, but here are a few samples.

Sample webding characters

In addition there are two source files included in this download—both a Flash and a Fireworks source file that make use of the webding vector shapes included in the library for your examination.

The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 1: Switch Statements

Rob Williams

One of the key components of any scripting or programming language are control structures, statements that tell a language interpretter to stop reading code in a linear line-by-line fashion and start to make more complex operations based on simple logic. While most developers are aware of the common "if else" and "for" structures, there are many others available in PHP (and other languages I might add) that allow you to save a great deal of time and make your coding more efficient and easier to understand.

In this series we're going to take a look at some of those "forgotten" structures and some practical examples of how they can be used to clean up your coding techniques. First up in the spotlight: the switch structure.

From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Six - Completing the Screen Media Type Layout

Adrian Senior

In Part 6 of this series you will complete the screen media type layout and discover what is meant by elements being in and out of the document flow. You will also learn about clearing floats and using techniques that allow you to see your design evolve as you work.

The Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility Series:
From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part One - Building the Header
From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Two - Building the Content Area
From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Three - Buidling the Footer and Exporting the Slices
From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Four - Site Structure and Image Preparation
From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Five - Building the Screen Media Type Layout
From Concept to Cross-Media Compatibility: Part Six - Completing the Screen Media Type Layout

Working with Shared Libraries - Part 5: Sharing Fonts with Runtime-Created Text Fields

Robert Reinhardt

In this "Working with" series, you learn how to create and use shared libraries with your Flash movies. Shared libraries can help you optimize your workflow, making it easier to update assets across several Flash movies used for any type of project. In the last tutorial of this series, you learned how to reuse fonts with dynamic text fields in other Flash movies. However, those text fields were placed in the movie at authortime, not with ActionScript at runtime. In this tutorial, you learn how to reuse shared fonts with dynamic text fields created in ActionScript. Sharing fonts is one of the best ways to trim down SWF file sizes for large projects involving many SWF files.

The Working with Shared Libraries Series:
Working with Shared Libraries - Part 1: Sharing Symbols in Authortime Libraries
Working with Shared Libraries - Part 2: Sharing Symbols in a Runtime Shared Library
Working with Shared Libraries - Part 3: Sharing Fonts with Static Text
Working with Shared Libraries - Part 4: Sharing Fonts with Dynamic Text
Working with Shared Libraries - Part 5: Sharing Fonts with Runtime-Created Text Fields
Working with Shared Libraries - Part 6: Using CSS with Shared Fonts Coming Soon
Working with Shared Libraries - Part 7: Sharing Components Coming Soon

Creating a Digital Photo Matte in Fireworks

Jim Babbage

So you've got that cool digital camera and you've been making some pretty awesome photos with it. Wouldn't it be nice to dress them up a bit with a nice matte, to frame the image? Then off you go to add them to flickr or put them on your own website to show the world.

In this tutorial, we'll use Fireworks 8 to create a textured digital matte to frame a photo. We'll be making use of both bitmap and vector tools, and we'll also save the matte settings as a style so they are easy to reuse for other images.

Below is one example of the finished image.

One thing I'd like to do is make this process as automated as possible. This way, we can combine a series of steps into a custom command that could be applied to multiple images.

Build a Dashboard Widget

Widgets and the new Dashboard feature introduced some serious eye candy with the debut of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" last year. But widgets can be seriously useful, too — not to mention great fun. This tutorial walks you through a fully functional CMX RSS feed reader widget created for Tiger. You'll see how it works...and how you can modify it to create your own Dashboard widget.

Check out the Article by CMX Partner Thomas Pletcher

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Joseph Balderson, CMX Partner.

Precise Coordinates for Ruler Guides in Flash

Rather than positioning your ruler guides according to the ruler, which can lend itself to inaccuracy as you squint trying to hit that perfect pixel, use the Info panel to help. As you drag a guide from the Ruler, watch your cursor coordinates in the Info panel. Where you let go of the mouse is the precise vertical or horizontal position of the ruler. This ensures that your ruler guides are pixel perfectly positioned (say that fast five times!)

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!