One of the coolest demos I ever saw was an app that Brandon Hall created prior to the release of Flash 5, in which he had built a Flash-based chat client. It was really quite simple – one Flash movie with an input field and a dynamic text field, talking (sending messages) to the same Flash movie in another browser (or on another computer). When I asked him how he did it, he said, “well, I’m using an XML server”. When I said that I’d never heard of an XML server (and remember this was many, many years ago), Brandon calmly added, “well, I couldn’t find one either – so I wrote one over the weekend”.

Now most of us aren’t capable of, and probably don’t have the desire to write our own XML server. That’s why Adobe introduced the Flash Media Server to manage communications between clients. But even that has its drawbacks, as we need to purchase the server – and many of us don’t have this option as our sites are hosted by an ISP. Of course, we could sign-up for an account with a FMS hosting partner, but that can sometimes be overkill – because what we’re looking for is a simple peer-to-peer solution. And of course these days, it’s not just about chat, it’s about video chat.

Well, look no further than Adobe Labs, where we have just posted the first preview of a new technology service, code-named Stratus, that will allow exactly that – simple peer-to-peer communication (text/audio/video and more) between Flash clients, whether those are running in the browser or as an AIR application – without the need for a complicated server set-up, because we’ve done all the work for you. Very cool!

Cheers!

As one of the “experts” on Dreamweaver in the world (at least according to all of you), I always get a kick out of discovering something new in my favorite program. And, since it just happened, I thought I’d share…

Back in CS3 we implemented copy/paste between Dreamweaver and Photoshop, allowing Dreamweaver to then optimize and save the image before placing it on the Dreamweaver page. With CS4, we updated the workflow to allow you to drag-and-drop a PSD directly into Dreamweaver with the same optimization/save process happening.

However, in seminars, I have always pointed out that if you want to use a piece of the PSD as a background image, you needed to do the copy/paste procedure. Then delete the image from the page, create a CSS rule and link to the newly created image as a background image.

Well, here’s the newly discovered enhancement: there’s no need to do the copy/paste/delete! The next time you’re thinking that you need a CSS background image for an element, simply choose to edit the rule (or create a new one if necessary) using the CSS dialog box in Dreamweaver CS4. Select the Background category and click the Browse button to locate the PSD file you’re interested in. Once you click OK to choose the PSD, you should see the optimization window open within Dreamweaver. You can then use the Crop tool (located at the bottom of the window) to isolate the area you wish to use as the background image. Set your optimization format and amount and click OK. Dreamweaver will prompt you to save the file in your site, and then return you to the CSS dialog with the image field filled out so that you can set additional properties (such as repeat, positioning, etc).

The only caveat to this procedure is that your PSD file needs to have been saved in a “useable” state. In other words, if you need to turn on/off a layer or layer group in order to get the “right” image, then this technique won’t work.

Hope this helps… Cheers!

Ever since the merger between Macromedia and Adobe, I’ve been enjoying exposing Photoshop users to Fireworks. For those of us from the Macromedia world, we’ve long been aware of the advantages of using Fireworks in our web workflow. I even know web designers that do all of their comps in Fireworks instead of Photoshop. That’s not to say they don’t use Photoshop at all, but rather they use Photoshop for their image edits and adjustments. But when it’s time to do a layout, they feel more comfortable in Fireworks’ more object oriented mode of working – and the fact that Fireworks is a hybrid application, working with bitmaps and vectors equally.

Since the merger, the Fireworks team has been hard at work, getting Fireworks more closely aligned with Photoshop. With CS4, Fireworks understands even more about Photoshop files that it is opening. In fact, opening a Photoshop file inside of Fireworks results in an identical image and layout. That is, unless you have done one very common thing in Photoshop – used an Adjustment layer.

If you open a PSD that contains an Adjustment layer in Fireworks, you’ll quickly see that the adjustment layer has been lost. Here’s the tip: before moving your PSD into Fireworks, you need to flatten any layers that use an Adjustment layer. Simply right-click on the Adjustment layer and choose Merge Down from the contextual menu. Save the PSD (although you will probably want to do a Save As in order to be able to return to the Adjustment layers in your original, if needed) and open the PSD in Fireworks.

Hope this saves you some frustration… Skål!