- Building a Table Class in ActionScript 2.0
- Mar 16, 2007
- Bront Davis says that it's not as complicated as you may think to display tabular HTML data in a Flash application. Working with ActionScript and XPath, this article examines a custom class for presenting HTML-based table data in Flash.
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- Adobe's Trials and Tribulations Toward Rich-Media PDF
- Mar 9, 2007
- If you're planning to produce an interactive PDF that will contain some form of audio, video, or animation, it's important to understand the limitations of the PDF specifications. We'll warn you right now: You must move carefully through a minefield to reach your final destination. Use this chapter as a map to learn Adobe's vision for Acrobat and how it gradually grew to become a multimedia application that allows PDF to replace the Web browser. You'll soon understand the reason why many Web page developers and others creating traditional forms of media have classified PDF as a disruptive technology.
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- Flash ActionScripting for Designers: Variables, Expressions, and Functions
- Mar 9, 2007
- To write effective Flash scripts, it's helpful to understand some of the important components of the ActionScript language. Author James Gonzalez reviews three important and related ActionScript components (variables, expressions, and functions) and tells you where to get the information you need.
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- Remote Mac Management on a Budget: Low-Cost Alternatives to Apple Remote Desktop
- Mar 9, 2007
- Observing and controlling computers remotely is a great tool for systems administrators, help desk staff, teachers, and even home users. Apple Remote Desktop gives you that power and more, but if you only want the most basic remote observation and control features, there are low-cost and free options for Mac OS X. Ryan Faas gives you the best alternatives.
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- Master Mac OS X Users and Groups by Making Your Mac Think It's a Server
- Mar 2, 2007
- One of the challenges of creating a small Mac network (or even sharing files among multiple users on a single Mac) is that Mac OS X doesn't allow you to create groups of users or share folders (among local users or over a network) other than preset Shared and Public folders. But, as Ryan Faas illustrates, when you have the right tools, you can get Mac OS X to support groups, permissions, additional shared folders, and even managed user preferences.
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- ActionScripting for Designers: Controlling Audio
- Feb 23, 2007
- In this article, James Gonzalez sets you up to practice creating and using some important ActionScript components including functions and Sound objects. You will learn how to create a custom sound object to control the volume of an audio file playing, not from a timeline, but from within the library.
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- Misunderstood Photoshop: Clipping Masks
- Feb 16, 2007
- The Photoshop clipping mask feature is a quick way to create effects such as text filled with a photograph. Helen Bradley points out more handy uses for clipping masks, such as limiting the effect of adjustment layers, or simplifying the process of editing a portion of an image. You can follow along with the accompanying video tutorial to see exactly how it's done.
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- Retouching Portraits with Smart Filters in Adobe Photoshop CS3
- Feb 16, 2007
- The Photoshop CS3 Beta has changed a lot of things about the way you use Photoshop, but perhaps nothing is as dramatic as Smart Filters. David Cross demonstrates how to use this tool to retouch a photo in a very nondestructive, editable-anytime manner.
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- Flash ActionScripting for Designers: Scripting a Telescoping Menu
- Feb 9, 2007
- Flash is a great tool for creating animated menus and other navigation elements. James Gonzalez shows you how to use ActionScript to create a compact telescoping menu system that saves valuable screen real estate yet still provides one-click access to many pages of your web site.
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- Quick Guide to Saving and Printing Files in Acrobat 8
- Feb 9, 2007
- Acrobat lets you save your PDF documents to a wide variety of formats. If you need to convert a PDF file to a TIFF file or an EPS file, just select those formats when you save the file. At print time, Acrobat gives you a lot of control over the details of how your document is placed on paper. You can even make a booklet out of your PDF file directly from Acrobat. In this chapter, you'll see how to use all of Acrobat's file saving, conversion, and printing capabilities.
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- Add Email Notification to Your Blog with FeedBurner
- Feb 9, 2007
- Some of us don't want to fool around with RSS just to keep up with blogs we like. FeedBurner offers a cool option to get email notices when a site is updated with new content. Maria Langer shows how to add this free feature to your blog.
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- Masks and Blend Effects: Using and Understanding Masks, Gradients, and Blend Effects
- Feb 5, 2007
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- Get Your Picture Perfect—No Photoshop Required
- Feb 2, 2007
- Photoshop offers incredible tools for correcting and adjusting exposure, tone, and color. However, very often an image is unusable not because of problems with its exposure or color, but because it's poorly composed. In this chapter, you'll learn how—by employing a few good shooting habits and paying more attention when shooting—you can get your compositions right in the camera, and avoid a trip to your image editor.
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- Making Movies with iMovie HD
- Feb 2, 2007
- Best-selling author Jim Heid shows you just about everything you need to know to make movies in iMovie HD. By the end of this chapter, you'll have learned how to work with clips, add photos and audio to movies, create titles, dazzle with effects and transitions, and more.
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- ActionScripting for Designers: Creating Animated Pull-down Menus
- Jan 26, 2007
- Continuing his series of articles on ActionScript for designers, James Gonzalez shows you how to combine several of the simple ActionScript techniques to create a semi-transparent, animated pull-down menu.
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- Flash ActionScripting for Designers: Controlling Independent Timelines
- Jan 19, 2007
- Flash can run multiple movie clip and SWF Timelines simultaneously. It is often useful to get these various Timelines working together with one Timeline controlling some or all of the others with ActionScript. This communication is achieved through the use of target paths. In this article, author James Gonzalez reviews this important concept through the use of examples containing working target path scripts.
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- Quick Guide To Creating RSS Feeds
- Jan 19, 2007
- This chapter is all about creating your own RSS feeds by using RSS creation applications. Read on to learn how to create RSS feeds online and on your computer, upload your RSS feed, add an XML button, and validate your RSS feed.
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- Flash ActionScripting for Designers: Controlling Timeline Playback
- Jan 12, 2007
- In Flash, once a movie starts, it plays in its entirety until it either reaches the last frame of the last scene on the Timeline, or it is instructed otherwise. The only way to instruct Flash is through the use of ActionScript. Author James Gonzalez reviews the basic scripts you must learn to direct Flash to execute basic but critical project functions.
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- The Brand Gap: Innovate
- Jan 12, 2007
- Innovation is both coveted and feared in the business world. So how can your company be innovative if security and conformity are more widely accepted? Marty Neumeier looks at common elements of innovation and offers his take on taking the road less traveled.
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- What Do People Think of Your Site Design? Here's How To Find Out.
- Jan 12, 2007
- Usability testing is an essential part of the web design diet. In a nutshell, it's a technique for soliciting feedback on the design of a web site. Usability testing is usually conducted on one participant at a time, and attempts to have participants use the site in as close to a real-world setting as possible. Different people have different approaches to usability testing but two things remain consistent—the documents describing what you'll do during the test (the plan) and what came out of the test (the results report). This chapter describes the test plan—the document you prepare in advance of testing—.
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