
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Google's Algorithms Explained. Kind Of. Google is of course very secretive about how it ranks pages, and would rather that no one knows their formula. If word got out on how it works, everyone would tailor their pages to work best with that formula, and search results would mean nothing. David Austin of Grand Valley State University thinks he has it pretty well figured out though, and offers his theory at AMS.org. Whether or not David is correct is beyond me, since I got lost after the first paragraph, but it's interesting to see someone pick apart a search engine theory in such a detailed manner. The comments given by people who have read the article is the other half of the fun of reading this article. Don't Accept QT From Strangers Posting the wrong Quicktime file on your MySpace page could keep people away from your space. It seems that MySpace has a vulnerability that can be exploited through the use of a Quicktime file. The result is that the links on your page can be changed to point users to phishing or porn websites. Read more about it at ABCNews.com. Meanwhile, VitalSecurity.org wonders how long Apple and MySpace have known about this worm... Weeeee!!! I mean... Wii!!! The newest console gaming platform these days is the Nintendo Wii. It's so new, that not everyone knows what it is, how it works, or if it's any fun. Your kids may be screaming for it now, but will they hate it a week after Santa drops it off? There's a good review at SlashDot.com that gives you the dirt on the Nintendo Wii. Bottom line: Zonk, the guy giving the review, loved it, as did his family. Jimmy Olsen Started This Way If you're the kind of person that tends to always have a digital camera or video camera by your side, you might be able to work with Yahoo and Reuters. Kind of. Both internet news portals are starting to accept pictures or videos taken by users like you and I, as long as they are newsworthy. Right now, it's unclear on what the pay will be, or whether the pay will even be monetary, but spokespeople say that if your pictures or videos are used, there will be some form of compensation. More on this at InformationWeek.com. iPhone Details Divulged By Possibly Drunk Founder of Digg.com. On a recent DiggNation podcast, Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, divulged that he has some inside information on the soon-to-be-released Apple iPhone. Kevin appeared to be drinking a bit, and after his partner prodded him for a bit, he was giving away secrets that he clearly felt uncomfortable giving out. You can see the video at YouTube.com and/or read more about Mr. BlabbyMouth at RedHerring.com.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "You guys are so great, especially for someone working on their own. It's like having a 'virtual' support system on call." - Debbie, CMX Subscriber, commenting on help she received through the support forums at Community MX 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: "I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: Try to please everybody all the time." - Herbert B. Swope So Be Sure To Always Smile And Wear Clean Underwear There's an interesting article over at MSNBC.com by Steven Levy. In it, he talks about one of the interesting results of the information age: While life is happening, some people's lives, or at least a tiny chunk of their lives, is put on the internet for all to see, critique and/or make fun of. For instance, the "Star Wars Kid." He probably wasn't thinking when he filmed himself gesticulating that he would be plastered all over the internet, but there he is, and he'll be defined by that little chunk of life for years. Now, you don't even have to have filmed yourself in order to wind up on the internet. Plenty of guerilla filmmakers are happy to involve you unwittingly (think "Borat"). So the question is, do you approach every encounter with the idea that this could be a setup, do you stop taking video of vacations and spontaneous moments, or do you just accept that you could wind up on someone's computer for their amusement? Don't know about you, but like the title says, we're just going to make sure we're smiling and wearing clean underwear. That way, at least Mom will be happy. Microsoft and Novell Play Nice Together Users of OpenOffice will be pleased to know that it will soon be compatible with Microsoft's Office 2007 software. Microsoft's newest version of Office uses an Open XML file format that is not compatible with the current version of OpenOffice, but Microsoft has been working with Novell as part of the Linux interoperability pact to get Office 2007 files to work in Linux. As this article at PCWorld.com mentions though, it will be up to the open source community to help integrate the Open XML code into OpenOffice. Don't Even Think About It If you saw the movie Minority Report, you know it was a film about how the police in the future could tell you were thinking about committing a crime, and stepping in before you actually broke the law. Software makers are working on figuring out how to target people who might be more likely to murder or commit violent crimes than other people. They say their software takes historical data, and compares it to their subjects background. For instance, what was their childhood like? Was it the same type of childhood that other murderers shared? If this works, we hope they'll concentrate on software for the horse races next... Read more about it at NetworkWorld.com. When Word Attacks An undocumented, unpatched vulnerability in Word could cause a hacker to gain control of your computer. So be careful opening any Word documents from friends, and don't open Word documents from strangers. This security hole seems to exist in all versions of Word from 2000 on up - even Microsoft Works and Word for Mac. There have been reports that this flaw has been exploited, and Microsoft is of course aware of the problem. No word (sorry) on when the flaw will be patched. More on this at Forbes.com. There's Water In Them Thar Hills!! Scientists have reason to believe that liquid water - as opposed to ice or water vapor - has flowed on the surface of Mars within the last seven years. Whether or not that water supports any life is unknown, but it raises speculation as to whether or not there could be life below the surface of Mars that satellites have not picked up. Read about it at MonstersAndCritics.com.
CMX Expiration Dates The CMX Expiration Dates extension allows you to set dates for files you work with that expire. If a page is beyond its expiration date, when you next start Dreamweaver this extension will let you know that you have a file to be edited. This functionality can be useful when you need to update a page (or set of pages) on an occasional basis, or even on an ongoing basis. For example, you may manage the company's knowledge management system, and you want to make sure that your content contributors are alerted when their content needs to be checked for "freshness" to ensure that the information contained on the pages they cover does not go stale, then the Expiration Date extension can help you acheive your goals. Or if your home page should be updated on Mondays to reflect the next set of featured products that arrived just this weekend, then you can set the expiration date for the home page for the upcoming Monday; then when you start Dreamweaver up on Monday morning, Dreamweaver will alert you to the fact that you need to update a file (in this case the home page). You can then edit that file, publish it. If desired, you can then set the expiration date for the file for the following Monday, to lather, rinse and repeat the cycle of updates as necessary. Take a look at this Extension by CMX Partner Danilo Celic
Fun and Freebies! Video Games Are Getting So Lifelike If you get bored with regular video games, try spicing it up a bit by creating your own, using a real hamster as your video game protagonist. Want an example? Check out this YouTube.com video. Virtual Human Beat Box Now here's something compelling and disturbing. Some kid who looks like Sideshow Bob lets you use him as a beat box by hitting keys on your keyboard. Each key makes him throw out a different sound. The effect is sort of neat for about a minute. Any longer than that, and you just want to call his parents and tell them how sorry you are. Go to Zanorg.com to beat on the brat. Is This Rap With or Without a "C"? We never said we understood Mongolian, but this video at Yahoo Video makes us want to learn it, just so we can understand why Mongolian rap needs to include imitations of Elvis and Michael Jackson...
Warping Video in a Flash Sometimes video needs to be such an odd shape that using a simple mask in Flash just won't solve the issue. In this video tutorial, I show you how to use the bezier Warp tool in After efects 7 to create a video that wraps around a shape. Then I show you how to output the video in After Effects and use that video in Flash. This free article by CMX Partner Tom Green can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing The Bitmap Auto-Crop Command for Fireworks Kim Cavanaugh Have you ever labored over a repetitive task and wished that there was a way to speed things up? You can often accomplish a great deal more if you just work out a more efficient way to get the job done. Such was the case recently when I needed to make a number of screen captures then crop the captured images to different sizes and shapes. Of course, there are excellent screen capture programs out there, but in this case I ultimately found it easier to crop my images in Fireworks so I could do some additional work. After a few renditions of copy, paste, select, cut, delete, paste, and then trim I was definitely ready for something easier. In the end, I created a custom command that takes most of the work out of the selection and cropping process. With the Bitmap Auto-Crop command that you'll find here you can take any bitmap selection no matter its size or shape and quickly remove all of the image except for the selected area, leaving you with a canvas that is sized based on your selection. And the entire process takes only seconds and one quick trip to the Menu bar. Heck, you can even assign a shortcut key to the command to make it even easier to use. Favourite Extensions: Part 2 - Massimo's CF Insert Bar Plus [FREE] Adrian Senior In this, the second look at extensions that can enhance your production time, we are going to look at Massimo Foti's CF Insert Bar Plus. The extension enhances functionality that already exists within Dreamweaver by reducing cftry, cfoutput and cfdump to a single click. Multiple Insert/Update in PHP - Part 2 Tom Muck Dreamweaver has some built-in tools for doing database inserts and updates, but they only handle basic inserts/updates of one record. What if you want to insert multiple records at a time, or update multiple records? Dreamweaver is no help in this case, but using PHP the process is simple. The first part of this tutorial showed two often-used methods for doing multiple inserts. Part 2 will show how to do a multiple update using these two techniques. The Multiple Insert/Update in PHP Series: Multiple Insert/Update in PHP - Part 1 Multiple Insert/Update in PHP - Part 2 CMX PHP Breadcrumbs Gordon Mackay As a web site's content grows, so does it's need to ensure that users can navigate around it in the easiest possible ways. In larger web sites it's very simple for users to lose track of their orientation within a site. Enter breadcrumbs... A very simply way to keep your users oriented, as well as giving them instant access to the pages closest to the one that they're viewing. Using the directory structure of a web site is the easiest way to implement breadcrumbs using PHP. In this tutorial we will look at creating a simple function that will automatically generate a breadcrumb trail in valid and semantic (X)HTML. JavaScript Validation Product Packages Paul Davis You have a client who wants to offer a special deal which requires the customer to select a certain number of products in order to get a packaged deal. We need to be able to check to see if they have selected the total number needed between all of the products, no more and no less. Sounds simple? With a little JavaScript and a some conformity on the form values, it can be! From Final Product to Upload in Flash Professional 8 [FREE] Tom Green You have created a video in After Effects. Now it is time to encode it and prepare it for playback through Flash. Approximate download size: 13.6MB Methods for Testing in Multiple Versions of IE [FREE] Zoe Gillenwater Internet Explorer 7 (IE), released in October 2006, greatly improves its CSS rendering capabilities. However, it's only available for Windows XP and Vista, so we still have to support IE 6 — and possibly IE 5.5 and 5.0, depending on your site's audience — for some time to come. Unfortunately, the integration of IE into the Windows operating system, and Microsoft's refusal to allow multiple versions of it to run at the same time, have made testing web sites in various versions of the ubiquitous browser difficult. There are, however, ways it can be done, and the advent of IE 7 has brought some new methods out for our consideration. In this article I'll provide an overview of the current methods available for testing multiple versions of Windows IE and provide the pros and cons of each method so you can decide which suits you best. The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 3: Advanced Loops and Arrays Rob Williams One of the key components of any scripting or programming language is control structures - statements that tell a language interpreter 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. This time around we'll be looking at some more advanced looping techniques that will allow you to make your code more powerful and easier to read. The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures Series: The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 1: Switch Statements The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 2: The Break Command The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 3: Advanced Loops and Arrays Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 5: HTML Formatting Joseph Balderson Ever tried formatting a text field in flash using ActionScript, only to get all tangled up in a myriad of class properties and methods? Parts 1 & 2 of this series looks at how to create a text field and format it completely with code. Part 3 examines dynamic font embedding, Parts 4 & 5 cover how to use HTML formatting, and Parts 6 & 7 show you how to use CSS stylesheets in Flash. In this tutorial we are going to pick up where we left off in Part 4, where we looked at formatting HTML text. We are also going to expand on what we learned about font embedding in Part 3 as it applies to HTML text. The Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified Series: Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 1: setTextFormat Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 2: setNewTextFormat Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 3: Embedding Fonts Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 4: HTML Formatting Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 5: HTML Formatting Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 6: Stylesheets Coming Soon Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 7: Stylesheets Coming Soon From After Effects to Flash: Poetry in Motion Graphics [FREE] Tom Green In this last installment of Chapter One we examine how to prepare an After Effects Video for encoding in Flash.
The Art of Encoding Flash Video: About the FLV Format The process of encoding quality streaming video for Flash (or for any video streaming playback delivery for that matter) is the most important process in creating video streaming applications. Any slick-looking video player that you build will only be as good as the quality of the video streaming through it. This article provides a comprehensive overview of FLV encoding by the encoding software. Understanding this article will help you create higher quality FLV files when it comes to applying settings in an encoder and creating video for encoding. Check out the Article by CMX Partner Derrick Ypenburg
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Chris Flick, Community MX Partner Tame Your PDF My boss just asked me to see if I could do anything to reduce a 70 page User manual PDF for his new digital camera with a couple pages of photos of the camera. It was 2.3MB. This is what I did on my Mac (Color Synch is a Mac-only utility, I believe): 1) Opened the PDF . 2) Opened the Print dialogue box. 3) Added Apple's ColorSync Utility to the PDF button. 4) Chose the Color Synch utility 5) After the Color Synch box came up and processed the PDF, I chose "Export" in Color Synch's dialogue box. 6) In the Quartz Filter drop down section, I chose "Reduce File Size", renamed my PDF and then hit "Save". I was able to knock 1 MB off of the overall file size. I know there are commercial programs that will compress PDFs but if you're in a bind and need something fast, this might work. BUT... This doesn't ALWAYS work. Depending on the original PDF, Color Synch can sometimes end up actually bloating a PDF. 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!

Google's Algorithms Explained. Kind Of.

Google is of course very secretive about how it ranks pages, and would rather that no one knows their formula. If word got out on how it works, everyone would tailor their pages to work best with that formula, and search results would mean nothing. David Austin of Grand Valley State University thinks he has it pretty well figured out though, and offers his theory at AMS.org. Whether or not David is correct is beyond me, since I got lost after the first paragraph, but it's interesting to see someone pick apart a search engine theory in such a detailed manner. The comments given by people who have read the article is the other half of the fun of reading this article.

Don't Accept QT From Strangers

Posting the wrong Quicktime file on your MySpace page could keep people away from your space. It seems that MySpace has a vulnerability that can be exploited through the use of a Quicktime file. The result is that the links on your page can be changed to point users to phishing or porn websites. Read more about it at ABCNews.com. Meanwhile, VitalSecurity.org wonders how long Apple and MySpace have known about this worm...

Weeeee!!! I mean... Wii!!!

The newest console gaming platform these days is the Nintendo Wii. It's so new, that not everyone knows what it is, how it works, or if it's any fun. Your kids may be screaming for it now, but will they hate it a week after Santa drops it off? There's a good review at SlashDot.com that gives you the dirt on the Nintendo Wii. Bottom line: Zonk, the guy giving the review, loved it, as did his family.

Jimmy Olsen Started This Way

If you're the kind of person that tends to always have a digital camera or video camera by your side, you might be able to work with Yahoo and Reuters. Kind of. Both internet news portals are starting to accept pictures or videos taken by users like you and I, as long as they are newsworthy. Right now, it's unclear on what the pay will be, or whether the pay will even be monetary, but spokespeople say that if your pictures or videos are used, there will be some form of compensation. More on this at InformationWeek.com.

iPhone Details Divulged By Possibly Drunk Founder of Digg.com.

On a recent DiggNation podcast, Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, divulged that he has some inside information on the soon-to-be-released Apple iPhone. Kevin appeared to be drinking a bit, and after his partner prodded him for a bit, he was giving away secrets that he clearly felt uncomfortable giving out. You can see the video at YouTube.com and/or read more about Mr. BlabbyMouth at RedHerring.com.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"You guys are so great, especially for someone working on their own. It's like having a 'virtual' support system on call."

- Debbie, CMX Subscriber, commenting on help she received through the support forums at Community MX

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:

"I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: Try to please everybody all the time." - Herbert B. Swope

So Be Sure To Always Smile And Wear Clean Underwear

There's an interesting article over at MSNBC.com by Steven Levy. In it, he talks about one of the interesting results of the information age: While life is happening, some people's lives, or at least a tiny chunk of their lives, is put on the internet for all to see, critique and/or make fun of. For instance, the "Star Wars Kid." He probably wasn't thinking when he filmed himself gesticulating that he would be plastered all over the internet, but there he is, and he'll be defined by that little chunk of life for years. Now, you don't even have to have filmed yourself in order to wind up on the internet. Plenty of guerilla filmmakers are happy to involve you unwittingly (think "Borat"). So the question is, do you approach every encounter with the idea that this could be a setup, do you stop taking video of vacations and spontaneous moments, or do you just accept that you could wind up on someone's computer for their amusement? Don't know about you, but like the title says, we're just going to make sure we're smiling and wearing clean underwear. That way, at least Mom will be happy.

Microsoft and Novell Play Nice Together

Users of OpenOffice will be pleased to know that it will soon be compatible with Microsoft's Office 2007 software. Microsoft's newest version of Office uses an Open XML file format that is not compatible with the current version of OpenOffice, but Microsoft has been working with Novell as part of the Linux interoperability pact to get Office 2007 files to work in Linux. As this article at PCWorld.com mentions though, it will be up to the open source community to help integrate the Open XML code into OpenOffice.

Don't Even Think About It

If you saw the movie Minority Report, you know it was a film about how the police in the future could tell you were thinking about committing a crime, and stepping in before you actually broke the law. Software makers are working on figuring out how to target people who might be more likely to murder or commit violent crimes than other people. They say their software takes historical data, and compares it to their subjects background. For instance, what was their childhood like? Was it the same type of childhood that other murderers shared? If this works, we hope they'll concentrate on software for the horse races next... Read more about it at NetworkWorld.com.

When Word Attacks

An undocumented, unpatched vulnerability in Word could cause a hacker to gain control of your computer. So be careful opening any Word documents from friends, and don't open Word documents from strangers. This security hole seems to exist in all versions of Word from 2000 on up - even Microsoft Works and Word for Mac. There have been reports that this flaw has been exploited, and Microsoft is of course aware of the problem. No word (sorry) on when the flaw will be patched. More on this at Forbes.com.

There's Water In Them Thar Hills!!

Scientists have reason to believe that liquid water - as opposed to ice or water vapor - has flowed on the surface of Mars within the last seven years. Whether or not that water supports any life is unknown, but it raises speculation as to whether or not there could be life below the surface of Mars that satellites have not picked up. Read about it at MonstersAndCritics.com.

CMX Expiration Dates

The CMX Expiration Dates extension allows you to set dates for files you work with that expire. If a page is beyond its expiration date, when you next start Dreamweaver this extension will let you know that you have a file to be edited. This functionality can be useful when you need to update a page (or set of pages) on an occasional basis, or even on an ongoing basis. For example, you may manage the company's knowledge management system, and you want to make sure that your content contributors are alerted when their content needs to be checked for "freshness" to ensure that the information contained on the pages they cover does not go stale, then the Expiration Date extension can help you acheive your goals. Or if your home page should be updated on Mondays to reflect the next set of featured products that arrived just this weekend, then you can set the expiration date for the home page for the upcoming Monday; then when you start Dreamweaver up on Monday morning, Dreamweaver will alert you to the fact that you need to update a file (in this case the home page). You can then edit that file, publish it. If desired, you can then set the expiration date for the file for the following Monday, to lather, rinse and repeat the cycle of updates as necessary.

Take a look at this Extension by CMX Partner Danilo Celic

Fun and Freebies!

Video Games Are Getting So Lifelike

If you get bored with regular video games, try spicing it up a bit by creating your own, using a real hamster as your video game protagonist. Want an example? Check out this YouTube.com video.

Virtual Human Beat Box

Now here's something compelling and disturbing. Some kid who looks like Sideshow Bob lets you use him as a beat box by hitting keys on your keyboard. Each key makes him throw out a different sound. The effect is sort of neat for about a minute. Any longer than that, and you just want to call his parents and tell them how sorry you are. Go to Zanorg.com to beat on the brat.

Is This Rap With or Without a "C"?

We never said we understood Mongolian, but this video at Yahoo Video makes us want to learn it, just so we can understand why Mongolian rap needs to include imitations of Elvis and Michael Jackson...

Warping Video in a Flash

Sometimes video needs to be such an odd shape that using a simple mask in Flash just won't solve the issue. In this video tutorial, I show you how to use the bezier Warp tool in After efects 7 to create a video that wraps around a shape. Then I show you how to output the video in After Effects and use that video in Flash.

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

Weekly Content Listing

The Bitmap Auto-Crop Command for Fireworks

Kim Cavanaugh

Have you ever labored over a repetitive task and wished that there was a way to speed things up? You can often accomplish a great deal more if you just work out a more efficient way to get the job done. Such was the case recently when I needed to make a number of screen captures then crop the captured images to different sizes and shapes.

Of course, there are excellent screen capture programs out there, but in this case I ultimately found it easier to crop my images in Fireworks so I could do some additional work. After a few renditions of copy, paste, select, cut, delete, paste, and then trim I was definitely ready for something easier.

In the end, I created a custom command that takes most of the work out of the selection and cropping process. With the Bitmap Auto-Crop command that you'll find here you can take any bitmap selection no matter its size or shape and quickly remove all of the image except for the selected area, leaving you with a canvas that is sized based on your selection. And the entire process takes only seconds and one quick trip to the Menu bar. Heck, you can even assign a shortcut key to the command to make it even easier to use.

Favourite Extensions: Part 2 - Massimo's CF Insert Bar Plus [FREE]

Adrian Senior

In this, the second look at extensions that can enhance your production time, we are going to look at Massimo Foti's CF Insert Bar Plus.

The extension enhances functionality that already exists within Dreamweaver by reducing cftry, cfoutput and cfdump to a single click.

Multiple Insert/Update in PHP - Part 2

Tom Muck

Dreamweaver has some built-in tools for doing database inserts and updates, but they only handle basic inserts/updates of one record. What if you want to insert multiple records at a time, or update multiple records? Dreamweaver is no help in this case, but using PHP the process is simple. The first part of this tutorial showed two often-used methods for doing multiple inserts. Part 2 will show how to do a multiple update using these two techniques.

The Multiple Insert/Update in PHP Series:
Multiple Insert/Update in PHP - Part 1
Multiple Insert/Update in PHP - Part 2

CMX PHP Breadcrumbs

Gordon Mackay

As a web site's content grows, so does it's need to ensure that users can navigate around it in the easiest possible ways. In larger web sites it's very simple for users to lose track of their orientation within a site.

Enter breadcrumbs... A very simply way to keep your users oriented, as well as giving them instant access to the pages closest to the one that they're viewing. Using the directory structure of a web site is the easiest way to implement breadcrumbs using PHP. In this tutorial we will look at creating a simple function that will automatically generate a breadcrumb trail in valid and semantic (X)HTML.

JavaScript Validation Product Packages

Paul Davis

You have a client who wants to offer a special deal which requires the customer to select a certain number of products in order to get a packaged deal. We need to be able to check to see if they have selected the total number needed between all of the products, no more and no less. Sounds simple? With a little JavaScript and a some conformity on the form values, it can be!

From Final Product to Upload in Flash Professional 8 [FREE]

Tom Green

You have created a video in After Effects. Now it is time to encode it and prepare it for playback through Flash.

Approximate download size: 13.6MB

Methods for Testing in Multiple Versions of IE [FREE]

Zoe Gillenwater

Internet Explorer 7 (IE), released in October 2006, greatly improves its CSS rendering capabilities. However, it's only available for Windows XP and Vista, so we still have to support IE 6 — and possibly IE 5.5 and 5.0, depending on your site's audience — for some time to come. Unfortunately, the integration of IE into the Windows operating system, and Microsoft's refusal to allow multiple versions of it to run at the same time, have made testing web sites in various versions of the ubiquitous browser difficult. There are, however, ways it can be done, and the advent of IE 7 has brought some new methods out for our consideration.

In this article I'll provide an overview of the current methods available for testing multiple versions of Windows IE and provide the pros and cons of each method so you can decide which suits you best.

The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 3: Advanced Loops and Arrays

Rob Williams

One of the key components of any scripting or programming language is control structures - statements that tell a language interpreter 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. This time around we'll be looking at some more advanced looping techniques that will allow you to make your code more powerful and easier to read.

The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures Series:
The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 1: Switch Statements
The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 2: The Break Command
The Lost Art of PHP Control Structures - Part 3: Advanced Loops and Arrays

Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 5: HTML Formatting

Joseph Balderson

Ever tried formatting a text field in flash using ActionScript, only to get all tangled up in a myriad of class properties and methods? Parts 1 & 2 of this series looks at how to create a text field and format it completely with code. Part 3 examines dynamic font embedding, Parts 4 & 5 cover how to use HTML formatting, and Parts 6 & 7 show you how to use CSS stylesheets in Flash.

In this tutorial we are going to pick up where we left off in Part 4, where we looked at formatting HTML text. We are also going to expand on what we learned about font embedding in Part 3 as it applies to HTML text.

The Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified Series:
Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 1: setTextFormat
Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 2: setNewTextFormat
Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 3: Embedding Fonts
Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 4: HTML Formatting
Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 5: HTML Formatting
Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 6: Stylesheets Coming Soon
Dynamic Text Formatting Demystified - Part 7: Stylesheets Coming Soon

From After Effects to Flash: Poetry in Motion Graphics [FREE]

Tom Green

In this last installment of Chapter One we examine how to prepare an After Effects Video for encoding in Flash.

The Art of Encoding Flash Video: About the FLV Format

The process of encoding quality streaming video for Flash (or for any video streaming playback delivery for that matter) is the most important process in creating video streaming applications. Any slick-looking video player that you build will only be as good as the quality of the video streaming through it. This article provides a comprehensive overview of FLV encoding by the encoding software. Understanding this article will help you create higher quality FLV files when it comes to applying settings in an encoder and creating video for encoding.

Check out the Article by CMX Partner Derrick Ypenburg

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

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

Tame Your PDF

My boss just asked me to see if I could do anything to reduce a 70 page User manual PDF for his new digital camera with a couple pages of photos of the
camera. It was 2.3MB.

This is what I did on my Mac (Color Synch is a Mac-only utility, I believe):

1) Opened the PDF .

2) Opened the Print dialogue box.

3) Added Apple's ColorSync Utility to the PDF button.

4) Chose the Color Synch utility

5) After the Color Synch box came up and processed the PDF, I chose "Export" in Color Synch's dialogue box.

6) In the Quartz Filter drop down section, I chose "Reduce File Size", renamed my PDF and then hit "Save".

I was able to knock 1 MB off of the overall file size. I know there are commercial programs that will compress PDFs but if you're in a bind and need something fast, this might work. BUT... This doesn't ALWAYS work. Depending on the original PDF, Color Synch
can sometimes end up actually bloating a PDF.

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!