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Gizmos and Software Releases

For those of you who are interested in such things, Microsoft have just announced a number of personal entertainment releases:

First up we have the preview of MSN Music. It's only in preview at the moment but the full version is expected later this year. 

Then secondly Windows Media Player 10 has also just been released and is available for download. 

This has also precipitated fresh gizmos called Portable Media Centres. You can now wander around the streets watching videos, films and looking at photos. 

But please mind the lamp posts!

Win a copy of the CSS Cookbook

Author Christopher Schmitt was so bowled over by the response of DMXzone readers to the competition to win his last book (Adobe Photoshop CS in 10 Simple Steps or Less), that he asked us if we'd like to feature his CSS Cookbook.

Given the popularity of our CSS related premium content articles, we reckon this could be our most popular competition yet and jumped at the offer of Christopher (and his publisher O'Reilly) of 5 books to give away.

Checkout this link for entry details (competition ends on 8^th September) >>

Concerned about your Browser?

If you're not entirely happy with IE (all those security warnings tend to make for a disturbed nights sleep) and want to know what alternatives there are - try this new site from the Web Standards Project.

Called Browse Happy, the site uses case studies to highlight different browsers and what advantages using them might give you.

Could be very useful - especially if you're the 'IT chap/ chapess' in an SME.

XP SP2 Watch

A couple of snippets to help you stay abreast of developments.

Pages to bookmark - the Microsoft XP SP2 Support Centre and the Using Programs and Hardware with SP2 page, which provides links off to other pages that might help you solve any problems that arise.

The current situation seems to be that home users with XP Home are likely to start getting the update soon, with Professional users having to wait another week or so.

Sadly someone has already reported a vulnerability in the pack.

DMXzone Extension News

Plenty of news for DMXzone Extension Users with updates and new support tutorials to report.

Smart Image Processor PHP has been updated to version 1.0.3. Features include:

• Full Dreamweaver MX2004 compatiblity
• When uploading multiple files only images pass through SIP
• Thumbnail function has been rewritten

Get your Smart Image Processor PHP update here >>

Read a Smart Image Processor PHP support tutorial here >> 

File Genie PHP has been updated to version 1.01 with some small bug fixes to address server formats.

Get your File Genie PHP update here >>

Read a File Genie PHP support tutorial here >>

A revised update for Pure PHP Upload has been released.

Existing owners grab a copy of the latest version (PurePHPUpload213_1.mxp) here >> 

Win a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS in 10 Simple Steps or Less

Thanks to Christopher Schmitt, who co-authored this book with Micah Laaker, and Wiley we've got 5 copies of this book to giveaway in another week long book competition.

Christopher Schmitt is a well-known author and Web designer who has written for a wide variety of publications on and off-line. In this book he and his co-author provide clear instructions on how to carry out over 250 Photoshop tasks. By breaking the tasks down into units of ten steps or less and using oodles of screen shots this book will have you to cropping, merging, shadowing and filtering in no time.

Winners will be announced on August 19th, so fingers on the buzzers and here we go. This book is all about creating neat Web graphics, so just drop us an email here with the URL of the best looking still image Web site (no animations, videos or Flash movies this time please) that you know of. Winning entries to be decided on the aesthetic judgement of the DMXzone content editor – so that's pretty random

If you don't want to try your luck, visit Amazon >>

Mozilla Updates

The Mozilla foundation (who recently celebrated their first birthday) have recently announced a set of updates. We are now at:

• Firefox browser version 0.9.3
• Thunderbird e-mail and news group client version 0.7.3
• Mozilla all-in-one Internet application suite 1.7.2

Grab your copy here >>

Microsoft XP Service Pack 2 News

Microsoft has now released XP SP2 to manufacturing and is going to start rolling out copies of the pack, with users being advised to activate Automatic Updates if they haven't already.

Given the size of Service Pack 2 (the executable thumps in at approx 266 MB) and the demand, roll out is going to be staggered. It will of course be available for download (along with installation software that will 'optimize the download experience'), but also may be obtained from MS on a free CD and may perhaps feature on magazine freebie disks.

The download via Automatic Update is dependent on a number of factors including to quote "the customer's Internet usage, location, language and the level of Internet demand for Service Pack 2".