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Monday, March 31, 2003

Tweak UI Tip 12:34 PM
Did you know you can create custom search prefixes in Internet Explorer using Tweak UI? It's sort of like QuickSearch in NetCaptor.



In Tweak UI, expand the Internet Explorer node and select Search (see screenshot above). Click Create and enter a shortcut or nickname for the site in the Prefix text box (e.g., a for Amazon, bn for Barnes & Noble, etc.). Then enter the link in the URL text box and click OK. Internet Explorer replaces %s in the URL with the term you want to search. For example, to search Amazon for books about lemurs, you would type

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?mode=blended&keyword=lemurs

in IE's address bar. Using Tweak UI, you replace lemurs with %s in the URL text box. After you click Apply, you can enter a lemurs in the address bar and press Enter to conduct your search.

Here are some of my favorites:

Use the blog comments feature to add any shortcuts of your own.

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Sunday, March 30, 2003

Spell Check 6:21 PM
By the way, it's "sneak peek." As in "peekaboo, I see you." Drag this M-W bookmarklet to your Links toolbar and your writing will reach new peaks.

Here are a few more (bookmarklets, that is):

• Brit
• W3C
• WDG
• CSS

(I should talk: I misspelled "read" in my last blog.)

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DRK 3 1:21 PM
Man, I love NewsDesk. I can read everybody's blog in one place. Now I see that Macromedia is planning to offer a Flash-based RSS news aggregation application in DRK 3. And a Flash RSSify component. Glad I subscribed to DevNet Essentials.

If you've got some time to kill, check out Strong Bad. It's sort of "South Park" for geeks. Wait a minute, isn't that redundant? How about "Beavis and Butt-Head" for geeks? Um... Anyway, if you spend a lot of time answering emails at your computer, you'll appreciate it. [Tip: don't click "back" right away. Some episodes have false endings. Also, be sure to click on objects for hidden links.]

And now for something completely different...

Spring finally found its way to Upstate New York this month. Last night, I found two tree frogs stuck to my front door like fridge magnets. I gently peeled them off the glass and pointed them toward the pond. I don't know how they got lost - the sounds of frogs croaking can be heard all over the property. In any event, no sooner had I removed the insulation from my windows when what happens? It snows. Last night, the prediction was "rain turning to snow. Total accumulation: less than one inch." Today, the forecast is 5-10 inches. It's practically April. What gives? Now all those frogs are going to have to bury themselves back in the mud for a couple weeks and I won't hear those "spring peepers" until...summer?

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Friday, March 28, 2003

MM Central Update 8:13 PM
I stand corrected. According to Kevin Lynch, Macromedia's chief software architect:

Macromedia Central is free and is expected to be available this summer with versions for Mac OS X and Windows. A beta software development kit for the new product will be available in April...Macromedia Central is installed using the Macromedia Flash player through a browser and then runs offline on a local client. Users and developers can view multiple applications at the same time, use the applications in conjunction with each other or move information from one application to the next in Central.

Wonder how Macromedia can afford to give away Central for nothing? Check this out:

Macromedia Central also creates a new distribution channel for Flash developers, enabling them to include in the environment Flash applications they have created, Lynch said. Users and other developers can download those applications for a designated fee set by the developer. Developers will get 80 percent of the revenue, with Macromedia taking 20 percent of the sale, he said.

For more information, read the entire CRN article.

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FlashComm Server 6:08 PM
If you've been thinking about playing around with Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX, but couldn't afford its $4500 price tag, you'll be pleased to know that Macromedia has just released a free developer edition of Flash Communication Server 1.5. According to Macromedia:

The Developer Edition is designed to provide developers with a version of the Communication Server that they can use to learn the product and author applications. It contains all of the functionality of the Personal Edition but has a maximum capacity ceiling appropriate only for the small amounts of traffic typically generated during the development phase...Real-world testing and deployment of applications authored with the Developer Edition should be done on either a Personal Edition or a Professional Edition.

The capacity ceiling for the Developer Edition is 250 kilobits of peak bandwidth per second (kbps) or 5 simultaneous connections, whichever limit is reached first. The capacity ceiling for the Personal Edition is one (1) megabit of peak bandwidth per second (Mbps) or 50 simultaneous connections, whichever limit is reached first. The capacity ceiling for the Professional Edition is ten (10) megabits of peak bandwidth per second (Mbps) or 2,500 simultaneous connections, whichever limit is reached first.

Although there's not a lot of hands-on tutorials for FlashComm in DevNet, the best place to start is "Creating Your First Broadcast with Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX" by Giacomo Guilizzoni.

FlashComm is ideal for multi-way audio and video streaming, chat, and real-time collaborative applications such as games, virtual meetings, whiteboards, and messaging. Essentially, if you need to exchange real-time data among multiple users in Flash, FlashComm is the way to go. Now that a free developer edition is available, expect to see many more inventive uses of FlashComm in the weeks and months ahead. Provided, of course, that developers can find a hosting provider that offers FlashComm support at an affordable price.

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Thursday, March 27, 2003

Macromedia Central 4:05 PM
Macromedia has announced the beta release of a new application: Macromedia Central. For a detailed description of Macromedia Central, see JD's Forum.

In essence, Macromedia Central is a program that users can download to subscribe to web services on their desktop and other devices, not unlike NewsDesk. According to John Dowdell:

Macromedia Central is a shell, a host, which lives on your local computer. It's a sandbox in which various applications can safely play...Macromedia Central is oriented around web services, with support for SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1 and XML-RPC. This is typically much faster than downloading HTML's blend of data and rendering instructions, much less any referenced image files and building a new display. But if you're working with your own server you have the additional option of using Flash Remoting and the compact binary AMF format.

At first glance, Macromedia Central reminds me of Shockmachine. Remember Shockmachine? Macromedia first tried selling it to users, but there was so much resistance, they decided to make it free. Judging from Macromedia's current business model, I don't expect Macromedia Central to be free. For those who don't remember Shockmachine, it was a little desktop application that enabled you to download and play Shockwave games on your computer. In any case, John Dowdell mentions Shockmachine in his forum and assures us that Macromedia is "well aware of things to do different this time around."

For more information, sign up to be considered for the Macromedia Central Developer SDK Beta.

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Wednesday, March 26, 2003

Advanced Query Wizard 5:45 PM
Just got a chance to try out the mother of all Dreamweaver extensions: Advanced Query Wizard. This should have been included with Dreamweaver from the outset, back when UltraDev 1 was released.

In a nutshell, Advanced Query Wizard enables you to create queries inside Dreamweaver using an interface that resembles SQL Server Query Designer or Query Design view in Microsoft Access. After installing AQW, a new button appears on the Recordset server behavior in Advanced mode. Clicking this button launches a new window to help you create advanced queries. The tabbed interface (you can also use a wizard-style approach) allows you to select tables and columns, create joins, enter sorting and filtering criteria, preview the results of your query, and view the final SQL.

If you're new to Structured Query Language, this extension could be a great time-saver and learning tool. Of course, I don't recommend embedding the SQL in your ASP and ColdFusion pages. Instead, I'd use AQW during site development, then convert the SQL to stored procedures (future versions may enable you to save your queries to the database as views and stored procedures). I used AQW to quickly generate a query that joins five tables. Normally, I would have written the query in Query Designer and saved it as a view. This saved me the whole rigamarole of launching Enterprise Manager. I like software that saves me time. I wonder if it's possible to run it as a standalone application, like Microsoft Query. All in all, a very impressive extension.

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Sunday, March 23, 2003

Flash Components 1:36 PM
Found a very clever site, MX Essential Components, that offers 13 free ASP/PHP components for Flash MX.

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Friday, March 21, 2003

PHP Shopping Cart 11:54 AM
Todays' tutorial: Building a Persistent Shopping Cart with PHP and MySQL by Mitchell Harper. A very good tutorial that could easily be adapted for ASP or ColdFusion.

If you're just learning PHP, like me, John Lim has created a useful PHP, JavaScript and VBScript matrix to highlight the differences among the three scripting languages.

More PHP resources:

Simple tutorial
http://www.php.net/manual/en/tutorial.php

Language Reference
http://www.php.net/manual/en/langref.php

Function Reference
http://www.php.net/manual/en/funcref.php

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Thursday, March 20, 2003

Installing MAMP 4:29 PM
As it turns out, installing PHP/MySQL on OSX 10.2 (Jaguar) was a snap.

1) I followed these directions to activate the PHP module.
2) I followed these directions to install MySQL.
3) And I followed these directions to create a new MySQL database and connect to it from Dreamweaver MX.

The Terminal utility is going to seem a bit daunting if you've never used a command prompt in Windows before. Otherwise, if you follow the instructions carefully, you can set up a Mac/Apache/MySQL/PHP (MAMP) environment on Jaguar in a very short time. The only place I departed from the instructions is using

http://localhost/~prnewman/

instead of

http://127.0.0.1/~admin/

to access the local Apache server (I don't have an admin user on my Mac, unless I'm missing something).

Remember, this only applies to Jaguar, which installs Apache server and PHP 4 by default.

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Wednesday, March 19, 2003

CFMX Update 3 6:08 PM
Macromedia has just released ColdFusion MX Updater 3. It's a whopping 29 MB, which means I'll be downloading it for the next three hours. Read the Release Notes carefully, because you have to stop several services before performing the installation. In the case of ColdFusion Standalone server, you have to stop the following services:

  • ColdFusion MX Application Server

  • ColdFusion MX ODBC Agent

  • ColdFusion MX ODBC Server


    • If you installed ColdFusion on another server, such as IIS, you have to stop that server as well. After installing Updater 3 on a production server, you should recompile your ColdFusion applications. According to Macromedia:

    You can use the updater_compile script installed in the cf_root\bin directory to recompile your ColdFusion applications. Recompiling your application helps to improve initial page request time, but is not necessary for the proper functioning of ColdFusion applications. Use the following commands to run this script:

    updater_compile.bat cf_web_root [cf_app_file_dir]

    This patch also installs the Flash Remoting Updater 1 for CFMX (see bug list).

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    Newman Zone Upgrade 3:20 PM
    Newman Zone will be down for approximately 6 hours, starting at 6PM PST tonight. (My host is upgrading the server - ColdFusion MX here were come!)

    Got an email from Macromedia today, touting "Groundbreaking sites made with MX":

    Incidentally, I couldn't find any classical music in the Sony Classical VIP Lounge. I guess they figure people who like classical music can afford to pay for it.

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    Tuesday, March 18, 2003

    Syndicated Blogs 1:17 PM
    As you've probably noticed by now, I'm a bit of a shareware junkie. Well...I was watching "The Screensavers" last night, and Leo Laporte mentioned a free program called NewsDesk that aggregates news into a single reader. I installed it last night and it's fabulous. What's really amazing is that it's a .NET application (the .NET Framework is required to install it). Don't bother with the default channels: you have buy a subscription from newsisfree.com to activate them (I guess newsis20dollarsayear.com was taken). I just deleted the NewsIsFree channels and created my own, consisting mainly of weblogs and news headlines.

    If you don't want to download NewsDesk, you can always visit an online blog aggregator like fullasagoog. Here you'll find plenty of MX bloggers, including Yours Truly, Jeremy Allaire, Tom Muck, Kevin Lynch, Waldo Smeets, Mike Chambers ("Mesh"), and John Dowdell.

    To add a blog or any other RSS feed to NewsDesk, right-click a category (e.g., Blogs) and choose New Channel. Enter the URL to the XML file in the dialog box and click OK. NewsDesk gathers information about the feed and adds it to the category, along with a list of headlines. Here's a feed to get you started:

    http://www.newmanzone.com/blogs/newmanzone.xml

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    Monday, March 17, 2003

    Wrox on the Rocks 2:07 PM
    According to The Register:

    IT publisher Wrox Press is set to close following the collapse into liquidation of US owners Peer Information last Friday.

    Peer Information owns Friends of Ed and Wrox Press, which trades as Glasshaus, Curlingstone, and runs a number of community sites.

    Glasshaus and Friends of Ed have announced that their respective sites are to close.
    For more information, check out these weblogs:

    http://www.dreamweavermxsupport.com/index.php?type=blog&pid=36

    http://www.hotfootmail.com/hotfeet/

    The bottom line is, authors who write for Wrox, glasshaus and Friends of Ed will probably not receive the money they deserve for all their hard work. No word yet on how this will impact titles already on Amazon and bookstore shelves, but if you've been dying to purchase one of these publishers' books, I'd do it fast.

    Wow.

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    Flash FTP Client 1:28 PM
    Here's a good example of the power of Flash Remoting: Move Your Desktop Software into the Browser. In this tutorial, Edoardo Zubler shows you how to create a Flash FTP client using ColdFusion Components (CFCs), ActionScript, and the CFFTP tag. Of course, this just scratches the surface of what can be done.

    Incidentally, if you decide to download the sample files, you may get the impression the application doesn't work. That's because the files are downloaded to ColdFusion's temp directory. On my computer, the path is

    C:\CFusionMX\runtime\servers\default\SERVER-INF\temp

    To change the download path, edit line 74 of ftpSpider.cfc:

    localfile="#GetTempDirectory()##ARGUMENTS.ftpFileLocal#"

    I changed the localfile attribute to this:

    localfile="#GetDirectoryFromPath(ExpandPath("/flash_ftp/*.*"))##ARGUMENTS.ftpFileLocal#"

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    Saturday, March 15, 2003

    PHP/Mac Setup 2:31 PM
    For all you Mac users out there, I found a good article on Setting up PHP, MySQL and Apache on Macintosh OS X. You should probably upgrade to Jaguar (OS X version 10.2) before you attempt this. I'm not sure if this particular setup requires Apple's Developer Tools, but I'll try it out and let you know. (According to this article, you need the Developer Tools to compile Apache or MySQL, as opposed to installing the precompiled binaries.)

    A few more articles on MAMP (Mac/Apache/MySQL/PHP):

    http://www.serverlogistics.com/downloads-jag.php

    http://roxanne.walterdavisstudio.com/freeway/tutorials/php_mysql/

    http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/

    http://developer.apple.com/internet/macosx/php.html

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    Flash Components 12:14 AM
    Found a good article by Colin Moock called What Is a Flash MX Component? I liked his analogy that "Flash MX components are Macromedia's effort to provide visual programmers with a drag-and-drop development environment, much like Microsoft Visual Basic." I never thought of them this way, but he's right. Just as Dreamweaver MX enables you to insert form elements in Design view - rather than hand-coding them - Flash components are essentially reusable widgets and code snippets.

    By the way, it looks like Macromedia has taken user feedback to heart: the web site is much faster now. I still find the Exchange frustrating because it keeps prompting me to log in after the session times out, and the "Remember Me" feature doesn't work. I also think the hidden frames workaround for the browser's "Back" button is a bit of a kludge, but it's a start.

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    Friday, March 14, 2003

    DevNet Subscriptions 12:43 AM
    Here's are some interesting tidbits from the Macromedia DevNet Subscriptions Licensing page:

    For how long can I continue to use my DevNet Server software?

    Your DevNet Server software licenses are term licenses meaning that you may continue to use them as long as you remain a subscriber. If your subscription lapses you must cease using the DevNet Server software.

    Do all of the developers on my team need to have DevNet Professional licenses to use my DevNet Server software?

    Anyone who writes, modifies, or directly accesses application source code on Server software licensed under DevNet Professional must work within your organization and also be a DevNet Professional subscriber.

    Can I use my DevNet Server software for staging?

    No you may not, DevNet Server software is for development only. Staging is considered a production usage.

    If I do not renew my DevNet Subscription, can I still use the software, content, and services?

    After the subscription expires:
    That's what I get for reading the fine print.

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    Thursday, March 13, 2003

    Updater Update 12:57 AM
    According to Mesh: "The update for Flash Remoting installed with ColdFusion MX will be included with the next ColdFusion MX updater."

    If you haven't applied ColdFusion MX Updater Release 2, wait for Release 3 to get all the ColdFusion fixes.

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    Wednesday, March 12, 2003

    More Macromedia Updaters 4:09 PM
    I just noticed that the Flash Remoting Updater Release 1 was posted to Macromedia's web site on March 10 (see list of bug fixes). It's a little confusing, but according to this document, the "patch" is designed for the .NET and Java versions of Flash Remoting MX.

    To update Flash Remoting MX within ColdFusion MX, you are encouraged to download the ColdFusion MX Updater Release 2. However, I see no mention of Flash Remoting in the release notes. According to Macromedia: "Updater releases are cumulative, therefore, Updater 2 includes all fixes from Updater 1. You do not have to install Updater 1 before you install Updater 2."

    You will probably be prompted to login to Macromedia.com before you can download the updaters. The ColdFusion MX Updater is just under 17 MB.

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    Monday, March 10, 2003

    Rich Internet Applications 6:17 PM
    Despite my objections to Macromedia's new web site, I'm still a big proponent of so-called "Rich Internet Applications." This technology is so new that only one book is available on the subject: Building Rich Internet Applications by Robert Reinhardt and Simon Allardice. Check out the book's companion web site to view the completed flash movies and the book's table of contents.

    If you're interested in learning more about RIAs, I found two very good tutorials on Macromedia.com:

    1) Macromedia Flash Remoting by Kevin Towes

    2) Learning Flash Remoting Basics Through Examples by Lucas Sherwood

    I found the second tutorial especially helpful because it explains how to use the NetConnection Debugger.

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    Sunday, March 09, 2003

    Tweak UI Tip 2:48 PM
    Here's a useful tip if you've installed Tweak UI, part of Microsoft's PowerToys for Windows XP. Tweak UI enables you to customize the folders listed in the "Common Dialog" box.

    To do this, launch Tweak UI and select Common Dialogs. Select the Custom Places radio button. You'll notice the drop-down menu consists of Windows' "Special Folders," such as My Documents, Desktop, My Computer, etc. To enter a custom folder, simply type in the complete path to the folder on your computer (e.g., C:\Downloads):



    Click Apply or OK and the next time you save a file on your computer, your custom folders will appear.

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    Saturday, March 08, 2003

    Macromedia Beta 1:21 AM
    Ugh. Is it me or is the new Macromedia Beta site a major blunder? I like Flash Remoting as much as the next guy - probably more than the next guy - but trying to use the site on dial-up is like watching paint dry:

    "Assembling Interface Components..."

    "Processing Content..."

    Closing browser...

    I've seen the future of RIAs, and it's for broadband users only.

    I tried to use the Exchange and finally gave up. Macromedia took a poorly organized and undervalued resource and managed, somehow, to make it even worse.

    I clicked on a link to download the Rich Internet Application Starter Kit and was redirected to a Flash demo. I still have no idea how to download it. Oh, wait, I see it: there's a little link - "Download the Kit" - in the bottom left corner. Reminds me of trying to find the free version of RealPlayer, back when I thought it was still worth downloading.

    I think where Macromedia really misses the boat on Flash Remoting is creating all these components to replicate HTML form elements in Flash. So developers will say, "Wow! You can create list menus and check boxes in Flash!" But the average user doesn't know it's Flash - they just think it takes too long to load. Why should I spend the extra time and money to create these interfaces when I could just as easily use Dynamic HTML?

    Don't get me wrong: I love Macromedia's products. But if this new site is any indication - DEVNET subscriptions, Resource Kits, Instructor Led Courses - I expect to pay a lot more for a lot less in the months to come. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted...

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