Acrobat 8 In My Eyes

With the release of many (if not all) of the Adobe CS3 Packages comes a nice new release of Adobe’s famous PDF creator, Acrobat. Throughout school I became familiar with Adobe Acrobat 7, using it to put together mockups of websites without needing to do any hard coding. Although it took a little while to get used to, once you know your whereabouts in the program it’s fairly easy to use. This is until the release of Acrobat 8.

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Is Flash on the iPhone FINALLY arriving?

On March 18, Adobe revealed its plans to begin development on an iPhone ready version of its proprietary media player, Flash. This came after Apple’s release of an iPhone software developer’s kit or SDK. There has been an ongoing controversy over how and when Flash, a now internet staple, would be supported by the popular handheld device.

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Flash Elements and Web Standards: UNITE.

Including a flash movie in a basic HTML page.  Sounds easy enough, right?  How about including a flash movie in HTML that is standards compliant AND works with the major browsers used on the web?  If you’re like a lot of designers this probably yields frustration, as the markup for doing such can be a bit of a challenge.

I came across an article a few months ago written by the author of Dreamweaver MX Web Development, as I struggled with creating my own website.  Drew McLellan provided much insight into the markup of Flash movies (or in my case, a navigation system I had developed) and led to what we’ll consider a coding theory: it works for me until I find a browser that disproves its functionality. Continue reading Flash Elements and Web Standards: UNITE.

n00bs of the Industry Finding Their Way…

Greetings-

As a soon to be graduate from a college institution, I find myself reflecting upon a time when advanced web design and new software presented itself as a giant question mark.  What to do, how to learn, what to learn, and methods of implementation all begged for answers, and for anyone venturing out on their own- these questions can be a little intimidating.  And just as eager young minds strive to find new techniques and design tricks,  every good designer is constantly learning, exploring, and probing for ways to beef up their skills. Continue reading n00bs of the Industry Finding Their Way…

Adobe Spry Tabbed Panels meets Sliding Door and CSS Sprites

So you like the functionality of the Adobe Spry Tabbed Panels, but their drab appearance doesn’t go well with the overall design of your Web site. Meanwhile, you have been hoping that Adobe would eventually give you the ability to change their appearance with little or no CSS experience. Perhaps I have the solution you have been hoping to find and use on your Web site using the Sliding Door and CSS Sprites technique.

I would recommend using Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 or Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 (or better) with the Spry Framework widget already installed. If you don’t have Spry preinstalled in Dreamweaver, go to it’s homepage and download the extension…
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/home.html

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How to Use the Adobe Illustrator Eraser Tool

When talking about the new features in Adobe’s newest release of its Creative Suite, no one can go without discussing the newly acquired “eraser” tool for Illustrator CS3. When working with vector graphics and images, nothing can be quite as frustrating as needing to trim up a layer/shape. Designers have been ever-longing for an easier route than make-shift divides and subtracts with the Pathfinder tool, or tedious adjustments of points and anchors with the pen tool. Now a user can very easily swipe pieces of vector shapes away, and are left with a just as beautiful vector in its place. Many speculate the slightly rough edge that it puts on, as almost no one can have that perfect curve when using a traditional mouse, but there are plenty of tools to help that, the easiest being the “Smoothing Tool” (looks like a pencil with lines all across it). To ensure a careful erase, make sure only the shapes in which you want to subtract from are selected. With the shapes selected just use the eraser tool similar to how you would in a photo editing program, such as Photoshop. This tool could quite possibly be the biggest advantage to the new release of Illustrator. Continue reading How to Use the Adobe Illustrator Eraser Tool

Encode Flash video and drop into Dreamweaver

Encode Flash video and drop into Dreamweaver

by Craig Petrou and Jasmine Bucher

Just as The Buggles so famously said, “Video killed the radio star,” so too can it be said that web-based video has killed the static web page. Gone are the days of catching the attention of the overstimulated consumer with well-placed hypertext links, stimulating content, and cool graphics. From presidential candidates and college admission offices to Wall Street investors and the creators of the phenomenally popular YouTube, everyone is doing it. And if peer pressure works like it has since long before the short career of The Buggles (1977–1981), then web-based video is here to stay and will only continue to increase for entertainment, communication, and content delivery. Continue reading Encode Flash video and drop into Dreamweaver