ANN: Community MX Week in Review 071404

Our announcements took a break, but CMX never rests. Here are the latest
offerings from Community MX.

More Money - Same Workload [FREE]
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=DFB9D
Tricia Littlefield

Using a simple time and billing program helped me make more money, make
better business decisions and bid on flat fee projects more accurately.
Best of all, the software was easy to use and blended into my workflow
problem-free. Read how a time and billing software program can help you and
then watch a video on how to use one such program.

Planning An Efficient Database
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=34710
Rob Williams

Database-driven websites are quickly becoming the "way of doing things" on
the net these days, but for developers new to the database way of thinking,
things often end up being far more complicated and confusing than they
should be. In this article we'll work through the basic concepts of
databases, and develop an easy and effective method of planning databases
that will not only make things easy to understand, but will also help to
improve the speed and efficiency of the databases you create.


Manipulating ID3 Tags: Part 2
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=53D16
Arman Danesh

In this second article on working with ID3 tags in MP3 files from within
ColdFusion, you will learn how to set and update the values stored in ID3
tags.


Simple Dynamic Recordset Sorting Using Stored Procedures
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=E1ECA
Tom Muck

A stored procedure gives you many benefits when building applications,
including web applications using ColdFusion, ASP, and other technologies.
They are fast because they are precompiled and they are secure because the
database tables are not being accessed directly. One thing that is a little
tricky in working with stored procedures is building dynamic queries. You
can build a SQL statement as a string within a stored procedure and execute
it using the EXEC statement (or xp_executeSQL), but this also defeats one of
the purposes of building your functionality into a stored procedure: the
statement is not compiled when it is built dynamically. This article shows
one way of creating dynamic SQL on the fly while still allowing the stored
procedure to be precompiled.

Extensioneering 101: Objects Part 1
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=33C1A
Danilo Celic

Objects are probably the most basic of extensions; their single-minded
purpose is to place a small portion of code where the user has made a
selection, or has positioned their insertion point. Of course, Objects, like
many of the other extension types that we'll cover throughout the
Extensioneering 101 series, you can do more, much more, if you really want
to.

But wait, doesn't an Object's functionality sound exactly like what a
snippet does? Why not create a snippet to insert the code, and forget about
all this Extension earring stuff?

Read on to find out why you will want to create an Object extension...


The Practice of CSS Column Design: Boxes in Columns [FREE]
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=CB7B3
John Gallant, Holly Bergevin

This tutorial expands our discussion about making accessible layouts using
divs for basic page construction blocks. Using CSS, we'll show how to build
a column of separate bordered boxes, each with a colored header, similar
those currently in use on the CMX main page (as of July, 2004). We'll also
discuss collapsing and escaping margins, and a few other things to look out
for on our way to some nicely styled Bordered Boxes.

Using Dreamweaver and .NET For Batch Updates
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=F57A3
Heidi Bautista

The Update Record server behavior is convenient and easy to use when you
need to update a single row of a table using values collected from a form.
But what if you want to update many rows simultaneously and don't want to
bother with filling out a form for each and every item? In this tutorial
you'll learn how to modify Dreamweaver's Update Record server behavior to
perform a batch update. With a bit of hand-coding you can still take
advantage of Dreamweaver's built-in server behavior.

Fun With Fink
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=6D83E
Thomas Pletcher

Fink is a powerful package manager for Linux and Unix open-source software
on Mac OS X/X11. Using Fink, you can install more than 1700 flexible (and
free) open-source packages - including valuable web development tools - from
binaries or source. This tutorial will show you how to get Fink installed on
your Mac, and then show you how to install and configure Bluefish, a popular
Linux-based text editor for programmers. You'll learn how to run Linux
programs side-by-side with your OS X favorites, via X11.

Immersive Imaging - Part 2 - Adding A QTVR File To A Web Page
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=4C91C
Jim Babbage

In Part One of this two-part series, we looked at the basics of creating
panoramic images for use in QuickTime VR (QTVR). In Part Two, we'll look at
bringing the panoramic image into your web page as a QTVR movie.

Also included in this tutorial, is a video that shows the process of
embedding the QTVR movie into a web page, and adding various parameters to
the movie via Dreamweaver.


Rotoscoped Buttons in Flash
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=801D6
Tom Green

We sometimes tend to forget how we got here. Back in the early days of
Flash, when video was a dream, we discovered how to use video without using
video. Rotoscoping lets you create some rather interesting video effects.

--
Bill Horvath
Free Tutorials for Studio MX
http://www.communitymx.com/free.cfm
Free 10 Day Trial
http://www.communitymx.com/joincmx.cfm