
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Introducing Our Newest JumpStart: Metropolis Welcome to CMX JumpStart Metropolis, Superman fans. Our latest JumpStart is based on Gordon Mackay's Design Element Krypton, and you'll need to get ready to travel faster than the speed of light. Reaching back into the future of our imaginations we'll take advantage of our current Web reality. Get ready for some powerful cutting-edge features. Get ready for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way". Metropolis is a two-column, hybrid layout that has a fluid left column and a fixed-width right column. Internet Explorer 7's support of min and max width makes this a good time to use those properties to control page width, and Metropolis uses Andrew Clover's script to force older versions of Internet Explorer for Windows to comply. It includes rounded corners on its right side, and employs faux column technique to achieve equal height columns. It has a footer as well as a fixed header that remains in view even as the visitor scrolls the page—yet another property now supported by Internet Explorer 7. It features styled unordered lists for the navigation, styled skip links and has a placeholder for a photo gallery. Finally, there are several style sheets involved: a main style sheet, a style sheet for print, and a style sheet for all of the special Internet Explorer rules. And of course, as always, Metropolis validates for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, CSS 2.1, and 508 and WAI accessibility. You can read more about Metropolis here. Subscribers can download Metropolis here. Non-Subscribers can purchase Metropolis here. $100 Discount for Community MX Readers If you haven't already heard about Web Directions North, the web design conference covering Ajax and Javascript, CSS, Microformats, mashups, standards-based web design and development, accessibility, web app development, XHTML and HTML and more, in Vancouver next February, then check out WebDirections.org. Between now and January 5th Community MX readers can get $100 off the ticket price for the conference, bringing it to just $795. To take advantage of this limited time discount go to the Web Directions registration page, and be sure to use the promo code: CMXWDN07 Victory For Bloggers and ISPs. Oh, and Tom Cruise Is The Devil The California Supreme Court ruled this week that it's quite alright to post defamatory things about a public or private person on your website... as long as you're not the first person to do it. Web publishers and ISPs cannot, according to the decision, get in trouble for publishing existing remarks. For instance, Tom Cruise is the devil. There. We said it. No doubt Tom is sitting at home right now, reading over this newsletter and calling his gaggle of lawyers, preparing to sue the pants off of Community MX. But we're not the first ones to say Tom Cruise is the devil. See here? That's how it works. We're safe. By the way, we don't really think Tom Cruise is the devil. But he did kill Oprah. Read more about it at Yahoo.com, even though Yahoo apparently blows (do a search, you'll find it). One Big Ugly Mac Bug A security hole in Mac OS X could leave your computer open to attack. What's worse is that it can take place simply by visiting a web page containing corrupted dmg files. This particular bug has not been addressed by Apple yet, so be careful. One piece of advice offered at ChannelRegister.co.uk is to turn off the "open safe files" feature in your Safari preferences. Does that mean if you don't use Safari you're screwed? We're not sure. CBS Leads The YouTube Experiment Although YouTube is facing lawsuits from various media outlets, they are proving themselves to be a viable commodity, rather than just a place kids go to watch Jackass clips. The CBS television network has been uploading videos of some its shows to YouTube, and have seen significant gains in viewers on television shows like David Letterman and the Late, Late Show as a result. You can be sure that other stations will follow suit in order to see the same benefits CBS has seen. Read all about it at Mashable.com.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "The community MX site is the best reference and training source I have ever found in my 5 years of coding. It's truly a must-have tool for coders like myself who sweat the details and slog through the minutia in order to provide a high-quality product to their clients. Keep up the great work!" - Danna M., CMX Subscriber, while commenting on Holly Bergevin and John Gallant's article, CSS Flyouts - Part One. 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: "Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration." - Ernest Newman Microsoft's New Product: Phish Be-Gone Microsoft is tired of email fraud, and is working with law officials in Europe and the Middle East to get phishers behind bars or fined. Their efforts include 129 lawsuits so far, as well as prison time for one guy in Turkey. This is all part of Microsoft's "Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative", and we're glad they've been following up on this particular initiative. Civil lawsuits have also been brought upon younger phishing perpetrators, most of which have to pay the fine with the help of their parents. Yep. Get Mom involved, and you can bet phishing goes way down... Read about it at Yahoo.com. Why It Pays To Read This Newsletter Right Away Tomorrow (Thanksgiving Day) at 11am Pacific Standard Time, Amazon.com will be selling 1,000 Xboxes for $100 each. Will you be one of the lucky recipients? Amazon currently sells the Xbox for $299, so this quite an offer. The folks at Kotaku.com pointed this out to all of the netizens out there. Firefox Gives Away Password Information By default, Firefox will ask you if you want to save the username and password you just entered on a page so that you can avoid having to type them in, or even remember them, in the future. If you're one of the folks who allows Firerfox to remember your username and password, you may want to stop doing it until Firefox comes out with a patch. The problem with the way this functionality works on Firefox is that your usernames and passwords can be stolen by an attacker. Typically this happens on websites where you are entering information in using HTML, like on a forum. See this article at P2PNet.net. Megapixels Megahooey? Walk into any electronics store and shop for a digital camera. The store clerk will probably try to sell you the camera with the highest number of megapixels, claiming that with each boost in megapixels, the quality of your photos is enhanced as well. The general consensus would agree with the store clerk. But is it true? David Pogue writes a tech column each week for the NY Times, and did a live test between three cameras, ranging from five megapixels to thirteen megapixels. The results? No difference in quality. Maybe you can tell the store clerk to stuff himself. It's Thanksgiving, after all. Read about it at NYTimes.com. Laurie... This One's For You We're all looking for bargains at Christmas, and to help us along, there is a new website called The Bargainist, at TheBargainist.com. Although the layout isn't the best, we're sure that will improve as time goes on. The brunt of the website's information seems solid, and they have some very good leads on saving dough for the holidays - though it's assumed their website will help us frugal folks all year long. Laurie Casolino is part of the administration here at Community MX, and is the most amazing power-shopper/bargain hunter we know. She is so gonna dig this website.
CMX Slideshow (Flash Extension) This extension for Flash MX 2004 loads external JPEG and SWF files to create a Flash slideshow. The CMX Slideshow component is very customizable and includes support for hyperlinks, captions, padding, resizing, transitions, controls, and much more. You can also access CMX Slideshow's methods, properties, and events using ActionScript. The support files demonstrate how to create your own custom controls, and how to load a list of images from an external XML file. Take a look at this extension by CMX Partner Paul Newman
Fun and Freebies! Ben Folds Fake A troupe calling themselves Improv Anywhere is known for pulling fast ones on people in a fun way, "anywhere." Hence the name. Their latest prank was planned by musican/singer Ben Fold. Ben thought it would be funny to have a fake Ben Fold take the stage before him at a concert, and be caught lip-synching. It came off pretty well, and when the crowd realized what was going on, it created a great dynamic. Check it out at ImprovAnywhere.com. The Gift That Keeps On Giving. Or Keeps Getting Given. There was a television show a few years back that mentioned "regifting", which is the practice of taking a gift you've received and giving it to someone else. The regifting is usually kept under wraps, pun heavily intended. Is it cool to repackage a gift, give it to someone else and pretend it's brand new? Probably not, but it's a great way to save a few bucks. If you want to learn more about it, visit the website that is dedicated to the art of regifting, Regiftable.com. Ouch This pitcher threw a strike... but not the way you'd think.
A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 1 There are various ways to create a data-driven multi-language site, but the method I will show in this article series uses an underused technique involving ColdFusion custom tags. Basically, the technique shown will turn any simple, well-formed HTML or XHTML page into a content management system with only one tag required on the page. This first part will show the principles behind the custom tag technique. The next part will show how to implement the multi-language aspect. The third part will create an administrative interface to administer the system. This free article by CMX Partner Tom Muck can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Happy Thanksgiving from Community MX! [FREE] The partners of Community MX would like to wish all of our readers a safe and joyous Thanksgiving! So that our partners can enjoy the holiday with their families and friends, we will not be releasing new content Thursday or Friday. However, we will be back Monday with two new articles. Enjoy your holiday, and we'll see you on Monday! Introducing CMX JumpStart Metropolis [FREE] Jim Babbage Metropolis. Home of the Man of Steel. Where looking up in the sky means you could see something other than a bird or a a plane. This symbol of a thriving cosmopolitan American city complete with villains and heroes, is now the feature of our latest JumpStart. Metropolis is based on the Gordon Mackay's CMX Design Element, Krypton (Hmmm, I sense a theme . . .). Sheri German has sliced up the Krypton PNG file and created all the necessary components to make Metropolis a solid, standards-based design that holds up well in even the latest browser, I.E. 7. In fact, it's just super! Read on to find out what Metropolis includes and get some tips about how you can adapt it in unique ways. We'll even include our own Metropolis adaptation to give you inspiration to build your own design, faster than a speeding bullet. At the end of this article we'll provide the link for you to download Metropolis so you can get started today! CMX JumpStart: Metropolis Sheri German CMX JumpStart Metropolis is a two-column, hybrid layout that has a fluid left column and a fixed-width right column. It includes rounded corners on its right side, and employs faux column technique to achieve equal height columns. It has a footer as well as a fixed header that remains in view even as the visitor scrolls the page - a property that is now supported by Internet Explorer 7. It features styled unordered lists for the navigation, styled skip links, min and max width, and has a placeholder for a photo gallery. Finally, there are several style sheets involved: a main style sheet, a style sheet for print, and a style sheet for all of the special Internet Explorer rules. And of course, as always, Metropolis validates for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, CSS 2.1, and 508 and WAI accessibility. Approximate download size: 7.1MB Announcing My CF Photo Gallery [FREE] Sheri German It is the holiday season, and you will problaby be taking a lot of pictures. Need a way to easily manage and display your photo galleries online? Read all about the new CMX application: My CF Photo Gallery. With the CF Photo Gallery and a ColdFusion server, you or a client can upload and manage image galleries right from a browser window. My CF Photo Gallery Adrian Senior My CF Photo Gallery is a ColdFusion image gallery application. It provides a logical step by step interface within a secure administration area enabling you to create new galleries and edit the content of existing galleries. Fixed Position in IE7 - Part One John Gallant, Holly Bergevin While many people have heard of fixed positioning, very few have ever used it because, until IE7 arrived, no IE/Win version supported it. Now we have an IE version that does support fixed positioning, and soon it will be prevalent enough in the userbase to consider this CSS feature for real world commercial sites. Join us as we explore what fixed positioning is and what it can do for you. We'll get into all the dirty details one step at a time as we progress through the series, and by the end you will have a decent grasp of the subject. Just think, you'll be ready to authoritatively answer any probing questions a future client may have about this new 'fixed' stuff they've been hearing about. Here we go... Turning Two-Frame Rollover Navigation into Button Symbols Jim Babbage Creating rollover navigation effects or buttons can be done easily in Fireworks, using different workflow styles. One very common method is to design your page on Frame 1, then make Frame 2 and set your rollover effects for your navigation on that page. You can then create your slices for each graphic element (including the buttons) and do your optimizing for each slice. While this method works and is pretty easy to understand, it has a certain pitfall which reveals itself upon Export. When you have two or more frames and multiple slices, Fireworks will export an image for each slice, in each frame. This means that in order to get your rollover button states from frame two you will also get a bunch of slices from that frame you do not need or want. An easier to manage method is to use Button Symbols. Ideally, you build your button symbols during the design stage. But what if you were supplied the design and wish to create button symbols from the existing navigation graphics? In this article, we're going to create them from an existing design that uses the 2-frame rollover method. We'll also review the functions of the Button Editor and talk about how if can help your workflow. Put a Calendar on Your Web Page - Part 2 Paul Davis Building on the JavaScript calendar, this article adds database interaction with PHP to make the calendar track events. Includes the PHP code and the JavaScript code for the calendar and database interaction. The Put a Calendar on Your Web Page Series: Put a Calendar on Your Web Page - Part 1 Put a Calendar on Your Web Page - Part 2 From Concept to Final Product in After Effects 7 [FREE] Tom Green In January, 2007, friendsofED will be releasing a ground breaking book: From After Effects to Flash: Poetry in Motion Graphics. Written by Community MX Partner, Tom Green and Comunity MX contributer, Tiago Dias, the book is the first exploration of how After Effects and Flash are about to become a motion graphics power house. Over the next few weeks, we will be presenting the first two chapters of the book. These two chapters are designed to explore the emerging workflow between After Effects and Flash and they take you from concept to upload. In this first excerpt, from Chapter 1, you are introduced to the After Effects work space and how Projects and Compositions are created in After Effects. Color Correction Without A Color Monitor Knut Kubenz Throw away your color monitor, you won't need it to do color corrections anymore. Does this look right to you? Should it go a bit redder? Is it too blue? Is the monitor's color off? You can remove a lot of the guess work in color correction by using a numbering system for Photoshop's Levels control, which afterwards can be saved and applied to any image. In fact, using this method doesn't even require you to have a color monitor, because you'll be working the numbers.
Extruding and Bevelling Fun in Illustrator Illustrator has some great effects that make it very easy to create complicated looking artwork. One such effect is Illustrator's Extrude & Bevel Effect. This effect not only produces very cool results, it is also a lot of fun to use. In this tutorial we will use the Extrude & Bevel effect to create two 3D graphics from simple paths. When using this effect many options such as lighting, shading, bevel, rotation and depth can be controlled to change the appearance of the 3D objects. Check out the Article by CMX Partner Kim Dudley
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Tom Green, Community MX Partner On Thanksgiving Day Don't feed the dog turkey bones. Uh... thanks, Tom... Would you like your tip published? Submit it to tips@communitymx.com. That's it for this week. Stay tuned for the next CMX newsletter!

CMX Weekly Newsletter

News
Fun and Freebies
Recent CMX Content
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats

Check the News!

Introducing Our Newest JumpStart: Metropolis

Welcome to CMX JumpStart Metropolis, Superman fans. Our latest JumpStart is based on Gordon Mackay's Design Element Krypton, and you'll need to get ready to travel faster than the speed of light. Reaching back into the future of our imaginations we'll take advantage of our current Web reality. Get ready for some powerful cutting-edge features. Get ready for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way".

Metropolis is a two-column, hybrid layout that has a fluid left column and a fixed-width right column. Internet Explorer 7's support of min and max width makes this a good time to use those properties to control page width, and Metropolis uses Andrew Clover's script to force older versions of Internet Explorer for Windows to comply. It includes rounded corners on its right side, and employs faux column technique to achieve equal height columns. It has a footer as well as a fixed header that remains in view even as the visitor scrolls the page—yet another property now supported by Internet Explorer 7. It features styled unordered lists for the navigation, styled skip links and has a placeholder for a photo gallery. Finally, there are several style sheets involved: a main style sheet, a style sheet for print, and a style sheet for all of the special Internet Explorer rules. And of course, as always, Metropolis validates for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, CSS 2.1, and 508 and WAI accessibility.

You can read more about Metropolis here.
Subscribers can download Metropolis here.
Non-Subscribers can purchase Metropolis here.

$100 Discount for Community MX Readers

If you haven't already heard about Web Directions North, the web design conference covering Ajax and Javascript, CSS, Microformats, mashups, standards-based web design and development, accessibility, web app development, XHTML and HTML and more, in Vancouver next February, then check out WebDirections.org. Between now and January 5th Community MX readers can get $100 off the ticket price for the conference, bringing it to just $795. To take advantage of this limited time discount go to the Web Directions registration page, and be sure to use the promo code: CMXWDN07

Victory For Bloggers and ISPs. Oh, and Tom Cruise Is The Devil

The California Supreme Court ruled this week that it's quite alright to post defamatory things about a public or private person on your website... as long as you're not the first person to do it. Web publishers and ISPs cannot, according to the decision, get in trouble for publishing existing remarks. For instance, Tom Cruise is the devil. There. We said it. No doubt Tom is sitting at home right now, reading over this newsletter and calling his gaggle of lawyers, preparing to sue the pants off of Community MX. But we're not the first ones to say Tom Cruise is the devil. See here? That's how it works. We're safe. By the way, we don't really think Tom Cruise is the devil. But he did kill Oprah. Read more about it at Yahoo.com, even though Yahoo apparently blows (do a search, you'll find it).

One Big Ugly Mac Bug

A security hole in Mac OS X could leave your computer open to attack. What's worse is that it can take place simply by visiting a web page containing corrupted dmg files. This particular bug has not been addressed by Apple yet, so be careful. One piece of advice offered at ChannelRegister.co.uk is to turn off the "open safe files" feature in your Safari preferences. Does that mean if you don't use Safari you're screwed? We're not sure.

CBS Leads The YouTube Experiment

Although YouTube is facing lawsuits from various media outlets, they are proving themselves to be a viable commodity, rather than just a place kids go to watch Jackass clips. The CBS television network has been uploading videos of some its shows to YouTube, and have seen significant gains in viewers on television shows like David Letterman and the Late, Late Show as a result. You can be sure that other stations will follow suit in order to see the same benefits CBS has seen. Read all about it at Mashable.com.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"The community MX site is the best reference and training source I have ever found in my 5 years of coding. It's truly a must-have tool for coders like myself who sweat the details and slog through the minutia in order to provide a high-quality product to their clients. Keep up the great work!"

- Danna M., CMX Subscriber, while commenting on Holly Bergevin and John Gallant's article, CSS Flyouts - Part One.

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:

"Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration." - Ernest Newman

Microsoft's New Product: Phish Be-Gone

Microsoft is tired of email fraud, and is working with law officials in Europe and the Middle East to get phishers behind bars or fined. Their efforts include 129 lawsuits so far, as well as prison time for one guy in Turkey. This is all part of Microsoft's "Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative", and we're glad they've been following up on this particular initiative. Civil lawsuits have also been brought upon younger phishing perpetrators, most of which have to pay the fine with the help of their parents. Yep. Get Mom involved, and you can bet phishing goes way down... Read about it at Yahoo.com.

Why It Pays To Read This Newsletter Right Away

Tomorrow (Thanksgiving Day) at 11am Pacific Standard Time, Amazon.com will be selling 1,000 Xboxes for $100 each. Will you be one of the lucky recipients? Amazon currently sells the Xbox for $299, so this quite an offer. The folks at Kotaku.com pointed this out to all of the netizens out there.

Firefox Gives Away Password Information

By default, Firefox will ask you if you want to save the username and password you just entered on a page so that you can avoid having to type them in, or even remember them, in the future. If you're one of the folks who allows Firerfox to remember your username and password, you may want to stop doing it until Firefox comes out with a patch. The problem with the way this functionality works on Firefox is that your usernames and passwords can be stolen by an attacker. Typically this happens on websites where you are entering information in using HTML, like on a forum. See this article at P2PNet.net.

Megapixels Megahooey?

Walk into any electronics store and shop for a digital camera. The store clerk will probably try to sell you the camera with the highest number of megapixels, claiming that with each boost in megapixels, the quality of your photos is enhanced as well. The general consensus would agree with the store clerk. But is it true? David Pogue writes a tech column each week for the NY Times, and did a live test between three cameras, ranging from five megapixels to thirteen megapixels. The results? No difference in quality. Maybe you can tell the store clerk to stuff himself. It's Thanksgiving, after all. Read about it at NYTimes.com.

Laurie... This One's For You

We're all looking for bargains at Christmas, and to help us along, there is a new website called The Bargainist, at TheBargainist.com. Although the layout isn't the best, we're sure that will improve as time goes on. The brunt of the website's information seems solid, and they have some very good leads on saving dough for the holidays - though it's assumed their website will help us frugal folks all year long. Laurie Casolino is part of the administration here at Community MX, and is the most amazing power-shopper/bargain hunter we know. She is so gonna dig this website.

CMX Slideshow (Flash Extension)

This extension for Flash MX 2004 loads external JPEG and SWF files to create a Flash slideshow. The CMX Slideshow component is very customizable and includes support for hyperlinks, captions, padding, resizing, transitions, controls, and much more. You can also access CMX Slideshow's methods, properties, and events using ActionScript. The support files demonstrate how to create your own custom controls, and how to load a list of images from an external XML file.

Take a look at this extension by CMX Partner Paul Newman

Fun and Freebies!

Ben Folds Fake

A troupe calling themselves Improv Anywhere is known for pulling fast ones on people in a fun way, "anywhere." Hence the name. Their latest prank was planned by musican/singer Ben Fold. Ben thought it would be funny to have a fake Ben Fold take the stage before him at a concert, and be caught lip-synching. It came off pretty well, and when the crowd realized what was going on, it created a great dynamic. Check it out at ImprovAnywhere.com.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving. Or Keeps Getting Given.

There was a television show a few years back that mentioned "regifting", which is the practice of taking a gift you've received and giving it to someone else. The regifting is usually kept under wraps, pun heavily intended. Is it cool to repackage a gift, give it to someone else and pretend it's brand new? Probably not, but it's a great way to save a few bucks. If you want to learn more about it, visit the website that is dedicated to the art of regifting, Regiftable.com.

Ouch

This pitcher threw a strike... but not the way you'd think.

A Simple Multi-language ColdFusion Content Management System - Part 1

There are various ways to create a data-driven multi-language site, but the method I will show in this article series uses an underused technique involving ColdFusion custom tags. Basically, the technique shown will turn any simple, well-formed HTML or XHTML page into a content management system with only one tag required on the page. This first part will show the principles behind the custom tag technique. The next part will show how to implement the multi-language aspect. The third part will create an administrative interface to administer the system.

This free article by CMX Partner Tom Muck can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Happy Thanksgiving from Community MX! [FREE]

The partners of Community MX would like to wish all of our readers a safe and joyous Thanksgiving!

So that our partners can enjoy the holiday with their families and friends, we will not be releasing new content Thursday or Friday. However, we will be back Monday with two new articles.

Enjoy your holiday, and we'll see you on Monday!

Introducing CMX JumpStart Metropolis [FREE]

Jim Babbage

Metropolis. Home of the Man of Steel. Where looking up in the sky means you could see something other than a bird or a a plane. This symbol of a thriving cosmopolitan American city complete with villains and heroes, is now the feature of our latest JumpStart. Metropolis is based on the Gordon Mackay's CMX Design Element, Krypton (Hmmm, I sense a theme . . .). Sheri German has sliced up the Krypton PNG file and created all the necessary components to make Metropolis a solid, standards-based design that holds up well in even the latest browser, I.E. 7. In fact, it's just super!

Read on to find out what Metropolis includes and get some tips about how you can adapt it in unique ways. We'll even include our own Metropolis adaptation to give you inspiration to build your own design, faster than a speeding bullet. At the end of this article we'll provide the link for you to download Metropolis so you can get started today!

CMX JumpStart: Metropolis

Sheri German

CMX JumpStart Metropolis is a two-column, hybrid layout that has a fluid left column and a fixed-width right column. It includes rounded corners on its right side, and employs faux column technique to achieve equal height columns. It has a footer as well as a fixed header that remains in view even as the visitor scrolls the page - a property that is now supported by Internet Explorer 7. It features styled unordered lists for the navigation, styled skip links, min and max width, and has a placeholder for a photo gallery. Finally, there are several style sheets involved: a main style sheet, a style sheet for print, and a style sheet for all of the special Internet Explorer rules. And of course, as always, Metropolis validates for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, CSS 2.1, and 508 and WAI accessibility.

Approximate download size: 7.1MB

Announcing My CF Photo Gallery [FREE]

Sheri German

It is the holiday season, and you will problaby be taking a lot of pictures. Need a way to easily manage and display your photo galleries online? Read all about the new CMX application: My CF Photo Gallery. With the CF Photo Gallery and a ColdFusion server, you or a client can upload and manage image galleries right from a browser window.

My CF Photo Gallery

Adrian Senior

My CF Photo Gallery is a ColdFusion image gallery application. It provides a logical step by step interface within a secure administration area enabling you to create new galleries and edit the content of existing galleries.

Fixed Position in IE7 - Part One

John Gallant, Holly Bergevin

While many people have heard of fixed positioning, very few have ever used it because, until IE7 arrived, no IE/Win version supported it. Now we have an IE version that does support fixed positioning, and soon it will be prevalent enough in the userbase to consider this CSS feature for real world commercial sites.

Join us as we explore what fixed positioning is and what it can do for you. We'll get into all the dirty details one step at a time as we progress through the series, and by the end you will have a decent grasp of the subject. Just think, you'll be ready to authoritatively answer any probing questions a future client may have about this new 'fixed' stuff they've been hearing about.

Here we go...

Turning Two-Frame Rollover Navigation into Button Symbols

Jim Babbage

Creating rollover navigation effects or buttons can be done easily in Fireworks, using different workflow styles. One very common method is to design your page on Frame 1, then make Frame 2 and set your rollover effects for your navigation on that page. You can then create your slices for each graphic element (including the buttons) and do your optimizing for each slice. While this method works and is pretty easy to understand, it has a certain pitfall which reveals itself upon Export.

When you have two or more frames and multiple slices, Fireworks will export an image for each slice, in each frame. This means that in order to get your rollover button states from frame two you will also get a bunch of slices from that frame you do not need or want. An easier to manage method is to use Button Symbols.

Ideally, you build your button symbols during the design stage. But what if you were supplied the design and wish to create button symbols from the existing navigation graphics? In this article, we're going to create them from an existing design that uses the 2-frame rollover method. We'll also review the functions of the Button Editor and talk about how if can help your workflow.

Put a Calendar on Your Web Page - Part 2

Paul Davis

Building on the JavaScript calendar, this article adds database interaction with PHP to make the calendar track events. Includes the PHP code and the JavaScript code for the calendar and database interaction.

The Put a Calendar on Your Web Page Series:
Put a Calendar on Your Web Page - Part 1
Put a Calendar on Your Web Page - Part 2

From Concept to Final Product in After Effects 7 [FREE]

Tom Green

In January, 2007, friendsofED will be releasing a ground breaking book: From After Effects to Flash: Poetry in Motion Graphics. Written by Community MX Partner, Tom Green and Comunity MX contributer, Tiago Dias, the book is the first exploration of how After Effects and Flash are about to become a motion graphics power house.

Over the next few weeks, we will be presenting the first two chapters of the book. These two chapters are designed to explore the emerging workflow between After Effects and Flash and they take you from concept to upload. In this first excerpt, from Chapter 1, you are introduced to the After Effects work space and how Projects and Compositions are created in After Effects.

Color Correction Without A Color Monitor

Knut Kubenz

Throw away your color monitor, you won't need it to do color corrections anymore.

Does this look right to you? Should it go a bit redder? Is it too blue? Is the monitor's color off?

You can remove a lot of the guess work in color correction by using a numbering system for Photoshop's Levels control, which afterwards can be saved and applied to any image. In fact, using this method doesn't even require you to have a color monitor, because you'll be working the numbers.

Extruding and Bevelling Fun in Illustrator

Illustrator has some great effects that make it very easy to create complicated looking artwork. One such effect is Illustrator's Extrude & Bevel Effect. This effect not only produces very cool results, it is also a lot of fun to use. In this tutorial we will use the Extrude & Bevel effect to create two 3D graphics from simple paths. When using this effect many options such as lighting, shading, bevel, rotation and depth can be controlled to change the appearance of the 3D objects.

Check out the Article by CMX Partner Kim Dudley

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

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

On Thanksgiving Day

Don't feed the dog turkey bones.

Uh... thanks, Tom...

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!