Past Newsletter Issues

LiveWire Archive April 06 LiveWire (4/26/2006) March 06 LiveWire (3/28/2006) - part 1 March 06 LiveWire (3/28/2006) - part 2 February 06 LiveWire - part 1 (2/20/2006) February 06 LiveWire - part 2 (2/20/2006)

January 06 LiveWire (1/25/2006) December 05 LiveWire - part 1 (12/6/2005) December 05 LiveWire - part 2 (12/6/2005) October 05 LiveWire (10/24/2005) September 05 LiveWire (9/27/2005) August 05 LiveWire (8/13/2005)

LiveWire Archive

2005	2006
August September October December	January February March April

April 06 LiveWire (4/26/2006)

In this month's issue:

• Ch-ch-changes: Review database and LiveWire tweaks the first of many changes to come. Be a part of it!
• Industry News: Windows on a Mac, Flash Player for Pocket PC and new power in MySQL
• Reviews: Our cup runnith over with 7 reviews this month!
• Tips & Tricks: Dreamweaver 8: A Few of My Favorite Things
• Resources: Database, Design, Flash, Programming, too much to even summarize!
• Training: UITS IT Training summer schedule
• Monthly Challenge: Zen-diana Design Challenge Continues
• Free Stuff: Design books are the order of the day
• Get Involved: We needs reviewers, CF programmers, Web designer, Raffle coodinator

Ch-ch-changes

Sometimes it's just hard to find the time to make the changes that you know need to be made. Talk is cheap and I've run up a pretty sizable tab when it comes to my ideas of what to do with the IUMMUG site. All of these ideas, of course, required someone to do them. For some time we've advertised, perhaps not prominently enough, the need for volunteers to help with a redesign and re-coding of the IUMMUG site. Well, circumstances have conspired to get me off my duff and start making changes.

I am up to my ears in outside projects and there's the small matter of having a family to spend my "off" hours with, so the hours I devote to IUMMUG have mainly been spent on the organizational stuff. This month, however, we had SEVEN (!) reviews for the newsletter and I thought it would be nuts to put them all in one month. But hey, they are on-topic and I've already got 3 more done for next month and it's still early. So Renee Le Beau and I sat down and planned a review database application. Thanks to a cold that kept me on the couch for the weekend+ (and the wireless that let me work from there) I took a first pass at the app. I hope you'll take a look (http://iummug.indiana.edu/newsletter/reviews.cfm) and give us some feedback. Version 1 was built for functionality alone. Look for a makeover in the coming weeks or months. We think that ColdFusion's Flash forms would be a nice touch.

Next on the agenda was the newsletter. It was driving me nuts when I wanted to look up something in a back issue that it took 2-3 clicks on the site to get there. Whose dumb idea was that? Oh yeah, I guess it was mine. Well, now I've removed the extra layer, added a menu at the top of the Past Newsletters page and then a somewhat more helpful TOC at the top of each individual issue. Look for more changes in this area. Eventually it will be an application like the review tool, including some search functionality.

In the coming months we will start to carve out a space on the site for the nascent Flash User Group. One would hope this will be accompanied by a facelift (and some Flash content?). Of course these changes will come more quickly with some help. The past 8 months has seen a real increase in participation from the membership. We have more and more people stepping up to do reviews and presentations. New faces have shown up in our design challenges. Our colleagues have shared their knowlege by submitting tips to the newsletter and even designing the design challenges (Thanks, Karen!).

Still, there is so many other areas we could use help. Sure, there are larger committments like taking a lead role on the website (nice portfolio builder), but there are also small things. There are over 200 web and print professioinals on our list. We all have the sites we couldn't get through our work without referencing as well as the interesting bits of news we run across each day. Send me something to share with the others. Why should the newsletter just contain the stuff I read? To sweeten the deal each month I'll pull a name from all those who share a favorite site, article, tip, etc. and the winner will get a book or some other cool stuff.

A great example of sharing comes from a new but enthusiastic member, Steve McFarland, a student at IUPUI. Steve has built Scrabble in Flash and is working on making it an online multiplayer game. Find the link in the resources below.

This group has made real strides in the past 8 months. The survey results show that folks are getting things out of the group and are looking for more good stuff to come. There is no special trick to this. Collectively we have a real power to teach, learn and lead. Where else are the marketers going to learn how to use their websites or publications to get their message out? Who else is going to open the possibilities of web applications to them? Who else is going to teach the decision makers what a CMS is actually used for and how to make the right choice from among the many available options? Who else is going to turn the technology into magic? It is the professional web and print community and I'm proud to be part of it!

~Bob Flynn, IUMMUG manager

Industry News

• Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows. Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them. Once you've completed Boot Camp, simply hold down the option key at startup to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. After starting up, your Mac runs Windows completely natively. Simply restart to come back to Mac. NOTE: Check out the review by IUMMUG member Thomas Harris of O'Reilly's eBook on installing Boot Camp.
• Developers can download the free Flash Player 7 for Pocket PC today to start developing and experiencing rich Flash content, enterprise applications and mobile services right from your Pocket PC.
• The Flash authoring team wants to hear from you! Add your ideas to the Flash 9 Wish List.
• MySQL is due to unveil a new transaction database engine at its user conference in late April 2006, according to a company executive. The new transaction database was developed by Jim Starkey, a noted database software architect who joined MySQL when it acquired his Web application technology company in February, Urlocker said in an interview at the LinuxWorld conference in Boston.
• The future of ColdFusion and Flex are in the news with an editorial by Simon Horwith and an interview with Ben Forta.
• Government Technology reports on the speed with which open source developers eliminate bugs

Reviews

As mentioned in the article above, we have 7 reviews this month. One of our speakers was kind enough to make book recommendations early enough to get them all reviewd. Into the mix throw an eBook from O'Reilly on Boot Camp from Apple. See all these reviews as well as many others on the new IUMMUG Review database.

Tips & Tricks

IUMMUG Karen Oeding has been playing with Dreamweaver 8 and has come up with a list of some of the cool features that she likes best.

Dreamweaver 8: A Few of My Favorite Things

1. Customize Your Work Space

   Look under Window -> Workspace Layout, there are some neat things you can do with your workspace.

   Try out the "coder" or the "designer" default views then drag your panel group around to get the desired effect. Look under the Window menu again to see if there are any panels you might want to use on a regular basis. Hey, why not open them all and see what they've got in them?

   Once you have it the way you want it, go back to Window -> Workspace Layout and select "Save Current..." Here's how I'm using mine while working on my Zen Garden Challenge.

   Notice I have my panel groups for files on the right and CSS on the left.

   My properties are along the bottom as well as my results panel for quick testing. I nested my References panel in my Results Window because with it being along the bottom of the screen you have a nice wide area to read in.

   The other thing I love is when I don't feel like seeing those wing-like panels, I can hide them in one of two ways: I can go to that little arrow on the divider between the column and the main view and click on it. Or, when I'm feeling particularly like seeing only my center area, I use F4 and they both toggle off. Want them back in a hurry? F4 again and they both toggle on.

2. Snippets

   Do you ever use Dreamweaver's Snippets? I know for sure they were available in Dreamweaver MX 2004 and I started using them back then.

   Find the panel by pressing F9. Some of these that come with Dreamweaver are based on tables, but can give you some nice quick code snips. Check out the JavaScript snips: there's even one to create a Random Image feature. This is great for a page where you want the user to see a new image each time they visit the page. It's kind of like paint by numbers, but it's code.

   What I like to use my snippet panel for are snips of code that I like to reuse on all kinds of sites. So I have a growing library of organized CSS snippets as well as some page elements like navigation that I like to start with and customize.

   Want more?

   • Go to http://www.dwfaq.com/Snippets/default.asp for a library, yes a library of snippets.
   • Go to http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=589 for a little snippet tutorial.

   Snippets are cool. They save time. And they're so conveniently located in that little library.

3. Linecraft Hide Email Plugin

   This one I use on every site I build, with every email. Every time. No exceptions.

   I hate spam, I really, really do. This tool helps you encrypt your email addresses so that spammers can't find a useable email from your site. Really. Easy to download, easy to use. Oh and did I say: FREE. Go to Dreamweaver Exchange http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/exchange/ and search for "Linecraft." It puts some javascript in the head tag of your page that scrambles the email address then puts it back together again in the user's email program. You are the protector of your client's email addresses. And you can tell your clients "I've encrypted your email address there so it is not harvested by malicious spam-bots." You look smart, you are smart.

Resources Worth a Look

We all pick up cool sites and cool tools during the course of our personal or professional browsing. Each month we share links collected and submitted by IUMMUG members. This month's resource section covers the spectrum from How-tos to How-they-do-thats? We have so many things it might evolve into its own newsletter. Until that time, enjoy what we have to share with you.

Remember if you run across a link that you found helpful, interesting or even just plain wacky, send it along to iummug @ indiana.edu. If you don't send them, we can't share them!

• Photoshop:
  • Masking with Channels in Photoshop. Excerpted from Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers by Barry Huggins. Masking is one of the most important aspects of working with Photoshop and often the most difficult. In this excerpt you'll learn how to create effective masks for tree branches and fur, how to make the most of blending modes and more.
  • We were all set to list this great article on the Photoshop Art History Brush when it struck us that the whole Graphics.com site was a goldmine of resources for designers. Get to know it!
  • Photoshop CS2 tips and tricks from Rob Daniels and Dee Sadler, of the Kansas City ColdFusion User Group. Web oriented tips and tricks as well as how to get the most from Photoshop. Length - 2 hours
• Conferences:
  • The InDesign Conference and The Creative Suite Conference will take place from May 15-20 in Chicago, IL.
• ColdFusion:
  • Jeff Houser writes a guide to help the reluctant in Making the Switch to CFEclipse.
  • Now that Yahoo and Microsoft have jumped into the game, Joe Danziger takes a closer look at Mapping APIs available to programmers.
  • From the Kansas City ColdFusion User Group - An introduction to MS SQL 2000 DTS (data transformation services) and calling it via ColdFusion. Brief example in SQL 2005 too. Length - 1 hour
• Development:
  • IUMMUG member Steve McFarland has put together Flash Scrabble! Grab a friend and play! Send Steve your feedback via the IUMMUG-L @ indiana.edu list
  • Inside WebTools Pro by Lee Underwood. As Web pages continually grow in complexity, Web developers/designers need to check the many aspects of the Web pages they create. In the past, one only needed to check a page in different browsers to see how they were displayed, and perhaps perform a bit of validation. These are still important steps but there are many more things to be checked, such as page load times, color depth, meta tags, events on the page and more. For those of us that use Firefox, there are a large assortment of "extensions" to perform these checks and validations. In fact, new ones are added on an almost weekly basis. There are now several addons/plugins for Internet Explorer (IE) as well. One of those is WebTools Pro.
  • The Benefits of Building a Web Site: An excerpt from Macromedia Studio 8 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies by Damon Dean and Andy Cowitt, among other things, explores the reasons that web sites get built, and gets you ready to build your own Web site.
  • Webreference.com presents a good primer in How to Design for Different Browsers. You'll find a very useful chart on page 2.
  • A lot has been written about Flash Player detection, but what about Acrobat detection. Adobe's John Dowdell jumps in with a couple resources. http://www.dithered.com/javascript/acrobat.html and http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/tips/lc_viewer_version.pdf
  • Flex Builder 2 for Flash Programmers, a presentation for the Online Flash User Group.
• Miscellaneous:
  • MySQL Data Methods. Excerpted from Chapter 3: Working with Data in MySQL from the MySQL, 3rd Edition by Paul Dubois. Virtually everything you do in MySQL involves data in some way or another because the purpose of a database management system is, by definition, to manage data. Even a simple SELECT 1 statement involves expression evaluation to produce an integer data value.
  • New Apress betaBooks give you access to the newest programming topics straight from the author, by way of weekly PDF chapters and updates, all before the final printed versions roll off the press. An advantageous 8 weeks before the book's final publication-and largely before competing books on the topic are released-the first several chapters of an Apress betaBook become available. After that, available updates or new chapters are delivered weekly to your inbox. Apress plans to publish betaBook versions of select titles across multiple technologies to suit every programming professional.
  • And finally, if you ever thought you understood technology, Christopher Ross ran into the one Dreamweaver error message that says it all

Thanks to John Dowdell, Bob Flynn, Phil Heinz, Steve McFarland, Ed Sullivan and Lee Underwood (of WebReference Newsletter) for this month's contributions.

Training

• The Indiana University UITS IT Training group Summer 2006 schedule has been posted. Check it out.
• The Indiana University School of Continuing Studies also offers a number of Computing and Video courses taught by professionals from around the community. Unfortunately they do not have their summer schedule up yet!

Monthly Challenge

The Zen-diana Design Challenge is entering its final round. Round 2 went to the bold blues of Karen Oeding. Details will be posted on the contest page as soon as they are available.

Free Stuff

• Win Over $2000 Worth of Software!
  • We are still giving raffle chances to each person attending the monthly meeting. The prize is the winner's choice of Adobe/Macromedia software (either a single application or bundled suite) up to a value of $2,100!
• April Meeting Give-Aways Include
  • Dreamweaver 8 Design and Construction by Marc Campbell
  • Macromedia Studio 8: Training from the Source by IUMMUG's very own Shaowen Bardzell, Jeff Bardzell and Bob Flynn!
  • Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman
  • And as always there may be one or two fabulous prizes that we haven't told you about-you have to be there to win! Come join the fun at this month's IUMMUG!

Get Involved

IUMMUG has periodic and ongoing opportunities to get more involved. If any of these activities interest you, contact iummug @ indiana.edu. Current opportunities include:

• Raffle Coordinator (new): We are going to step up the ways members can win and we need someone to coordinate it.
• Web Designer (ongoing): We would like to redesign our website. Creative ideas and energy are needed.
• Coldfusion Programmer (ongoing): We would like to redesign our website. There are some fundamental changes that need to be made. ColdFusion programmers, from novice to experienced, with the time and desire to contribute are welcome.
• Extension Reviewer (ongoing): As mentioned in the December Spotlight we would like to start playing with and reviewing extensions from the Adobe Exchange. We are looking for reviewers for Dreamweaver, Flash, ColdFusion, Fireworks and more.
• Book Reviewer (ongoing): We are always looking for those interested in reviewing books from our publishing partners. If you find a book that looks interesting, drop us a line and we'll get it for you. Review the book and keep it when you are done!

March 06 LiveWire (3/28/2006) - part 1

In this month's issue:

• IUMMUG & Industry News: Software announcements, Browser tools, Conference discounts, Local Flash User Group
• Book Review: Foundation Flash 8 by Sham Bhangal and Kristian Besley and Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0
• Tips & Tricks: Dreamweaver – Photo editing in a pinch
• Resources: Database, Design, Flash, Programming, too much to even summarize!
• Training: UITS IT Training, IU Continuing Studies, People's University, Commerical Photoshop class
• What's that mean?: Server-side Includes
• Monthly Challenge: Zen-diana Design Challenge Continues
• Free Stuff: Podcasting and Studio 8 books
• Get Involved: We need a Newsletter editor, Reviewers, CF programmers, Web designer, Raffle coodinator

IUMMUG & Industry News

• Software
  • Adobe/Macromedia Labs:
    • Flex 2.0 Beta 2 is released. Flash Player 8.5 Beta and other pieces of the Flex puzzle were updated as well. See details of the changes from Beta 1.
    • Build the coolest Flex application and win more than just bragging rights. Enter the Flex Developer Derby and you can win recognition from your peers, plus a plasma TV and an Xbox!
    • Ben Forta is touring the country talking about ColdFusion MX 7 and Flex 2. Check out what he has to say.
    • ActionScript3 Libraries: Adobe Developer Relations team released a set of seven free ActionScript 3.0 APIs to help developers get started building Flex 2.0 applications on http://labs.adobe.com.
    • XMP Toolkit Version 4.0 Prerelease 1: The Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is a labeling technology that allows you to embed data about a file, known as metadata, into the file itself. With XMP, desktop applications and back-end publishing systems gain a common method for capturing, sharing, and leveraging this valuable metadata opening the door for more efficient job processing, workflow automation, and rights management, among many other possibilities.
  • In mid-February Indiana University contracts for Macromedia software expired. Pricing and licensing for new purchases shifted to Adobe and its agreements with IU. Prices increased and personal purchases in the bookstores are now limited to students. On the positive side of the ledger, it is our understanding that Adobe does allow for a "work-at-home" installation of the software purchased and licensed for use at work. Talk to your campus purchasing agent to get details.
  • Do you want some of those fun Apple-like widgets on your Windows machines? Well Yahoo bought Konfabulator and set those widgets free!
  • U.S. Grants Patent For Broad Range Of Internet Rich Applications
  • What's New in Photoshop CS2 — A recorded Macrochat with John Nack of the Adobe Photoshop team.
• Browsers
  • Extend Firefox Context: Mozilla announces the winners of its Extend Firefox Contest. The contest was open for developers to create new, cool extensions for Firefox.
  • Firefox 2.0 'Bon Echo' Takes Its Baby Step (by Sean Michael Kerner): It's just an early alpha release at this point, but Mozilla Firefox 2.0 "Bon Echo" is an early showcase for the next round of the modern browser wars.
  • Updates to the Yahoo Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox provides tabbed browsing to users of IE 5 and 6, and several improvements based on user feedback for the Firefox version. (Thanks to Webreference for this one.)
• Conferences
  • Students qualify for a special student 60% discount on CFUNITED, the premiere ColdFusion technical conference. Discounts for non-student user group members as well. Act soon. Price increases March 31!
  • MySQL Users Conference 2006 takes place in Santa Clara, CA in April. Discounts are available for user group members, ful-time students and employees of non-profit organizations.
  • National Association of Broadcasters Web & Mobile Development Conference takes place in Las Vegas, NV in April as well.
  • An Event Apart: For People Who Make Web Sites is coming to Chicago, IL on Friday, June 2nd. This amazing one-day touring workshop features Web Standards guru (and Indiana University graduate!) Jeffrey Zeldman and reknown CSS expert Eric Meyer. The first two workshops in Philadelipia and Atlanta sold out. Register by May 1 and get $50 off. IUMMUG manager Bob Flynn attended the Philadelphia An Event Apart. He can tell you all about it.
• Other
  • On March 8, IUMMUG members interested in creating a Flash User Group gathered to strategize. A survey was sent out and the results are now being tabulated. Watch for more news on the list!
  • Microsoft has announced that the release of its new operating system, code-named Vista, has been pushed back to 2007. Reports are that large parts of it must be rewritten.
  • Mr. Dell vs. Dell Inc.: Dell Computers is suing a man named Paul Dell for having the domain name "dellwebsites.com." Paul is a Web designer who lives in Spain.
  • Don't Make Me Think… Let Steve Krug Do It For You!: Win a 1-day site review by Web usability expert Steve Krug!. Simply send an email to contests@peachpit.com with your name and postal address and you'll be entered to win. No purchase necessary. The contest will close March 31, 2006 and the winner will be drawn before April 15, 2006. The winner will be contacted via email.

Reviews

This month we take a look at a Flash book from a great software book publisher, Friends of Ed. We'll have a few more of their books in coming months. I encourage you to check out their titles. Request one to review if you are intersted. Our second review is also something new for us. We take a look at some software from a great software maker. Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 is the everyman's home video-editing, DVD-producing software for Windows.

The review of Sham Bhangal and Kristian Besley's Foundation Flash 8 and Bob Flynn's review of Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 can now be found on our Review page.

Tips & Tricks

Dreamweaver: Photo editing in a pinch

IUMMUG member Laura Wisely found herself trying to squeeze a big screenshot in a small space. Lo and behold, Dremweaver had just what she needed. Check out her full story .

Resources Worth a Look

We all pick up cool sites and cool tools during the course of our personal or professional browsing. Each month we share links collected and submitted by IUMMUG members. This month's resource section covers the spectrum from How-tos to How-they-do-thats? We have so many things it might evolve into its own newsletter. Until that time, enjoy what we have to share with you.

Remember if you run across a link that you found helpful, interesting or even just plain wacky, send it along to iummug @ indiana.edu. If you don't send them, we can't share them!

• Database
  • Creating Database-Driven Websites Using ColdFusion MX 7 on Mac OS X (by David Stutler): Until recently, it was difficult for most Apple users and ColdFusion developers to fit comfortably together. This all changed when Adobe (formerly Macromedia) released a version of ColdFusion MX 7 with official support for the Apple Mac OS X platform.
  • Ten of the Biggest Mistakes Developers Make With Databases (by Mke Gunderloy): You are probably still pumping data in and out of a database, just as we all did a decade or more ago. That makes it all the more surprising that mistakes are still being made that date back to the good old days of Windows 95 and before.
  • Don't Use Select *. It could be stealing away precious performance from your application.
• Design
  • Bookend Lists: Using CSS to Float a Masthead: Learn how to create that 'bookend' look with lists and CSS positioning. This CSS-layout technique saves a significant amount of XHTML code over tables.
  • CSS resources and tutorials for web designers and developers: Some of these tutorials includes creating radically different list options with just a simple list; using CSS to create floating images, images with captions, next and back buttons, drop caps, inline lists and more; and a step by step tutorial using selectors to build a 3-column layout.
• Flash Picks (A recent question on the list asked for favorite Flash Resources. Paul Robertson and Scott Brown came through with the following)
  • Books:
    • ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference
    • Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Flash
    • Essential ActionScript 2.0
    • Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move (watch for upcoming review in May newsletter)
    • Macromedia Flash 8 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide
    • Macromedia Flash 8 Advanced for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickPro Guide (yet another IUMMUG author!)
  • Online Resources:
    • Flash Livedocs — the main documentation for Flash
    • The Flash category in the "Macromedia XML News Aggregator"
    • Full As A Goog — Aggregator of blogs dealing with Rich Internet Application development
    • Paul Robertson's Recommended Reading List from his blog
    • Flash author Lee Brimelow's site, and his excellent resources The Flash Blog and GoToAndLearn.com
• Programming
  • Python Essentials: Operators and Expressions: An excerpt from Python Essential Reference, 3rd Edition by David Beazleyo describing Python's built-in operators as well as the precedence rules used in the evaluation of expressions
  • JavaScript Primer Number 1 (by Mark Kahn): The first in a 10-part series that introduces the JavaScript language. This article explains what JavaScript is, and shows you how to create your first script.
  • Visual Verification in PHP (by Brett Patterson): While it's easy to check to see if a form field is empty, determining if the posted information came from a real human is another task altogether. Most online forms now include image verification for just this reason. This article will demonstrate how to create a simplified image verification system.
  • ActionScript 2.0 Best Practices (by Jen deHaan): ActionScript coding conventions are very important for Macromedia Flash designers and developers to ensure that code and applications are structured in a way that is intuitive and beneficial to themselves as well as other people working on the same project. This is particularly important with long code files. When you follow coding conventions, everyone on the design and development team can understand the code and can work more efficiently. This document helps formalize the ActionScript coding process. The sections in this article outline best practices for writing ActionScript.
  • Professional Ajax: XML, XPath, and XSLT: Reproduced from "Professional Ajax" by Nicholas Zakas, Jeremy McPeak, Joe Fawcett. Browser makers have broadened the availability of XML support with new features, giving Web developers powerful tools akin to those formerly found only on the server. In this installment you will learn how to load and manipulate XML documents in an XML DOM object, use XPath to select XML nodes that meet certain criteria, and transform XML documents into HTML using XSLT.
• Miscellaneous
  • 2nd Wednesdays - a virtual brownbag series about teaching with technology
  • Debunking SEO Myths (by Shari Thurow): This column addresses the myths and misconceptions about the branding impact of top search engine positions through "natural" SEO. People make assumptions about Web sites that achieve top search engine visibility. They believe, for example, a Web site must be a valuable source of information, or it wouldn't have a top 10 position in Google, Yahoo!, or MSN Search. The site must generate millions of dollars in revenue. And even if a site doesn't convert visitors into buyers, top positions surely deliver a positive branding impact… right?
  • Inside Adobe Bridge and Version Cue: Inside Adobe Bridge and Version Cue: Part 1. Excerpted from Adobe Creative Suite 2 Workflow by Jennifer Alspach, Shari Nakano and Steve Samson. Just when you thought you knew everything about Creative Suite, Adobe has given you more to work with, and the ability to connect all your Creative Suite 2 applications via the new Bridge and manage your files with Version Cue CS2.
  • Check out the article "A Personal Experience with Philly-Based User Groups" by Rober M. Hall. Roberts discusses the value of user groups for network.

Thanks to Scott Brown, Bob Flynn, Paul Robertson, Ed Sullivan and Lee Underwood (of WebReference Newsletter) for this month's contributions.

March 06 LiveWire (3/28/2006) - part 2

Training

We are fortunate to have a nice variety of training providers in our community. IU's IT Trianing group, IU's school of Continuing Studies and the City of Bloomington's People's University all provide courses for those interested in learning to putting their creative ideas to work. If you are holding training relevant to IUMMUG members or you are aware of any other training opportunities worth sharing, send them to iummug @ indiana.edu.

• The Indiana University UITS IT Training group is excellent source of great workshops on a wide variety of topics. From single classes in CSS to series such as the Web Graphics Certificate Series to in-depth 3-day workshops on ActionScript, ColdFusion and MS SQL. These hands-on classes are an incredible value for those inside and outside the university community. As mentioned last month, the spring schedules are out. Get a great start coding with the Web Markup & Style Coding Certificate Series, the Web Graphics fundamentals with Macromedia Studio Series will help you develop a great graphics toolset. Check out the Flash, CSS, XHTML and other classes. Their redesigned website clearly lists all their series and topics in all locations.
• The Indiana University School of Continuing Studies also offers a number of Computing and Video courses taught by professionals from around the community, including some members of IUMMUG.
• Another source of training available in Bloomington is from the good folks at Megagrooves. Under the auspices of the City of Bloomington's People's University, Megagrooves' Carlos Colon has one more course, Digital Cameras, on the spring schedule.
• Photoshop is Comin' to Town! (Sing with me!) — The folks at CompuMaster are doing a one-day Photoshop training/conference at the University Plaza Hotel on May 25.

What's that mean?

This month's term is SSI. It stands for server-side includes. In a nutshell, SSI's are snippets of code or script that are run on the server when someone calls your web page. Typically the do some processing before the server returns your page. Typically if your host web server has SSI's turned on, you need to change the extension of your pages from .html or .htm to .shtml or .shtm. This signals the server to look for the processing directives in the files before returning the content to the user's web browser. These directives can do neat little tricks like dynamically pulling in the name of the page and the last modified date. This is handy if you use the same footer file for all your pages. Which leads me to the real power and usefulness of SSI's. SSI's can pull in other files at the moment your page is constructed and returned to the user's browser. This means that you can have a single header file, a single navigation file and a single footer file for your entire site. This makes it easy to update common elements, like banner images or navigation links, on your entire site from a single source.

Of course it's easy enough to look up the definition of SSI on Wikipedia. They even have a few code examples that we won't cover here. However let's take a look at a concrete example. The good folks on the Indiana University Web team have put together some web page templates for university entities to use. We'll focus on the IUB Web Page Templates for our example.

The IUB Web Page Templates consist of a number of files, none of which is, by itself, a complete web page. The download comes with three pages (index.shtml, page1.shtml and page2.shtml) representing a home page and a couple of internal pages. Through the magic of SSI's these pages share the same header, navigation, footer and search "includes". That means if I change a link in the navigation include (_leftnav.shtml) it will change it on all three pages. If I change an image in the header (_header.shtml) it will change in on all three pages. It's a great thing, especially if you have 100 pages on your site and the boss says he wants the link change from "Courses" to "Course Descriptions". You can have the whole site updated before the electronic ink is dry on his email.

There are some pitfalls to watch out for though and I don't believe they are adequately explained on the IUB Web Page Templates page. If you site has multiple levels, you have to modify the path to the include files to allow each file to find the includes. There are simple technical ways like symbolic links to get around that. The other major pitfall is that if your links and paths to images are relative then they will break when they are displayed in pages at a different level in your web heirarchy than the includes. However, if you use absolute paths in your links and your tags, you can overcome this.

If you build your site with Dreamweaver you can let it worry about all of these path issues. If you create your pages from a Dreamweaver template that knows where the includes are located, it will fix the paths automatically regardless of where under your web root you save your files. Below I have provided links to a version of the IUB Web Page Templates made from a Dreamweaver template (template included) as well as a version made using ColdFusion's tag for those CFer's out there.

One final note. The directions on the IUB Web Page Templates page are primarily intended for those putting pages on Apache web servers (like Veritas and Champion at IUB and IUPUI). They do mention how you must vary your SSI commands if you are on a Windows IIS web server. By default SSI's are turned off on IIS. (How's that for confusion? SSI and IIS?) Check with your server administrators before assuming you can do this.

• IUB Web Templates built from Dreamweaver template (18KB zip file)
• IUB Web Templates built for ColdFusion (18KB zip file)

~Bob Flynn

Monthly Challenge

The Monthly Challenge is an area where we post real problems faced by your fellow developers and designers. We throw it out there for you, the membership, to present a solution. Put your best answer(s) forward for a chance to win fame and prizes. NOTE: If you'd like to share a challenge, please contact iummug @ indiana.edu. It can be any sort of challenge (programming, design, graphic, video, Flash, etc.) that you face in your web/print work.

We make no secret of this month's challenge. We are moving into the second month of our IUMMUG: Zen-diana Design Contest. At press time the winner of the first round of the challenge had yet to be announced. The second round entails building the links portion of the site based on the first round winning design. For full details and to see the competing designs, see the contest page. Oh, and did we mention that just participating gives you a chance at over $2000 worth of software?

Free Stuff

Beginning with the February 2006 meeting each person attending the meeting will get one chance to win our software Grand Prize. The prize is the winner's choice of Adobe/Macromedia software (either a single application or bundled suite) up to a value of $2,100! There will be several ways to get raffle tickets including participating in the monthly challege.

Below are a few of the items we'll be giving away at the March meeting.

• Podcasting Hacks: Tips and Tools for Blogging Out Loud By Jack Herrington
• Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual By David Sawyer McFarland
• Macromedia Flash 8: Training from the Source By James English — See IUMMUG member Ruth Droppo's review in the December 05 newsletter

And as always there may be one or two fabulous prizes that we haven't told you about-you have to be there to win! Come join the fun at this month's IUMMUG!

Get Involved

IUMMUG has periodic and ongoing opportunities to get more involved. If any of these activities interest you, contact iummug @ indiana.edu. Current opportunities include:

• Newsletter Editor (new): Help put together our monthly newsletter. Technical skills are not necessary. You just need to be punctual, persuasive and have good attention to detail.
• Raffle Coordinator (new): We are going to step up the ways members can win and we need someone to coordinate it.
• Web Designer (ongoing): We would like to redesign our website. Creative ideas and energy are needed.
• Coldfusion Programmer (ongoing): We would like to redesign our website. There are some fundamental changes that need to be made. ColdFusion programmers, from novice to experienced, with the time and desire to contribute are welcome.
• Extension Reviewer (ongoing): As mentioned in the December Spotlight we would like to start playing with and reviewing extensions from the Adobe Exchange. We are looking for reviewers for Dreamweaver, Flash, ColdFusion, Fireworks and more.
• Book Reviewer (ongoing): We are always looking for those interested in reviewing books from our publishing partners. If you find a book that looks interesting, drop us a line and we'll get it for you. Review the book and keep it when you are done!

February 06 LiveWire - part 1 (2/20/2006)

In this month's issue:

• IUMMUG & Industry News: IUMMUG name modification, hardware and software releases
• Book Review: Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Certified Developer Study Guide by Ben Forta
• Tips & Tricks: Photoshop – Web headers, Illustrator – Recreate fonts, UNIX – Quick strip-tease, Firefox – Keywords
• Resources: Video, ColdFusion, Alternative Training
• Training: UITS IT Training, IU Continuing Studies, People's University
• What's that mean?: Rich Internet Applications
• Monthly Challenge: Zen-diana Design Challenge Launched!
• Free Stuff: Thousands of $$ in software, piles of books, MM Memorabilia
• Get Involved: We need reviewers, CF programmers, Web designer, Raffle coodinator

IUMMUG & Industry News

• Our top story is a local one. Three months after the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia, we are making a subtle change to the name of our group. Clearly foreshadowed in the October 05 Challenge, we are now officially the Indiana University Multimedia User Group. There are a number of reasons for this.
  1. Reality — Macromedia no longer exists as a company. Once Adobe figures out what they want to call their user group program, we'll throw their logo on the site because we do receive support from them and we are an officially sanctioned group, for what that's worth.
  2. Inclusion — "Multimedia" is more inclusive than Macromedia was. Apart from the obvious sense that we were endorsing Macromedia's products, we have always tried, albeit with marginal success, to bring in more people than those who work on the Web side of the house.
  3. Practicality — "Multimedia" works nicely. We don't have to buy all new stationery or hold a new logo contest.
• Microsoft Expression — Microsoft recently announced a new bundle of design products. This bundle contains three applications: Graphic Designer (that brings together seemless manipulation of vector- and pixel-based media), Interactive Designer (for streamlined creation of multimedia applications), and Web Designer (for creating standards-based web sites). The Interactive Designer, code-named "Sparkle" is seen as a direct competitor for Flash.
• Apple's introduction of their new Intel Core Duo chips may mean for a lot more fun and a lot more speed from your Mac, but it might also mean a wait for your favorite applications to become "Universal". Adobe announced (PDF: 79k) its Intel Mac support will not come until 2007.
• Internet Explorer 7 — Beta 2 preview is now available. Given the upcoming release, Adobe is relaunching the Active Content Developer Center to help developers get to the most current information on both the intended changes to MSIE, and the suggested steps and "design arounds" to prepare your content for this browser update from Microsoft.
• It's Official! Fireworks Lives to See Another Cycle Community MX's Stephanie Sullivan blogs on official word from Adobe that a new version of Fireworks is in the works. Word from Ben Forta and a Sacramento ColdFusion User Group presentation is that FlashPaper still lives on and will see another update as well. Interesting stuff!
• If you have moved to Firefox 1.5 you should move a tiny step further. An update (1.5.0.1) has been released to fix a few security holes.

Book Review

The February Meeting covers ColdFusion forms and we hope it will bring in a few people new to ColdFusion. With that in mind, IUMMUG member Renee Le Beau tells us that there is something for everyone in the ColdFusion books she is reviewing.

The review of Ben Forta's Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Certified Developer Study Guide can now be found on our Review page.

Tips & Tricks

Photoshop Tip: Web headers sans original files

You've started a new job and inherited a web site to maintain. Unfortunately your predecessor did not leave behind any of the original files used to create the site. How do you add new heads to match the old ones?

1. Set up a folder to put the new headers that go with a project.
2. Save one of the header bars (gif or jpeg) from the web into that folder.
3. Open it in Photoshop and save as a PSD file. Make a duplicate of the background as a new layer. Name this one Bar. With the eyedropper tool, select the bar's background color. Take the Marquee or Lasso tool to surround type and other elements on the header pulled from the web site. Don't capture any elements that must appear on every page such as a logo. Use Edit > Fill with 100% Foreground color. You should now see an empty header bar shape. Close the eye at left on the layer to close it temporarily.
4. Original web bar should be showing. Select Type tool and type over the existing header-use the same words as original header. The new type will be on separate layer floating above the original which allows you experiment in finding the typeface used previously. Once you determine the typeface, adjust the font weight, size, and color to match original type. Draw a horizontal rule at the bottom of the type line and a vertical one matching the justification of the original headers.
5. When the match is complete, drag this type layer above the new Bar layer. You will see your new type floating over your new empty bar as well as alignment rules.
6. If there is a small logo or art element to be added to every bar that type overprints, add from an original logo file or copy and recreate the art elements. Place in same location as original bar.

Illustrator Tip: Recreate Fonts sans Original

When trying to update the IUMMUG logo, manager Bob Flynn encountered a small problem. He didn't have the font used in the original. Although he had the Illustrator files, the fonts were outlined. To the graphically unitiated, like Bob, this just meant that he couldn't type over them. The font in question was Adobe Myriad Pro. He had Adobe Myriad and Myriad Pro — both close, but not exact. He used his lifeline and called IUMMUG-L, the IUMMUG discussion list. Bob thought the answers were so helpful that he wanted to include them in this month's tips.

Michelle Buddie explained the problem this way,

"Once a font has been 'outlined' you essentially lose the ability to go back and edit it as a font - it's sort of like doing a 'break apart' in flash, or rasterizing a font layer in photoshop. Except you can scale the outlined font and actually use the handle bars to change the shape of the letters like a regular shape."

Molly Marlatt provided this advice on how to work around the problem.

"You've got a couple options that I know of. You can either select the text and adjust the horizontal scale (in the character palette—you may need to expand the palette once it's open using the little arrow in the top right, you're looking for the letter T with a horizontal double-headed arrow underneath it). Increase/Decrease % as needed… You may find that doing this will put more spacing between the letters than you intended. To correct that, adjust the tracking in that same palette (AV with horizontal, double-headed arrow beneath it).

"If that doesn't give you the result you're looking for, you could change your text to outlines (basically turning them into objects rather than text) and then widen them. To do that, you would need to right click>>create outlines. Then right click again>>ungroup. Select all of the letters you want to widen>>right click>>transform>>transform each. There should be an option to adjust horizontally (and also a handy preview option if you want to see what it looks like before you say ok). Increase/decrease the percent for the horizontal scale."

If YOU run into a problem and you are looking for help. Look no further than your colleagues and fellow IUMMUG members. Post it to IUMMUG-L@indiana.edu. If you are not on the list, please subscribe. This is a great example of its purpose. We hope it can help you too!

A Quick Strip-tease for Your Duplicates

This didn't make it to the list, but its answer is worth sharing. A student team needed a quick way to clean a text file of all its duplicate lines. After exploring Perl and PHP methods they came up with this quick and easy answer that works from a Unix command prompt.

sort yourtextfile.txt | uniq > newtextfile.txt

Keywords are Key to Fast Access to Your Firefox Bookmarks

Are you a keyboard or a mouse person? You know what I mean. Are you a clicker or typer? (Yeah, I know, "typ-IST".) For those of you who like to let all ten fingers do the walking and the surfing you'll love this tip. Firefox allows you to access any bookmark with a single word, or even a single letter! Just right-click (ctrl-click on Mac) on a bookmark in Firefox and choose Properties. Type a word or letters into the Keyword field. They will serve as a shortcut. Click 'OK' to save your changes. Now click in the browser's address box or ctrl-l (cmd-l for Mac) to select the address box. Type the your keyword in and hit enter (return). It will take you to your page. This is a real time-saver for those pages you have to open all the time.

Resources Worth a Look

We all pick up cool sites and cool tools during the course of our personal or professional browsing. Each month we share links collected and submitted by IUMMUG members. This month's resource section covers the spectrum from How-tos to How-they-do-thats? We have so many things it might evolve into its own newsletter. Until that time, enjoy what we have to share with you.

Remember if you run across a link that you found helpful, interesting or even just plain wacky, send it along to iummug @ indiana.edu. If you don't send them, we can't share them!

• For the Video Set
  • You've got the video on DVD, now how do you get it on your website? Flash video is often a good choice, but how do you convert it to a .flv? Womble's MPEG Video Wizard DVD provides a flexible alternative. Read up more about it in the process in this guide on a UK video forum.
  • Are you looking for a fast, easy and inexpensive way to bring video to your website? Don't be bold, be Wimpy! (software review)
  • Flash Video Template: Video Presentation with Navigation by Dan Carr
  • As Macromedia and now Adobe make greater use of the Flash Platform, people look for more ways to make it work for them. In this tutorial on the Adobe website Michael Ninness shows how to Load External JPEG files into .swf at Runtime.
  • A few months back we mentioned GoToAndLearn.com, but it bears repeating. This guy has put togther a variety of high-quality, no-charge, Flash and Flash Video tutorials that are easy to watch and learn from.
• ColdFusion
  • CF Conferences coming up in March —
    • cf.Objective (March 11 & 12, Minneapolis, MN) is a high-end ColdFusion conference.
    • Spring
      (March 23, Athen, OH) is held each year by the Southeast Ohio Macromedia User Group and is very highly regarded. Some IUMMUG folks went last year and liked everything but the drive!
  • Where are all the CF7 Materials?
    • Not too long after the launch of CF7 a discussion began about the lack of new books coming out about it. Steven Erat of TalkingTree.com got the ball rolling.
    • Ray Camden, ColdFusion Jedi and all-around nice guy opined further at the New Year that it had been years since a ColdFusion Cookbook came out. There was a need to be filled and Ray took the intiative. So was born the online Coldfusion Cookbook. The site was created to offer practical solutions to problems that developers encounter every day. Check it out.
• Training Alternatives or Alternative Trainings?
  • ColdFusion in Ohio in March may be some folks' idea of fun, but my vote goes to Geek Cruises! — Get your techno-fix while cruising Mediterranean, Caribbean or even to Alaska!
  • How about a conference where the topics are decided on the spot and take advantage of the interest and expertise at hand? You have to check out BrainJams!
• Random Food for Thought
  • XML in the Real World — Scott Fegette teaches you what XML is, what purpose it serves, and how you can put it to use in your projects.
  • So you want to make some money at this? Internetnews.com reports on how PayPal Aims at Developer Integration. It could just make it a bit easier to pull in the cash.
  • Are you thinking about trying to get certified in your favorite application or technology? It could mean a bump in your paycheck or even a new job. You can check out the Exam Blueprints for the current and upcoming tests for former Macromedia products and see the guidelines for Adobe's ACE certification program as well.
  • You know you should do it. Why not make it easy on yourself. Take a look at Russel Madere's Fusionauthority.com article entitled Towards Better Code Documentation
  • NoteTab Pro (software review) — If you're comfortable with HTML and CSS and don't want or need a WYSIWYG program, then NoteTab Pro may be the editor for you.

Thanks to Loren Elks, Bob Flynn, Mitchell Greenfield, Dave Hannum, Craig Malcolm Petrou, Kevin Stagg, Ed Sullivan and Lee Underwood (of WebReference Newsletter) for this month's contributions.

February 06 LiveWire - part 2 (2/20/2006)

Training

We are fortunate to have a nice variety of training providers in our community. IU's IT Trianing group, IU's school of Continuing Studies and the City of Bloomington's People's University all provide courses for those interested in learning to putting their creative ideas to work. If you are holding training relevant to IUMMUG members or you are aware of any other training opportunities worth sharing, send them to iummug @ indiana.edu.

• The Indiana University UITS IT Training group is not only a big supporter of IUMMUG, but they are an excellent source of very affordable, very helpful workshops on a wide variety of topics. From single classes in CSS to series such as the Web Graphics Certificate Series to in-depth 3-day workshops on ActionScript, ColdFusion and MS SQL. These hands-on classes are an incredible value for those inside and outside the university community. As mentioned last month, the spring schedules are out. Get a great start coding with the Web Markup & Style Coding Certificate Series, the Web Graphics fundamentals with Macromedia Studio Series will help you develop a great graphics toolset. Check out the Flash, CSS, XHTML and other classes. Their redesigned website clearly lists all their series and topics in all locations.
• The Indiana University School of Continuing Studies also offers a number of Computing and Video courses taught by professionals from around the community.
• Another source of training available in Bloomington is from the good folks at Megagrooves. Under the auspices of the City of Bloomington's People's University, Megagrooves' Carlos Colon is offering technology courses in MP3 Technology and Digital Cameras in the coming months.

What's that mean?

In the Web world technology and terminology changes come fast and furious. Keeping up with what things mean, much less how to do them can be a full-time job. Each month we will try to highlight a term or two, tell you what they mean and give some examples and/or tutorials that help explain them.

This month we look at Rich Internet Applications or more commonly RIA's. As usual Wikipedia gives us a thorough definition of RIA's, but we'll summarize it here and point you to some examples.

The term Rich Internet Applications was introduced by Macromedia in 2002 but it represents a concept that had been around for some time. It describes applications that are a cross between Web and traditional desktop applications. They take advantage of Web browsers' increased capabilities to do client-side processing of data. They typically require no software in addition to the browsers and plugins that come standard on most computers.

A short list of Rich Internet Applications includes many now familar to Internet users. Google's Gmail and Google Maps have become commonplace and Yahoo's Flickr is revolutionizing how we share photos.

The RIA's listed above use AJAX to work their magic, but Macromedia had other ideas when they coined the term. With the nearly ubiquitous proliferation of the Flash player (98% of personal computers by Adobe's estimates) they see the Flash Platform as the ideal method of delivering Rich Internet Applications. This began with Flash-based forms and user interfaces but took a quantum leap forward with the introduction of Flex in 2004. Essentially Flex builds a .swf file, like Flash. These are no ordinary .swf files though. They can be wired into a back-end data feed like Flash Remoting, Web Services or some middleware like ColdFusion, PHP or ASP. So what's the big advantage to all of this? Pretty looking web applications? Maybe, but what really gives the user a "rich" experience is that without page reload or even much delay you get instant updates of information and instant reaction to user feedback. This is not unique to Flex. All RIA's share that sense of real-time feedback.

Seeing is believing. You can see some of the AJAX based applications listed above and read the first in a series of articles on Webreference.com on Alternate AJAX Techniques. To see some Flex applications, see the list below. NOTE: Flex 2 applications are in beta testing now. They require Flash Player 8.5, also in beta.

Flex 1.5 Sample Applications

• Broadmoor Hotel
• Sherwin-Williams Color Visulizer
• Flex Store (demo app)
• More…

Flex 2.0 beta Sample Applications (requires Flash player 8.5)

• Flickr Photo Viewer (demo app) — A nice example of a simple user app mashing with another application.
• Flex Dashboard (demo app)
• Flex Store (demo app) — Check out the difference from the previous version!

Flex 2.0 will be much more accessible to the development community. Adobe has decided to make the SDK and rendering engine (the thing that makes the .swf out of your code) for free. They will charge for Flexbuilder, the custom tool to create Flex applications, but you could also just build them in any text editor. You can download the betas for all this software, including Flexbuilder on the Adobe Labs site. For an idea of what to expect in the new Flexbuilder, see this recent Flexbuilder Macrochat.

Conclusions

I guess the simple conclusion is that the direction of RIA's holds a lot of promise. The method is where the questions are. Developer.com's Alexei White takes a look in that direction — Web RIA Crystal Ball: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Going?

Monthly Challenge

The Monthly Challenge is an area where we post real problems faced by your fellow developers and designers. We throw it out there for you, the membership, to present a solution. Put your best answer(s) forward for a chance to win fame and prizes. NOTE: If you'd like to share a challenge, please contact iummug @ indiana.edu. It can be any sort of challenge (programming, design, graphic, video, Flash, etc.) that you face in your web/print work.

This month the challenge takes on a whole new character. IUMMUG member Karen Oeding has come up with a wonderfully creative project for the entire community. This challenge is so big it will span three months, with winners at each stage.

The Details – Zen-diana Design Challenge

The Indiana University Multimedia User Group (IUMMUG) is going to create a CSS Zen Garden entry over the next 3 months. Each stage you enter and each stage you win increases your chances of winning the Grand Prize of software worth over $2000!

Each month, we'll work on one element and have a vote to determine the winner for that element. The next month's element will build upon that winning idea until we have an entry to submit to csszengarden.com. This technique in design is very much like the old story game where the first person starts a story and then the rest add to it as it goes around a circle.

Full details of the challenge, including eligibility, deadlines, rules and the specifics of the February-March portion are available here.

Free Stuff

• Win Over $2000 Worth of Software!
  • Beginning with the February 2006 meeting each person attending the meeting will get one chance to win our software Grand Prize. The prize is the winner's choice of Adobe/Macromedia software (either a single application or bundled suite) up to a value of $2,100! There will be several ways to get raffle tickets including participating in the monthly challege.
• February Meeting Give-Aways!
  • Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Certified Developer Study Guide by Ben Forta — This comprehensive study guide ensures that you do! In these pages, veteran author and ColdFusion product evangelist Ben Forta provides you with the inside skinny on everything you need to know to become a certified ColdFusion MX 7 developer. Organized as a series of tightly focused review sessions that follow the same subject divisions as the test itself, this thoroughly updated study guide covers all that's new in ColdFusion-structured business reports, rich forms, Enterprise Manager (which lets users cluster multiple ColdFusion servers on a single machine), and more-as well as every major feature and skill: variables and expressions, data types, services and protocols, databases, tuning and optimization. See Review
  • Macromedia Studio 8: Training from the Source by Shaowen Bardzell, Jeff Bardzell (and IUMMUG's very own Bob Flynn!) — Learn by doing! Macromedia Studio 8: Training from the Source provides a comprehensive, working introduction to the most powerful Web design and development suite available. Starting from the ground up, you'll build two Web sites. In the first half of the book, you'll combine the strengths of Macromedia Flash, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver to create an attractive, yet maintainable site. In the second half of the book, you'll focus on building a powerful and dynamic user experience by combining Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver, Contribute, FlashPaper, and ColdFusion. The enclosed CD-ROM contains all the files you need to complete the projects, plus completed files for you to compare with your results and use as models for future projects. If you ask, I'm sure Bob would even autograph the copy for you!
  • Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide Connecting Flash MX Applications to Remote Services by Tom Muck — Flash Remoting MX lets developers easily integrate rich Macromedia Flash content with applications that are built using ColdFusion, ASP.NET, Java, PHP, or SOAP-based web services. The result is complex client/server applications that more closely resemble desktop applications than traditional web pages. Build applications that connect to a database, file system, or other server-side technologies. Developers who are looking to create Rich Internet Applications with the Flash will find Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide indispensable.
  • ONE lucky winner gets to choose SOFTWARE, this month's software selection, with a retail price of $75.00 is The Alagad Image Component. It is a 100% native ColdFusion Component used to create and manipulate image files. Written entirely in ColdFusion CFML, the Image Component does not require installation of any additional software. The Image Component is not a CFX tag and is not Platform dependant.
    
    Using the Image Component you can perform all of the most frequently requested image related functions including reading, writing, creating and drawing into images, resizing and finding image widths and heights, drawing text and even other images into images and controlling image compression quality. It requires almost no effort to install and use. Simply place the component into your custom tags directory or any directory in your site and then instantiate it using the ColdFusion CreateObject method. Once you have the Image Component instantiated you can use its methods to begin creating and manipulating images. To learn more, see the developer give a presentation on the Alagad Image and Captcha Components.
  • And as always there may be one or two fabulous prizes that we haven't told you about-you have to be there to win! Come join the fun at this month's IUMMUG!

Get Involved

IUMMUG has periodic and ongoing opportunities to get more involved. If any of these activities interest you, contact iummug @ indiana.edu. Current opportunities include:

• Raffle Coordinator (new): We are going to step up the ways members can win and we need someone to coordinate it.
• Web Designer (ongoing): We would like to redesign our website. Creative ideas and energy are needed.
• Coldfusion Programmer (ongoing): We would like to redesign our website. There are some fundamental changes that need to be made. ColdFusion programmers, from novice to experienced, with the time and desire to contribute are welcome.
• Extension Reviewer (ongoing): As mentioned in the December Spotlight we would like to start playing with and reviewing extensions from the Adobe Exchange. We are looking for reviewers for Dreamweaver, Flash, ColdFusion, Fireworks and more.
• Book Reviewer (ongoing): We are always looking for those interested in reviewing books from our publishing partners. If you find a book that looks interesting, drop us a line and we'll get it for you. Review the book and keep it when you are done!

January 06 LiveWire (1/25/2006)

In this month's issue:

• IUMMUG & Industry News: Developers in demand, Future of ColdFusion @ Adobe, Future of Macromedia @ IUMMUG
• Book Review: Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8 by Rachel Andrew
• Tips & Tricks: Dreamweaver 8 — The Power of Find and Replace
• Resources: Web Services, CSS, AJAX, Conference, Flash, Cookies, and so much more!
• Training: UITS IT Training offerings and video classes at People's University
• What's that mean?: Fusebox and Mach-II
• Monthly Challenge: December answer but no new January challenge
• Get Involved: We need reviewers, CF programmers, and Web designer

IUMMUG & Industry News

• Web Titans in Web Developer Skirmish — Thanks to recent moves by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft's Internet division, MSN, Web developers are experiencing a spike in attention showered upon them. (eWeek)
• The Future of ColdFusion at Adobe — Simon Horwith, editor of the ColdFusion Developers Journal, interviews Dave Mendels, Senior Vice President of Adobe's new Enterprise and Developer Solutions Business Unit, about opportunities for ColdFusion at Adobe.
• Macromedia had a very open relationship with the users of its products thanks in no small part by its employee blogs. Adobe has kept the ball rolling by having its long-time employees join the newcomers in the Blogosphere. Take a look back at one observer's Best Macromedia Blogs 2005.
• This morning Macromedia released an end date for the introductory upgrade pricing for its Studio 8 product suite. New pricing begins January 1, 2006.
• Adobe President & COO, Shantanu Narayen talks about the company's commitment to the developers and user community.
• Indiana University's UITS IT Training group, premiere technical training group in South Central Indiana has redesigned their site. Find out why and what advantages it provides for you. Let them know what you think, but be kind, there are some fellow IUMMUG members in their midst!
• IUMMUG still bears Macromedia in its name for now. For some time we have talked about changing to IU Multimedia User Group. We'd be able to save the acronym, accounts and URL, not to mention the fancy stationery. However, in recognition of the support Macromedia his given us since the group's inception, we are going to wait to see what they rename their user group program to before we make the final decision. That should come, we are told, in the next month or so.

Book Review

The review of Rachel Andrew's Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8 can now be found on our Review page.

Tips & Tricks

Dreamweaver 8 — The Power of Find and Replace

Have you ever done a big search through a long file or possibly a directory of files only to be overwhelmed by the number of results you get? Then starts the hunt for the needle (or in the haystack. Well this month Angela Buraglia, author of Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips, teaches us a few techniques for narrowing down our search.

Find and Replace Allows You to Search for Specfic Tags.

• You can find and replace any tag.
• Find and replace a tag with or without specified attributes (optional).
• Find and replace tags based on if it is inside another tag or if it contains another tag.

Find and Replace for More Than Simple Replacing.

• Strip tags
• Remove tag contents only
• Change to a different tag
• Remove attributes
• Add or change attributes
• Add code before or after the tag

How to Replace in Results

1. Always make a backup of affected files before any Find and Replace operation just in case.
2. Perform the search. Choose Find All.
3. Bring back the Find and Replace dialog by clicking the green arrow on the left of the Results panel.
4. In the list of search results in the Results panel:
   • Ctrl+click (Cmd+click) individual noncontiguous results
   • Shift+click once and then a second time to select all results between and including the once you selected useing shift_click.
5. Choose Replace (not Replace All) in the Find and Replace dialog.
6. The files that are modified get marked by a green dot to the left of the filenames in the Results panel.

Special thanks to Angela Buraglia

Resources Worth a Look

We all pick up cool sites and cool tools during the course of our personal or professional browsing. Each month we share links collected and submitted by IUMMUG members. This month's resource section covers the spectrum from How-tos to How-they-do-thats? We have so many things it might evolve into its own newsletter. Until that time, enjoy what we have to share with you.

Remember if you run across a link that you found helpful, interesting or even just plain wacky, send it along to iummug @ indiana.edu. If you don't send them, we can't share them!

• Food for Thought: Articles that nudge the conventional wisdom
  • Java? It's So Nineties (Business Week)
  • Myths And Realities of Web Services (ASPNews.com)
  • How do you price the work that you do? (HTMLGoodies.com)
  • The Cookie Debate: To Serve or Not to Serve? Cookies are back in the news, and not for the best of reasons. Do you use them on your sites? (Clickz.com)
  • First Impressions Count in Web Design (WebSiteOptimization.com)
• From the Publishers:
  • Apress, a publisher for the programming side of the house, has a number of great new titles out covering SQL Server 2005, PHP 5, MySQL 5, AJAX and more. If you would like a free copy of one of their books, it is yours for as little as a book review. Write iummug @ indiana.edu with the name of the book you'd like.
  • O'Reilly's Safari Books Online has just announced a new service called Rough Cuts that gives you early access to content on cutting-edge technologies months before it's published. Rough Cuts allows you to purchase work-in-progress manuscripts of selected titles. You'll even have the chance to shape the final product by sending feedback to the author and editors. The beta version just debuted with four works-in-progress covering Ajax, Ruby, and Flickr. For more information, go to the Rough Cuts FAQs.
• Style:
  • The title says it all — The 10 best resources for CSS
  • The HTML Hierarchy: Thinking Inside the Box — learning to visualize the structure of the code can actually help in the design of the page. (Webreference.com)
• Flash:
  • When your link on a screen element doesn't say it all: Tutorial on making Tooltips in Flash
  • When Tooltips just don't give you the space you need, Eric Dolecki gives you ExternalInterface, CSS, & Tooltips, Oh My!. See his ideas in action by visiting his home page. Be sure to mouse over the "items of potential interest" on the right to see his ideas in action.
  • Actionscript resources: A recent thread on the UG managers' list lead to this nice list of sites worth looking at for the ActionScript-inclined among us.
    • http://www.kirupa.com/
    • http://www.flashkit.com/
    • http://www.ultrashock.com/
    • http://www.flash-mx.com/links/index.cfm
    • http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_12046
    • http://www.creationflux.com/liquidlink/home/Resources/Programming/ActionScript_(Flash)/
    • Actionscript.org
• Fireworks:
  • Fireworks Masks - Check out this short tutorial in how to make masks in Fireworks. (It's a nice example of Adobe Captivate at work making the tutorial.)
• Benefits:
  • Lynda.com, Adobe's largest training provider and long-time publisher of a wide range of top-notch books and courseware CDs on web design and development, has extended a new agreement to user groups. Watch this newsletter for further details of the discounts and freebies on the way from these good folks.
• GMail User?:
  • Do you have a GMail account? Make the most of your account space by hooking into the GMail Drive.
  • Better yet, and faster they say, a new Firefox extension to manage that filespace. Read the post on Gadgetell by IU student Bryan Glanzberg.
• Developers Tools:
  • Yet another new useful Firefox extension out for developers. Firebug rolls several key debugging tools into one.
• Conferences:
  • CFUNITED the premiere ColdFusion developers conference takes place at the end of June in Washington, DC. Registration is available in three-day, four-day and one-day packages. Early-bird registration ends January 31! Extra discount for IUMMUG members. If you don't have the code write iummug @ indiana.edu for it.
  • cf.Objective() "Industrial Strength Training, Enterprise Class Results" is a 2-day weekend conference in Minneapolis with top speakers.
  • Just how serious are you about your Mac? If you want to make the most of a Mac training experience, check out MacMania 4.5!

Thanks to Jude Cooks, Bob Flynn, Bryan Glanzberg and Lee Underwood (WebReference Newsletter) for this month's contributions.

Training

As the new year begins the talented folks at IU's UITS IT Training group have a fresh slate of classes of interest. The City of Bloomington's People's University also has some items of interest. If you are holding training relevant to IUMMUG members or you are aware of any other training opportunities worth sharing, send them to iummug @ indiana.edu.

• The Indiana University UITS IT Training group is not only a big supporter of IUMMUG, but they are an excellent source of very affordable, very helpful workshops on a wide variety of topics. From single classes in CSS to series such as the Web Graphics Certificate Series to in-depth 3-day workshops on ActionScript, ColdFusion and MS SQL. These hands-on classes are an incredible value for those inside and outside the university community. As mentioned last month, the spring schedules are out. Get a great start coding with the Web Markup & Style Coding Certificate Series, the Web Graphics fundamentals with Macromedia Studio Series will help you develop a great graphics toolset. Check out the Flash, CSS, XHTML and other classes. Their redesigned website clearly lists all their series and topics in all locations.
• Another source of training available in Bloomington is from the good folks at Megagrooves. Under the auspices of the City of Bloomington's People's University, Megagrooves' Carlos Colon will be holding technology courses in Personal Videography, MP3 Technology and Digital Cameras throughout the spring.

What's that mean?

In the Web world technology and terminology changes come fast and furious. Keeping up with what things mean, much less how to do them can be a full-time job. Each month we will try to highlight a term or two, tell you what they mean and give some examples and/or tutorials that help explain them.

This month we terms are Fusebox and Mach-II.

Fusebox

I can't really put it better than the Wikipedia definition, but Fusebox is a web application development framework that lets developers create applications large and small in a systematic way. Applications are broken down into small, discreet units or "fuses" that separate logic, functionality and presentation. Fusebox works very well with the classic Model-View-Controller (MVC) software architecture.

Because of its modular nature and exceptional documentation, "Fuseboxers" can work on individual fuses without any need to know about the application as a whole. This lends itself well to team development as well as development environments where there is high turnover or even a need for secrecy.

One byproduct of Fusebox revolution is the so-called Fusebox Livecycle Process (FLiP). FliP is a project management and development methodology that can be applied to any application development project. Even if you have no interest in Fusebox, FLiP can turn your ideas of application development on their head and radically increase the success rate of the software you build.

Fusebox resources:

• An Overview of Fusebox
• HalHelms.com
• Jeff Peter's GrockFusebox
• Helms and Peters Outloud — A series of podcasts on Fusebox, FLiP and application development.

Mach-II

Mach-II is a fully object-oriented (OO) web application framework. While Fusebox caters to the procedural programmers in ColdFusion and PHP, Mach-II caters to the OO side. Many of the applications on the former Macromedia website are written in Mach-II.

Mach-II resources:

• Mach-II home
• Mach-II documentation and resources
• (Adobe Website Engineer) Sean Corfield's Mach-II site

http://corfield.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=machii.main

Monthly Challenge

The Monthly Challenge is an area where we post real problems faced by your fellow developers and designers. We throw it out there for you, the membership, to present a solution. Put your best answer(s) forward for a chance to win fame and prizes. NOTE: If you'd like to share a challenge, please contact iummug @ indiana.edu. It can be any sort of challenge (programming, design, graphic, video, Flash, etc.) that you face in your web/print work.

Last onth's challenge came from Professor Alexander Brinkman of Temple University from is book "Pascal Programming for Music Research" and was used with his permission. .

This month's challenge will be for us to come up with more challenges. Please send yours to iummug @ indiana.edu. We'll give everyone a shot at it.

Solution to December's Challenge

You can see the full details of the December Challenge in December's newsletter, but essentially it was to code a way to take a string and test to see if it is a palindrome.

We had three very good solutions, each with its own merit. Our winner, chosen at random from the correct solutions, was Frank "Buddy" Morris of the Teaching & Learning Technologies Center. A detailed explanation of all three solutions can be found on the challenge page.

Free Stuff

We have a number of books and Macromedia collectors items to give away this month so be sure to attend the January meeting Due to the tardiness of the newsletter we will not list them all here. You just have to come to the meeting or attend online!

Get Involved

IUMMUG has periodic and ongoing opportunities to get more involved. If any of these activities interest you, contact iummug @ indiana.edu. Current opportunities include:

• Web Designer (ongoing): We would like to redesign our website. Creative ideas and energy are needed.
• Coldfusion Programmer (ongoing): We would like to redesign our website. There are some fundamental changes that need to be made. ColdFusion programmers, from novice to experienced, with the time and desire to contribute are welcome.
• Extension Reviewer (new): As mentioned in the December Spotlight we would like to start playing with and reviewing extensions from the Adobe Exchange. We are looking for reviewers for Dreamweaver, Flash, ColdFusion, Fireworks and more.
• Book Reviewer (ongoing): We are always looking for those interested in reviewing books from our publishing partners. If you find a book that looks interesting, drop us a line and we'll get it for you. Review the book and keep it when you are done!

December 05 LiveWire - part 1 (12/6/2005)

In this month's issue:

• IUMMUG & Industry News: Abobe completes Macromedia aquisition, Firefox release, DVD obsolescence
• Book Review: Macromedia Flash 8: Training from the Source by James English
• Tips & Tricks: Marble Backgrounds and MORE Dreamweaver tips to die for
• Resources: Great Google maps, ColdFusion tools, Crossword help and Macromedia history
• Tales from the List: UITS IT Training, Megagrooves and IU Continuing Studies
• Training: UITS IT Training, Megagrooves and IU Continuing Studies
• What's that mean?: AJAX and Mashing - Does this involve dirty laundry?
• Monthly Challenge: Programmatic palindromes
• Free Stuff: Studio 8, Dynamic websites, Web Standards, Video for the web
• Get Involved: We need reviewers and CF programmers

IUMMUG & Industry News

• Late last week Adobe Systems and Macromedia announced that Adbobe's acquistion of Macromedia was to close Saturday, December 3. A joint financial presentation will be made by the company later this month with a statement about future plans to come at the end of January.
• NASDAQ reports Adobe Plans To Move Fast After Macromedia Deal Closes. (No kidding! If you check out the Macromedia site you'll see that as of Monday the branding has already been changed.)
• Adobe Chairman Bruce Chizen discusses his vision for the newly combined companies.
• This morning Macromedia released an end date for the introductory upgrade pricing for its Studio 8 product suite. New pricing begins January 1, 2006.
• Firefox, the upstart exstesible web browser, released version 1.5 with a number a nice new features including usability and web standards improvements.
• Are your DVDs obsolete already? News that a 300GB disc that is set to challenge DVD is due out next year.

Book Review

This month's meeting deals with Macromedia Studio 8, with an emphasis on Dreamweaver 8 and Flash Professional 8. This presented a number of possible books to review. Several of the members took up the challenge. Watch for many more Flash reviews in the coming months. This month we present a review by IUMMUG member Ruth Droppo and a brief teaser for next month's review from IUMMUG member Karen Oeding.

The review of James English's Macromedia Flash 8: Training from the Source can now be found on our Review page.

The bait is too delicious to pass up: build a site that is standards compliant, accessible, and cross-browser compatible as you become a Dreamweaver 8 Master! That’s like a Chai tea latte on a Bloomington winter day for me. Rachel has convinced me just by the cover and introduction to her new book that no matter my perceived level of experience I can code better for pages that load faster, get better search engine rankings and are easier to maintain. Plus I can make the internet a more Section 508 compliant place for all to access my site’s rich content (yes, Tiny Tim: Scrooge has a gentle heart after all). All right, Rachel: you’re on. I am a working web developer who recently upgraded to Dreamweaver 8 and I currently code with CSS. I’m going to go step by step, chapter by chapter and build this honey of a site while I brush up on my compliance. Will I be amazed? Will I be disappointed? Will the site actually validate yet still look pretty? Watch the next issue of LiveWire for a full review.

~Karen Oeding

Tips & Tricks

This month's Tips & Tricks section features two tips. The first tip comes from IUMMUG member Phyllis Taylor. She shows us how to throw together a quick and slick marble background in Photoshop.

The second tip starts a series of Dreamweaver tips from the tool kit of DreamweaverFAQ.com founder and Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips co-author Angela Buraglia. Angela was gracious enough to allow IUMMUG to share some of the tips she presented at the recent MAX 2005 conference.

Marble Backgrounds

You have a report you want to add some color to and very little time and resources to find a photo CD with what you need. You can create your own easily.

1. In a grayscale file set to whatever dpi you need for your final output, scribble with the Pencil tool. Try various pencil widths and opacities in Multipy Mode to get a mix of lines and gradations. Save as Scribble.tif
2. Go to Filter > Distort > Wave. Use these settings: Number of Generators set at 30; Wavelength set at 10 min. 120 Max.; Amplitude set at 5 and 35; leave Scale 100%. Undefined areas set at Warp Around. Click on Randomize button to see different wave patterns based on these settings. Choose one. The result should look like gray marbleized paper. Use the Ripple filter to increase the marbling effect. Save as Marble1.tif
3. Next go Image > Mode > RGB Color. Take color picker and pick a background color. I chose a dark red (such as IU's PMS 201) as foreground color. Do Select All of image and then Edit > Fill. Set for Foreground Color and 80%. My marbled patterned now is a deep rose and burgundy. Image looks great with a solid bar of the deep red with reversed out type. Save as Red Marble.tif
4. Want to use the same pattern thematically on interior pages or web pages part of a set? Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. By moving the top Hue slider, you can totally change the color. The Saturation slider allows you change the intensity of the color. This is an easy way to set off different sections- "different but equal" style treatment.
5. Want to use the marbleized image to fill a large area but give it more focus for dynamic type in the center? Try applying the Twirl filter to your marble pattern. A little or a lot, depending on the end result you wish to achieve.
6. Remember to Save for Web as Gifs if creating these for web. You can get down to a few colors for a small file and it still looks good.

~Phyllis Taylor

Dreamweaver 8 & CSS

This month's killer Dreamweaver tips come directly from the expert herself. Absolute URLs for your style sheet? Design-time CSS? Dynamic CSS? We wanted to write about it all, but Ms. Buraglia has gone one better. She wrote up the whole piece in the description of her MAX 2005 presentation. Take a look at her tips and instructions, including exercise files.

Special thanks to Angela Buraglia

Resources Worth a Look

We all pick up cool sites and cool tools during the course of our personal or professional browsing. Each month we share links collected and submitted by IUMMUG members. This month's resource section covers the spectrum from How-tos to How-they-do-thats? We have so many things it might evolve into its own newsletter. Until that time, enjoy what we have to share with you.

Remember if you run across a link that you found helpful, interesting or even just plain wacky, send it along to iummug @ indiana.edu. If you don't send them, we can't share them!

• Map Mania: Doubtless you have seen some of the great new mapping sites out there. If Google maps were cool enough for you, seeing things like Flash Earth had to make you marvel at the cool things people are doing with this technology. This month we show you several examples of map mash-ups and point you to the APIs if you want to jump in and develop your own.
  • Kayak: You can check the best fares to the most searched destinations from any airport in the world based on the searches other users have conducted. Your results are mapped on a Google Map.
  • ATM locator? Zip code boundry? Gas price map? Here's a whole list of cool tools made from Google Maps. Be sure to check out Dig to the Other Side, a site that shows where you would come out on the other side of the earth if you stated digging in a given spot. Everytime you visit you'll find something new and interesting.
  • Here's a map to locate Macromedia User Groups!
  • See what hangs in Yahoo's gallery of maps developed using their API
  • The guys at ColdFusionPodCast (see below) have released a GoogleMaps CFC if you CF developers want to jump in and build something using maps on your sites.
  • Google Maps API
  • Yahoo Maps API
• The ColdFusion community has been on fire lately with discussions about frameworks, development methodologies and new tools.
  • This year at MAX Macromedia announced active involvement in the CFEclipse project. CFEclipse is a plugin for the popular open-source Eclipse editing/coding tool. This article on Devnet helps you get started using it for you CF coding.
  • A real wealth of ColdFusion information is now available in podcasts. Bryan Kaiser and Michael Haynie of ColdFusionPodcasts have a great series covering a wide variety of CF issues and gurus Hal Helms and Jeff Peters have begun waxing on software and web development in their Out Loud series.
  • Macromedia's, ehr, Adobe's Steven Erat recently put together a great list of ColdFusion Resources. Be sure to add the wonderful new cfQuickDocs.
  • Some of the buzz about new development frameworks and methodologies with ColdFusion surrounds ColdFusion on Wheels. It may just provide the edge you are looking for.
  • And once you've got this ColdFusion thing down and you are ready to proudly promote your development religion, you can show it off with some fashionable ColdFusion Gear
• Style:
  • PositionIsEverything.net is a great resource for designers. The article In Search of the One True Layout is useful for CSS novices and gurus alike.
  • The good folks at Webreference have put up a nice article (by Stu Nicholls) on How to Style an Unordered List with CSS
• Miscellaneous
  • You've all probably received a phishing email at one time or another. Do you think you can spot the real emails from the fakes? Check out this little quiz and see.
  • Unleash the true potential of the Web! One Across will help you through the New York Times crosswords puzzles, even the Sunday edition!
  • Like a good penny, this one keeps coming around. Here is another list of cool development tools for Firefox. This one is Firefox version 1.5 ready (well close).
  • For those of you already felling nostalgic, here is an interesting stroll down Macromedia memory lane.
  • Though it's a bit early, we thought we'd share some Easter cheer with you. If you own a copy of Contribute, check out the Easter Eggs posted on Alan Musselman's blog.
• Flash:
  • Ken Toley of Flash Technical Suport has written an article on helping to get you started making your Flash pages 508 compliant in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
  • See the story and additional list of Flash-related resources below ?

Tales from the List

In a break from the norm for this section, we want to take a moment to remind folks of our LISTSERVs. Most of you reading this will have received the newsletter via the IUMMUGNEWS-L list. This is essentially the announcment list of the Indiana University Macromedia User Group. Our other list, IUMMUG-L is meant to be an open discussion list for members of IUMMUG to post their questions and discuss development and design issues. It is wildly under-utilized. Below is a brief story of one of our fellow members who posted his story to the list, got some help and got his problem solved. Now it didn't spark of bunch of discussion because it quickly went off list, but he did get it resolved and we wanted you to see the solution. That's the point of the list - something to help us with our work and something to help us learn.

Feedback from a New Flash Video User

If you subscribe to the IUMMUG list serve, you probably read my recent plea for help regarding Flash video playback issues that I was having using Flash MX Pro 2004. My thanks to those of you who offered help and advice. However, I am pleased to say that the new features found in Flash Pro 8 have allowed me to resolve the problem.

Background: I developed a Flash program that runs off of CD-ROM and links to external FLV (Flash Video) files contained on the CD-ROM as well. The video clips were originally played and controlled in Flash using the MediaDisplay and MediaController components. The Flash application was built using Screens and contains 15 video clips in various locations within the program.

My Problem: When running the published program off of the CD-ROM (or even directly off of my desktop), the Flash Video would start playing with the audio only -then the video would eventually (sometimes never) start to play. There was no sync problem, just a delayed display of the video, which varied somewhat randomly. I tried many different encoder settings using the built in Sorenson Spark encoder, but regardless of the bit rate and quality level I had the same problem.

The Solution: While wrestling with this problem I upgraded to Flash Pro 8. This latest release of Flash has (in my opinion) significantly improved video encoding and playback capabilities. Two that I noticed immediately are the new On2 VP6 codec for importing and encoding video directly within Flash. The other is the addition of a new FLVPlayback Component for displaying and controlling external Flash Video files within a published Flash program.

To resolve my problem, I used both of these new features. I re-imported all of my original video segments using one of the preset On2 VP6 encoder profiles, specifically the "low quality" 150 kbps profile. Though designated "low" quality, the resulting video looks very good. I selected this 150 kbps profile to ensure good playback performance off of a CD-ROM. I then re-exported each of the videos as Flash Video (FLV) files, which are played externally through the published Flash program. To display and control the external FLVs I used the new FLVPlayback component. It includes a wide range of nice user-control "skins" that you can choose, a well as more accessible parameters that can be edited via the FLVPlayback Component Inspector. By using both of these new Flash 8 features I no longer have any video performance issues; on the contrary the displayed video and user controls are amazingly responsive.

Keith Danielson
Producer/Director, Media Production Division
Instructional Support Services, IUB

NOTE: Keith's question was sent out to other user group managers and it prompted the following list of great Flash video resources from Las Vegas MMUG manager Greg Hamer. This made it out the IUMMUG-L list, but we felt it was worth repeating in the newsletter. It is especially relevant in light of this month's meeting topic.

• The FlashCom list has a lot Flash Video experts.
• The Flash Video Developer Center has articles.
Phillip Kerman did some good Flash Video write-ups and presentation before the Flash 8 release.
• Lynda.com has an on-line course: Audio and Video Integration in Macromedia Flash MX 2004
• Macromedia Training Partners offer a 3-day course: Macromedia Flash 8: Video Development
• There were some good Macrochats this year:
  • Flash Video Basics
  • Six Advanced Flash Video Techniques
• LiveDocs on Flash 8
  • Using Flash: Working with Video
  • Getting Started with Flash: Tutorial: Building a Video Player

Thanks to Keith Danielson, Bob Flynn, Greg Hamer and Lee Underwood (WebReference Newsletter) for this month's contributions.

December 05 LiveWire - part 2 (12/6/2005)

Training

We have a wealth of IT training opportunities in and around Indiana University, both in Bloomington and Indianapolis. Each month we will try to alert you to any upcoming trainings on Web, print, graphic, programming, design, video, etc. If you are holding training relevant to IUMMUG members or you are aware of any other training opportunities worth sharing, send them to iummug @ indiana.edu.

• The Indiana University UITS IT Training group is not only a big supporter of IUMMUG, but they are an excellent source of very affordable, very helpful workshops on a wide variety of topics. From single classes in CSS to series such as the Web Graphics Certificate Series to in-depth 3-day workshops on ActionScript, ColdFusion and MS SQL. These hands-on classes are an incredible value for those inside and outside the university community. The spring schedules are out. Get a great start coding with the Web Markup & Style Coding Certificate Series (IUB | IUPUI). The Web Graphics fundamentals with Macromedia Studio Series (IUB | IUPUI) will help you develop a great graphics toolset. Check out the Flash classes (IUB | IUPUI) as well. Full course schedules available (IUB | IUPUI).
• Another source of training available in Bloomington is from the good folks at Megagrooves. Under the auspices of the City of Bloomington's People's University, Megagrooves' Carlos Colon will be holding a course in Personal Videography on January 28.

What's that mean?

In the Web world technology and terminology changes come fast and furious. Keeping up with what things mean, much less how to do them can be a full-time job. Each month we will try to highlight a term or two, tell you what they mean and give some examples and/or tutorials that help explain them.

This month we terms are Asynchronous JavaScript and XML or (AJAX) and "Mashing".

AJAX

If a picture is worth 1000 words then a demo has to be worth more than I could write. Manning Press has a "What is AJAX" screencast (requires registration) you can download and watch as well as a simple but cool demo of AJAX on the site for their book AJAX in Action. I couldn't put it better. The cfQuickDocs mentioned above is also an example of AJAX in action. CFQuickDocs uses AJAX to pull information, including the comments, live off of the ColdFusion LiveDocs pages and display them real time in much easier-to-use interface.

Additional AJAX resources:

• So What's AJAX (ColdFusion Developers Journal (Part 1 | Part 2)
• Top Ten Reasons AJAX is Here to Stay
• WebReference.com has a three part "How to Develop Web Applications with Ajax" series. (part 1 | part 2 | part 3)

Mashing

Simply put, mashing is the combination of two or more technolgoies to produce another result. Mashing is also easier to explain by example. One of my favorite examples ocurred years ago, before the term was ever used. Apparently the meeting rooms at Sun Microsystems had motion detector light switches in them. Some clever engineers figured out how to monitor the light-switch system and developed a tool for determining which meeting rooms were free and which were in use. Pretty, um, bright if you ask me.

The various examples of tools built on top of Google and Yahoo maps in the Resources section above are examples of Mashing. So now go build your own maps using the Google or Yahoo APIs. Let your mind roam. You could come up with the next great app by leveraging and builing upon the great tools out there.

Monthly Challenge

The Monthly Challenge is an area where we post real problems faced by your fellow developers and designers. We throw it out there for you, the membership, to present a solution. Put your best answer(s) forward for a chance to win fame and prizes. NOTE: If you'd like to share a challenge, please contact iummug @ indiana.edu. It can be any sort of challenge (programming, design, graphic, video, Flash, etc.) that you face in your web/print work.

Last month IUMMUG member Bob Flynn asked designers to take a table-based, JavaScript-powered banner with rollover image and conver it to all CSS and XHTML. We post the solutions at the end of this section.

This month's challenge comes from Professor Alexander Brinkman of Temple University from his book "Pascal Programming for Music Research" and is used with his permission. It takes us back to the world of programmers. The challenge may be solved using any programming/scripting language. Style points awarded for the simplicity and elegance of the code. Code must be your own.

The Details

Write function palidrome(palString), which returns true if string palString is a palindrome (a string that reads the same forward and backward). Generalize so that case, punctuation, and spaces do not matter, i.e., each of the following should register as a palindrome. For example:

• Able was I ere I saw Elba.
• A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.
• Doc, note--I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.
• Bog dirt up a side track carted is a putrid gob!

Housekeeping

You must be a member of IUMMUG to submit an answer, but membership is free so it shouldn't stop you. (Follow the Become a Member link.) If you think you can come up with an answer, send it to iummug @ indiana.edu. Please comment your code very well. It will help us evaluate it and it will make it more helpful to readers when we posting your winning answer. We will choose at random from all of the correct answers posted. The winner will receive the O'Reilly Press book of their choice and possibly more. Deadline for submission is Monday, January 16.

~Bob Flynn

Solution to October's Challenge

You can see the full details of the October Challenge in October's newsletter, but essentially it was to create a CSS-based image rollover in a banner. Can you say "foreshadowing"? Who would have known how good the timing was going to be for this challenge. When we issued it we were the Indiana University Macromedia User Group and when the solutions are published we are rolling over to the Indiana University Multimedia User Group.

I am happy to say we had three worthy solutions submitted, two by our winner, Paul Robertson. You can see the correct solutions and Paul's very detailed explanations on the challenge page.

Free Stuff

As of publication time we are still waiting on a few packages, but it is our hope to give away the following fine books this month. We have lots of other things to give away this month, so be sure to attend the October meeting. Free Stuff

Windows, Mac, Macromedia, Mambo – it doesn’t matter. This month’s Freebies include some fantastic books sure to sharpen your skills and impress your friends! Be sure to attend the December meeting to win!

• Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 with ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP: Training from the Source by Jeff Bardzell - Learn by doing! Follow along, step-by-step, as you upgrade a static HTML site that uses obsolete code to an XML standard-compliant, CSS-formatted dynamic site using Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), Macromedia ColdFusion, or the open source PHP.
• Macromedia Flash 8: Training from the Source by James English. This Macromedia-certified guide provides the key to learning the basics of Flash 8. With its breakthrough motion-graphics capabilities and powerful run-time effects, Flash 8 provides the tools, authoring power, and rich video capabilities you need to provide stunning interactive content
• Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8 by Rachel Andrew. In Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8, Rachel Andrew guides you, step-by-step, through the process of creating a complete, flexible, and easy-to-maintain site in strict XHTML and CSS using Dreamweaver. Rachel shows you efficient workflow techniques that will make you a Dreamweaver pro in no time!
• Mastering Internet Video: A Guide to Streaming and On-Demand Video by Damon Stolarz - Mastering Internet Video brings together clear, coherent coverage of every key issue: compression, formats, standards, servers, software, hardware, networking, multicasting, digital rights management, video editing—even troubleshooting.
• Macromedia FreeHand MX for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide by Sandee Cohen - The first few chapters provide an overview of the program before walking you through how to create sophisticated artwork using Macromedia FreeHand MX¿s many powerful features: layers and layering, points and paths, working in color, strokes and fills, creating text and text effects, and more.
• Building Websites with Mambo by Hagen Graf - This book is a fast paced tutorial to creating a website using Mambo. If you have never used Mambo, or even any web content management system before, then this book will walk you through each step in a friendly and accessible way.
• Building Online Communities with phpBB by Stoyan Stefanov, Jeremy Rogers, and Mike Lothar - A practical guide to creating and maintaining online discussion forums with phpBB, the leading free open source PHP/MySQL-based bulletin board

And ONE lucky winner gets to choose from SOFTWARE, yes…the good stuff… Macromedia Studio 8 OR Macromedia Coldfusion MX7

And of course…there are probably one or two fabulous gifts and prizes that we haven’t told you about—you have to be there to win! Come join the fun at this month’s IUMMUG — the prizes may not be as good as winning the lottery, but the odds are better and you’ll have more fun!

Get Involved

IUMMUG has periodic and ongoing opportunities to get more involved. If any of these activities interest you, contact iummug @ indiana.edu. Current opportunities include:

• Coldfusion Programmer (new): We are starting a redesign of our website. We will be rebuilding it from the ground up using FarCry 3.0, an open source ColdFusion content management system. Whether you are an experienced ColdFusion programmer looking to get experience with FarCry or a CF newbie looking to learn by doing, we can use your help.
• Extension Reviewer (new): As mentioned in this month's Spotlight we would like to start playing with and reviewing extensions from the Macromedia Exchange. We are looking for reviewers for Dreamweaver, Flash, ColdFusion, Fireworks and more.
• Book Reviewer (ongoing): We are always looking for those interested in reviewing books from our publishing partners. If you find a book that looks interesting, drop us a line and we'll get it for you. Review the book and keep it when you are done!

October 05 LiveWire (10/24/2005)

In this month's issue:

• IUMMUG & Industry News: Companies on the move, Macromedia MAX 2005 news, Web 2.0
• Book Review: CSS Hacks and Filters: Making Cascading Stylesheets Work by Joseph W. Lowery
• Tips & Tricks: Picture borders and Dreamweaver tips to die for
• Resources: CMS resources galore, going WAY back with browsers, top 10 web design mistakes
• Training: UITS IT Training, Megagrooves and IU Continuing Studies
• Monthly Challenge: Jettison the JavaScript for rollovers
• Free Stuff: CMS Smorgasborg - partake at this month's meeting!

IUMMUG & Industry News

• Oracle buys Innobase. Innobase is the company that provides the underlying code for the InnoDB storage engine in MySQL. The acquisition of the open-source rival has many wondering what it means for the future of this popular database solution. Stay tuned on this one.
• The long awaited MySQL 5 has been released. New to this significant update are views, triggers, stored procedures, and more.
• A whole lot of interesting news came out of Macromedia MAX 2005. Not the least of which was the announcements surrounding Flex 2, ActionScript 3 and Flash Player 8.5. This will put Rich Internet Applications in the hands of the average developer. In order to speed their development and to get community input early in the process, Macromedia launched Macromedia Labs, where you can download the alpha of this software, play with it and contribute to its development through the site's wiki.
• Macromedia also announced the launch of their Community site. It is a great place to find MM blogs, Macrochats, product forums, events, etc.
• Adobe Systems acquisition of Macromedia, announced in April, has been approved by shareholders of both companies, blessed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the lawsuit between the two companies has been resolved to the satisfaction of the US Department of Justice. All that remains before the two companies consummate the deal is to gain the approval of European regulators. Details
• As we discuss issues of content and content management this month, we will touch on the role RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) can play on your site and in your digital information life. A recent study shows that RSS has yet to be widely adopted. Come to the October meeting to see what parts of that study should and shouldn't concern you as you consider using RSS.
• Discussion of the future shape of the web has led to the coining of the term "Web 2.0". Tim O'Reilly provides an excellent overview of how it got started and where the conversation stands.

Book Review

Each month we will try to bring you at least one book review relating to the month's meeting topic. Whenever possible we will pass on book recommendations from the presenters to members in advance of a meeting so they can review the book and receive a copy to keep for themselves. Our next meeting will be about Macromedia Studio 8, with emphasis on Dreamweaver 8 and Flash Professional 8. If you see a book out there on those topics that you would like to review in time for our next newsletter (due out just after Thanksgiving), please contact iummug @ indiana.edu.

The review of Joseph W. Lowrey's CSS Hacks and Filters: Making Cascading Stylesheets Work can now be found on our Review page.

Tips & Tricks

This month's Tips & Tricks section features two tips. The first tip comes from IUMMUG member Joe Auty. He presents strategies for creating picture borders in your web and print publications.

The second tip starts a series of Dreamweaver tips from the tool kit of DreamweaverFAQ.com founder and Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips co-author Angela Buraglia. Angela was gracious enough to allow IUMMUG to share some of the tips she presented at the recent MAX 2005 conference.

Photo Borders

It is often desirable to create a thin border around a picture, and is a standard practice for web and print news publications with photos that accompany stories. There are two approaches to creating picture borders:

1. Use CSS to render a border around a CSS element, table, or table cell
2. Use Photoshop to alter the photo to (destructively) add the border to the photo

Option #1 may be more desirable if you do not wish to alter the photo, would like to set a consistent style for all photos or categories of photos, or want a quick and easy way to manually add borders to specific photos. To create a CSS class for picture borders, add the following to your CSS class:

border:1px #18181A solid;

This example will render a one pixel border using color #18181A, and a border style of "solid" (other options including "dashed" and "dotted").

Option #2 is a good choice if you wish for your photo to be downloadable and retain its border, or if you wish to otherwise alter the photo to include a border. Using Photoshop Actions, you can automate this process for a batch of photos.

There are several ways to create borders in Photoshop, but perhaps the easiest way is to set a "stroke" layer style on a non-background layer. The stroke should be set with position "inside", and a size of one pixel, opacity 100%, and fill type "color" are good suggestions for starting out.

Photoshop Actions allow you to create scripts to automate repetitive actions. To create an action, you simply need to create the action from the "Actions" palette, and while the action is being recorded, perform the steps needed to create your border while Photoshop "watches" and records your actions. Here are the steps I take:

1. Option/Alt + click on background layer to convert it to a non-background layer
2. Set layer style using the options outlined above
3. Flatten Image

To perform your new recorded action on a set of photos, from Photoshop's "File" menu, select "Automate" -> "Batch". You can set the options here accordingly, but most importantly, set "Set" to your new Action.

~Joe Auty

Dreamweaver Tag Hints & Tag Completion

When hand-coding (Code or Split view) Dreamweaver provides tag hints and tag closing as you type. The tag hints pop up when you hit the space bar inside a tag. If it does not pop up because you've backspaced or hit return, you can get it to pop up by holding down the control key and hitting the space bar.

Dreamweaver 8 has added a nice new feature for hand-coders. Rather than automatically outputting an end tag when you close an opening tag as in previous versions, Dreamweaver 8 waits until you type "

~Angela Buraglia

Resources Worth a Look

We all pick up cool sites and cool tools during the course of our personal or professional browsing. Each month we share links collected and submitted by IUMMUG members. As usual we have an interesting collection. This month's resource section has something old and something new, something on topic and something just for the fun of it. If you run across a link that you found helpful, interesting or even just plain wacky, send it along to iummug @ indiana.edu. We are especially interested in sites useful to the print and layout experts out there. To date, they are under-represented. But if you don't send them, we can't share them! By the way, in case you missed last month's meeting, there is a slew of great Web Standards links in the presentation slides.

• Tired of trying to get through all your mailing lists? Frustrated at trying to find something of worth you may have seen fly by last week or last month? The Mail Archive is a free service that pools lists thematically and archives them for easy searching later. See this example of ColdFusion lists.
• Want to know how your latest standards-compliant makeover of your site degrades in IE 3 or Mosaic 2.1? (If so, we need to talk…) Here are a couple of sites where you can download installers for these and other browsers:
  • http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/find_old.htm
  • http://browsers.evolt.org/
• Three articles relevant to our topic of Content Management Systems come to us from InformIT.com. They touch on the nature of content and the underlying systems we use to deliver it.
• The Search Lurch: Have We Become Lazy Googlers or Smarter Web Researchers? - A discussion with experts in web content
• The Lure of Open Source Software: Why Consider It for Your Business?
• Open Source Versus Commercial Software: Why Proprietary Software is Here to Stay
• CMSMatrix.org allows you to see side-by-side comparisons of over 400 different commercial and open-source Content Management Systems
• Do you have a favorite online color tool? IUMMUG member Renee Le Beau recommends http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html for your consideration.
• One of Jakob Nielsen's top 10 web design mistakes of 2005 was a failure to have the cursor start out when a page loads an online form. This little tutorial shows you how easy it can be to take care of that.
• Are you looking to install or upgrade PHP/MySQL on your Mac OS X box? Apparently even Apple refers people to Marc Liyanage's page for guidance.

Thanks to Sean Corfield, Bob Flynn, Renee Le Beau and Erick Carballo for this month's tips.

Training

We have a wealth of IT training opportunities in and around Indiana University, both in Bloomington and Indianapolis. Each month we will try to alert you to any upcoming trainings on Web, print, graphic, programming, design, video, etc. If you are holding training relevant to IUMMUG members or you are aware of any other training opportunities worth sharing, send them to iummug @ indiana.edu.

• The UITS IT Training group is not only a big supporter of IUMMUG, but they are an excellent source of very affordable, very helpful workshops on a wide variety of topics. From single classes in CSS to series such as the Web Graphics Certificate Series to in-depth 3-day workshops on ActionScript, ColdFusion and MS SQL. These hands-on classes are an incredible value for those inside and outside the university community. Check out the list of courses remaining this calendar year on the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses. The schedule for the spring semester will be posted soon, but there are still dozens of valuable classes this year.
• Another source of training available in Bloomington is from the good folks at Megagrooves. Under the auspices of the City of Bloomington's People's University, Megagrooves' Carlos Colon will be holding a course in Personal Videography in mid-November.
• The IU School of Continuing Studies offers a number of computing courses, primarily on design tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. The Digital Design Desktop Publishing Certificate series looks especially promising.

Monthly Challenge

The Monthly Challenge is an area where we post real problems faced by your fellow developers and designers. We throw it out there for you, the membership, to present a solution. Put your best answer(s) forward for a chance to win fame and prizes. NOTE: If you'd like to share a challenge, please contact iummug @ indiana.edu. It can be any sort of challenge (programming, design, graphic, video, Flash, etc.) that you face in your web/print work.

Last month IUMMUG member Erick Carballo stumped the developers out there with his Library of Congress programming challenge. We post Erick's solution at the end of this section.

This month we turn to our designers, though developers might be interested as well. Our challenge comes from IUMMUG manager Bob Flynn who had to tackle this problem for an exercise in the upcoming Macromedia Press Studio 8 book by IUMMUG members Jeffrey and Shaowen Bardzell. In honor of Dreamweaver 8's great new CSS features Bob wanted to convert the exercise files to a more Web Standards compliant methodology.

The Details

The exercise files were built from a Dreamweaver template that had a banner across the top with a slick rollover image. The exercise file was from the previous version of the book covering Macromedia Studio MX 2004. It was built with Fireworks MX 2004 and consisted of images in a table that used JavaScript to handle the rollover. I've recreated the scenario in this example. The challenge is to create the same look, the same effect, without tables and without JavaScript. We are looking for a CSS solution, but any other valid answer will be eligible to win. Download the exercise files, get out your CSS books and pick up the challenge!

Housekeeping

You must be a member of IUMMUG to submit an answer, but membership is free so it shouldn't stop you. (Follow the Become a Member link.) If you think you can come up with an answer, send it to iummug @ indiana.edu. Please comment your code very well. It will help us evaluate it and it will make it more helpful to readers when we posting your winning answer. We will choose at random from all of the correct answers posted. The winner will receive the O'Reilly Press book of their choice and possibly more. Deadline for submission is Monday, November 14.

~Bob Flynn

Solution to Last Month's Challenge

You may recall that Erick's challenge last month was to parse through a large text file put out by The Library of Congress. It was called the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I: Subject Terms. The file had a semi-regular pattern of records and only certain ones needed to be extracted. You can see the full details in last month's newsletter. You can see his answer here. NOTE: Erick wrote his answer in PHP, but it could have been in done in many other languages as well.

Free Stuff

As of publication time we are still waiting on a few packages, but it is our hope to give away the following fine books this month. We have lots of other things to give away this month, so be sure to attend the October meeting.

• Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy by Ann Rockley - This book gives you an end-to-end view of the process of implementing a content management system.
• Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery by JoAnn T. Hackos - This book is helps you develop a unified content strategy. It is designed for content managers, information architects and anyone responsible for creating enterprise content.
• Building Websites with Mambo by Hagen Graf - A fast paced introductory tutorial to this well established PHP/MySQL based content management system
• Building Online Communities with phpBB by Stoyan Stefanov, Jeremy Rogers, and Mike Lothar - A practical guide to creating and maintaining online discussion forums with phpBB, the leading free open source PHP/MySQL-based bulletin board
• Macromedia Contribute 3 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide by Tom Negrino - Need to learn Macromedia Contribute fast? Try one of Peachpit's Visual QuickStart Guides.
• Design and Deploy Websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3: Training from the Source by Joseph Lowery - Learn about Dreamweaver and Contribute interaction from the author of this month's reviewed book

Comments/Questions: iummug @ indiana.edu

September 05 LiveWire (9/27/2005)

In this month's issue:

• IUMMUG & Industry News: IUMMUG meeting schedule set, LOTS of browser news and more
• Book Review: Designing With Web Standards by (IU grad) Jeffrey Zeldman
• Tips & Tricks: Getting last inserted ID using ColdFusion/MS SQL and PHP/MySQL
• Resources: Dreamweaver 8 Template gotchas, more ways to make your browser work for you, Fireworks and ActionScript blogs
• Monthly Challenge: Pulling data needles out of one huge haystack of data
• Free Stuff: CSS and Design - a look at some of the books we are giving away

IUMMUG & Industry News

• In the August LiveWire we passed on the news that Macromedia was releasing a new version of their Studio suite, Studio 8. This month, happily, we can tell you that it is actually shipping. For those of you in the IU community, you can place departmental orders through BellTech.logix. Watch for personal copy purchase through campus bookstores soon. You can find a number of helpful articles, tutorials and samples at the Studio Developer Center.
• Thanks to the input of attendees at the August IUMMUG meeting we have a slate of meeting topics for the next 10 months. *Dates and topics are subject to change.
  

  Month	Date*	Topic*
  October	Wed 10/26	Content Management Systems
  Nov/Dec	Wed 12/7	MM Studio 8 Overview
  January	Wed 1/25	Dreamweaver Templates
  February	Wed 2/22	ColdFusion's CFFORM
  March	Wed 3/22	Flash Basics
  April	Wed 4/26	Harmonious Web Design
  May	Wed 5/24	Flash Actionscript
  June/July	TBD	Application Frameworks

• There are a number of ways, large and small, to get involved in IUMMUG. Each has its own rewards. Some ways are pretty simple — Come to the meetings, send your questions to the iummug-l@indiana.edu discussion list, answer questions sent to the list. Some require a greater commmitment. We currently have the following needs:
  • Newsletter: write a book review (see below), contribute to the monthly tips & tricks or code challenges, etc.
  • Marketing & Outreach: spreading the word about the group and its meetings, looking for sponsors
  • Website overhaul: programming and design work (this is a great way to learn)
  If you are interested in joining in the effort on any of these projects please email iummug @ indiana.edu
• Opera has been around since at least 1997. It has long been one of, if not the leading standards-compliant browser. So why isn't it more widely known and used? Well, until now you've either had to pay for it or use a version that served up ads, neither compelling propects to a public used to free browsers such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla and Firefox. Earlier this month Opera announced the release of the full-featured, ad-free Opera 8.5.
• Conference News: It's probably too late to hitch up the wagons and make it to the Fusebox & Frameworks Conference this week, but there are a couple of other compelling events on the horizon.
  • Macromedia's annual conference, MAX, takes place October 16-19 in Anaheim, CA, with optional full-day workshops the first day.
  • Apropos this month's meeting topic, a new series of events is being launched by Web Standards gurus Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer. An Event Apart is billed as "a concentrated, one-day learning session that will change the way you approach web design". The first in this travelling series takes place in Philadelphia on December 5.
• IUMMUG's Paul Robertson recently blogged about ColdFusion 7's Flash forms. His excellent postings garnered the attention and praise of Mike Nimer, Macromedia's father of CFFORM. Well-deserved kudos to Paul!
• For some people a web browser is a very personal choice. For some it is a practical choise. Some didn't even know there was a choice! For web developers and designers we must use them all because we need to ensure our sites look and function as we intended in each one. (A great reason to design with Web Standards is to cut down on this busy work!) For the past several years Internet Explorer has commanded the lion's share of the market but the emergance of the open-source Firefox browser has led to a serious erosion of that lead. The recent release of a free version of Opera is sure to cut into it more. Beyond personal or religious preference there are practical reasons for chosing one browser over the other. These days security tops that list of reasons. These articles related to browser security
  • Now, Every Keystroke Can Betray You (LA Times)
  • More Flaws in Firefox Than in Internet Explorer (AP story on Yahoo News) [NOTE: I'm told by a Firefox expert that the article is slightly misleading in that it does not properly explain the calculation of the numbers. You can see the original report at Symantec.com. (Requires registration.)]
  • You can track and deal with all critical browser security holes quickly at Secunia.com

Book Review

The review of Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing With Web Standards can now be found on our Review page.

Tips & Tricks: Getting Last Inserted ID

Anyone who writes an application that interacts with a database reaches the point where they need to insert a record. Often some subsequent procedure requires that you immediately retrieve the unique ID of the record that's just been inserted. This sounds simple enough and there are always awkward ways to do that. In this month's Tips & Tricks IUMMUG members Renee Le Beau and Erick Carballo show us built in functions that make it easy for ColdFusion/MS SQL and PHP/MySQL.

ColdFusion/MS SQL Server 2000

Sometimes when inserting a record into a table with an "Autonumber" primary key (an identity column) you need to know what the automatically generated number is. In SQL Server 2000 and ColdFusion this process can be accomplished within a single CFQUERY tag.

In the following example a new employee is inserted into the Employee_table. Scope_Identity() returns the last identity value inserted into an identity column in the same connection, so that a CFTRANSACTION tag is not necessary.

"dbo" name="insert_employee">
	INSERT INTO Employee_table (Name)
	VALUES ('Jim')

	SELECT Scope_Identity() as Employee_Id

The local variable latestID now contains the primary key for Jim's employee record.

~Renee Le Beau

PHP/MySQL

If using PHP/MySQL, this id can be obtained using PHP's mysql_insert(). This function retrieves the ID generated for an AUTO_INCREMENT column by the previous INSERT query.

$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'mysql_user', 'mysql_password');
if (!$link)
     {
     die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
     }
mysql_select_db('mydb');

mysql_query("INSERT INTO Employee_table (Name) VALUES ('Jim')");
printf("Last inserted record has id %d\n", mysql_insert_id());
?>

---

MySQL has its own LAST_INSERT_ID() function to obtain AUTO_INCREMENT values:

mysql> INSERT INTO Employee_table (Name)
     -> VALUES ("Jim");
mysql> SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID();

+------------------+
| last_insert_id() |
+------------------+
|              247 |
+------------------+

Using LAST_INSERT_ID() is preferable to retrieving the largest sequence number in the column via the MAX() function as in:

mysql> SELECT MAX(id) from Employee_table;

The former query is unrelliable since it does not take into consideration the multi-threaded nature of the MySQL server: if another client where to select a record before you issue the SELECT query, MAX(id) will return, in this case 248, instead of 247.

You may combine LAST_INSERT_ID() with the WHERE statement to retrieve part of or the entire record, without even knowing its id number:

mysql> INSERT INTO Employee_table (Name)
     -> VALUES ("Jim");
mysql> SELECT * FROM Employee_table
     -> WHERE id = LAST_INSERT_ID();

~Erick Carballo

Resources Worth a Look

We all pick up cool sites and cool tools during the course of our personal or professional browsing. Each month we will share links collected and submitted by IUMMUG members.

• Changes in Dreamweaver 8 Templates (CommunityMX) — If you use Dreamweaver templates and are upgrading to 8, here are some gotchas to watch for.
• Microsoft has launched their own version of a Web Developer Toolbar simliar to the one available to Mozilla/Firefox described in the August LiveWire Tips & Tricks section.
• Newstoday.com is a great design portal for inspiration and there's a chat feature there where you can ask other designer/developers questions or search for questions that have already been answered
• Macromedia's recent trend of having the product engineers blog continues. New sites for Flash and Fireworks developers have been launched:
  • Ken Toley is Flash Technical Support Team Lead and the team’s Subject Matter Expert on Flash ActionScript and Application Architecture. His blog promises to be a rich resource for Flash developers.
  • Fireworks team member John Nosal has begun blogging and podcasting on a variety of Fireworks-related issues.
• Our August Tips & Tricks article talked about the extensions that can turn the Firefox browser into a first rate web development tool. This month we give you Leslie Franke's Rapid Web Development and Testing with Mozilla Firefox and Fini Alring's Extending Firefox for Web Developers. They bring even more cool tools for Firefox to the table. As an added bonus, Franke's presentation uses Eric Meyer's S5 (A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System).
• User Interface Fun: Remove Results from Google Searches — What if you could remove the obviously spammy results from Google searches and permanently ban them from ever coming up on your searches again? Take a look at one of Google's current experiments.

Thanks to John Dowdell, Bob Flynn, Ian Lloyd, Owen Mundy, Allan Musselman and for this month's tips.

Monthly Challenge

This month we begin to take our Monthly Challenge seriously. Each month we will post a challenge (we'll shoot for a real-world challenge faced by an IUMMUG member) and open it up to the membership to post their solutions. This month's challenge is a programming dilemma. It comes from IUMMUG member Erick Carballo. He faced this challenge in his work at the Teaching & Learning Technologies Center. NOTE: If you'd like to share a challenge, please contact iummug @ indiana.edu. It can be any sort of challenge (programming, design, graphic, video, Flash, etc.) that you face in your web/print work.

The Details

The Library of Congress (LOC) has developed the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I: Subject Terms (TGM I) which provides a "substantial body of terms for subject indexing of pictorial materials, particularly the large general collections of historical images which are found in many libraries, historical societies, archives, and museums."

In relation to its practical applications the TGM I "may be used to index subjects represented in a variety of still image media and formats, including prints, photographs, drawings, posters, architectural drawings, cartoons, and pictorial ephemera."

TGM I may be downloaded from http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/tgm1/downloadtgm1.html. Nevertheless, the file provided by the LOC contains additional terms, each tagged according to its role in the thesaurus. The "authorized" terms are ONLY those tagged with "MT:" for which there are no "USE:" terms, but the LOC does not provide a simple list of these terms.

For example, the first item in the file starts:

MT: 1970s
USE: Nineteen seventies

This is an example of a term (tagged with MT:) that is not used in favor of another term (tagged with USE:). The goal of the challenge is to pull out those that do not have the USE: line. The first one of those in the file begins:

MT: 4-H clubs

With this in mind, write a script that:

1. gathers just the authorized terms,
2. strips out the "MT:" tag,
3. determines the number of authorized terms,
4. and writes all terms to a text file (authAlphaTerms.txt) in alphabetical order.

Housekeeping

You must be a member of IUMMUG to submit an answer, but membership is free so it shouldn't stop you. (Follow the Become a Member link.) If you think you can come up with an answer, send it to iummug @ indiana.edu. Answers may be in any programming language you wish. Please comment your code very well. It will help us evaluate it and it will make it more helpful to readers when we posting your winning answer. We will choose at random from all of the correct answers posted. The winner will receive the O'Reilly Press book of their choice and possibly more. Deadline for submission is Monday, October 10.

Free Stuff

As of publication time we are still waiting on a few packages, but it is our hope to give away the following fine books this month. We always have a few other surprises as well, so be sure to attend the September meeting.

• Web Design Garage by Marc Campbell
• Access by Design : A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers by Sarah Horton
• Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition By Eric Meyer
• CSS Cookbook by Christopher Schmitt

August 05 LiveWire (8/13/2005)

In this month's issue:

• IUMMUG Logo Contest: We have a winner!
• Member Benefits: A number of great reasons to be a part of IUMMUG
• Tips & Tricks: Is your browser a development tool?
• Resources: Flash totorials, cross-browser testing tools and a HOT app built with ColdFusion's Flash forms
• Monthly Challenge: How can you make sure survey-takers don't rank two items as their first choice?

Logo Contest Winner

By now you will have seen the new IUMMUG logo adorning our maiden issue of LiveWire. The designer of the winning design is IUMMUG member Jeff Hanson. Jeff is a 2nd year graduate student and AI in the Graphic Design Program at Indiana University. He will teach typography this fall. Jeff has a BFA in Graphic Design from Utah State University (2002). During his years in Utah he also worked for the Bridgerland Applied Technology College as a Certified Macromedia Trainer, teaching Flash and Dreamweaver workshops. He has worked as a professional web and print designer for the past 4 years.

In addition to the winning the undeniably prestigious IUMMUG Logo Design Contest, Jeff can also boast the following professional awards.

• 4 Rocky Awards from the Boise Advertising Federation (a branch of the American Advertising Federation)
• 2 were for logo Identity Systems that he designed while working for an Idaho advertising firm, the Noot Group.
• 2 were for print ad campaigns
• He has recently been awarded the friends of art fellowship at the IU art museum to help them in designing and developing interactive media on their website and possibly kiosks.

Jeff has been lurking on the IUMMUG list since he arrived in August 2004. He has not attended any meetings as he has routinely had conflicts with the meeting times, but he hopes to change that this year as we move to daytime meetings.
For his prizes Jeff chose Designing Interfaces by Jennifer Tidwell, due out in October and the recently published Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One by Deke McClelland.

The contest was very close and second place went to Owen Mundy, long-time member and contributor who sadly will be leaving Indiana and IUMMUG for San Diego where he will start his MFA at UCSD. We wish him the best of luck and hope he will stay in touch!

The Benefits of Being a Member of IUMMUG

There are a number of great reasons to become a member of the IU Macromedia User Group. In addition to the interesting speakers each month and the community of colleagues who bring a wide range of skills to the table, there are a number of more tangible benefits:

• Discounts from publishers, conferences, web hosting companies and more.
• In exchange for a review, you can receive free books from a wide range of publshers*
• Addison-Wesley
• APress
• Friends of Ed
• Manning Press
• O'Reilly Press (and publishing partners)
• Peachpit/Macromedia/Adobe/Apple Certified/Lynda.com/New Riders/New Riders Games/Safari/TechTV
• Prentice Hall
• SAMS
• and more…
• Free books, software, and assorted schwag

In addition to all of this you have the combined experience of all of the members of the group. We introduce each other to great sites, great techniques, great tools and great leads to help us do our jobs better or to get better jobs.

So what are you waiting for? Come out and contribute. I guarantee you'll get more than your share in return!

*Typically your review is published in the IUMMUG Newsletter, on Amazon and sent to the publisher for possible use on their site. See the O'Reilly Book Review Guidelines for an example of what the publishers look for.

Is Your Browser a Development Tool?

If not, it could/should be. What tools do you use to get your job done? Some of us use Dreamweaver, some use Photoshop, some Flash, some Contribute, and some just use Notepad. Whether you are a coder, a graphics artist, a web designer or a casual webmaster, we all have a tool or set of tools that we need to get our jobs done. How about your browser? Do you count it among your tools?

Sure you have to view your work in a browser at some point. You practice due dilligence and check it in multiple browsers (IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Safari, the list goes on) and on multiple platforms. At least you do that when you've got time. But how many of you view your browser as a development tool?

Thanks to the extensibility of the Mozilla family of browsers and Firefox in particular, your browser can be leveraged to do amazing things. Yeah, the tabbed browsing is great, the customizable search engines are pretty nice, but this month's tip is how to turn your browser into a indispensible development tool.

Firefox can be extended by, well, extensions. There are hundereds of them written to do everything from helping the heathens bet on BetFair to the religious search Bible verses. Web developers have over 50 to choose from on the official extension site as well as others floating around the net. Below I've listed just a few of my favorites from the web development arena. If you have others you have found useful, send them to us at iummug @ indiana.edu.

Aardvark: Billed as a tool to allow you to clean up a page before printing it, this is an awesome tool for web developers. Be sure to try the demo on the website and to learn the shortcut keys!

HTML Validator: Based on the W3C's HTML Tidy tool, you can validate your pages right inside the browser.

IE View: Just right-click a page in IE to lauch that page in IE. There is even one you can install so that you can do the opposite while browsing with IE (FirefoxView)

Live HTTP Headers: Allows you to view live headers as a page downloads. You can even edit them and resubmit the page. You never knew so much information was being passed when you hit a page!

MeasureIt: A handy little widget that lets you draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage. You never knew how useful it could be until you had it!

View Rendered Source: Displays Color-Coded, Formatted and Styled Rendered Source. "View Source" will never quite be the same!

Web Developer: If you don't check any others, this is the one to have. This installs a bar of handy tools ranging from the "Oh, that's handy" View Source and Resize to the "NOW YOU'RE TALKIN'" Outline, Image, CSS and Information menus which will outline all table cells on the page, show you the details of every image on a page, show full CSS path to any element on the page, and show you the ID and Class info on every block level element on the page. It's a great tool for learning how others have constructed their pages. There is so much more this whole article could be about this extension alone.

These are just a few of the extensions that will turn your browser into an indespensible development and learning tool. I am not a designer, graphics artist or Flasher. There are extensions beyond these that aid more in the specifics of your dark arts. Spend some time checking them out. If you ever want to find more, you can quickly find the site in Firefox by following Tools-> Extensions and then click on Get More Extensions at the bottom. Note: Most, but not all of these tools are available on the all platforms. The individual extension pages will tell you.

As mentioned above, Firefox has a slew of search plugins as well as visual themes to play with. Treat yourself to a customized browser environment while you are building your powerful work tool. You deserve it!

Resources Worth a Look

We all pick up cool sites and cool tools during the course of our personal or professional browsing. Each month we will share links collected and submitted by IUMMUG members.

• Article on migrating applications from IE to Mozilla browsers — Heavy on the technical side, but useful for developers
• GoToAndLearn.com — Excellent tutorials on working with Flash video and Flash media components.
• Max Design — a great compendium of CSS links and tutorials. A real one-stop shop.
• MOZiE — an extremely light-weight, free Windows application that allows web designers the ability to compare page rendering in Mozilla and Internet Explorer simultaneously.
• MXNA Reader — An AMAZING blog reading tool written by the ColdFusion form wizards at asFusion.com. Yes, this is REALLY just a bunch of ColdFusion forms. See how they made it.
• Sliding Photo Galleries — A very slick adaptation of the CSS sliding doors to display photos. While you're there, check out the whole site. Very nice.

Thanks to John Dowdell, Bob Flynn, Kingsley Joseph and Laura Wisely for this month's tips.

Coding Challenge

Most web developers have had to create a web form or two in their day. For some it seems like that's all they're asked to do. How often is that form some sort of survey? There are plenty of pre-built survey options out there, but invraibly there is something that is not just right for my needs. One frequent request I get is to allow a person to rank choices. It sounds simple enough, but how do you insure that the user doesn't duplicate a choice?

If I were coming at this challenge anew I would likely start with ColdFusion MX 7. The Flash forms have a lot of built in validation and they might be able to handle this task. But since I was presented with this challenge long before CFMX7, I had to go the "old-fashioned" way.

Ideally you'd like to notify the user as soon as they make the duplicate choice that there is a problem. That makes JavaScript my choice. It operates client-side and can give the user feedback before the form has been sent back to the server. Below is some fairly simple JavaScript that has served me well. Credit for it goes to my friend Rob Brosnan, formerly at IU, now at Seaton Hall U. NOTE: Many users have JavaScript disabled for security reasons, so some server-side checking should be done as well.

If you can think of a different way to go about solving this issue, send it to iummug @ indiana.edu. I'm always keen to find the most elegant solution. If you have an idea for a future challenge, let us know!

~Bob Flynn

Working Example
Complete Commented Code