SEO Image Replacement Techniques with CS4

This is a cool tutorial that discusses image replacement techniques to optimize your web site images using Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

SEO Image Replacement Techniques with CS4

50 Beautiful Flash Websites (Via Smashing Magazine)

"Flash enabled designers and developers to deliver rich content over the browsers, creating motion, interactivity and an impressive visual experience. Good Flash-sites do not require too much bandwidth, load fast and allow for a smooth interaction; besides, beautiful Flash-based sites are Photoshop masterpieces, transporting some kind of reality and fantasy to the Flash movie.

In the showcase below we present 50 colorful, creative, interactive and beautiful Flash-based web-sites. Hopefully they will serve you as an inspiration for your future works or just entertain you..."

Full Article: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/07/50-beautiful-flash-websites/

10 Ways To Make Your Site Accessible Using Web Standards (via Smashing Magazine)

Without argument, one of the most important things to consider when creating a website is that it be accessible to everyone who wants to view it. Does your website play nice with screen readers? Can a user override your style sheet with a more accessible one and still see everything your website has to offer? Would another Web developer be embarrassed if they saw your code? If your website is standards-compliant, you could more confidently answer these questions.

Full Article: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/18/10-ways-to-make-your-site-accessible-using-web-standards/

Building a Simple Chat App With Adobe Flash Collaboration Services (Via InsideRIA)

"In this post, we will focus on getting started with Adobe Flash Collaboration Services (formerly Cocomo). If you've heard of this, but aren't really sure what it is, AFCS is a hosted service provided by Adobe which enables real-time collaboration within your own Flex applications.

A better description from the AFCS site on Adobe Labs:

Adobe Flash Collaboration Service is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (rich Internet applications). Comprised of both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Adobe Flash Collaboration Service allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before. And because Acrobat.com hosts the service, issues like deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of for you.

This can be used for live chats, video chats, whiteboarding, and real-time collaboration, and is very easy to get started. Below, you'll find a quick example that I was able to put together this evening."

Full article: http://www.insideria.com/2009/06/building-a-simple-chat-app-wit.html

Adaptive CSS-Layouts: New Era In Fluid Layouts? (Via Smashing Magazine)

"Fluid web designs have many benefits, but only if implemented correctly. With proper technique, a design can be seen correctly on large screens, small screens and even tiny PDA screens. With bad coding structure, however, a fluid layout can be disastrous. Because of this, we need to find ways to work around most, if not all, of the cons of fluid design.

If you as a designer are going to go through all the extra work of creating a functional fluid layout, why not go a bit further and make it compatible with all resolutions, instead of just most? You can use a few techniques to create an incredibly versatile, adaptive layout that will stay perfectly functional with the constantly changing screen sizes.

In this article, we’ll discuss effective techniques to create 100%-functional adaptive CSS-layouts, and provide details on other tutorials and practices."

Full article: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/09/smart-fixes-for-fluid-layouts/

Build Your Own Captcha and Contact Form (Via NETTUTS)

"Ever get hit with spam through the contact form on your personal site? Well, here is a short tutorial on how to build a custom captcha to keep the bad guys out."

Full Tutorial: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/build-your-own-captcha-and-contact-form/

Why Designers Should Learn How to Code (Via Six Revisions)

"More often than not, designers have rightfully been accused of retreating into their cocoons of ignorance as soon as their work of creating a web design is finished, leaving the dirty and more hands-on work of putting it up on the web to developers. This apathy is prevalent not only in the web-building industry, but also in software and game engineering.

The hard truth is that the buck of development should stop with designers. For optimum efficiency, designers should not only be concerned with painting the bigger picture but also building it! In this article, I’d like to share with you some reasons why designers should learn how to code."

Full article: http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/why-designers-should-learn-how-to-code/

Microsoft has confirmed they plan on using the Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010.

Yesterday during the WITF tour there was mention of Outlook 2010's use of Word to render HTML. Here's a link to the community website & Twitter campaign, http://fixoutlook.org/ , that is trying to get this changed.

Here's Microsoft's response: http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/06/24/the-power-of-word-in-outlook.aspx

On a side note, whether you are concerned with Outlook or not, go check out the fixoutlook.org website - it's a very cool way to turn tweets into website content.

Thanks to Eric for sending me this link.

June Meeting: WITF Media Center Tour

Title:

June Meeting: WITF Media Center Tour

Date and Time:

June 24, 2009 from 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Address:

WITF Media Center

4801 Lindle Rd

Harrisburg, PA 17111

Speaker:

Tom Downing, WITF Broadcast Graphic Artist. View Tom's portfolio at http://tdowning.com/

Danelle Wolf, WITF Web Designer. View Danelle's portfolio at http://danellesheree.com/portfolio.htm

Agenda:

We'll start in the WITF meeting room with our tour hosts Tom Downing and Danelle Sheree and then tour the Media Center facility afterwards. If you've never been to the Media Center it's a must see - very impressive.

WITF, Inc., is a trusted, valued supplier of programs and services that both satisfy and stimulate curiosity for residents in every community in the central Pennsylvania region. WITF broadcast services reach audiences in over 17 counties in central Pennsylvania. The company comprises public broadcasting stations WITF-TV, WITF-FM, news networks RadioPA Networks and Public Radio Capitol News, monthly regional magazine Central PA, WITF.org, WITF Educational Services, Top Flight Media and Media Solutions.

Keywords:

WITF

WITF Media Center

Tom Downing

WITF Broadcast Graphic Artist

tdowning.com

HTC Hero: The first Android device with Flash

HTC Hero delivers a more complete Web browsing experience and allows mobile users to access a broad variety of Flash technology based content available on the Web today.

Info from: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/htchero.html

More on Flash for mobile: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/

New Adobe Font Website

The New Adobe Font Website makes it easy to find fonts by style, theme, usage, designer, and more. Adobe knows that finding the perfect font can be extremely frustrating, using up time better spent designing. That's why they revamped their font website to help make it easier for you to find the fonts that best convey your mood and message.

• Choose from more than 2,500 popular fonts across diverse categories
• Use the intuitive Flex interface of our Font Finder Tool to zero in on your desired font
• Integrate your chosen fonts seamlessly with your favorite applications
• OpenType for cross platform usage
  

More at: http://www.adobe.com/type/

Warholizer: Turn digital photos of you and your friends into pop art!

"This toy was inspired by Andy Warhol's famous paintings of Marilyn Monroe. Warhol created the paintings using silkscreens to create a kind of "assembly line" art. This toy attempts to simulate the false color and silkscreen effect on photographs from your digital camera but really it's a thing all its own. The name "Warholizer" is more of a tribute than anything else."

Warholizer: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/warholizer.php

Flash 10 Coming Soon to Most Smartphones…But Not the iPhone

A recent Adobe presentation reveals that the planned release date of Flash 10 beta for smartphones is somewhere between October 4th and 7th, which is when Adobe’s MAX conference takes place. Android, Palm WebOS, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices are all mentioned in the presentation, but at least one large smartphone platform remains absent: iPhone OS.

Full Article: http://mashable.com/2009/06/23/flash-10-smartphones/

Add a light Source in Lightroom in 5 Easy Steps (Via Digital Photography School)

"The Lightroom Graduated Filter tool can be used to add a secondary light source to an image where one was not in existence when you shot it. This often works better to rescue an unexposed area of an image than, for example, applying a Shadow/Highlight fix in Photoshop."

Full article: http://digital-photography-school.com/add-a-light-source-in-lightroom-in-5-easy-steps

12 Excellent Free Tools for Monitoring Your Site’s Uptime (Via Six Revisions)

"A website or web application’s high availability is very crucial; users who constantly encounter problems accessing the content of a site will not likely come back. For web applications - poor uptimes means users won’t be confident about your product: if they constantly experience issues with your apps’s availability, they will likely look for another solution that isn’t as problematic.

It’s essential that your sites and web apps are constantly accessible to your users. In this article, you will find free and useful monitoring tools to help you know when your website or web application becomes unavailable."

Full Article: http://sixrevisions.com/tools/12-excellent-free-tools-for-monitoring-your-sites-uptime/

Job Op: Programmer at PSECU

PSECU Programmer

Duties:

* Engineers, codes, test and debugs new software
* Enhances existing software
* Research and develops software based on the quality software development lifecycle
* Provide project manager with development estimates
* Meet project deadlines

Qualifications:

* Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field is desirable.
* Knowledge of programming skills in a Microsoft Windows environment is necessary.
* Knowledge of C#, HTML, Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic,, HTML and MS SQL server are mandatory.
* JavaScript, XML, COM+ are a plus.
* Knowledge of Object Oriented Analysis and Design techniques.
* Effective organizational, analytical and communication skills are a must.
* Must be bondable and credit worthy.

Contact Information

Please submit your resume, history and salary requirements to:

PSECU
Human Resources, Dept 8031
P.O. Box 67013
Harrisburg, PA 17106-7013
E-mail: hr@psecu.com
Fax: 717.720.1115

Adobe Unleashes Acrobat.com, Takes on Google and Microsoft (Via Mashable)

"About one year ago, Adobe created tools for building documents collaboratively online: Acrobat.com. Not to be confused with the desktop version, Acrobat.com is meant for business collaboration, similar to Google Docs.

Now a full year later, Adobe is turning up the heat on its competitors with a series of big announcements. First, Acrobat.com is coming out of beta. Second, business subscriptions are going live. And third, it’s releasing an advanced tool to build spreadsheets, on top of the Presentations program it released last month. So what does Acrobat.com offer to the user? And is it something you should be using? Let’s take a look..."

Full article: http://mashable.com/2009/06/14/adobe-acrobat-2/

Understanding Filters in Photoshop (Via Digital Photography School)

"When I was young, my dad told me that if at first you don’t succeed you should try and try again until you do. In today’s post, I am going to tell you why this adage relates to editing photos by working with filters in Photoshop Elements and in Photoshop."

Full article at: http://digital-photography-school.com/understanding-filters-in-photoshop-elements

HU Announces FlashFilm and Digital Arts Festival

Now is your chance to be a filmmaker. Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is pleased to announce it will hold the “HU Flash Film and Digital Arts” festival. Submissions are now being accepted for Flash work and/or Digital Art work in a variety of categories that helps explore, explain and celebrate science and technology.

Additionally, Mike Williams, Colorist at Warner Brothers in Los Angles, CA, will serve as the keynote speaker during the live awards ceremony on October 24, 2009.

Submissions will be evaluated by a panel of expert judges and, during that ceremony, the winners in each category, along with the People's Choice winner, will be announced and awarded with the famous "HUFF-Da".

The categories include Linear Storytelling, Interactive Storytelling, Cartoon/Comic Books, Code, Visualizing Science, Game, Cool Widgets, 3D Environs, Soundscapes, and Experimental Video. A work must be targeted to one of these audiences: Student(K-8); Student (9-12); Student (College); Student (Graduate ); Instructional; or Professional.

People may submit a work or just attend the festival to participate in workshops, panel discussions and other sessions. The festival is expected to attract both submissions and attendees from around the globe. There are opportunities for sponsorships and exhibitors, too.

Information on registering, submitting entries, judges and guidelines is found online at www.HarrisburgU.net/FlashFilmFestival

Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is located at 326 Market Street in Harrisburg, PA.

Adobe AIR Zooms Past 200 Million Installs, And We Have Some Apps To Recommend (Via Techcrunch)

"...Adobe Systems has just confirmed the number of installs for Adobe AIR that had been floating around the Web ever since CTO Kevin Lynch mentioned something along those lines at the recent Flash Camp Keynote in San Francisco: 200 million, double the amount the company touted at the end of January 2009. The number was reached a little over two weeks ago, about 16 months after its debut on the market.

Whether you’re aware that you’ve installed Adobe AIR at some point or not, or whether you think the 200 million installs is actually on the low rather than the high side (I think the number is fairly moderate), there are some really good applications out there that you don’t know yet but might want to check out..."

Full article & recommended apps at: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/16/adobe-air-zooms-past-200-million-installs-and-we-have-some-apps-to-recommend/

Would you like a free book to review?

One of our CPAUG book publishing partners, Focal Press, is looking for user group members to immediately review and publish their review on Amazon.com for the following books:

Digital Painting in Photoshop by Sue Bloom

Printing with Adobe Photoshop CS4 by Tim Daly

If you are interested in receiving the book to review & post on Amazon.com (you get to keep the book!) please let me know by email cpaugManager@gmail.com. The review must be completed and posted to Amazon.com within a week of receiving the book. If you don't have (or don't want to) use your own Amazon.com account, you can email me the review and I can post it under "CPAUG".

It's an active news day from Adobe!

1. Adobe releases Acrobat Tables (beta), which enables Flex-based spreadsheets on acrobat.com
2. The RTMP scpecification is now open, as part of the open screen project. RTMP is used to power everything from streaming audio and video, to real time data push.

From: http://www.insideria.com/2009/06/its-an-active-news-day-from-ad.html

Live Email Marketing Webinars at Listrak.com

Listrak is a Central PA email marketing company and they regularly have very good live Webinars on various email marketing topics. You can sign up for them at their website: http://www.listrak.com/resources.asp. Additionally, they also have some nice white pages and other email marketing resources.

Use Adobe Acrobat? Paid user study ($150)

If you use Adobe Acrobat Professional wed love to hear from you!

The Adobe User Research team is conducting a series of studies around Adobe Acrobat Professional. We have some new features in Acrobat that we would like to show you and get your feedback on. If you are interested in giving your thoughts and opinions, and helping shape the future development of Acrobat, please take the time to fill out our screeners.

These studies will be done over the phone and over Adobe Connect Pro. You will be asked to play around with some of the new features in an upcoming version of Acrobat and then provide feedback.

If you are selected to participate in a study, we will thank you with $150 in American Express Gift Checks

The screener will determine whether or not you are eligible to participate in these studies. This information will be kept confidential and will not be shared with a third party or used for any purpose other than qualifying you for Adobe studies.

Please fill out our screener if interested: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=p_2bFqcLK7nSgNMCJxKZ1jVQ_3d_3d

Harrisburg University FlashFilm and Digital Arts Festival

This conference focuses on learning all you can about Flash and other digital art technologies so that you can create better Flash video, rich internet applications in and out of the browser, animation, audio, games, and much more. Harrisburg University FlashFilm and Digital Arts Festival, led by the industry innovators, is full of inspiration which helps push you, your company and your future in new directions. Inspiration fuels the ‘creative curve’ and keeps you ahead of the pace (or at the very least, in step with it) which is where you want to be.

When: Saturday, October 24, 2009

Where: Harrisburg University's new Academic Center

Event Schedule: http://www.harrisburgu.net/flashfilmfestival/schedule.asp

Workshops: http://www.harrisburgu.net/flashfilmfestival/workshops.asp

Sessions: http://www.harrisburgu.net/flashfilmfestival/sessions.asp

Pricing: http://www.harrisburgu.net/flashfilmfestival/pricing.asp

More info: http://www.harrisburgu.net/flashfilmfestival/index.asp

Flex Event - Recap & Photos

Thank you to Shane Hoffa and CPFUG for setting up this great event. CPAUG raffled off some nice prizes including a Flash tee shirt and Flash books including two copies of How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS4 from Focal Press and Creating a Web Site with Flash CS4 Visual QuickProject from Peachpit Press.

Check out photos from the event at http://groups.adobe.com/resources/be532789c0/summary

Our next meeting is June 24, 2008 at 6PM at WITF Media Center. Details can be found at: http://groups.adobe.com/posts/586089313e

Special Meeting: June 4 - Flex and Flash Catalyst Pre-Release Event!

Details and RSVP at http://groups.adobe.com/posts/4c0cfe96e9

Adobe co-sponsored Scott Kelby's Second Annual Worldwide Photo Walk

What's a Photo Walk anyhow?

It’s a social photography event where photographers get together, usually in a downtown area or trendy section of town, to walk around, shoot photos, and generally have fun with other photographers.

MEETING LOCATION:Begin at the restrooms near parking lot in Borough Park (Corner of Front St and Geary Ave, New Cumberland, PA 17070), end at Bridge Street (300 block of Bridge St, New Cumberland, PA 17070)

Scott Kelby's Second Annual Worldwide Photo Walk  site:

http://worldwidephotowalk.com

Sign up for the New Cumberland walk.  Hurry! There's only 50 spaces!

http://worldwidephotowalk.com/new-cumberland-pennsylvania-pa-usa/

General Walk FAQ

http://worldwidephotowalk.com/about/

Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder 4 have gone into public beta!

Flash Catalyst: http://labs.adobe.com/

technologies/flashcatalyst/

Flash Builder 4: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/

There is a ton of new content on the Adobe Developer Connection about these products. Here's a few links to get started:

Flash Builder and Flex 4 SDK: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/tutorials/

Flash Catalyst: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/tutorials/
Flash Platform videos: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flash/videos/