
Wednesday, December 15th, 2007
CMX Weekly Newsletter News Fun and Freebies Recent CMX Content Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats Check the News! Brio For Free-o The next version of Adobe Connect, code-named Brio, is being made available to the public as a beta product. If you're not familiar with Connect, it facilitates online conferencing with all the features you'd hope for, including chat, whiteboard, desktop sharing and audio/video capabilities. The beta will not be open to everyone who signs up, so you'll want to sign up on Adobe's website immediately if you're interested. The beta is fully functional, but you'll only be able to conference with up to three other people. Hey, what do you want for free? Is Wikipedia Going To Be PutToSleepia? Google, continuing their quest for eventual world domination, have decided to take on About.com and Wikipedia.org by introducing Knol, a new tool that essentially does what About and Wikipedia do, but with a couple new bells and whistles included. You can read Google's introduction of Knol, which is not yet out of private beta, on Google's blog. Knol, which stands for "a unit of knowledge", is supposed to highlight the authors of each article that is posted. Whether or not this idea will help keep the integrity of those articles intact, which was a huge problem with Wikipedia this past year, is unknown. We're not sure that seeing a picture of someone and knowing that they've had a Second Life account for nine months is going to instill any more trust in Knol than we have in About or Wikipedia... Read more about it at NewsFactor.com. Fare Thee Well, You Bag Of Overpriced Bones CompUSA was the biggest computer store in the business at one point. That was before places like Best Buy and Fry's Electronics took over and showed consumers that they didn't have to spend that much on electronics. If you live in the U.S., you've probably noticed that CompUSA stores are becoming scarce. Well, they're about to become a whole lot more scarce, since they've just announced that they're going to close down or sell their remaining stores. It's a clearly unfortunate situation for their employees, but we're wondering if the announcement to employees included the good news/bad news speech: "The good news is that we're going to be having some major sales coming up. The bad news is... uh... Ted, tell 'em the bad news." More on this at ArsTechnica.com. Can You Live With Linux? We know that the Mac and Windows operating systems are not the only games in town. Linux is rising in popularity more and more recently, especially with Dell's help. But can you really give up what you're used to and switch to Linux without crying yourself to sleep each night? APCMag.com commissioned one of their crew, Ashton Mills, to install Linux, along with whatever open source software he needed, and use it for everything that he typically his Windows workstation for. What was Mills' verdict? Most of the tasks he tracked, which included networking, internet usage, file management, plug and play and other important tasks, were comparable or superior when using Linux, with few exceptions. Keep in mind that this experiment was not done by an avid Linux user, but someone who is more comfortable in a Windows environment. Interesting stuff that indicates the short distance that Linux has to travel to become a more widely used OS. Microsoft is prepared to help you if you want to bail out of Linux though. You can check out this support page to uninstall Linux and install Windows. Good, But Not Complete List Of Websites For Color Inspiration Sawse.com has posted a list of websites that can help you choose color schemes for your designs, whether you're building a website, a brochure or whatever - and those "whatevers" can be difficult, right? While the websites that Sawse has listed are very good, they left out one of our favorites, which is Kuler. Even cooler than the online Kuler are the Kuler extensions developed by PixelFumes.com for Flash and Fireworks. They allow you to view tons of beautiful color pallets created by other users. So check out the Sawse.com list and go forth and beautify. By coincidence, Jim Babbage, CMX author and resident Fireworks expert, has a free article this week on how to use the Kuler Panel for Fireworks.
Satisfied Customers Speak Out! "Thank you for this tutorial. Very nice. I have been looking for a way to copyright my images." - Kevin H., CMX Subscriber, commenting on Knut Kubenz's article, "Your Images Deserve Your Copyright" 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: " Our work is the presentation of our capabilities." — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe This Is The Kind Of Customer Service We Like To See When A. Hildebrandt entered a contest to win a heavily discounted HP Pavilion laptop from Amazon.com, he hopped onto an Amazon community forum and joked about it. He decided to take it one step further and actually write Jeff Bezos a tongue-in-cheek email about it. As funny as Hildebrandt's email was, the folks at Amazon gave back as good, actually better, than they got. Autumn Walker, employed in the Executive Customer Relations division at Amazon, wrote back to Hildebrandt and answered him in the same spirit of his original email, to hilarious effect. Read about it at Consumerist.com. Meanwhile, BestBuy Is Not So Easily Amused Improv Anywhere, a comedy improvisation troupe, thought it would be funny to sell t-shirts online that use Best Buy's now-famous yellow tag. Eventually, a link to the t-shirts made it to a blog. Specifically, a blog at LaughingSquid.com. The folks at Best Buy were none too amused by this set of events and decided to send a cease and desist letter to... the people who linked to Improv Anywhere. Yes, Best Buy sent the same letter to Improv Anywhere, but to send it to the owners of a website who simply linked to the t-shirts? Pretty darned odd. This story has captured a lot of people's attention, like Wired.com, Consumerist.com, and BoingBoing.net. Last Chance To Stick It To The Man This Year Hopefully Paul Davis, CMX's resident tax expert, will chime in on this one via the CMX blog. According to EquipmentFinance.com, if your purchase certain types of office equipment now, you could get a tax break for it on your 2007 taxes. Section 179 of the US Tax Code allows you to deduct the full cost of the purchase this year, instead of just the depreciative value over several years. Why is the government providing this break? Basically, it's to get money circulating. We'll wait for Paul to contribute his two cents, but for now you can read about Section 179 at EquipmentFinance.com. More Viral Than Vile Are you a control freak? Have you ever wanted to tell someone what to do, no matter how silly the task, and have them do it anyway? At ModMyLife.com, you can give "ModStars" instructions and then watch them as they publicly do whatever you ask them to do. No, this isn't anything dirty. Most of the instructions are just plain silly, like "cry for your mommy" or telling innocent bystanders something like "dude you gotta heal me, I’m losing life points!" While some might think this is a great sociological experiment, it's really plain goofy fun. It reminds us of hanging out with friends and daring them to do something dopey at the mall. ModMyLife.com plans on archiving all of their Modcasts, and we'll look forward to viewing them all. Found through a link at TechCrunch.com. Great Idea 1, Radiohead 0... Dollars. We mentioned in a previous newsletter about Radiohead selling their latest album on the internet for whatever price their fans were willing to pay for it. Radiohead got some great press over it, and industry experts thought that this could be the start of a whole new paradigm in selling music online. News.com had an article in November of this year about it. The article had a line that said "an increasing majority of worldwide consumers simply view recorded music as free." Radiohead found out this out the hard way. After asking consumers to name their own price, about sixty two percent of them decided that "free" was a pretty darn good price. Not surprisingly, Radiohead, or perhaps their management, or maybe their record label, decided that "free" was not really a darn good price after all. Their CD is now availble through traditional outlets - music stores, iTunes, etc. While this experiment didn't work out quite the way Radiohead might have hoped, it still put a nice-sized germ of an idea in people's minds. While it's true that sixty two percent of consumers didn't want to have to pay for Radiohead's latest music, thirty eight percent did. How many of those thirty eight percent would have paid for the music if they had to pay full price? More on this at News.com.
CMX Robot File Dreamweaver Extension The CMX Robots.txt Creator will create a robots.txt file formatted according to the standards set for this type of file and save it to your local site. Quickly create your robots.txt files with this extension and stop worrying about the syntax! Take a look at this extension by Paul Davis
Fun and Freebies! Weirdest Work Stories? This Reads Like A Day In The Life To Us... From CareerBuilder.com, via CNN.com, comes the weirdest work stories of the year. We're pretty sure our resident artist, Chris Flick, is the subject of #15. These Probably Happened In Windows ME If you've loaded enough programs on any version of Windows, you've probably seen some pretty funky error messages. Gizmodo.com has collected some of the funny error messages - well, funny if you're not the victim - and made them available for your amusement. Go Elf Yourself Seeing our own Tom Green dance around as an elf is actually not that unusual. Wanna see? He's the one on the right. Not To Be Outdone By Windows, Steve Jobs Shows That He Can Make Errors Too 9to5Mac.com posted a video of the various foibles that have occured at MacWorld conventions.
Creating Smoke in Flash CS3: Part 1 Ever wanted to add steam hissing out of a vent or smoke rising from a smoldering log in Flash? Read on... This free article by author Tom Green can be found here.
Weekly Content Listing Snow Grey: Not OK - Snow White: Just Right Jim Babbage It's that time of year in many parts of the world, where many things get covered in a blanket of snow. Snow scenes can be stunning, but the average camera (film or digital) is not designed to capture snow at its true and original brightness. There are different ways to handle a snow scene photo; you can correct the exposure at the time you shoot, or you can adjust the exposure in software such as Fireworks or Photoshop. In this 2-part series, we'll look at both, beginning with the photographic solutions here in part 1. Setting Up Color in Illustrator - Part 2 Kim Dudley In Part One of Setting up Color in Illustrator, I introduced the world of Full Color or Process Printing. In that tutorial I discussed the differences between RGB and CMYK, explained what separations are, and set up artwork for process printing using Illustrator CS2 or CS3. At one time, the only more economical option to full color printing was spot color printing. These days digital printing is becoming much more common and is a very viable option for lower budget projects, often providing full color products for the same price as a 1 or 2 color print job. Although digital printing is gaining popularity, spot printing still has a place in the print world since it is often the best way to reproduce an exact color. In this tutorial we will look at: How spot color printing works How to convert process colors to spot colors How to set up a Pantone color, and Predefined color libraries Approximate download size: 4.1MB The Setting up Color in Illustrator Series: Setting Up Color in Illustrator - Part 1 Setting Up Color in Illustrator - Part 2 Designing Look and Feel with the Flex 2 Skins Template Steve Schelter Flex Builder 2 has many powerful ways of customizing the appearance of its components. Each component has many style attributes that can be tweaked to drastically change the look-and-feel of your application. Sometimes, however, you may find that these attributes are insufficient in giving you the complete look you are going for. In addition to styling with attributes, you can also define skins. Skins are treated as concrete assets that represent the entire appearance of a component. They're usually the easiest and most controlled solution for maximum visual control. In this lesson, we will look into skins and skin templates for our Flex 2 components. This lesson adds to the discussion of component styling as started from the previous article, Designing Look and Feel with the Flex 2 Style Explorer. Faking a Document Class in ActionScript 2.0 David Stiller Flash CS3 offers a remarkably convenient way to separate code from FLA assets completely. This feature is called the document class, and it's only available for FLA files configured for ActionScript 3.0. In AS3 documents, the Property inspector displays a Document class field when the Stage is selected, which facilitates the new feature; in AS2 and AS1 documents, this field is disabled. In a nutshell, the document class concept allows you control the main timeline by way of a custom class definition that extends Sprite or MovieClip. This class becomes your main timeline at runtime — and you can accomplish this without a shred of code in the FLA itself (see Steve Schelter's "Flash CS3 - The Document Class" series for details). In team situations, especially, this allows designers to steer clear of programming altogether and opens the way for programmers do their thing away from drawing tools and timelines, which keeps everyone happy. But what if you haven't yet upgraded to Flash CS3? Or what if you have, but your project requirements dictate ActionScript 2.0? While the full benefit of a true document class cannot be realized before AS3, the feature can be faked as early as Flash MX 2004 by way of a single movie clip's Linkage properties. Let's take a look. CSS Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 3 Adrian Senior In the final part of this series we will look at how you can use borders set on the LI and UL elements to provide a nice finish to your navigation list. The CSS Problems and Fixes Series: Css Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 1 CSS Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 2 CSS Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 3 Web Writing Exercises Part One [FREE] Sheri German In this series, we'll explore that topic of writing for the web in depth. Each article's download folder will include copy that you can use to experiment with the featured concepts. It will also include my interpretation of how to effectively present the copy. According to statistics, 79% of readers scan text on web pages rather than read every word. Therefore, in this first article, we'll look at how we can help readers more easily scan text by using effective headings, hyperlinks, bolded phrases, and lists. Quick Shot - Reset the Root mySQL Password [FREE] Paul Davis You have lost the root password, or the password is corrupt, to your mySQL server and you need to get it back as quickly as possible. Read this tutorial to get the instructions on how! Photoshop Magic Without the Magic Wand Knut Kubenz Ever had a client hand you a file with just a logo or some piece of type, which needed to go on a cover photo for a book or a calendar? Now the type might simply be black type on a white background and you have to perhaps add color or some special effect to the type and then place it on the picture. Well at some point in time you're going to have to actually separate the type from its white background and your instincts might suggest just using the Magic Wand. With the Magic Wand you could simply click on the white background and then Inverse the selection and Delete the white. This could be good for some bold type, but when you have more frilly or closed in letters such as o's and p's, you literally have to make additional selections with the Wand to get the enclosed letter white spaces. In this quick tutorial, I'll demonstrate a simple and effective way to grab all the type, no matter how intricate, using the Composite Controls area in the Layers Palette. In a few steps you'll have the type placed and ready to apply any special treatment. Let's begin. Fireworks Kuler Panel [FREE] Jim Babbage Making color choices for a web site can at times be a daunting task, especially for those of us not schooled in color harmonics. Help in making those choices has recently gotten much easier with the introduction of the Flash kuler Panel for Fireworks. Ben Pritchard from Pixel Fumes first built a kuler panel for Flash, then Alan Musselman asked him if he would consider creating one for Fireworks. In early August of 2007, Ben had one for all us faithful FW users. Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript - Part 1 David Stiller For the most part, the drawing API in ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0 is a straightforward business. Sure, complex shapes are a pain to draw programmatically, but the syntax is easy enough. You have your imaginary pen and tell it where to go, using the moveTo(), lineTo(), and curveTo() methods of their respective classes (MovieClip class in AS2, Graphics class in AS3). Fills are easy, too. The beginFill() method accepts two parameters: color and opacity. But gradients ... whoa, gradients are another matter! The beginGradientFill() method accepts at least five parameters, one of which involves matrix math. If you've ever had to build gradients with ActionScript and found yourself lost right out the gate, this is the tutorial for you. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we'll break down all the parameters of the beginGradientFill() method, including the matrix, which — bafflingly — can be supplied in three different ways in AS2. In Part 2, we'll write a JavaScript Flash (JSFL) script to create the tedious ActionScript for you. The Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript Series: Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript - Part 1 Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript - Part 2 Coming Soon
Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript - Part 1 For the most part, the drawing API in ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0 is a straightforward business. Sure, complex shapes are a pain to draw programmatically, but the syntax is easy enough. You have your imaginary pen and tell it where to go, using the moveTo(), lineTo(), and curveTo() methods of their respective classes (MovieClip class in AS2, Graphics class in AS3). Fills are easy, too. The beginFill() method accepts two parameters: color and opacity. But gradients ... whoa, gradients are another matter! The beginGradientFill() method accepts at least five parameters, one of which involves matrix math. If you've ever had to build gradients with ActionScript and found yourself lost right out the gate, this is the tutorial for you. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we'll break down all the parameters of the beginGradientFill() method, including the matrix, which — bafflingly — can be supplied in three different ways in AS2. In Part 2, we'll write a JavaScript Flash (JSFL) script to create the tedious ActionScript for you. Check out the Article by CMX Partner David Stiller
Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats! This week's Tip, Trick or Dirty Cheat is courtesy of Paul Davis, CMX Partner. RSS Feed Icons Well, I was all ready to make a tutorial on how to make those cute little RSS feed icons - I was doing well, working in Fireworks, getting it done. Then I hit a snag, getting the arc to look right. I searched the regular resources for hints on how to get this done and one of them pointed me to a website. When I got there, I realized, this was the perfect solution. Unfortunately, it also made the creation of the icon moot - it was a free collection of PSD and other graphic formats of the icon all sized, colored and ready to go, even a grayscale copy of the image for customization. Check out Feed Icons to pick up this handy little resource. 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!

Brio For Free-o

The next version of Adobe Connect, code-named Brio, is being made available to the public as a beta product. If you're not familiar with Connect, it facilitates online conferencing with all the features you'd hope for, including chat, whiteboard, desktop sharing and audio/video capabilities. The beta will not be open to everyone who signs up, so you'll want to sign up on Adobe's website immediately if you're interested. The beta is fully functional, but you'll only be able to conference with up to three other people. Hey, what do you want for free?

Is Wikipedia Going To Be PutToSleepia?

Google, continuing their quest for eventual world domination, have decided to take on About.com and Wikipedia.org by introducing Knol, a new tool that essentially does what About and Wikipedia do, but with a couple new bells and whistles included. You can read Google's introduction of Knol, which is not yet out of private beta, on Google's blog. Knol, which stands for "a unit of knowledge", is supposed to highlight the authors of each article that is posted. Whether or not this idea will help keep the integrity of those articles intact, which was a huge problem with Wikipedia this past year, is unknown. We're not sure that seeing a picture of someone and knowing that they've had a Second Life account for nine months is going to instill any more trust in Knol than we have in About or Wikipedia... Read more about it at NewsFactor.com.

Fare Thee Well, You Bag Of Overpriced Bones

CompUSA was the biggest computer store in the business at one point. That was before places like Best Buy and Fry's Electronics took over and showed consumers that they didn't have to spend that much on electronics. If you live in the U.S., you've probably noticed that CompUSA stores are becoming scarce. Well, they're about to become a whole lot more scarce, since they've just announced that they're going to close down or sell their remaining stores. It's a clearly unfortunate situation for their employees, but we're wondering if the announcement to employees included the good news/bad news speech: "The good news is that we're going to be having some major sales coming up. The bad news is... uh... Ted, tell 'em the bad news." More on this at ArsTechnica.com.

Can You Live With Linux?

We know that the Mac and Windows operating systems are not the only games in town. Linux is rising in popularity more and more recently, especially with Dell's help. But can you really give up what you're used to and switch to Linux without crying yourself to sleep each night? APCMag.com commissioned one of their crew, Ashton Mills, to install Linux, along with whatever open source software he needed, and use it for everything that he typically his Windows workstation for. What was Mills' verdict? Most of the tasks he tracked, which included networking, internet usage, file management, plug and play and other important tasks, were comparable or superior when using Linux, with few exceptions. Keep in mind that this experiment was not done by an avid Linux user, but someone who is more comfortable in a Windows environment. Interesting stuff that indicates the short distance that Linux has to travel to become a more widely used OS. Microsoft is prepared to help you if you want to bail out of Linux though. You can check out this support page to uninstall Linux and install Windows.

Good, But Not Complete List Of Websites For Color Inspiration

Sawse.com has posted a list of websites that can help you choose color schemes for your designs, whether you're building a website, a brochure or whatever - and those "whatevers" can be difficult, right? While the websites that Sawse has listed are very good, they left out one of our favorites, which is Kuler. Even cooler than the online Kuler are the Kuler extensions developed by PixelFumes.com for Flash and Fireworks. They allow you to view tons of beautiful color pallets created by other users. So check out the Sawse.com list and go forth and beautify. By coincidence, Jim Babbage, CMX author and resident Fireworks expert, has a free article this week on how to use the Kuler Panel for Fireworks.

Satisfied Customers Speak Out!

"Thank you for this tutorial. Very nice. I have been looking for a way to copyright my images."

- Kevin H., CMX Subscriber, commenting on Knut Kubenz's article, "Your Images Deserve Your Copyright"

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:

" Our work is the presentation of our capabilities." — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

This Is The Kind Of Customer Service We Like To See

When A. Hildebrandt entered a contest to win a heavily discounted HP Pavilion laptop from Amazon.com, he hopped onto an Amazon community forum and joked about it. He decided to take it one step further and actually write Jeff Bezos a tongue-in-cheek email about it. As funny as Hildebrandt's email was, the folks at Amazon gave back as good, actually better, than they got. Autumn Walker, employed in the Executive Customer Relations division at Amazon, wrote back to Hildebrandt and answered him in the same spirit of his original email, to hilarious effect. Read about it at Consumerist.com.

Meanwhile, BestBuy Is Not So Easily Amused

Improv Anywhere, a comedy improvisation troupe, thought it would be funny to sell t-shirts online that use Best Buy's now-famous yellow tag. Eventually, a link to the t-shirts made it to a blog. Specifically, a blog at LaughingSquid.com. The folks at Best Buy were none too amused by this set of events and decided to send a cease and desist letter to... the people who linked to Improv Anywhere. Yes, Best Buy sent the same letter to Improv Anywhere, but to send it to the owners of a website who simply linked to the t-shirts? Pretty darned odd. This story has captured a lot of people's attention, like Wired.com, Consumerist.com, and BoingBoing.net.

Last Chance To Stick It To The Man This Year

Hopefully Paul Davis, CMX's resident tax expert, will chime in on this one via the CMX blog. According to EquipmentFinance.com, if your purchase certain types of office equipment now, you could get a tax break for it on your 2007 taxes. Section 179 of the US Tax Code allows you to deduct the full cost of the purchase this year, instead of just the depreciative value over several years. Why is the government providing this break? Basically, it's to get money circulating. We'll wait for Paul to contribute his two cents, but for now you can read about Section 179 at EquipmentFinance.com.

More Viral Than Vile

Are you a control freak? Have you ever wanted to tell someone what to do, no matter how silly the task, and have them do it anyway? At ModMyLife.com, you can give "ModStars" instructions and then watch them as they publicly do whatever you ask them to do. No, this isn't anything dirty. Most of the instructions are just plain silly, like "cry for your mommy" or telling innocent bystanders something like "dude you gotta heal me, I’m losing life points!" While some might think this is a great sociological experiment, it's really plain goofy fun. It reminds us of hanging out with friends and daring them to do something dopey at the mall. ModMyLife.com plans on archiving all of their Modcasts, and we'll look forward to viewing them all. Found through a link at TechCrunch.com.

Great Idea 1, Radiohead 0... Dollars.

We mentioned in a previous newsletter about Radiohead selling their latest album on the internet for whatever price their fans were willing to pay for it. Radiohead got some great press over it, and industry experts thought that this could be the start of a whole new paradigm in selling music online. News.com had an article in November of this year about it. The article had a line that said "an increasing majority of worldwide consumers simply view recorded music as free." Radiohead found out this out the hard way. After asking consumers to name their own price, about sixty two percent of them decided that "free" was a pretty darn good price. Not surprisingly, Radiohead, or perhaps their management, or maybe their record label, decided that "free" was not really a darn good price after all. Their CD is now availble through traditional outlets - music stores, iTunes, etc. While this experiment didn't work out quite the way Radiohead might have hoped, it still put a nice-sized germ of an idea in people's minds. While it's true that sixty two percent of consumers didn't want to have to pay for Radiohead's latest music, thirty eight percent did. How many of those thirty eight percent would have paid for the music if they had to pay full price? More on this at News.com.

CMX Robot File Dreamweaver Extension

The CMX Robots.txt Creator will create a robots.txt file formatted according to the standards set for this type of file and save it to your local site. Quickly create your robots.txt files with this extension and stop worrying about the syntax!

Take a look at this extension by Paul Davis

Fun and Freebies!

Weirdest Work Stories? This Reads Like A Day In The Life To Us...

From CareerBuilder.com, via CNN.com, comes the weirdest work stories of the year. We're pretty sure our resident artist, Chris Flick, is the subject of #15.

These Probably Happened In Windows ME

If you've loaded enough programs on any version of Windows, you've probably seen some pretty funky error messages. Gizmodo.com has collected some of the funny error messages - well, funny if you're not the victim - and made them available for your amusement.

Go Elf Yourself

Seeing our own Tom Green dance around as an elf is actually not that unusual. Wanna see? He's the one on the right.

Not To Be Outdone By Windows, Steve Jobs Shows That He Can Make Errors Too

9to5Mac.com posted a video of the various foibles that have occured at MacWorld conventions.

Creating Smoke in Flash CS3: Part 1

Ever wanted to add steam hissing out of a vent or smoke rising from a smoldering log in Flash? Read on...

This free article by author Tom Green can be found here.

Weekly Content Listing

Snow Grey: Not OK - Snow White: Just Right

Jim Babbage

It's that time of year in many parts of the world, where many things get covered in a blanket of snow. Snow scenes can be stunning, but the average camera (film or digital) is not designed to capture snow at its true and original brightness. There are different ways to handle a snow scene photo; you can correct the exposure at the time you shoot, or you can adjust the exposure in software such as Fireworks or Photoshop. In this 2-part series, we'll look at both, beginning with the photographic solutions here in part 1.

Setting Up Color in Illustrator - Part 2

Kim Dudley

In Part One of Setting up Color in Illustrator, I introduced the world of Full Color or Process Printing. In that tutorial I discussed the differences between RGB and CMYK, explained what separations are, and set up artwork for process printing using Illustrator CS2 or CS3. At one time, the only more economical option to full color printing was spot color printing. These days digital printing is becoming much more common and is a very viable option for lower budget projects, often providing full color products for the same price as a 1 or 2 color print job.

Although digital printing is gaining popularity, spot printing still has a place in the print world since it is often the best way to reproduce an exact color. In this tutorial we will look at:

How spot color printing works
How to convert process colors to spot colors
How to set up a Pantone color, and Predefined color libraries

Approximate download size: 4.1MB

The Setting up Color in Illustrator Series:
Setting Up Color in Illustrator - Part 1
Setting Up Color in Illustrator - Part 2

Designing Look and Feel with the Flex 2 Skins Template

Steve Schelter

Flex Builder 2 has many powerful ways of customizing the appearance of its components. Each component has many style attributes that can be tweaked to drastically change the look-and-feel of your application. Sometimes, however, you may find that these attributes are insufficient in giving you the complete look you are going for. In addition to styling with attributes, you can also define skins. Skins are treated as concrete assets that represent the entire appearance of a component. They're usually the easiest and most controlled solution for maximum visual control. In this lesson, we will look into skins and skin templates for our Flex 2 components.

This lesson adds to the discussion of component styling as started from the previous article, Designing Look and Feel with the Flex 2 Style Explorer.

Faking a Document Class in ActionScript 2.0

David Stiller

Flash CS3 offers a remarkably convenient way to separate code from FLA assets completely. This feature is called the document class, and it's only available for FLA files configured for ActionScript 3.0. In AS3 documents, the Property inspector displays a Document class field when the Stage is selected, which facilitates the new feature; in AS2 and AS1 documents, this field is disabled. In a nutshell, the document class concept allows you control the main timeline by way of a custom class definition that extends Sprite or MovieClip. This class becomes your main timeline at runtime — and you can accomplish this without a shred of code in the FLA itself (see Steve Schelter's "Flash CS3 - The Document Class" series for details).

In team situations, especially, this allows designers to steer clear of programming altogether and opens the way for programmers do their thing away from drawing tools and timelines, which keeps everyone happy. But what if you haven't yet upgraded to Flash CS3? Or what if you have, but your project requirements dictate ActionScript 2.0? While the full benefit of a true document class cannot be realized before AS3, the feature can be faked as early as Flash MX 2004 by way of a single movie clip's Linkage properties. Let's take a look.

CSS Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 3

Adrian Senior

In the final part of this series we will look at how you can use borders set on the LI and UL elements to provide a nice finish to your navigation list.

The CSS Problems and Fixes Series:
Css Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 1
CSS Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 2
CSS Problems and Fixes: Vertical List Navigation - Part 3

Web Writing Exercises Part One [FREE]

Sheri German

In this series, we'll explore that topic of writing for the web in depth. Each article's download folder will include copy that you can use to experiment with the featured concepts. It will also include my interpretation of how to effectively present the copy.

According to statistics, 79% of readers scan text on web pages rather than read every word. Therefore, in this first article, we'll look at how we can help readers more easily scan text by using effective headings, hyperlinks, bolded phrases, and lists.

Quick Shot - Reset the Root mySQL Password [FREE]

Paul Davis

You have lost the root password, or the password is corrupt, to your mySQL server and you need to get it back as quickly as possible. Read this tutorial to get the instructions on how!

Photoshop Magic Without the Magic Wand

Knut Kubenz

Ever had a client hand you a file with just a logo or some piece of type, which needed to go on a cover photo for a book or a calendar? Now the type might simply be black type on a white background and you have to perhaps add color or some special effect to the type and then place it on the picture.

Well at some point in time you're going to have to actually separate the type from its white background and your instincts might suggest just using the Magic Wand. With the Magic Wand you could simply click on the white background and then Inverse the selection and Delete the white. This could be good for some bold type, but when you have more frilly or closed in letters such as o's and p's, you literally have to make additional selections with the Wand to get the enclosed letter white spaces.

In this quick tutorial, I'll demonstrate a simple and effective way to grab all the type, no matter how intricate, using the Composite Controls area in the Layers Palette. In a few steps you'll have the type placed and ready to apply any special treatment. Let's begin.

Fireworks Kuler Panel [FREE]

Jim Babbage

Making color choices for a web site can at times be a daunting task, especially for those of us not schooled in color harmonics. Help in making those choices has recently gotten much easier with the introduction of the Flash kuler Panel for Fireworks. Ben Pritchard from Pixel Fumes first built a kuler panel for Flash, then Alan Musselman asked him if he would consider creating one for Fireworks. In early August of 2007, Ben had one for all us faithful FW users.

Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript - Part 1

David Stiller

For the most part, the drawing API in ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0 is a straightforward business. Sure, complex shapes are a pain to draw programmatically, but the syntax is easy enough. You have your imaginary pen and tell it where to go, using the moveTo(), lineTo(), and curveTo() methods of their respective classes (MovieClip class in AS2, Graphics class in AS3). Fills are easy, too. The beginFill() method accepts two parameters: color and opacity. But gradients ... whoa, gradients are another matter! The beginGradientFill() method accepts at least five parameters, one of which involves matrix math. If you've ever had to build gradients with ActionScript and found yourself lost right out the gate, this is the tutorial for you.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we'll break down all the parameters of the beginGradientFill() method, including the matrix, which — bafflingly — can be supplied in three different ways in AS2.

In Part 2, we'll write a JavaScript Flash (JSFL) script to create the tedious ActionScript for you.
The Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript Series:
Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript - Part 1
Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript - Part 2 Coming Soon

Understanding Gradient Fills in ActionScript - Part 1

For the most part, the drawing API in ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0 is a straightforward business. Sure, complex shapes are a pain to draw programmatically, but the syntax is easy enough. You have your imaginary pen and tell it where to go, using the moveTo(), lineTo(), and curveTo() methods of their respective classes (MovieClip class in AS2, Graphics class in AS3). Fills are easy, too. The beginFill() method accepts two parameters: color and opacity. But gradients ... whoa, gradients are another matter! The beginGradientFill() method accepts at least five parameters, one of which involves matrix math. If you've ever had to build gradients with ActionScript and found yourself lost right out the gate, this is the tutorial for you. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we'll break down all the parameters of the beginGradientFill() method, including the matrix, which — bafflingly — can be supplied in three different ways in AS2. In Part 2, we'll write a JavaScript Flash (JSFL) script to create the tedious ActionScript for you.

Check out the Article by CMX Partner David Stiller

Tips, Tricks and Dirty Cheats!

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

RSS Feed Icons

Well, I was all ready to make a tutorial on how to make those cute little RSS feed icons - I was doing well, working in Fireworks, getting it done. Then I hit a snag, getting the arc to look right. I searched the regular resources for hints on how to get this done and one of them pointed me to a website. When I got there, I realized, this was the perfect solution. Unfortunately, it also made the creation of the icon moot - it was a free collection of PSD and other graphic formats of the icon all sized, colored and ready to go, even a grayscale copy of the image for customization.

Check out Feed Icons to pick up this handy little resource.

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!