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Blog II: Three-Column Layout Modifications

Last week I promised the coding wizards out there that you could shake your collective heads at my efforts with PHP and MySQL this week. However, despite my lack of skills and with a little help from my server manager, I managed to upload WordPress 1.5. From that point, with very little further help, I added a three-column template and modified it to suit my needs. Therefore, I wrote this piece for any designer (or beginning coder) who longs for a three-column personal blog, but who freaks out when she views a string of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks that look like an alien language. A warning, however: You must at least have access to an FTP program and you must know how to use it.

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Linda Goin
5652

No-database Flash-PHP chat. Part V: Emoticons

This is the final article of the No-database Flash-PHP chat series (see Part I, Creating Basic Chat Functionality, Part II Security and Usability features, Part III Security and Usability features (continued) and Part IV, Usability and nice-to-have features)

In this last iteration we will concentrate on a topic that is definitely more fun than security or user tracking. Today we will talk about “Emoticons” or how they also call them “Smileys”. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary an emoticon is “a group of keyboard characters (as :-)) typically representing a facial expression or an emotion or otherwise conveying tone or attitude that is used especially in computerized communications (as e-mail)”.  We could add to that instead of “a group of keyboard characters” it could be an image, or in case with Flash … animation (yummy!).

There is a good and bad news. The good news is you CAN make really cool looking Flash emoticons with sound, video and all the effects Flash has in its arsenal. The bad news is Flash seems to be having troubles with positioning movie clip within a TextField or TextArea component inline with the text.  The only workaround I found was to display emoticons on the next line. If this doesn’t bother you – proceed to the next paragraph, otherwise I would suggest waiting for the next version of Flash player. Hopefully this bug will be fixed.

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Alex July
17815

Blog Development Possibilities for the Web Designer

We can’t avoid it. We can’t get around it, either, because it hits us in the face whenever we surf the Web. It’s fairly recognizable because its design may lack “umph,” spirit, and spunk (Did someone say it looks “mass-produced”?).  On the other hand, it may appear so sharp that it seems to defy the pundits who declare that the Web is no place for the likes of magazine design. IT is the Weblog, or BLOG. In some cases, it’s a personal soblog, a collaborative moblog, a Billy Joe Boblog, and even a joblog. Where does the Web designer fit into this self-designed madhouse? This week I’ll take you on a tour to discover how this Web tool works for and against professional Web designers.

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Linda Goin
2626

Content Development for the Web Designer

A web designer often spends months on site development. Say that after all these months the colours for your new design shimmer, the layout reeks with perfection, and the navigation moves your test viewers to grateful tears. However, the content falls short. Do you hire a pro writer and editor to help, or can you modify the content yourself? Can a person design AND write? Of course! With the grammatical rules contained in this article, your content could shine as brightly as your design. Read More
Linda Goin
2704

Creating circular movement with Flash

Welcome to the second article in our series on Flash motion using ActionScript. In the first article, I looked at how you could move an object in a straight line using ActionScript. In this article, I'll look at creating circular motion - moving an object in a circle around another object. By the end of this article, you'll be able to create a function that you can reuse throughout your movies. Read More
Sas Jacobs
7396

ColdFusion MX: Securing Your Application

In the last article we built out the back-end administration of the website in CFForms & Administration (Part 2 of 2).  We had already built the tools to allow people to put stuff into the database, so we built a way to get things out of the database.  Our goal was to build the framework for our back-end, and build one tool that allowed us to report off the sales leads.  The last article was full of great tips, additional use of Dreamweaver code wizards and we also spent a great deal of time explaining the code that we used as well.  One such example is that we introduced recordset paging and recordset navigation.  These two useful tools allow you to be informed on what records you’re viewing, and a means to navigate through all the records being returned.

In this article we want to secure what we’ve created so that only people with the right login, password and security role can log in and interact with the back-end admin section.  We will focus our attention on the Application framework, the Application.cfm file, Application variables and how to secure your website with a login and password using <cflogin>, <cfloginuser>, <cflogout> as well as some related functions: GetAuthUser() and IsUserInRole(). 

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Rob Sherman
2987

No-database Flash-PHP chat. Part IV: Usability and nice-to-have features

In this article we will continue working on our Flash-PHP chat application (see Part I, Creating Basic Chat Functionality, Part II Security and Usability features and Part III Security and Usability features (continued))

Today we will cover the following topics:

  • Using unique colours for each user’s messages
  • Displaying timestamp with each message
  • Automatically placing keyboard focus in the nickname field on the log-in form
  • Log-in by pressing “Enter” key
  • Send and format messages by pressing “Enter” Key
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Alex July
11336

Design Psychology: Hoax or Hot Stuff?

Every few years a new trend floats through design markets. These changes usually focus on form and/or function, and it seems that audiences (and many designers) are swept along with the tide without means to contradict or question the outcome. The latest buzz phrase, “design psychology,” began in the architectural design market a few years ago, and now you can partake in courses on this subject at many colleges. Before you plunk down hard-earned cash to learn more about how psychology affects the success of your Web design (or any other design), learn first what this term means to you and your work. Through the following information and links to other sites, I hope to show you how to spot research hoaxes (or poor studies) and how to recognize hot information that will help you succeed with your online endeavors.

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Linda Goin
3148

Creating Animated GIFs with Photoshop & ImageReady

Love them or hate them, you just can’t avoid animated GIFs. The often-maligned animated GIF may not be the favorite visual device it once was, but it still serves very legitimate purposes. From banner ads to slide shows to dynamic simulations, animated GIF files are often the best solution on a web page. Flash is excellent at creating animations, but for many reasons Flash is not always a viable option. This leaves animated GIFs as the most effective way to create movement on a web page without resorting to scripting, plug-ins and ‘invalid markup’.

There are a number of tools to create Animated GIFs. From stand-alone tools like ULead GIF Animator, to high-end software like Fireworks and Photoshop, there’s a tool available to fit your needs. Because most web authors have a copy of Photoshop, that’s what we’ll focus on in this tutorial. However, many of this article’s methods will apply to other software as well.

Photoshop has long been the standard for pictures destined for printing. With version 5.5, Adobe started including ImageReady, a separate but similar program, which focused on creating images for the web. ImageReady makes it possible to slice, optimize and animate your Photoshop images. It also gives you the ability to create interactive elements like rollover buttons and image maps. Of course, for our purposes in this article, we’ll focus on creating Animated GIF files in Photoshop and ImageReady.

I used Photoshop CS and ImageReady CS on Windows XP for this tutorial, but most of the steps will be similar to the Macintosh version and previous versions on either platform. The process of creating Animated GIFs hasn’t changed much in the last few versions.

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Zac Van Note
120793

XMLHttpRequest

If you've been using the web of late you'll have noticed some funky things being done with client side HTML that pulls data from a server without the need to refresh the page. Such techniques are used in pages like Google's Suggest, (www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en) Maps (maps.google.com/)and Gmail (www.gmail.com), along with a number of other applications from web professionals trying out the technology. It's similar to how Flash can pull XML data and utilise it, but using plain old HTML and JavaScript.

In this tutorial we're going to look at the basics of how this is done using XMLHttpRequest, and show a simple application you can put it to.

To use this tutorial you'll need an understanding of JavaScript and basic XML and PHP, if you're only familiar with server behaviors the tutorial is probably a bit advanced for you. I've tried to keep the example as un-cluttered as possible to focus on the core idea behind the technology.

How it works

Normally when you request a web page, your browser sends a request for the page and then the page is returned. The browser only interacts with the server at the page request, so our only way to get an update to the page based on user data is to request a new one or use a plug-in like Flash or Java.

XMLHttpRequest allows us to request additional data from the server via JavaScript. A series of calls to the XMLHttpRequest object allow us to request small batches of XML data from a server source over a web connection. Because they're small, the technique is ideal for small dynamic updates to page information. For security reasons these requests can only go to the server that the JavaScript was originally downloaded from.

The technology was originally created by Microsoft as an Active X object, but other browsers have followed suit with a native JavaScript Object. This object is actually part of the W3C standard, but is obscurely hidden within the depths of the SVG specification.

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Matt Machell
5072

Moving objects with ActionScript part 1

You're probably familiar with motion tweens and using them to create movement in a Flash movie. Motion tweens move objects around the Stage, rotate them and fade them in and out. What you might not know is that you can achieve the same effect using ActionScript. This approach gives you much more flexibility and you can write functions that you can reuse in your Flash projects.

This is the first in a series of articles looking at scripted motion in ActionScript. In this article, we'll start by creating simple motion in a straight line. We'll look at how you can bounce an object off the walls of a movie clip.

The other articles will be on:

  • Circular motion
  • Fades and rotations
  • Inertia and gravity effects
  • Creating springs
  • Tweening and Transition classes

By the end of each article, you'll be able to create a function that you can reuse throughout your movies. I

I've assumed that you are using Flash MX or Flash MX 2004 and that know how to add ActionScript to a movie. I've used ActionScript 1.0 for my examples.

You can download the source files for the tutorial from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file. The download includes the starter files you'll need as well as the completed files.

Note: If you have difficulties downloading the source files or PDF, you might have a problem with your cookies. Delete the cookies from your machine and try again. In Internet Explorer, you can do this by choosing Tools > Internet Options... and clicking the Delete Cookies... button on the General tab.

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Sas Jacobs
15564

Introduction to Coldfusion Components

Introduction

Coldfusion Components also known as CFC’s. A lot of people I know who program Coldfusion and not use CFC’s have as excuse; it’s too hard to learn! It’s too hard to learn?? No way!!

It’s very easy to learn. It’s just an other way of thinking than you’re used to. You must see CFC’s as building blocks. By constructing “building blocks” you’re code is much cleaner and far more reusable, thus quicker to build your application. Most (if not every) Coldfusion developer knows UDF’s (User Defined Functions) and Custom Tags. CFC’s are almost the same as Custom Tags, but have some differences:

  • Custom Tags have a single entry point; CFC’s can have multiple entry points. This makes it possible to create a single component that does many related actions. (To do that with custom tags you would need multiple tags or cumbersome switch processing.)
  • Custom Tags have no formalized parameters passing and validation mechanism; CFC’s do. In other words unlike custom tags, CFC’s can validate passed data, enforce data types, check for required parameters, and optionally assign default values.
  • Custom Tags cannot persist; CFC’s can. Custom Tags are blocks of code that are executed as is, while CFC’s are objects and can be treated as such.
  • Custom Tags are designed to contain code; CFC’s are designed to contain both code and data.
  • Custom Tags are accessible only by Coldfusion and only locally; CFC’s can be accessed as web services, opening up a whole new world of reuse possibilities.

To sum it up, CFC’s and Custom Tags are quite different. Although their functionality does overlap a little, they really do not solve the same problems at all. So to learn the basics of CFC’s while head right on it and start with some sample “spaghetti code” and transform it to a structured and reusable way; a CFC. Please note that this article only covers the basics of CFC’s and does not handle any advanced topics.

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Michael van Leest
7316
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