Adobe Blogs

Potential ColdFusion security issue

Adobe is aware of reports of ColdFusion websites being compromised through a vulnerability in the FCKEditor rich text editor, which is installed with ColdFusion 8. Adobe is working on an update to ColdFusion to resolve the issue, which we expect to make available next week. In the meantime, ColdFusion 8 administrators are advised to mitigate this issue by following the steps below:

1. Disable connectors by setting config.Enabled to false in the editor/filemanager/connectors/cfm/config.cfm file.
2. Remove unused cfm files under editor/filemanager/connectors/cfm directory of the FCKeditor.
3. Inspect FCKeditor directories for content that has already been uploaded. The uploaded files go under the directory specified in the config.UserFilesPath set in config.cfm.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights.

PS User Group San Jose to meet July 14

The next meeting of the San Jose Photoshop User Group is scheduled for July 14. Group organizer Dan Clark writes,

Photoshop questions? Samples of your Photoshop work? Bring either to our next meeting. We'll have an evening of Photoshop show and tell, as well as answers to your questions. Let's see some tough questions and nice work! Please send questions and sample files ahead of time to: dan at weinberg-clark.com

For complete info & directions, check out the event page.

Notes about PS printing performance

Recently an iMac user asked about ways to speed up large scan & print jobs in Photoshop:

In your opinion, would a Mac Pro significantly accelerate the processing [while printing]? Is the printing engine in Photoshop multiprocessor aware?

I put the question to Photoshop printing engineer Dave Polaschek, and here's his reply:

While Photoshop's printing code isn't multi-threaded & is mostly disk-bound*, another core may be used by the OS for color management if you're printing in "Printer Manages Color" mode. More cores won't hurt.
That said, the disk (or better, disks) in a Mac Pro are significantly faster than the disk in an iMac, which will help since every printed job is spooled to disk. Plus you can put more RAM in a Mac Pro, which will help in preparing the image for printing.

As with most things in Photoshop, the two biggest gains you can get in speed are:

1 - Put in as much RAM as you can afford and the machine can hold. When friends are buying new Macs, I tell them they should have an absolute minimum of 1G of RAM per core, and 2G per core will still be a noticeable improvement over that. For running Photoshop with big images, I've found some operations which run over 10x faster since I moved from 4GB to 8GB of RAM in my quad-core Mac Pro just because it keeps all the images and intermediate data in memory.

2 - Put in the fastest disk (or RAID array - four 500GB disks in a RAID array are cheaper and faster than a 2TB disk, and the default controller in my Mac Pro could do RAID with no new hardware) you can afford after you're done buying RAM. When we do have to read or save a file, or spool something to disk, that fast disk will mean less time spent looking at progress bars.

[Question via Colin Smith]

* In other words, the speed of printing depends on how quickly data can be moved to/from your hard drive.

Masking Multiple Layers

Not only are Layer Groups great for organizing your layers, you can also use them to mask the contents of multiple layers at a time. With the Group targeted in the Layers panel, click the Add Pixel (or Vector) Mask icon from the Masks panel. This mask will control the visibility of all layers within the Group.

CS4 @ the FCP Supermeet London & Nehalem Power!

Hello, my friends! I'm just back from my brief tour in the UK, and this time the focus was around Universities, broadcast and industry clientel, and a special appearance at the FCPUG Supermeet in London, reprising my performance from the 'meet' in Vegas during NAB.

This time around, my colleague Michael O'Neill joined me at the event, and I took the stage in the early evening to an enthusiastic capacity crowd. As in Vegas, the session was titled Sharing the Love - FCP & CS4, and I did indeed share it 'round, getting some great responses from the crowd.

My intro slide, snapped by Michael from the audience

Just about to begin, standing on stage, snapping with the iPhone

Prior to the Supermeet, Michael and I spent several days visiting Universities in the South of England, focusing on workflow and integration between CS4 and FCP, as well as Avid Media Composer integration and even mentions of incorporating ProTools into a CS4 project. What was especially cool about these visits is that we got a chance to show-off performance from the latest MacBookPro 8GB laptops, as well as the newest Intel Nehalem Workstation (similar to the one I used at LLB a few months back). Once again, the Nehalem processor continues to WOW people (even primarily Mac-based set-ups) and in conjunction with the supah-speedy MBP 17", it's a true one-two performance punch, for both online and offline production.

And, in case you thought that Universities still have basic 'Broadcast Journalism' majors (well, I 'sort of' though that!) here's a list of what you might be studying at Falmouth U. Where was this stuff when *I* was in school? ;)

Falmouth University Media Degree Programs

With that, my friends, I'm going back to the studio to 'shed' and work on some new materials for upcoming Adobe TV episodes. I've also got a few musical creations in the works, so perhaps I'll post some 'in-progress' versions, if anyone has any desire to hear them. And, since a few people asked where they can get a 'proper headshot', here's the one I used at the SuperMeet (and will likely update my Twitter account with).

Healing People Daily, with my hair down...;)

Until next time,

Blog on.

Tips to reduce editing time for Captivate movies

Anyone who creates computer-based tutorials for a client knows the kind of effort that goes into applying a consistent style, in on-screen text as well as visuals. If you are using Captivate to create these tutorials, there are many ways you can reduce post-production editing time.

One of the least-known ways is perhaps the way to change the default captions added by Captivate for various actions you record.

]]> Let’s say the default caption for clicking a menu is “Select the menu” and the style mandated by your client is “Click ”. Instead of editing the captions after you complete recording, you can minimize your editing time by editing the template file from which Captivate sources the default captions.
This file is CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl, and can be found in your Captivate installation. Open the file in any text editor (wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could edit this file from within Captivate?) and modify the captions as you wish. Save and start recording.
The Captivate team shares many smart tips and tricks on their blog. Here are some of my favorites:
How to create training and assessment modules from one Captivate project
http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2009/06/reduce_your_editing_hours_crea.html

How to set default timing and transition properties and use them across slides, projects and sessions
http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2009/03/rapid_elearning_authoring_is_t.html

Feedback, please: Copying hex values

Designer/Twitter crazy person Sam Potts made what I thought was a good suggestion earlier today:

The Copy Color as HTML in the color panel is awesome. Everyone uses it all the time. However, times have changed and my guess is that most of the people who use this are writing their colors in CSS. So you always have to delete the color="" part after you paste it into a style sheet.

It would be awesome to simply have a "Copy Color Hex Code" option and get #CCFF00 instead of the full color="#CCFF00" tag.

Or, to cover both bases, add to the panel menu:

Copy Color as HTML ---> color="#CCFF00" as it is now

AND

Copy Color as CSS ---> color:#CCFF00

I know it's a tweaky query, but if you have a preference, please chime in.

Copying Merged Layers (and Groups)

Copying Merged Layers (and Groups)
Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + Shift + C (with a selection) copies a merged view of all visible layers onto the clipboard.
Option-Command (Mac) / Alt-Control (Win) + Shift +E, pastes a merged copy of all visible layers on a (single) new layer above the topmost currently selected layer.

Thursday Photography: CBGB to crazy cheesy

Fish hover in space in Michael Itkoff's Perch on Ice.
The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year set features some lovely images, all freely shared. [Via]
NYC:
- Martin Sobey's colorful on-street photographic installations punch up the street in front of my old office.
- A bit further down that street lie the ghosts of CBGB, living on through a panoramic virtual tour.
- If your camera doesn't make city cops nervous enough, try a riflestock camera mount.
Extreme cheese-rolling: Guaranteed to end in tears. (And cheese.)

PDF Accessibility

I've been meeting and talking with some UK Local Authorities this week and have been asked a lot about Accessibility in PDF files. (By the way, have I been piling up the miles or what?)

For me accessibility really starts with Tagging, and as luck would have it, I've just seen a great article about defining PDF accessibility from WebAIM and you can read it here...

http://www.webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/

Fireworks designers from Brazil

I was looking around the web for some creative tutorials for Fireworks which can be of good use for newbie to Fireworks or for people who are stuck in the same workflow for multiple versions of the application.

There is a designer site in Brazil http://abduzeedo.com which discusses many workflows, features of many features of Fireworks. They seem to have multiple contributing authors which gives a very good perspective of different individuals.

I dug into the articles section and there are some really neat ones which explore basic functionality which leads to some creative design output.

One of their fresh article is related to the export of PDF document directly from Fireworks which can be read here http://abduzeedo.com/reader-tutorial-fireworks-interactive-prototypes-pdf

Fireworks sure has users globally!

Super cool video stabilization technology

Adobe researchers Hailin Jin and Aseem Agarwala*, collaborating with U.Wisconsin prof. Michael Gleicher & Feng Liu, have unveiled their work on "Content-Preserving Warps for 3D Video Stabilization." In other words, their tech can give your (and my) crappy hand-held footage the look of a Steadicam shot.

Check out the demonstration video, shot at & around Adobe's Seattle office. (Hello, Fremont Lenin!) It compares the new technique to what's available in iMovie '09 and other commercial tools.

As with all research papers/demos, I should point out making technology ready for real-world use can require plenty of additional work & tuning. Still, these developments are encouraging. [Via]

[Previously: Healing Brush & Content-Aware Scaling on (really good) drugs.]

* If you've created a panorama using Photoshop, you've used Hailin's (image alignment) and Aseem's (image blending) work.

Displaying Layer Group Contents

Command (Mac) / Control (Win) -click the disclosure triangle next to a layer Group to expand or collapse all layer Groups in the document.

Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) -click the disclosure triangle to expand collapse all groups nested within the current group.

Option-Command (Mac) / Alt-Control (Win) -cick the disclosure triangle to expand and collapse all groups (nested or not).

Or, if you prefer, Control (Mac)/ right mouse (Win) -click the Group’s disclosure triangle and choose “Close/Open this Group” or “Close/Open all Other Groups”.

Quickly blog about feeds you receive via Aggregators

Tags: Contribute,RSS Aggregators

Using Contribute, you can easily post content such as news items to your blog from RSS aggregators. You can set Contribute as your blog publishing tool in RSS aggregators such as FeedDemon (Windows) and NetNewsWire (Mac OS). You can post your favorite or interesting news clips to your blog and also add your own comments before you post it.

]]> You need to configure FeedDemon to Post the news clips to your blog. Here are the steps how to configure:

Open the FeedDemon application.
Select any news item in the list.
Click the Send To (arrow) icon, and select Blog This News Item > Configure Blog Publishing Tools.

The Blog Publishing Tools dialog box appears

Click Add.
The Program dialog box appears.
Enter the following details:

Enter Contribute in the Name text box.

Enter the command in the Command-line or URL text box. To enter the command, browse to the location where the contribute.exe file is located on your hard disk. After you select the file and the path appears in the Command Line text box, click the cursor at the end of the path; enter one space and type -mmPostToBlog.

(Optional) Select Set As Default to have Contribute be your default blog publishing tool.
Click OK.
Contribute now appears in the Blog Publishing Tool dialog box.
Click OK.

To verify whether Contribute is successfully configured in FeedDemon, do the following:

Select any news item in FeedDemon.
Right-click the news item.
Select Send Item > Blog this News Item and check whether Contribute appears in the list.

Video workflow on RSS Aggregators Configuration and how it works with Contribute.

How to configure NetNewsWire on Mac?

Open the NetNewsWire application.
Select Preferences.
Select Posting > Post to Web log using > Other...
Click Weblog Editor.

In the Weblog editor application pop-up menu, browse to the location of the contribute.app file.

Adobe Contribute Contribute Publishing Server

Update on Updates!

FrameMaker,DITA,XML authoring,PDF,CMS,Specialisation,MIF,cross-reference,WebDav,reltable,Publishing,Patch,Facing Pages

Dear Framers

I hope all of you have comfortably installed 9.0.2 by now. Though this was difficult to accommodate in our tight schedule but my first objective is to remove your pains and I feel satisfied that 9.0.2 fixed the issues which crept in through the mega 9.0.1 patch.

Let me briefly describe the fixes of 9.0.2

Commands drop down in the designers work NOW and numbering building block in Para designer do get populated NOW if FM is launched afresh and the designers are present in the workspace.

FrameMaker DOES NOT crash on inserting any file of a type other than the type defined for the column in a reltable.

FrameMaker DOES NOT crash while opening a file with view->options set as "Facing Pages"

Now let's talk something about the new trends. You know that FrameMaker 9 provides innovative, robust, forward-looking and complete support for DITA. With the complete technical communication solution in form of TCS2, the cross-product integrations add to the power of your workflows.

DITA as a standard and FrameMaker as the DITA tool are great to adopt. The tool allows you to leverage the power of DITA Specialization. But some users ask for something more. That "something" is expert help on specializing DITA in FrameMaker.

We spent lot of time writing, reviewing and polishing expert help and published a white paper named "Integrating DITA Specialization with ADOBE® FRAMEMAKER® 9".

You can download this paper from http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/9.0/DITA/framemaker_9_dita_integration.pdf

I am also including it below.

Based on popular demand and criticality of the need, we'll keep working on such information packages. Please keep sharing your feedback with me at mahesh@adobe.com

Take care

- Mahesh

FrameMaker: Making comments stand out

Consider this scenario: you're working in a FrameMaker document that uses a lot of conditional tags, including the conditional tag defined for comments and editorial notes. If you need to work on incorporating comments, you can display all the conditional content in the document with the condition indicators visible. However, browsing your way through the multi-colored text to look for comments may be difficult.

]]> A simple workaround here could be applying a character tag to the comments and editorial notes in addition to the conditional formatting. This way, even when the condition indicators are hidden, the comments and editorial notes in the document stand out from the rest of the content.

The screenshot below illustrates the character tag Comment-text applied to editorial notes.

Further reading

If you need help creating a new character tag in FrameMaker, refer to "Character Formats" in FrameMaker web Help. To understand how to apply and manage conditional tags, see "Working in conditional documents".

Junk comment issue solved

The issue related to all comments landing in the junk section has been finally resolved. From now on commenters will have to type the word 'Fireworks' to ensure that the comment is a valid one and not from an automated source which will automatically trigger it as a junk.

It is a mandatory field when a comment is posted. I have dug out all the issues and replied to them. Incase you do not find them replied to, please enter a new comment and I will look at them and try to see what is the next course of action for me and the team

Selecting Layer Groups

To automatically select Layer Groups (as oppose to selecting individual layers), with the Move tool selected, check the Auto-Select box in the Options bar and choose Group from the pull-down menu.

Adobe is closed this week (and what that means)

I just saw Daring Fireball point to an SJ Merc story relaying the rather banal news that most Adobe offices are closed this week. So they are*. I'm no expert on company expense management, nor am I a corporate spokesperson (see blurb at right), but I feel like sharing a little perspective.

Let me first mention that these Adobe shutdowns are nothing new. I've worked here for 9 years, and the company has done the shutdowns off and on throughout that time--at least since '01 or '02. I didn't hear the news of this one and say (as DF does) "Uh-oh."

Mr. Gruber reasonably asks, "At a software company, shouldn’t every week be a productive week?" Sure, but I'll bet you know what it's like to work near holidays: it's harder to make progress when lots of your colleagues are out of the office. If that's going to be the case, why not just schedule a break & save a bunch of money on facilities, security, and so forth?**

I'd rather have everyone be gone at once (and thus more likely back at once) than to run at reduced strength for weeks on end.

Gruber also writes,

And I can only guess that on some, if not most, teams, there is subtle (or even not so subtle) pressure to keep working from home on whatever your current project is.

Nope. As I understand it, a few teams with time-sensitive projects may get permission to work through the break, but everyone else is taking the time off. Because the breaks aren't a surprise, most teams built them into their schedules a long time ago (just as they do with holidays). Adobe offers very generous PTO benefits, to the point that people don't use up enough time off. A week-long shutdown is a way of saying, "No, seriously, guys--we want you to take some vacation. Get the hell out of here, enjoy yourself, and come back refreshed."

Anyway, my inbox for Monday shows 70 mails, vs. 300+ for a typical day. Clearly somebody is taking vacation seriously. Collectively we're taking it all in stride.

* So why am I continuing to blog? For one thing, I'm drumming my fingers with nervous energy, waiting for a baby to arrive, and I need the distraction.

** For a company of ~7,400 employees, saving a week's worth of summertime energy & other infrastructure expenses translates to real money. Meanwhile Adobe HQ (already the first existing LEED Platinum-rated green building) is upgrading this week to even more energy-efficient HVAC. The 20-story yellow crane I saw yesterday can't do its thing while people are inside/below.

User comments going to junk

Hi All,

I noticed that all the comments from you are now going to Junk comments section. I have raised an alarm internally.

Also I have managed to find all the legitimate comments from the junk section. If you still do not find your comment answered to in the next couple of days, please write a new one.

This will help me in answering your queries in speed.

LiveCycle ES Processes Do Not Support Collections of Collections

If you try to add a list to a list in a process, you’ll get unexpected behavior — because it’s not supported. Nor can you add a list to a map, a map to a list, or (you guessed it) a map to a map. If you try to add a collection to another collection, each item in the first collection is added to the second, not the collection itself.

]]> Let's say my process has a list variable called listVar. I use the Set Value service to add some values to it:

/process_data/listVar[1] = "abc"
/process_data/listVar[2] = "xyz"

I then try to add this list to another list, uberListVar:
/process_data/uberListVar[1] = listVar

The first item in uberListVar is “abc”, and the second item is “xyz”.

GridIron Flow now shipping

It was my pleasure to help the GridIron Software folks officially launch Flow this morning. I got to reveal a previously unannounced feature that's dear to my heart: Flash panels (screenshot) that run inside CS4 applications*, offering immediate context for your file (what files went into it, what files are derived from it, how long you've spent working on it, etc.).

If you haven't seen Flow, check out this 2-minute overview:

For a deeper dive, Dave Cross from PhotoshopUser TV & Layers Magazine has created a solid 10-minute tour that shows the Flash panels in action (also available on Vimeo).

A single-user license for GridIron Flow is $299, and a three-user license costs $399, via the GridIron store. [Update: Use promo code "NACKONADOBE" to save $50.]

[Previously: GridIron Flow saves Adobe designer's bacon]

*Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks

Deleting Layer Groups

To delete a Group, select Layer > Delete > Group or, with the Group selected on the Layers panel, click the trash can icon. Either method displays a dialog with the options to delete the “Group and Contents” (which deletes both), “Group Only” (which removes any groups but leaves the layers), or “Cancel”.

To delete the Group and all of it’s contents while bypassing the dialog select the Group on the Layers panel and either drag the Group to the trash can icon or, Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) -click the trash can icon.

Command (Mac) / Control (Win) -drag a Group to the trash can icon to delete a Group without deleting it’s contents.

Blog comments sent to junk by overly aggressive spam filter

If you've left a comment on this blog in the past month or so, and you wondered why I didn't approve it or respond, then you might be interested to know that our spam filter went rogue and started killing... well... everything.

I'm digging through the purported spam now, trying to find the legitimate comments and approve them and respond to them.

Sunday Photography: Playing with Time

I dig Andrew Curtis's Cinco De Mayo Carnival timelapses (not to mention the infectious soundtrack). He's uploaded this clip and many others as iTunes video podcasts. (Check out Dizzy Driving.) [Via]
SignalTheorist created a long-exposure capture of a Roomba doing its thing. [Via]
David Coiffier captured rugby, fire-breathing and more in extreme slow-mo.
Gorgeousness ensuses in The Colors Of Light Art Performance Photography.

6/22/09 Weekly Wrapup: @rjacquez on Twitter

By RJ Jacquez. Follow him on Twitter in English @rjacquez and in Spanish @rjacquezEspanol, for real-time announcements, tips & tricks, how-to tutorials, Did You Know's, best practices, Adobe-branded giveaways and more.

This week I'm starting a new "featured tweet of the week" category, where I will highlight a very short list of tweets, which garnered the most attention for that week. For example, the link in this tweet was clicked over 600 times within minutes. To automatically ReTweet it from your Twitter account, click the RT icon below, which includes pre-populated data.

Featured Tweet of the Week (click to Retweet)

With 200 Million installations of Adobe AIR, I'm hoping more RoboHelp 8 users create AIR-based Help. Here's a how-to: http://bit.ly/EvH1b

News, Announcements, Tutorials and Questions:

[eSeminar] Will deliver eSeminar en Español on Adobe Captivate 4, July 9th, 9am PST for Latin America, http://bit.ly/C07gi 7:51 AM Jun 22nd from TweetDeck
[How-To Post] Embedding Adobe PDFs in Blogs via Acrobat.com: Sample and Captivate how-to: http://bit.ly/eBp8A 10:05 AM Jun 27th from TweetDeck
Posted a reply to "insufficient memory resources" error in Captivate on Connect Pro forum. In case you get same error, http://bit.ly/ZNmXN about 21 hours ago from TweetDeck
Everything you need to know about Adobe Learning Summit 2009, November 9th: http://bit.ly/FLmb4 2:59 PM Jun 25th from TweetDeck
This is awesome: "The future of video is searchable" test it here, http://bit.ly/9qLTB 9:30 AM Jun 26th from TweetDeck
Absolutely the best DITA book for Authors and Managers. $9.95 for PDF Version, worth every penny! http://bit.ly/Zmw4h 10:53 AM Jun 25th from TweetDeck
Just curious, if you could add just 'one' Adobe app to the existing line-up in eLearning Suite, which one would it be and why?10:33 AM Jun 23rd from TweetDeck
Same question for the Technical Communication Suite 2. If you could add one Adobe app, which one and why?10:34 AM Jun 23rd from TweetDeck
Wow, great responses! Most picked Adobe Illustrator for Tech Comm. Catalyst, Fireworks, Audition and Flex for eLearning. Others?11:55 AM Jun 23rd from TweetDeck
When demo'ing the Adobe Tech Comm Suite 2, by and large, the WOW factor is Importing PDF comments back into FrameMaker 911:48 AM Jun 24th from TweetDeck
@pdelsignore Regarding Captivate on a Mac, we are working on it now, stay Tuned!2:52 PM Jun 25th from TweetDeck in reply to pdelsignore

Useful Resources and Reviews:

Great advice! RT @joe_deegan: Great tips for avoiding the "click next" course http://tinyurl.com/lvjpnj Love @CatMoore design style10:28 AM Jun 24th from TweetDeck
Great discussion Captivate LinkedIn group on "What's a good screen resolution for E-Learning?" Great resource here, http://bit.ly/JyNSD 12:03 PM Jun 24th from TweetDeck
RT @esulliva: Serial numbers posted to Adobe Labs for extending your Flash Catalyst beta: http://bit.ly/T2xkH (have to login)9:01 AM Jun 25th from TweetDeck
Great Review: "Adobe RoboHelp Server 8 – A giant step forward" http://bit.ly/m0h6f 8:44 PM Jun 26th from TweetDeck
RT @bcarticles: @blogcritics Software Review: Adobe eLearning Suite From Adobe Systems http://tinyurl.com/qmsjda 10:08 PM Jun 26th from TweetDeck

FAQs, Tips and Tricks, Did You Know:

[Adobe Captivate 4 Tip] Easiest way to add branding is via "Display for:" here's a how-to demo, http://bit.ly/10poHp 12:33 PM Jun 26th from TweetDeck
When adding Captivate movies to your Blog, disable ''Auto Play" in Preferences. Here's example, http://bit.ly/KxaGW 10:42 AM Jun 20th from TweetDeck
[Adobe Captivate Tip] Before deleting Slides "Hide" them first (Ctrl+Shift+H) in case you need them when you Preview Simulations16 minutes ago from TweetDeck
[Adobe Captivate 4 Tip] Getting unexpected Quiz Results? press F9 for a complete view of Scorable Objects. Change as needed9:22 AM Jun 20th from TweetDeck
Though the "Rescale Project" feature is better in Adobe Captivate 4, as best practice, plan ahead and avoid resizing altogether!10:15 AM Jun 23rd from TweetDeck
[Tip] Two ways to make Interactive PDFs from FrameMaker 9: 1) Add 3D models; 2) Add how-to Captivate movies. End-users only need Reader 911:55 AM Jun 24th from TweetDeck
[Did You Know?] Captivate 4 can now generate a single SWF file, making it easier to import How-Tos in FrameMaker 9 and RoboHelp 811:58 AM Jun 24th from TweetDeck
.@andyjones1302 Edit "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 4\CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl" in Notepad. Make sure you keep the %s8:32 AM Jun 25th from TweetDeck
[Did You Know?] You can upload .zip w/.htm to Adobe Connect Pro. How I host my Getting Started pages, http://bit.ly/RLe2q12:41 PM Jun 25th from TweetDeck
- (cont'd) I use Dreamweaver to edit index.html page and all other assets. I then zip up entire folder and upload to Connect Pro as Content12:49 PM Jun 25th from TweetDeck

Compelling ReTweets (RTs) and @replies:

RT @barbbinder: Has been a day of learning. Captivate/FrameMaker/RoboHelp integration: goes way beyond static print docs. Love FlashHelp.4:37 PM Jun 22nd from TweetDeck
RT @scottabel: “Or, we could agree that MadCap has never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” -Author-it blog http://bit.ly/58RkS from TweetDeck
@spotlearning Adding Premiere to Adobe eLearning Suite is something we hear quite a bit, so great suggestion, thank you!10:08 AM Jun 24th from TweetDeck in reply to spotlearning
@stryker908 Yes. In fact, I recorded this how-to on building animations in Flash for use in Captivate, http://bit.ly/L32rE 1:34 PM Jun 24th from TweetDeck in reply to stryker908
RT @ellounge How NOT to Engage with Your ELearning Audience! | E-Learning Lounge http://cli.gs/7RS6R (via @tweetmeme)9:02 AM Jun 25th from web
@aprilsheninger Sounds like "Automatic Panning" is currently set, to stop this, select "No Panning" from pulldown by clicking camera icon9:14 AM Jun 25th from TweetDeck in reply to aprilsheninger
RT @sheepeeh: Would b spiffy if presenters demoing tools at #dh09 put together Captivate modules to give a taste even if tool isn't live10:16 AM Jun 25th from TweetDeck
@sidkataria I'll be hosting a Captivate 4 for beginners session soon. Here are the ones I have today for eLearning, http://bit.ly/uoMX 2:34 PM Jun 25th from TweetDeck in reply to sidkataria
@spencerbean Yes. In Preferences (Start and End) disable "Auto Play" I do this on my blog, here's an example: http://bit.ly/KxaGW 1:51 PM Jun 26th from TweetDeck in reply to spencerbean

Personal Observations

There's an update to the Times Reader, AIR app, 2.051. Launch app and click update.8:54 AM Jun 23rd from TweetDeck
@mashable What is the difference between adding a "mashable" column to TweetDeck and installing MashDeck? Are there other benefits?9:10 AM Jun 25th from TweetDeck
Wondering if TweetDeck has considered monetizing on client by selling versions with Twitter username(s) column(s) built-in, a la MashDeck?1:34 PM Jun 25th from TweetDeck
Would you pay for a custom #TweetDeck app that had a column with your Twitter username by default and logo branding? I would!1:42 PM Jun 25th from TweetDeck

@rjacquez,Twitter,weekly wrapup,eLearning,tech comm,captivate,acrobat.com

How Hot is Shockwave 3D?

One focus of the next release is Director is on updating 3D, so how hot is Shockwave 3D already? I was struck by a visit to Shockwave.com online last night. I went to the site, and noted that there was a new Motocross game from Silent Bay Studios.

I was gripped because I have always wanted to do or see a decent motocross solution - (I'm yawning from all those silly side scrolls of motocross) and figured it was totally 'doable' in Shockwave 3D. Silent Bay proves it can be done and it can be cool in this online offering. But as I was trolling the Shockwave.com site, another realization struck me - when I sorted the games by popularity.

14 of the top 20 Games on Shockwave.com right now, use Shockwave / Director for the delivery platform. 13 of those 14 are Shockwave 3D.

]]> Certainly based on this random sample Shockwave 3D is leading the charge in online games. And it isn't even just leading the 3D charge - its leading the race overall in this case. It will of course take a broader sample to determine if 3D games are leading 2D games in numbers of players, but I thought it was worth noting, as this particular instance seems to demonstrate a clear trend favoring both 3D games and Shockwave 3D as the delivery mechanism.

Some other interesting figures: if you add the number of game plays today for the Shockwave games, (569,062) there were more than half a million Shockwave game plays on this one site, considering only the top 20 games. The top 20 accounted for a total of 837,134 game plays. So Shockwave games were 67.9% of all plays in the top 20.

The remaining games in the top 20 break down into Flash, the PopCap engine and Java. In one case the game online is Flash, and offline is within the Director engine. (This is a common approach in the Casual downloadable arena.)

I'll continue to explore this trend across other sites, and let you know how various sites compare. I think one early takeaway is that Shockwave 3D games are really outperforming other online games (at least in this demographic.) It seems like the time is definitely right for students and young developers to cut their teeth on Shockwave 3D.