Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Literacy and wireless in Laos - since1968 - I really love what Marc Garrett is doing with Since1968. This interview talks with Lee Thornof the Jhai Foundation who was in Indochina during the Vietnam war and then went back in 1998 to deliver humanitarian supplies. What he found there led him to help set up a wireless network with bike powered computers and so on. Interesting and a good sort of thing to think about. We do have a lot, and finding ways to give back to the community at large is a good thing to do. Nice work Marc! 11:07:44 AM      comment []

New on the DesDev center - This is the big Director release, but there is a lot on Contribute as well. Director MX Application Development Center Director joins the Macromedia MX family. New articles and tutorials Director MX: Professional-Strength Multimedia for Industrial-Strength Projects - Rob Burgess Use the right tool for the job. Rob Burgess examines the role of Director MX in Macromedia history-and in the future. Dynamic Run-time Linking to External Media with Director MX - Joe Sparks Joe Sparks explains how to use Lingo to import and manipulate external files on the fly with Director MX. Director MX Video Tutorials - Mark Fletcher Watch and learn how to use Director MX features such as accessibility behaviors, Lingo control, and improved debugging. Publishing Video with Director MX and Flash Communication Server MX - Jay Armstrong and Tom Higgins Use Lingo and Flash objects to publish and receive live video broadcasts. Director MX and Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX - John Taylor Create multiuser Director MX applications the modern way. Director Extreme: Interface and Workflow Improvements in Director MX - Gary Rosenzweig Get your job done faster in the Macromedia MX environment. Logged In: Introducing Director MX - Miriam Geller Multimedia just got better than ever. Check out all the new features in Director MX. JD's Forum: The Third Channel of Delivery for Your MX Work - John Dowdell Text, web interfaces, and stand-alone apps each have their own unique distribution advantages. Generating Perlin Noise with Director MX - Andrew Phelps Use Lingo and ActionScript code to create image effects in Director MX with Perlin noise. Using the Fireworks MX Import Xtra to Export to Director MX - Macromedia Follow these instructions to bring your Fireworks graphics into the Director authoring environment. Top Ten Reasons to Use Director MX - Macromedia Count the ways that Director MX can help you build your next project. Comparing Macromedia Flash and Director - Macromedia Both tools have unique strengths and advantages. Find the right balance for your project. Making Director Movies Accessible - George Brown, Jay Armstrong and Kraig Mentor Learn how to ensure that all users can access your Director application. Retrofitting Director MX Content for Accessibility - Laura Keen Share your content with everyone. Advantages of Running Multiple Instances of ColdFusion MX for J2EE - Brandon Purcell Boost performance and stability in your applications by running multiple ColdFusion instances in single or clustered setup. Learning Flash Remoting Basics Through Examples (for ColdFusion Developers) - Lucas Sherwood Get versed with Macromedia Flash Remoting with these code-based widgets. Using Macromedia Flash with Sony CLIE NX Series - Phillip Torrone Get, play, and create Flash content for the new Sony CLIE. Tips for Manipulating Images and Text in Authorware 6.5 - Andrew Poulos Get creative with your text display using these helpful suggestions. Updating Static Content in a Dynamic Website with Contribute - Marc A. Garrett Build a site that uses server includes yet allows users to update static content globally. Building a Contribute-enabled Intranet - Mike Weiland Create a website that allows different groups to maintain it on a daily basis. Stay tuned for our next launch coming January 6th and be sure to sign up for our Designer & Developer Center newsletter to stay updated on our new content. As always, if you have an article or topic proposal, we'd love to hear from you. Please send your proposals to DesDev Content ( 9:37:05 AM      comment []

Director MX released - Director MX is now available from the Macromedia store. Macromedia Director MX enables users to author content once and deliver it anywhere, whether it is online or offline. Director MX supports most major video, audio, bitmap, 3D, and vector formats to give developers the broadest range of materials from which to deliver professional strength multimedia content and applications. The performance, media handling, and extensibility of Director MX are designed to handle data deployed to fixed media, as it quickly loads and unloads data into system memory for optimal playback of large CD/DVD-ROM or kiosk-based files. 9:34:31 AM      comment []

ANN: Fix for MX 6.1 source code formatting w/o indentation issue - Chris Valiquet - [Matt adds... this was from yesterday, but I deleted it while demonstrating Radio... not the brightest bulb in the box sometimes.... ] The Dreamweaver MX 6.1 Updater for Contribute includes fixes and enhancements to many standard Dreamweaver MX features.  One area of improvement is source code formatting.  With the Updater,  Dreamweaver will better preserve any existing formatting in your documents. However, when the Indent preference for code formatting is unchecked (Edit > Preferences > Code Format category), source code generated by Dreamweaver may be formatted and indented inconsistently and incorrectly. To address this issue, an Updater Extension has been made available which will allow use of the 6.0 code formatting algorithm when the Indent preference is unchecked. Please note that this Updater extension applies only to Dreamweaver MX 6.1 (6.0 with the Updater for Contribute installed).  Installing it on any other version will have no effect. Also be aware this Updater extension is specifically directed to developers who have the Indent preference unchecked.  If you never uncheck this preference, this extension will have no effect. For more specific information, please review our TechNote on the issue at the following URL (watch for line wrap): http://www.macromedia.com/support/dreamweaver/ts/documents/indentpref.htm Or visit our Updater page to download the extension: http://www.macromedia.com/support/dreamweaver/downloads_updaters.html 9:33:35 AM      comment []

Accessibility interview with Joe Clark - slashdot.net - There is a pretty interesting and detailed interview with Joe Clark,  author of Building Accessable WebSites. Although this has been up for 10 days, it just came across the desk today. I think this is a pretty good read and the questions are all from users. There is a good explanation of where Flash can be used and where it shouldn't be which is really interesting. 9:31:41 AM      comment []

The real value of Contribute - Willi Schneider, Contribute Forum - This post show exactly what we expect from the product and what people will find in using it. I had to post this here. Willi, check your mail, I asked your permission there if you don't want this post here, let me know. [Contribute] was designed to allow website owners a way to update their sites, by themselves, and save themselves some money. additionally, if you convince your clients (especially smaller companies who are not willing to spend a lot of money), that a site with "up-to-date" content is much more successful, these clients see the benefit from contribute. So What is the developers benefit? Quite simple! If my clients notice, their sites are more successful  with up-to-date content, they might want me to add new chapters from time to time, which they can't do (even if CT would allow). They are no longer afraid of the maintenance costs and plan "bigger" sites. They come back, when they want major changes of the site-layout (which then is my job..), because with almost no costs for updating content, they can spend more money for the layout. There still are clients who make their first steps on the internet. These (usually small) companies are unexperienced. With CT they almost cannot destroy the layout, but still have professional looking sites. This is good to know, if you show your portfolio to new clients... Why not try & buy a software like CT, to just "check" if updating content is the "thing". At the "high risk" of 99.- $ your clients can gather experience in "content managing". If they don't like it, you can show them a different, more expensive CMS or do the work for them... In the really short time CT or comparable products have been on the market, I got several new clients, just because I could convince these people, that they can afford maintenance. Plus telling these clients, that setting up a site to be compatible to CT (Templates, Libraries etc.) is a little more work in the beginning, gave me the opportunity to ask for higher rates. ...just my 2 cents... Willi Schneider (Munich) 9:20:22 AM      comment []