"My advice here is to always provide a way to do all configuration easily with a programmatic interface, and then treat a separate configuration file as an optional feature. You can easily build configuration file handling to use the programmatic interface. If you are writing a component you then leave it up to your user whether to use the programmatic interface, your configuration file format, or to write their own custom configuration file format and tie it into the programmatic interface" - Martin Fowler

The application of this design principle is particularly effective in Parsley. While some frameworks are restricted to specific configuration mechanisms, Parsley provides programmatic interfaces for synchronous and asynchronous configuration, and several out-of-the-box implementations. These interfaces provide an extension-point so developers can plug-in their own configuration processors when the need arises.

In Parsley, a configuration processor uses some form of configuration data to build up a registry of object definitions. This process is abstracted by the following interfaces:

• ConfigurationProcessor
• AsynConfigurationProcessor

Parsley has a number of standard implementations, including the following two most commonly used:

• ActionScriptConfigurationProcessor
• XmlConfigurationProcessor

The developer manual has a section explaining how to extend the framework with a new configuration processor:

• Custom Configuration Mechanisms

Example: Modular Configuation Processor

There are various reasons to write a custom configuration processor. Perhaps you want to support your own particular configuration files, loaded and processed at runtime. However, these interfaces open up some other doors for more interesting forms of configuration. For example, they can be used to process configuration data from a compiled module.

Consider a large, modular application. Let's say the application consists of a Flex shell application that loads 20 modules, and 10 of these rely on the same set of shared services. It's undesirable to compile these services into the shell application, where they could be inherited by the modules, since the shell should have no knowledge of these lower level details. Instead they could be compiled into a module and the shell application could load that module at start-up, so the services are available for inheritance, but there is no dependency imposed on the shell.

This can be achieved quite simply by writing a new configuration processor, something like this:

package com.adobe
{
     import flash.events.ErrorEvent;
     import flash.events.Event;
     import flash.events.EventDispatcher;

     import mx.events.ModuleEvent;
     import mx.modules.IModuleInfo;
     import mx.modules.ModuleManager;
     import mx.utils.StringUtil;

     import org.spicefactory.parsley.core.builder.AsyncConfigurationProcessor;
     import org.spicefactory.parsley.core.builder.ConfigurationProcessor;
     import org.spicefactory.parsley.core.registry.ObjectDefinitionRegistry;

     public class ModularConfigurationProcessor 
          extends EventDispatcher 
          implements AsyncConfigurationProcessor
     {
          private static const MODULE_LOADING_ERROR : String = 
               "Unable to load the module at URL {0} due to {1}";
          private static const MODULE_INCOMPATIBLE_ERROR : String = 
               "The module doesn't implement the ConfigurationProcessor interface.";

          private var url : String;
          private var module : IModuleInfo;
          private var registry : ObjectDefinitionRegistry;

          public function ModularConfigurationProcessor( url : String )
          {
               this.url = url;
          }

          public function cancel() : void
          {
               module.removeEventListener( ModuleEvent.READY, moduleReadyHandler );
               module.removeEventListener( ModuleEvent.ERROR, moduleErrorHandler );
          }

          public function processConfiguration(
               registry : ObjectDefinitionRegistry ) : void
          {
               this.registry = registry;
               module = ModuleManager.getModule( url );
               module.addEventListener( ModuleEvent.READY, moduleReadyHandler );
               module.addEventListener( ModuleEvent.ERROR, moduleErrorHandler );
               module.load( registry.domain );
          }

          private function moduleReadyHandler( event : ModuleEvent ) : void
          {
               try
               {
                    processConfigurationWithModule();
                    dispatchEvent( new Event( Event.COMPLETE ) );
               }
               catch ( e : Error )
               {
                    dispatchErrorEvent( e.message );
               }

          }

          private function processConfigurationWithModule() : void
          {
               var instance : Object = module.factory.create();

               if ( instance is ConfigurationProcessor )
               {
                    ConfigurationProcessor( instance ).processConfiguration( registry );
               }
               else
               {
                    throw new Error( MODULE_INCOMPATIBLE_ERROR );
               }
          }

          private function moduleErrorHandler( event : ModuleEvent ) : void
          {
               dispatchErrorEvent( MODULE_LOADING_ERROR, url, event.errorText );
          }

          private function dispatchErrorEvent( message : String, ... rest ) : void
          {
               dispatchEvent( new ErrorEvent(
                    ErrorEvent.ERROR,
                    false,
                    false,
                    StringUtil.substitute( message, rest ) );
          }
     }
}

The processor is initialized with the module URL. It loads the module, creates an instance, then checks whether the module itself is a configuration processor. If so, it delegates configuration processing to the module. Here's an example module:

package com.adobe
{
    import mx.modules.ModuleBase;

    import org.spicefactory.parsley.asconfig.processor.ActionScriptConfigurationProcessor;
    import org.spicefactory.parsley.core.builder.ConfigurationProcessor;
    import org.spicefactory.parsley.core.registry.ObjectDefinitionRegistry;

    public class MyModule extends ModuleBase implements ConfigurationProcessor
    {
        public function processConfiguration(
            registry : ObjectDefinitionRegistry ) : void
        {
            new ActionScriptConfigurationProcessor(
                [ MyModuleConfiguration ] ).processConfiguration( registry );
        }
    }
}

Parsley's extension points can be taken a little further by writing a complementary configuration tag:

package com.adobe
{
    public class ModularConfig implements ContextBuilderProcessor 
    {
        public var url : String;

        public function processBuilder( builder : CompositeContextBuilder ) : void 
        {
            builder.addProcessor(
                new ModularConfigurationProcessor( url ) );
        }
    }
}

So now a modular configuration can be easily combined with other forms of Parsley configuration using the usual MXML tags:

  <sf:ContextBuilder>
     <sf:FlexConfig type="{ MyShellApplicationConfig }"/>
     <adobe:ModularConfig url="MyModularConfig.swf"/>
     <adobe:ModularConfig url="MyOtherModularConfig.swf"/>
  </sfConfigBuilder>

  ...

Conclusion

When creating a framework, it is wise to define generic interfaces for configuration processing, so that different formats can be used where appropriate. In many cases programmatic configuration with MXML is the simplest and most desirable option, but there are several valid cases for configuration from XML and other kinds of file (including SWFs) loaded at runtime. The configuration interfaces provided by Parsley satisfy this requirement nicely.

In the meantime, I'll mention again that this content is available via iTunes as a podcast and on Vimeo. On the podcast, I'm catching up slowly with episodes, so it will be a month or so before I can get all of my older content up there.

I'll be busy banging away on all kinds of exciting new things until I can return to this, but if nothing else, know that my heart is in this and I am going to continue to post content as often as I can. Wish me the best in clearing my calendar!

Cheers, Dennis </dennis/>

Adobe Beginner Classes

Apple是如此描述Flash：能夠跨平台及跨瀏覽器且立即部署豐富的網站內容標準。

可是這樣的遺漏卻發生在iPhone及iPad，當Steve Jobs正眉飛色舞的展示iPad如何炫麗的瀏覽網頁時卻發現原本應該秀出Flash內容的地方成為一處空白。

為什麼？"因為Apple不想要它在這兒",Adrian Ludwig,Flash platform的Group Manager如此說。

這是真的嗎？

"這不是錢或者是技術的因素，在其他相似的裝置上我們已經成功讓Flash在上面跑，而且免費授權給製造商"。Ludwig描述著。

Apple目前的應用程式商店適用於iPhone當然也包括iPad，而防止其他類似的免費應用程式經由Flash進來打亂其佈局，當然它的app無法跨平台，而這是Flash所能做到的。

目前有個變通方式是會有個轉檔工具把Flash轉成iPhone app的格式，不過Apple畢竟還是有權利對這樣的應用程式是否上架做決定。

而針對這樣的變局，Apple也併購了一家專做線上行動廣告的公司，想要取代原本Flash在這塊市場上的應用。不過Apple在iPad上的策略有點在砸自己的腳，畢竟使用者可以忍受iPhone無法秀Flash，但在可以順暢的瀏覽網頁為主軸的iPad上，如果要在有85%的網站上都使用Flash的情況下宣稱自己是對網站友善，這就有些站不住腳。

除非等到Apple願意改變心意，短期內你還是會看到很多缺著Flash的網頁！

引用於: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local-beat/Why-Doesnt-the-iPad-Do-Flash-82967272.html

All the links in the slide set are active in the downloadable PDF.

You can download the slides directly from the link below, or preview the slides in the Acrobat.com window.

Acrobat_9_Healthcare.pdf (620K PDF)

For more on load-testing LiveCycle Workspace ES applications, see here.

The Russell Brown Show - Painting 3D Patterns

Join Russell Brown as he shows you how to literally paint tiled 3D patterns in this Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended tutorial.

The Complete Picture with Julieanne Kost - Using a Secondary Display

In this episode of The Complete Picture, Julieanne Kost shows you how to use 2 monitors to take advantage of Lightroom's dual monitor solution.

Photoshop User TV - Custom shapes, shadows, & more

Dave and Scott have a custom shape tool and a shadow tutorial respectively. Scott invites everyone to join his Photo Walk and David DuChemin is in the studio to talk about his new photography book.

Design Premium CS4 Feature Tour - Creative Suite 4: New Features for CS1 Owners

If you're using Creative Suite 1 you're not only missing out on the cool new features in CS4, you're also missing new features added in CS2 and CS3. In this episode, Terry White shows you just some of the amazing functionality you'll get by upgrading to CS4.

2008 workshop in progress in the Type & Media classroom (photo by Erik van Blokland)

Installation,Infrastructure

	This technical guide provides insight and recommendations around the infrastructure for deployment of Adobe LiveCycle ES2. It also provides assistance in the preparation of an environment prior to installation. The Appendix alone makes this document worth downloading. It lists most (if not all) of the resources you should be reading while preparing for your installation.
	http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/pdfs/lces2_infrastructure.pdf

However, a manual change has to be made for Content Services ES. Otherwise, you will get the following error messages in the server log:

ERROR [WSClient] ALC-CSV-001-000-Checking Server status at http://10.20.50.40:8080/contentspace/faces/jsp/login.jsp
INFO [HttpMethodDirector] I/O exception (java.net.ConnectException) caught when processing request: Connection refused: connect
INFO [HttpMethodDirector] Retrying request

1) Login to the LiveCycle AdminUI, and navigate to Services->Applications and Services->Service Management
2) Filter on the 'Content Services' category
3) Click on Document Management Service
4) In the Configuration tab, change HTTP Port to 80 (or whatever port JBoss/Tomcat is configured to listen on) and save.
5) Re-start JBoss
6) After re-start, login to the LiveCycle AdminUI and navigate to Services->LiveCycle ContentServices ES2 and make sure that the page loads. In the server log, you should see entries such as these:

ERROR [WSClient] ALC-CSV-001-000-Checking Server status at http://10.20.50.40:80/contentspace/faces/jsp/login.jsp
ERROR [WSClient] ALC-CSV-001-000-Query server at http://10.20.50.40:80/contentspace/faces/jsp/login.jsp is successful

Please ignore the 'ERROR' designation - it is a known problem which is being fixed.

AIM contains the Preference Reference, a preference dictionary for Acrobat products. The Preference Reference for Acrobat and Adobe Reader is organized by preference path and name, and its structure is identical to the Windows registry. Each top level name is expanded into a user-friendly name. However, by using the Table of Contents, you can search by keyname, friendly name, or subfeature friendly name. The quick and full indices as well as the other pages should make needed information quickly accessible.

Customize this application by adding and removing RSS feeds, links, and bookmarks. You will be automatically notified of content updates.

The current version of AIM includes:

• Preference Reference for Acrobat and Adobe Reader: An in-progress database of configurable registry-level preferences that is updated regularly.
  
• Preference Overview: Describes the data types, feature lockdown, and other details.
  
• Feature Lockdown: A guide to locking features so that end users can't change the settings.
  
• Application Security Documentation: A guide to secure application configuration, including enhanced security, JavaScript controls, and other features.

Install the Administrator's Information Manager for Acrobat

crossdomain.xml,enhanced security,Reader 9.3

	We have a number of external-facing PDF forms that use Web Services to populate certain aspects of their data.  I understand that 9.3 has Enhanced Security turned on by default.  What's the fastest way we can get communication working with our servers?
	Joel Geraci covers this topic in an existing blog article here but the two documents you will need to get started are: Enhanced Security Troubleshooting Guide and FAQ Link directly to Workflow fixes with enhanced security enabled page These should provide you with the direction you're looking for. However, if you are in a situation that needs a quick fix and completely open access then you could deploy a totally-open master policy on the root directory of your server as a starting point and then work through your forms, Reader Extensions certificate, and sub-directories to ensure you implement a secure solution. <?xml version="1.0" ?> <cross-domain-policy> <site-control permitted-cross-domain-policies="master-only" /> <allow-access-from domain="*" /> <allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*" headers="*" /> </cross-domain-policy> If you would like to just use a master policy then I would suggest associating the policy to your Reader Extensions certificate.  This would allow only PDF forms extended with your certificate to access services on your server.

The frustration is fresh on my mind since I ran into the same problem today trying to schedule an appointment for my son today. My son is in school at California State University and I have to fill in forms for him here in Illinois. The receptionist couldn't even fax me the forms since " . . . the pages are dark and they don't fax well."

Aargh!

In this introductory article you'll learn how to:

• Create a form
• Add or edit fields
• Add buttons so that patients can email the form to you
• Save the form and enable it for your patients who use the free Adobe Reader software

Acrobat Forms Basics

Using Acrobat 9, you can create a form that is fillable for your patients who are using an earlier version of the free Adobe Reader. Adobe has distributed almost a billion copies of the free Adobe Reader, so it is very unlikely that your patient won't be able to fill out the document.

Architecturally, the form fields "live" in a layer on top of the base document.

The basic steps to create a form are:

1. Find your form
   • If the form is on paper, scan it in. You can do that directly in Acrobat
   • Locate your existing Word, Excel, etc. form file
2. Use Acrobat to auto-recognize form fields on the document
3. Add, delete fields as necessary
4. Test the form

To make it easy to try this yourself, I've you can download the "flat" and completed forms below.

Before Form - No fields (14K PDF)
Form with Fillable Fields, Reader Enabled (193K PDF)

Read on to learn how to do it yourself!

Acrobat includes a Wizard that makes the forms authoring process easy. Acrobat can automatically find boxes or underlines which have associated labels.

Here are a couple of examples:

Create your First PDF Form

1. On the Acrobat toolbar, click the Forms button and choose Start Forms Wizard . . .
   
2. You'll be presented with some choices:
   
   
   A) Use this choice if you already have a PDF or a Word doc to convert
   B) Use this choice if you have a scanner attached to your computer
   C) I only recommend this choice for expert users who want to create a form from scratch
   
   For this article, I will presume you will use option A above.
   
   
3. Click the Next button.
4. Locate the file you wish to convert by using the Browse button to find your file, then click the Next button.
   (You can use the sample patient_information_form.pdf you downloaded above.
   
5. Acrobat will find the fields on your form and open the window below. Click the OK button.
   
6. Your form will appear in the Acrobat window in Editing View.
   — A Fields panel on the left lists all of the form fields which were found.
   — On the right, you can see your form with all the fields on top
   

What next? Time to add or fix fields

Acrobat doesn't always do a perfect job finding form fields.

• Acrobat may find too many fields
  
• Acrobat may not find all your fields
• Acrobat might add the wrong type of field
• Acrobat might make a field too big or too small

Deleting and Sizing Fields

• To delete a field, simply select it and hit the DELETE key.
• To make a field larger, simply drag one of the "handles" to the desired size.

Adding new Fields to the Form

Acrobat allows you stamp several kinds of fields on top of the form as needed.

Here are the types you will use most often are:

• Text Fields
  Allow your patient to type whatever they want into the field
  
  
  
• Check Boxes
  Allow the patient to tick off an item
  
  
  
• Radio Buttons
  Allow the patient to select only one out of a series of options
  
  
  
• Regular Buttons
  Allow the patient to clear fields or submit a form via email.
  
  

You can add additional fields by clicking the Add New Field button at the top of the window

Acrobat offers several types of form fields. Select the type you want from the list and stamp it on to the document.

Changing the Text Fields

Text fields in Acrobat can hold thousands of characters of text. By default, if the text doesn't fit the field, Acrobat makes it smaller until it is eight points high. After that, Acrobat can (optionally) scroll the text in the field.

If you double-click on a Text field, you can change various options for it:

1. Font, size, color of the text
2. Allow or disallow multiple lines of text
3. Limit the amount of text in a cell
4. Formatting (e.g. make all phone number conform to a style like (888) 999-0000 even if the patient didn't type it in that way

Adding or Changing Radio Buttons

Radio buttons offer a mutually exclusive set of choices to your form. By using a radio button, you can ensure that the patient only chooses one out of an allowable set of options. For example, you can be either married or single, but not both.

O the sample form, Acrobat did not create fields for minor, single, married, at the top of the form. I've marked them with the red lines below.

Adding radio buttons is a bit trickier because Acrobat maintains them as a group.

Here's how to add a set of radio buttons:

1. Click the Add New Field button and chose Radio Button from the list
   
2. Stamp a Radio Button on top of the document
   
3. A yellow options window appears:
   
   
   A) Fill in the name of the group of buttons
   B) Fill in the name of the button that is being clicked
   C) Click the Add another button to group and then add the next radio button

Adding an Email Button

HIPAA rules state that doctors and healthcare organizations need to be extremely careful when transmitting patient data.

Fortunately, patients are not covered entities and can choose to convey information to you the way in which they are comfortable, including email.

Here's how to add an email button:

1. Click the Add New Field button and chose Button from the list
2. Stamp the button onto the form (usually in the upper right)
3. Give the button in name in the yellow options window, then click the Show All Properties link
4. Click the Appearance tab in the Button Properties Window
   Change the fill and border colors to your taste
   
5. Click the Options tab of the Button Properties window
   Fill in the Label field with the text you want to appear on the button face
   
   
6. Click the Actions tab of the Button Properties window
   A) Choose Submit a form from the Trigger pop-up menu
   B) Click the Add button
   
7. Make the following changes . . .
   A) Enter mailto: followed by the email address you wish to receive the form
   B) Click PDF The complete document
   C) Click the OK button
   
8. Click the Close button

Reader-enabling the Form

Normally, a patient using the free Adobe Reader software can view, print and navigate a document, but cannot save any changes. This limitation includes saving data patients have typed into the form.

However, if you have Acrobat 9 (Standard or Pro), you have PDF superpowers. You can "bless" a PDF for your patients so that they can save their information in the form.

This process is called Reader-enabling the document.

Here's how:

1. Open the form you wish to Reader-enable

2. Next choose the appropriate option based on which version of Acrobat you have:
   Acrobat 9 Pro:   Advanced> Extend Features in Adobe Reader . . .
   Acrobat 9 Standard: Advanced> Extend Forms Fill-in & Save in Adobe Reader . . .

3. Acrobat will prompt you to save the form.

The Reader-enabled form may be emailed to patients or posted on your website. The email button is "wired" to always send the form back to you.

Licensing Limitations

The licensing agreement for Acrobat limits the number of times each individual form may be returned to you to 500 responses.

Note that this is a licensing limitation. Acrobat doesn't actually count responses.

Five-hundred responses should be plenty to cover the needs of smaller practices. Since this is a per form limit, you could change the form which would allow for a reset of the limitation.

The positive feedback I received from the participants inspired me to post this short recording of the steps it takes to embed a SolidWorks 3D assembly in PDF via FrameMaker and in a Help systems via RoboHelp.

As always, thank you for taking the time to check out the recording and if you have any comments, leave me a message below and send me a Tweet @rjacquez.

Click HERE to watch the recording of Incorporating 3D in Technical Documentation (duration: 00:13:50).

TIP: I typically set my desktop resolution to 1024 x 768 for best recording results, however because I was showing apps, which require high resolution, you will notice some distortion in the demonstration part of the recording. Something you may want to try is to click the "Scroll" button at the bottom left of the Connect Pro window, which will help you zoom in closer and follow the action around the presenter's mouse.  To the right is what the button looks like in all Connect Pro recordings.

3D,PDF,Documentation,TechComm,FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Acrobat,SolidWorks

The new LiveCycle Managed Services is a subscription-based service that leverages the power and security of the Amazon EC2 platform. A key component of the offering is the Adobe Network Operations Center, a team of Adobe service professionals that work behind the scenes to manage and monitor operations - taking the burden off a company's internal IT resources.

Watch Paul McNamara, EIR, Cloud Computing, walk through what LiveCycle Managed Services offers!
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/getting-to-know-livecycle-es2/livecycle-managed-services

To learn more about Adobe LiveCycle Managed Services ES2, visit www.adobe.com/livecycle/cloud

A colleague of mine at school became stressed out about a project. She is volunteering for our School Counselor Association, working with a group of college/university professors on a publication project. She was going to meet with them during one of her work days far from our home town. She got behind at work and become extremely stressed out about leaving her family and students for almost two days across the state. She observed my strategies of getting up early in the morning, doing an Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro Meeting session from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. with my own colleagues before my work day. Then a light came on for her, she came to me and asked for help with her situation. I asked her what problem she was trying to solve. She explained how she was in charge of collecting information on each section of the publication the higher education teachers where producing to explain their admission process. Each section of the publication needed to be analyzed by the group and edited for revision. I emailed her an Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro Meeting Room URL and told her to send it out for an online meeting. I decided to help solve her challenge by creating multiple chat rooms labeled with the same headings found in the admissions publication. Each chat room was a bucket ready to be filled with the recommended revisions from the higher education group. I turned on the "Presenter Only Area" within Connect Pro and staged each chat room off to the side, ready to be dragged over into the "Participant Viewing Area." The meeting began, all of the professors were impressed how organized she was by dragging each chat room over into their view. They would fill the chat room with their recommended revisions for each section, and then she would drag it off and drag the new one into view. This process went on for about an hour. At the end of the meeting, all of the professors and my friend were back at their jobs, in their geographic locations, working with students and not missing hours of work time. Finally, she just needed to copy and paste each section from the chat rooms and dump the information into a Word Document to send to the publisher. Once again, the technology of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro came to the rescue.

Today, Adobe brings its LiveCycle Enterprise Suite (ES) to the cloud, providing a hosted option for customers to quickly deploy key projects that drive innovation and help prioritize IT investments.

The new LiveCycle Managed Services is a subscription-based service that leverages the power and security of the Amazon EC2 platform. A key component of the offering is the Adobe Network Operations Center, a team of Adobe service professionals that work behind the scenes to manage and monitor operations - taking the burden off a company's internal IT resources.

Watch Paul McNamara, EIR, Cloud Computing, walk through what LiveCycle Managed Services offers!

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/getting-to-know-livecycle-es2/livecycle-managed-services

To learn more about Adobe LiveCycle Managed Services ES2, visit www.adobe.com/livecycle/cloud

The new LiveCycle Managed Services is a subscription-based service that leverages the power and security of the Amazon EC2 platform. A key component of the offering is the Adobe Network Operations Center, a team of Adobe service professionals that work behind the scenes to manage and monitor operations - taking the burden off a company's internal IT resources.

Watch Paul McNamara, EIR, Cloud Computing, walk through what LiveCycle Managed Services offers on AdobeTV.

To learn more about Adobe LiveCycle Managed Services ES2, visit www.adobe.com/livecycle/cloud

So why do you need a framework?

The decision depends on your use case. If are building a small website, with some static videos, the existing components might work well and provide a great default UI. A different case are more advanced video projects. The players might simply not fulfill your requirements, therefore you have to build a wrapper on top of it, or even build your own framework from ground up - if you ever built your own video framework, you probably know this can be a pretty intensive task, and certainly something you don't to do for each individual video project.

Fullscreen viewing recommended. [Via]

(You can see it in higher resolution on Facebook.)

Hopefully this helps explain why we put the Extract filter out to pasture in CS4.

[Update: See also another great mask made with Photoshop :-). (Via Steven Johnson)]

If you have a suggestion for a website for this list, let me know in the comments.

After Effects community resources (English)

Resources on the Adobe website

Adobe provides documentation resources for After Effects on the After Effects Help & Support page on the Adobe website. From the After Effects Help & Support page, you can also search for community resources not on the Adobe website.

Adobe and its partners provide a basic set of video tutorials on the Adobe website, in addition to excellent tutorials provided by other members of the community. Many sections of After Effects Help refer to additional video tutorials in context to provide information about specific features. If you know of an excellent video tutorial or other resource about After Effects, please leave a comment at the bottom of the relevant page of After Effects Help on the Web to tell others about it.

To make a feature request or file a bug report, fill out the feature request and bug report form on the Adobe website.

The Adobe After Effects User-to-User Forum is a great place to ask questions about After Effects and have them answered by other After Effects users.

You can subscribe to RSS feeds from Adobe Technical Support so that you can get notification of issues and workarounds related to After Effects (or other Adobe products).

For information on plug-ins available for After Effects, go to the After Effects plug-in page on the Adobe website.

To exchange scripts, projects, and other useful items with other After Effects users, go to the After Effects Exchange on the Adobe website.

Michael Coleman, After Effects product manager, provides news and notes about After Effects on his Keyframes blog.

Todd Kopriva, After Effects documentation lead, provides links to instructional resources and reference material for After Effects users on his After Effects Region of Interest blog.

Adobe provides resources for scripting and plug-in creation on the After Effects Developer Center section of the Adobe website. The Video Technology Center section of the Developer Center has information about all of the Adobe digital video and audio applications. The Adobe Developer Center newsletter, The Edge, occasionally includes material of interest to After Effects users, especially with regard to interactive video and video for the Web.

You can use the Adobe Community Publishing System (CPS) on the Adobe website to write and post articles directly to Adobe.com.

Resources on other websites

A good place to ask questions about After Effects--especially with regard to integration with 3D applications--is the Mograph forum.

The ProVideo Coalition (PVC) website contains articles and blogs on topics of interest to professionals in the video industry. In addition to articles by Chris and Trish Meyer, the PVC website includes articles by Mark Christiansen, Frank Capria, Jim Feeley, Adam Wilt, Mark Curtis, and Scott Gentry.

The Toolfarm website provides forums, tutorials, and other resources related to After Effects and other Adobe products. The AE Freemart website is a division of Toolfarm that provides free tutorials about After Effects.

The AE Enhancers forum provides example scripts and useful information about scripting (as well as expressions and animation presets) in After Effects. Particularly active and helpful on this forum is Paul Tuersley.

Jonas Hummelstrand provides tutorials, troubleshooting tips, and insights about After Effects and motion graphics in general on his General Specialist website.

Trish and Chris Meyer provide instructional resources for After Effects in many places, including their CyberMotion website.

Lutz Albrecht provides a list of After Effectserror codes and some possible solutions on his Mylenium error code database website.

John Dickinson provides tutorials and other resources for After Effects and related softwareon his Motionworks website.

Alan Shisko provides insights and tips about motion graphics on his Motion Graphics 'n Such blog.

Harry Frank provides tutorials on all areas of After Effects, with an emphasis on expressions and use of third-party plug-ins on his graymachine website.

Andrew Kramer provides tutorials and training on his Video Copilot website.

Dan Ebberts provides scripting tutorials and useful scripts on the scripting portion of the MotionScript website. Dan also provides an excellent collection of example expressions and tutorials for learning how to work with expressions on the expressions portion of the MotionScript website.

Lloyd Alvarez, Mathias Möhl, and others provide useful scripts on the After Effects Scripts website.

Jeff Almasol provides a collection of useful scripts on his redefinery website.

Stu Maschwitz provides insights and tips about After Effects and video, visual effects, and compositing in general on his ProLost blog.

The Creative COW website provides several resources for After Effects users. Many of these resources feature Aharon Rabinowitz:

• Multimedia 101 podcast


• After Effects podcasts


• After Effects tutorials


• After Effects articles


• After Effects Basics forum


• After Effects forum


• After Effects Expressions forum

The Layers Magazine website provides articles and tutorials about After Effects and other Adobe creative products.

David Van Brink provides tips, insights, and downloadable utilities for After Effects and other digital video software on his Omino
website.

Colin Braley provides tutorials--mostly about expressions--on his website.

Rich Young maintains a list of After Effects resources on his AE Portal News blog.

Rick Gerard provides tips and tricks on his AE Tips and Tricks website.

David Torno provides tips and tutorials about visual effects and compositing on his AE I Owe You blog.

Dean Velez provides many sample projects (some free) and other useful things on his Motion Graphics Lab website.

Jerzy Drozda, Jr. provides After Effects tutorials on his Maltaannon website.

Dale Bradshaw provides scripts and tricks on his Creative Workflow Hacks website.

Richard Harrington provides tutorials and other useful material about After Effects and other video software on his Photoshop for Video website and Raster|Vector website. He also posts video tutorials on Adobe TV.

Sean Kennedy provides several video tutorials--including some about rotoscoping and motion tracking--on the SimplyCG website. They're all linked to from his website.

Ayato Fuji provides tutorials on his ayato@web website. Some of the tutorials are a little out of date, but much of the material is still strong,
especially for learning to use some of the Trapcode plug-ins.

Chris Pirazzi provides technical details of digital video on his Lurker's Guide to Video website.

Chris Zwar provides articles, After Effects projects, scripts, and other resources on his website.

Christopher Green provides many useful scripts on his website.

Satya Meka provides tutorials, plug-ins, and other resources on his gutsblow website.

Jeff Foster provides tutorials for using After Effects and Photoshop on his PixelPainter website.

Sébastien Périer provides tutorials and other information on his website.

Ressources communautaires d'After Effects (Français)

Ressources sur le site Web d'Adobe

Adobe met à votre disposition des ressources documentaires relatives à After Effects dans la section Aide communautaire d'After Effects du site Web d'Adobe. Sur la page de l'Aide communautaire, vous pouvez également rechercher des ressources communautaires qui ne figurent pas sur le site Web d'Adobe.

Adobe et ses partenaires proposent un ensemble basique de tutoriels vidéo sur le site Web d'Adobe; ils s'ajoutent aux excellents didacticiels d'autres membres de la communauté. De nombreuses sections de l'aide After Effects renvoient à d'autres didacticiels vidéo en contexte pour fournir des informations sur certaines fonctionnalités spécifiques. Si vous avez un bon tutoriel vidéo ou d'autres ressources en français à recommander pour After Effects, partagez-les avec d'autres utilisateurs en écrivant un commentaire en bas de la page concernée sur l'aide en ligne d'After Effect CS4.

Le forum d'utilisateurs Adobe est l'endroit idéal pour poser des questions sur After Effects et obtenir les réponses d'autres utilisateurs.

Ressources sur d'autres sites Web

Le forum du site internet "Le Repaire" est une bonne source d'aide communautaire en français sur After Effects.

Sur son site Mattias Peresini, un jeune motion designer propose de nombreux didacticiels en français sur After Effects.

Les sites
http://www.xplorerstudio.com/tutorials.html
http://cysworld-leblog.blogspot.com/
Offrent egalement de bons tutorials en francais.

Recursos de la comunidad After Effects (Español)

Recursos en el sitio Web de Adobe

Adobe ofrece recursos de documentación para After Effects en la sección Ayuda de la comunidad de After Effects del sitio Web de Adobe. Desde la página de Ayuda de la comunidad, también puede buscar recursos de la comunidad que no estén en el sitio Web de Adobe.

Adobe y sus socios ofrecen un conjunto básico de tutoriales en vídeo en del sitio Web de Adobe, además de los excelentes tutoriales ofrecidos por otros miembros de la comunidad. Muchas secciones de la Ayuda de After Effects se refieren a tutoriales en vídeo adicionales en contexto para proporcionar información sobre funciones específicas. Si sabes de un tutorial en video excelente, o de otros recursos sobre After Effects en Español, por favor deja un comentario al pie de la página relevante de la Ayuda de After Effects en la Web para compartirlo con otros.

El Adobe Foros de usuario a usuario es el lugar idóneo para formular preguntas sobre After Effects, a las que otros usuarios de After Effects podrán responder.

Recursos en otros sitios Web

El sitio AdobeLabo incluye artículos y tutoriales sobre After Effects (y otros productos de Adobe).

El sitio http://aftereffects.260mb.com incluye tutoriales sobre After Effects.
Desglose:

• Conceptos básicos sobre composición y renderizado


• Conceptos básicos sobre importación y nesting


• Animación Básica


• Animación Avanzada, interpolación, easing


• Edición no lineal con After Effects


• Iniciación a los efectos y presets


• Entorno 3D, cámaras, luces y sombras


• Corrección de color, Niveles, Curvas y saturación


• Modos de fusion, darkening, additive


• Modos de fusion, Overlay, difference, color


• Máscaras, pluma Bezier


• Mattes y transparencias


• Efecto keylight


• Mocha, tutorial básico y workflow


• Cinema4D y After Effects: Integración 1


• Cinema4D y After Effects: Integración 2

After Effects Community-Ressourcen (Deutsch)

Ressourcen auf der Adobe-Website

Adobe stellt Dokumentationsressourcen für After Effects im Abschnitt After Effects Community Help der Adobe-Website bereit. Auf der Seite „Community Help" können Sie auch nach Community-Ressourcen suchen, die nicht Teil der Adobe-Website sind.

Adobe und seine Partner stellen der Adobe-Website einige grundlegende Video-Lehrgänge bereit. Sie werden ergänzt durch hervorragende Lehrgänge von anderen Community-Mitgliedern. In vielen Abschnitten der After Effects-Hilfe wird auf weitere, kontextbezogene Video-Lehrgänge verwiesen, die über spezifische Funktionen informieren. Wenn Sie interessante und hochwertige Tutorials oder andere Quellen kennen, die sich mit After Effects beschäftigen oder artverwandte Themen behandeln, hinterlassen Sie bitte einen Kommentar auf der jeweiligen zugehörigen Seite der Adobe After Effects Onlinehilfe, so dass andere Anwender diese auch finden können.


Das Adobe Benutzerforum bietet die großartige Möglichkeit, Fragen zu After Effects zu stellen und von anderen Benutzern Antworten zu erhalten.

Ressourcen auf anderen Websites

Video2Brain stellen Video-Lehrgänge bereit.

After Effects コミュニティリソース(日本語)

アドビ システムズ社の Web サイト上のリソース

アドビ システムズ社は、After Effects のドキュメンテーションリソースを、アドビ システムズ社の Web サイトにある After Effects コミュニティヘルプで公開しています。コミュニティヘルプページでは、アドビ システムズ社の Web サイト以外のコミュニティリソースも検索することができます。

アドビ システムズ社で、ビデオチュートリアルの基本セットを提供しています。他にも、コミュニティのメンバーから提供された優れたチュートリアルも提供しています。 After Effects のヘルプでは、特定の機能に関する情報を提供するために、文中で様々なビデオチュートリアルを参照しています。 After Effects の日本語チュートリアルや、日本語で説明された制作例などをご存知でしたら、After Effects オンラインヘルプの該当するページのコメント欄にてご紹介ください。コメント欄は、各ページの一番下にあります。

アドビ ユーザフォーラムでは、他の After Effects ユーザと After Effects に関する情報を交換することができます。

ご要望と不具合については、アドビ システムズ社の Web サイトの 製品への要望／不具合報告フォーム を使ってご連絡ください。

その他の Web サイト上のリソース

藤井彩人の Web サイト (日本語):
http://www.ayatoweb.com/

日本のAfter Effectsユーザーがリソースや記事を共有するウェブサイトを公開しました。是非ご利用ください！
http://ae-users.com/jp/

Gaining broad adoption for their runtime platforms translates into their ability to create massive derivative value through downstream products and services. For Apple, this is hardware and paid media (content and apps) sales. For Google, this is about creating massive reach for their advertising platforms and products. For Adobe, this about creating major new applications businesses based on their platform. For Microsoft, it is about driving unit sales of their core OS and business applications.

A silo... an eyeball tracker... a tool shop... a business office. Each with its own culture, each with its own goals. A company can reinvent itself, but if you want to guess what they'll do next, it's a good bet to just follow the money.

Take for example this BBC iPlayer. The BBC looked to this iPlayer to help them transform the world-wide on-demand TV space. It took BBC about 10 weeks to build the iPlayer and in its first 3 weeks of launch, there were 3.5m downloads. Currently, it accounts for 5 million views a day which is aobut 5% of the UK internet traffic.

These great participation rates are because from the start, the BBC considered the user central to how the rest of the system worked to deliver content to users. The iPlayer can be used by anyone across platforms and even if they are disconnected from the internet.

Okay, I probably haven't told you anything you didn't know already, except perhaps the tremendous adoption rate of the iPlayer. I was pretty impressed with when I heard the figures.

Any government agency would kill for these sorts of participation rates.

Okay, now imagine this agency is a tax and revenue agency.

Now stop imagining because innovative agencies are acting on it and reaping the rewards from being innovative.

The Polish Ministry of Finance, in an effort to improve citizen interactions, led an e-Declarations project. At the core of the citizen interaction piece is a cross-platform, freely available client application which manages the electronic forms, pushes news alerts down and allows citizens to check the status of their filings.

The first button gives a citizen access to the latest forms, the second button gives access to the accounts/filings/cases the citizen has pending, the third button provides information on legislation, the bottom bottom allows the user to set preferences.

Clicking on the first button gives you access to the list of forms available. As questions are completed, the application will determine if other forms are needed. If you select the first form in the list which is the declaration of income PIT-36, the latest version of the form will be presented.

The form is an Adobe PDF with key form fields pre-filled (eg. first name, last name, address) already with information based on my account. I have the options of printing, saving on my local drive or even submitting. If I try to submit at this point, it will validate the form and let me know I am missing required information and will now allow me to submit.

If a citizen wanted this type of support in your agency, what would be involved?

Now, if I want to check on the status of my applications, I select the second button and I am presented with all incomplete, pending and completed applications.

No call to a call center was needed, no rifling through various websites looking for the status for different applications, it was all located in one place, the Polish e-Deklaracje desktop.

Need to get latest updates from the Ministry? Check out the news alerts section.

Selecting any of the news alerts from this section will pull up the official PDF version of the document. This ensures that official information comes directly from the ministry so that citizens know they can trust it.

Interested in checking out this application for yourself? You can download it from here.

Next time you are playing your favorite music on your MP3 or browsing through music and videos online. Think about the possibilities of transferring some of these great user interactions to the work that your agency needs to help citizens accomplish in the weeks, months and years to come.

Usual caveats apply. There are bugs, missing features, etc. But it might be a starting point if you need to throw some charts on the screen on top of the Spark.

Run Demo
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More recently, Kevin responded to comments on this post and shared is thoughts on Flash Player performance as well as reports of crashes in some browsers.  As he notes, Adobe works directly with browser teams for Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Google Chrome to resolve issues and ensure that Flash Player is not released with any known crash bugs. 

If you’re following the wider conversation on the future of the Flash Platform, be sure to check back or follow us on Twitter.

No, it's not pure open source. It's not a perfect standard with national bodies arguing over each must, will, or shall.

But in follow the comments from our CTO's posting "Open access to Content and Apps", I noticed that there are comments about Flash not being an "open" technology and questions about why we don't open source the Player, so I thought I'd jump in and provide some details to help clear up some misconceptions and explain how open we are with the Flash Platform.

(Might I also suggest you check out this "Open at Adobe" video on YouTube.)

The main reason we can't release Flash Player as open source is because there is technology in the Player that we don't own, such as the industry standard hi-def video codec, H.264. Adobe pays for that codec so video plays reliably worldwide, across browsers and OS's. So we make it as open as we can - by releasing the specifications.

The Flash file format (SWF) specifications are open and unrestricted, so any company - even Apple - can build their own Flash Player if they want. Also freely available are related specifications for the Flash ecosystem: RTMP, FLV/F4V, AMF, and MCD.

Flex - the framework to make rich Internet app (RIAs) is open source; the Text Layout Framework, which is the same text engine in Flash Player driving typography, is open source; OSMF is an open source framework for building video deployment solutions using the Flash Platform. Tamarin, the virtual machine powering Flash Player is open sourced at Mozilla.

For more info on Flash Platform openness as well as to follow all the open initiatives at Adobe, visit opensource.adobe.com.

FrameMaker,Technical Communication,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,FDK

In this blog, we are going to talk about the correct way to use FDK resources.

All Structure Import/Export clients have to link with structure lib(struct.lib) and its dependent resource file(fmstruct.res). These files(struct.lib and fmstruct.res) are shipped with every version of FDK, and to link with the above mentioned files, you should add them to the Additional Dependencies field in your client's project setting. This is the recommended way to link with structure lib and its resources.

In case, you have embedded the structure resources(fmstruct.res) into your client's project as a resource script file(.rc), then after upgrading your client to link with newer version of FDK, your client may behave unexpectedly. This may happen because, structure resources and their index in string table may change with every new version of FDK. If you are following this approach, then don't forget to update the embedded resources in your client project.

Please write a comment if you've any doubts/questions.

Thanks!
Harsh Gupta
FrameMaker Engineering

This diagram shows a Client Browser request to an HTTPS Load Balancer with SSL Terminiation. Notice that the request is sent from the Load Balancer to the application server with HTTP data.

Within LCDS most endpoints are servlets within waiting for a request. The messagebroker/amfsecure endpoint is defined within the services-config.xml file for LCDS under the WEB-INF/flex/ directory.

<channel-definition id="my-amf-secure" class="mx.messaging.channels.SecureAMFChannel">
<endpoint url="https://{server.name}:{server.port}/{context.root}/messagebroker/amfsecure" class="flex.messaging.endpoints.SecureAMFEndpoint "/>
<properties>
<add-no-cache-headers>false</add-no-cache-headers>
</properties>
</channel-definition>

Notice in the configuration above we want to send a request from the Client to the Load Balancer as SSL. To do this the SWF uses a channel-definition for SSL. The following class will be used by the SWF to create the channel within ActionScript class="mx.messaging.channels.SecureAMFChannel". This will send the request to the Load Balancer where it will terminate the SSL and decrypt it.

The next step in this process is to pass the data from the Load Balancer to the Application server as in the diagram below.

On the server we need to modify the endpoint so it will not use a class that tries to decrypt the data. In this case we will use the endpoint class that specifies AMFEndpoint.

<channel-definition id="my-amf-secure" class="mx.messaging.channels.SecureAMFChannel">
<endpoint url="https://{server.name}:{server.port}/{context.root}/messagebroker/amfsecure" class="flex.messaging.endpoints.AMFEndpoint "/>
<properties>
<add-no-cache-headers>false</add-no-cache-headers>
</properties>
</channel-definition>

With this modification the request is received on the server at the endpoint https://{server.name}:{server.port}{context.root}/messagebroker/amfsecure/ it will use the flex.messaging.endpoints.AMFEndpoint to process the request. This endpoint will not decrypt the data and will pass back the request to the Load Balancer.

• Ann Lewnes is Adobe's senior vice president of Global Marketing and is on the Board of the Adobe Foundation and The Advertising Council

The filters are available at Adobe.com.

For Mac filter go here.
For Windows filter find it here.

Here are the instructions to install and use this filter:

1. Quit Illustrator CS4, if it is running.
2. Remove the Crop Marks.aip plug-in from the Illustrator Filters folder (save a copy of this plug-in separately if you wish to use the Crop Marks effect in the future). It is located at Adobe Illustrator _CS4/Plug-ins/Illustrator Filters.
3. Download the provided CS3 Crop Marks plug-in to any accessible location on your computer (such as the desktop) and uncompress/extract the contents.
4. Place the Crop Marks.aip plug-in inside the Illustrator Filters folder (same path as in step 2).
5. Delete the Illustrator preferences. The Illustrator preferences file is located at Users\\Library\Preferences\Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings.
6. Relaunch Illustrator CS4. The filter will be available at Object > Filters > Create > Crop Marks.
7. If the filter is not available, check to see if you placed the plug-in in the correct folder.

Important points to note:

• After switching to the Illustrator CS3 Crop Marks filter the Illustrator CS4 Crop Marks effect will not be available. Opening any Illustrator CS4 files that contain objects with the Crop Marks effect created using the Illustrator CS4 Crop Marks effect will require expanding the object to proceed with further editing. This is a standard Illustrator behavior when a plug-in is missing.
• If you wish to get the CS4 Crop Marks effect back, you just need to switch back to the original CS4 Crop Marks effect plug-in following the same steps and deleting preferences before restarting the application (resetting preferences is essential every time the Plug-in folder is modified).
• When reinstalling Illustrator CS4, you will need to perform the above steps again to install the Illustrator CS3 Crop Marks filter.

Thanks
-Anil Ahuja
(Illustrator Team)

I was alerted to a recent study of indeed.com data made by Jonathan Campos that I believe should give future graduates a more solid outlook if they've been at all rattled by the recent debates.

Some of the highlights are revealed in the following charts (keep in mind that July 2009 is probably the height of the current global recession):

We can see from the graph above that Flex is still the leading RIA technology. Sure, Dojo (representing the HTML/JavaScript area of RIA) is doing nicely as well- but HTML/JavaScript and Flash are complementary technologies and in no way supplant one another aside from their specific strengths and weaknesses.

Happily, we see here that practitioners of RIA technologies still get paid nicely for their work.

Students- you have nothing to worry about. Don't let the trolls frighten you!

Woodblock prints in the 1400s... Linotype in the 1880s... digital in the 1980s... webpages more recently. Each enabled more people to communicate, more easily, more expressively.

For communications, very few owned signal towers and elevated roadways, until carrier pigeon, then telegraph, later telephone made communications more accessible. We started with one-way broadcast TV, later asynchronous videotape, now realtime peer-to-peer. Remote expressivity evolved from smoky symbols to text, to speech, to photos, to video.

The natural evolution is to become more diverse, more open, accessible to more people. Richer. More options.

Personal computer screens are only twenty years old. Their expressivity has become richer, their communications offer far more choices. From white-collar workstations, to blue-collar laptops, and now to the global denim pocket... different than fifteen years ago, or fifteen years from now.

A future using networked pocket devices will be a little bit richer than a hypertext viewer on a workstation.

How to design presentations and interactions for a world where your audience is using multiple devices throughout the day, where sometimes they may want short text, other times a passive movie, but at times heavy interaction? A world where your devices know where you are and can augment your environment... a world where your friends can "be" with you, no matter where they may be?

We simply don't know much yet about optimal design of such interfaces. Using networked pocket devices will be much richer than surfing the web.

We heard DHTML will kill Flash, Ajax will kill Flash, "HML5" will kill Flash. That's a very limiting way to look at things.

"We'll do that, but better" seems narrower than "We'll do something better". Second-movers may need confrontation; first-movers need vision.

Take a walk along the water sometime. Look out, and think about the more important things you could do.

Close with two quotes... wanted to close with three, but couldn't find something from Gregory Bateson about how the natural tendency of successful ecologies is towards increasing diversification over time, and how it's less-successful ecologies which focus on killing off The Other... but couldn't find it from Bateson, though, so there's just two:

Robert Anton Wilson:

"Information is doubling faster all the time. It took from the time of Jesus to the time of Leonardo for one doubling of knowledge. The next doubling of knowledge was completed before the American Revolution, the next one by 1900, the next one by 1950, the next one by 1960. You see how it keeps moving faster? Now knowledge is doubling every eighteen months.

"With all these new bits, bytes, blips of information, no model can last long because models only include the bytes of information that were available when the model was made. As new bytes of information come in it gets harder and harder to adjust our old models to include the new blips and beeps of information, so we've got to make new models."

JBS Haldane:

"My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

[Comments policy: A masked person with a reasonable question is okay. A real person with a dumb question is okay. A masked person making dumb assertions, not.]

These barcodes encode form field data the user has typed in.  When the form is printed (or perhaps faxed) the barcode can be scanned and the form data retrieved.  This workflow was originally envisioned on static forms with fixed amounts of data -- after all, a 2D barcode holds a limited amount of data.  As a result, the design process does not allow the inclusion of repeating subforms in the barcode data.  However, there certainly are cases where we could safely allow some repeating data in a barcode without overflowing the storage capacity.

I'll show you how to fix the problem first, and then if I still have your attention I'll give you the details on how it works.

The Fix

When you add your PaperForm barcode to your form, you also define a collection of fields and subforms to include in the barcode value.  If you add any repeating subforms to this list, then at runtime only the first subform instance will be included in the barcode.  In order to have the barcode include more instances, we need to modify the collection.  In the sample form, I've done this with an initialization script on the barcode field.  When you re-use this script, you need to change the last line so that it points to your collection:

makeManifestRepeat(BC_Collection);

You need to replace "BC_Collection" with the name of the collection used by your barcode.   There is one other detail needed to make this work for Reader 8.  When you add a new instance of a subform, you need to explicitly fire the barcode calculation.  The sample does this in the button click event:

PaperFormsBarcode1.execCalculate();

How it Works

The UI terminology for the fields included in a barcode is "Collection".  But the grammar calls it a manifest.  The manifest in the sample looks like this:

<manifest name="BC_Collection" id="2ae4d4a5-5e5d-4dba-b50e-e069b91533ce">
  <ref>xfa[0].form[0].bcTest[0].p1[0].Subform1[0].TextField1[0].dataNode</ref>
  <ref>xfa[0].form[0].bcTest[0].p1[0].Subform1[0].TextField2[0].dataNode</ref>
  <ref>xfa[0].form[0].bcTest[0].p1[0].Subform1[0].TextField3[0].dataNode</ref>
</manifest>

The manifest is a list of SOM expressions to the values to be included in the barcode.  Note that our repeating subform explicitly references the first instance: "Subform1[0]".  To make this manifest include all instances, we need to change it to "Subform1[*]":

We could have fixed this by editing the XML source in Designer, but that would be awkward.  Instead, we update the manifest when the form is opened in Reader -- that's the function of the initialization script.

You can get the IBM "Garbage Collection and Memory Visualizer" by downloading the IBM Support Assistant Workbench" which is based on Eclipse. It is a collection of several diagnostic tools. It is free but you need a "universal IBM user ID". During the installation, make sure you choose "IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Garbage Collection and Memory Visualizer".

Once started, the tool can be pointed to the GC log of your J9 or HotSpot JVM. To make the Sun HotSpot JVM log garbage collection details, you need to add the following JVM arguments to the JBoss or WebLogic startup script (change it to fit your environment):

rem ----------------------------------
rem Enable garbage collection logging
rem ---------------------------------
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -verbose:gc
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Xloggc:C:\Programs\jboss_4.2.1\server\lc_mysql\log\gc.log
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -XX:+PrintGCDetails
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -XX:+PrintHeapAtGC

Click HERE to watch the recording of my top 10 favorite Adobe Captivate keyboard shortcuts (duration: 00:33:31).

TIP: I typically set my desktop resolution to 1024 x 768 for best recording results, however because I was showing apps, which require high resolution, you will notice some distortion in the demonstration part of the recording. Something you may want to try is to click the "Scroll" button at the bottom left of the Connect Pro window, which will help you zoom in closer and follow the action around the presenter's mouse.  To the right is what the button looks like in all Connect Pro recordings.

If you have your own favorite keyboard shortcuts, please share with my readers by leaving a comment.

Related Posts:

• OnDemand Learning Resources for Adobe Captivate 4 Users

• Adobe Captivate 4 Best Practices: What's Yours?

• Test-Drive Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2 in minutes, no trial download required

• List of Adobe Captivate Users on Twitter

• My Top 10 Favorite Adobe FrameMaker Keyboard Shortcuts

Adobe,Captivate,keyboard,shortcuts,Twitter,rjacquez

• OSMF Sample Player with Chrome.  We've heard your feedback about the need for a configurable, embeddable sample player.  The new OSMFPlayer supports all OSMF media types, and comes with a nice-looking, dynamic control bar. If you play a progressive video, you'll have basic playback controls.  If you play a dynamic streaming video, you'll have an additional set of controls (for monitoring or switching streams).  The sample player uses the new ChromeLibrary, a reference implementation for how to create UI controls with OSMF.  You can see the player in action here.
  
• SMIL Support.  A new SMIL plugin allows you to create MediaElements out of SMIL documents, and play them back.  Supported SMIL features include dynamic streaming (via the <switch> tag), parallel and sequential media, and the core media types (video, audio, and image).
• HTTP Streaming Support.  We've added support for HTTP streaming in the latest OSMF release.  If you'd like to test this new functionality, please sign for our pre-release at: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=prerelease_interest.  (Note that the prerelease enrollment form at this link won't be available until approximately 2/12.)
  
• Enhanced Plugin Support.  We've added a new plugin type (CREATE_ON_LOAD) to allow a plugin's MediaElement to be created as soon as the plugin is loaded.  This is useful for plugins that monitor the status of other media (e.g. for analytics & reporting).
• API Lockdown Progress. We continue to make progress on our lockdown of APIs, and we expect the lockdown to be largely complete in the next release at the end of sprint 10. Details of API changes in sprint 9 are included in the release notes.  We have been aggressively working with an internal review board to review the public APIs, and have made sufficient progress now that we consider the API to be functionally complete.  The review process is likely to go on for at least another month, during which the primary focus will be on ensuring that terminology and conventions are consistent with other Flash Platform APIs.  For information on overall status of the API lockdown effort, please see our API Lockdown Status wiki page.

• Source ZIP
• Release Notes
• ASDocs
• SVN: Sprint9-Stable Tag

Run Demo
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M=R*(A+C)^E

I know, at first sight it reads like "miracle", but I don't think it takes a miracle to monetize video online. Here's what the formula is trying to say:

Effective Monetization requires combining broad Reach with the right balance between Access and Control to offer a compelling user Experience.

The first variable, Reach, is an easy one to achieve: use Flash. It runs on over 98% of Internet-connected computers world-wide (PCs, Macs and Linux.) It is used for over 75% of video on the web. And the Flash Platform continues to evolve, with new versions being rolled out not just on desktops and laptops, but also tablets and smartphones (just not the ones you're thinking of.)

Flash can also help you create a great user Experience, by enabling the development of rich, interactive applications and the use of dynamic streaming to adjust to changing bandwidth conditions.

That leaves the part about balancing Access and Control. All monetization strategies, whether it's advertising, subscription (buzzword of the month: paywall), rental or electronic sell-through need some of both. Going too far in either direction is just not profit-maximizing.

And this is where content protection technologies such as Flash Access come in. By limiting unauthorized copying and redistribution and enforcing usage rules to support their business model, content providers can use Flash Access to help protect investments in content and technology. When used correctly, the vast majority of consumers won't even notice that the content is protected in the first place.

F

Now, however, Kevin has posted an interesting follow-up via the comments. It's worth reading in its entirety, but here are bits I found significant:

For those wondering, the main computer I use is a MacBook Pro, and I've been using the Mac (and developing software for it) since it came out in 1984. [...]

Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today. [...]

Before we release a new version of Flash Player we run more than 100,000 test cases and have built an automated system that has scanned over 1 million SWFs that we use for testing from across the web. Our QA lab has a very large variety of machines to represent the machines in real use on the web.

Addressing crash issues is a top priority in the engineering team, and currently there are open reports we are researching in Flash Player 10. From the comments across the web there may either be an upswing in incidents or there is a general piling on happening -- we are looking into this actively and will work to resolve any real issues. If you are experiencing issues please report them directly to the Flash engineering team via the public bug database and the team will investigate and resolve each. [...]

Now regarding performance, given identical hardware, Flash Player on Windows has historically been faster than the Mac, and it is for the most part the same code running in Flash for each operating system. We have and continue to invest significant effort to make Mac OS optimizations to close this gap, and Apple has been helpful in working with us on this. Vector graphics rendering in Flash Player 10 now runs almost exactly the same in terms of CPU usage across Mac and Windows, which is due to this work. In Flash Player 10.1 we are moving to Core Animation, which will further reduce CPU usage and we believe will get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering.

Video rendering is an area we are focusing more attention on -- for example, today a 480p video on a 1.8 Ghz Mac Mini in Safari uses about 34% of CPU on Mac versus 16% on Windows (running in BootCamp on same hardware). With Flash Player 10.1, we are optimizing video rendering further on the Mac and expect to reduce CPU usage by half, bringing Mac and Windows closer to parity for video.

Speaking of using Photoshop & iPhone development, the San Francisco Photoshop User Group is meeting tomorrow (Thursday) night starting at 6:30, with a focus on mobile development:

Marine Leroux of Bamboudesign Inc. will showcase how easy it is to design iPhone apps efficiently with Photoshop. Through a step by step method combined with tips for smart user experience design, she'll guide you from sketching an app interface to designing it in Photoshop, building libraries and template files to expedite the design process. She'll define Apple's design requirements and the workflow between design, development, and publishing of an iPhone app to the App Store.

It isn't because I'm fascinated with the actual tools, many of them will have disappeared in the next couple of years. Rather, it is one of the most poignant examples of the incredible participation rates that great user design can induce. The possibilities of how this can transform government and key public issues have me mesmerized.

No public issue is as front and center these days as health care. Leland Berkwits, M.D. wrote into ModernHealthcare.com questioning the conclusions from a study conducted by a group of educators at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.

The study was to answer the question: "Does the medical-school curriculum adequately prepare students to diagnose and treat patients using an electronic health record?"

The conclusion Dr. Berkwits questioned?

Dr. Berkwits in her letter brings up a compelling point which is that conventional EHRs, not the physicians or students are the problem. She noted as a practicing physician for the past 17 years and having used 5 different systems, none of them were "intuitively easy to use".

It seems that those that conducted the study and Dr. Berkwits would agree on one issue. Whether it is the EHR or the training of the physician, the disconnect does lead to more user errors such as medication errors that could harm patients.

Aren't these incidents EHRs are suppose to reduce?

In the interest of fewer errors and achieving the adoption rates needed around meaningful use, it behooves us to make EHRs more intuitive to use. It is much easier and predictable to mold technology around the user than to try to change human behavior.

[Via]

The session will take place at Friday 2/12/10 at 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. PST. Please contact Victoria Selwyn (vselwyn@adobe.com) to reserve your spot today.

Thanks and regards,
Victoria Selwyn

Update: Thank you all for the responses. We're full now and not taking any more requests for inclusion on this interactive walk through. --Eric

In a nutshell? Shoppers want an easy, quick way to browse--with as few clicks and as little scrolling as possible when searching for the right product. But when making a purchase (to really add to cart), all shoppers want to be provided as much visual information in as large a viewing format as possible--including interactive zoom that enables shoppers to dynamically pan and zoom to deeper levels of details. Offering fly-over, click-driven browsing combined with full-screen interactive zoom is the ideal best practice.

One Scene7 customer who does a particularly good job at following these best practices is Halfords, a leading retailer of car parts, car enhancements and bicycles operating out of the United Kingdom.

Halfords delivers detailed product descriptions complete with alternate images (front, back and sides of product). Users can click on any of the images and then by just moving their mouse curser over the main image, another image automatically "flies out" with a single level of zoom to reveal a closer look at the product -- without clicking. To take an even deeper look, users can click on the "View Larger" button to view a separate product window that delivers even greater zoom levels of detail, where users can interactively examine more and more details on any area of the image.

For more about this study, download the report.

In most cases, modifying workflows to work with enhanced security enabled is a better choice than disabling the feature.

Enhanced Security Troubleshooting Guide and FAQ
Link directly to Workflow fixes with enhanced security enabled page

Stability

If you can make the system crash on demand, that's much easier to fix than if it crashes only intermittently, unpredictably.

For instance, if you can never successfully view any SWF, or if it used to work fine but suddenly doesn't, or if the installer didn't seem to take, then try running the uninstaller to clear out any damaged packages on your system, then re-install afresh. This gets your Player code back to a known condition. If this was the cause, you'll immediately know, because you'll see Flash content again.

If a clean-reinstall still doesn't let you view anything, then you'll immediately know the Player code wasn't the difference from similar computers, and that you'll need to dig deeper into the system and its configuration.

Either way, a crash-on-demand situation is straightforward to diagnose. Just keep isolating one element at a time, until you can see where the core of the problem is. When you fix it, you'll immediately know.

It's harder to diagnose an intermittent failure, where things work well for awhile before crashing. Here are some fast tests to zoom in on the difference-that-makes-a-difference, the critical element required to make the system fail:

All pages, or just some pages? Can you view the Player Test Page normally? If it's only a particular page which crashes the system, clear the browser cache of potential damaged assets. If it's only a particular website which refuses to show its content, check its user-agent detection, its visitor requirements. If nothing works, that's different than if only some things work... check the content to find the key factor.

All sessions, or just some sessions? It's amazing how many problems are solved by just restarting the browser, or restarting the operating system. A fresh session may not solve the problem, but it's a quick test to prove the system didn't fall into a bad state.

All tasks, or just some tasks? If a failure only occurs playing an action game while watching a movie and having two dozen browser-tabs open, then that's tip that the requested tasks are overwhelming the system's capabilities. Graceful degradation is the desirable goal which is not always achieved, when the system is asked to do too much.

All browsers, or just some browsers? Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera Google Apple... each wants you to view The Web through their own brand of web-browser. Even the same browser brand can act differently loaded with extensions than when used in its original state. Take advantage of this variety -- if the problem doesn't appear in a different browser, you've quickly identified a cofactor.

All machines, or just some machines? Sometimes it helps to see how a similar system behaves, viewing the same webpage, the same browser. Ask a friend or a webforum if they can view the content normally in a similar configuration. If everybody else has the same problem, then you know it's not just you!

These tests won't always identify the problem, but are the fastest way to clear away large sets of potential causes. See the Player Support area for more.

Performance

If it's hard to identify a crash, and harder to identify an intermittent crash, then it's much much much much harder to identify the true factors responsible for performance differences.... ;-)

The first step is to get an idea of your system's baseline performance, minimizing all other competing processes, removing all simultaneous distractions. Restart the system, use a fresh browser session and no background tabs, turn off any background notification systems or other tasks. See what the system can actually do.

If performance in a clean state is better than performance in the usual state, then that tells you to examine the effect of the other processes. If they're both bad, then you'd know to compare the content to the system directly, and won't have to worry about interference from other apps.

If you're trying to improve baseline performance, vary the hosting software, vary the content, vary your settings:

• Browsers differ in processing cycles they permit to plugins, and also interrupt those cycles under different conditions. Desktop applications (AIR, Projectors) are typically reported to run with less interference, faster. These differences are easier to see in a fresh session, without competing background processes. Vary the application which calls Adobe Flash Player to test whether this is the constraint.

• Believe it or not, there's some content out there which doesn't quite follow best-practices. For example, check out these thousands of videos whose HTML requests wmode=transparent... piping the Player's output through the browser for superfluous compositing will always be slower than writing directly to the screen, regardless of operating system. Make sure you're not trying to optimize some content which has built-in problems. See if changing the content (both SWF and HTML) changes the performance.

• Check your options, too... Adobe Flash Player is permitted to use hardware acceleration in some environments, reducing the load on the Central Processing Unit. Do a context-click on any SWF to call up its "Settings" mini-dialog to see what options may be available. Check your system's display options, and whether your browser lets plugins use these.
  

But if your baseline performance is much better than your usual performance, then you've got to figure out how to prevent things from gradually going slow. Here are some of the top factors:

• Background SWF: If you've got two dozen pages open, and each page has five SWFs, each trying to run at twenty frames a second, that's 2400 frame events you've theoretically trying to execute each second. Different browsers choke off background pages in different ways, but they're constrained by public desire to run video or audio in a background tab. If your performance bogs down midway through a session, cast a glance at how many SWF you're running in the background, and whether reducing this helps performance. (The upcoming generation of Player 10.1 will help too.)

• Background AJAX: This is an increasing problem, as more webpages include runtime elements. It's harder to control this than SWF. Overall browser response is often the tipoff here... slow to switch tabs, slow to type, beachballs as the Macintosh reassigns memory. If you're trying to regain baseline performance, cast a keen eye on what other tasks the browser is performing, perhaps without your knowledge. (And for goshsakes, be careful with those "HTML5" demo pages!)

• Too many things on each page: If your system slows down after too many webpages, try reducing the number of things each page does. Flash blockers, Ad blockers, JavaScript blockers, third-party monitors -- all are great tools in a world where webpages have ballooned up past a hundred HTTP requests, invoking scripts from half-a-dozen domains. If the content is overwhelming the system, you can put those pages on a diet.

• Widgets, toolbars, messaging systems, taskbar alerts, background updates, music players, typing utilities... there are many additions which can affect system performance. This is why that initial test in a clean condition is so important... it lets you compare your system's true capabilities.
  

Performance is never good enough, but if you're worried you're not getting all you're entitled to, the above tests are some of the faster ways to either fix it or identify it. If there's even one person who can get good performance out of your general type of configuration, then you should expect to get that same good performance too.

(Sidenote on CPU % : Don't stress the numbers much... they mean different things across operating systems, and having extra CPU cycles in the bank doesn't offer much benefit. Keep an eye on whether the chip is running hot for the case, however... the fans mean more than the meters. Same with OS crash reports which mention the Player, which often happens when the browser fails to handle a plugin memory request. The numbers mean less than the behavior.)

--
Tue Feb 2: This is a first draft, and I plan on editing-in-public over the next few days. Comments probably won't be published (considering history and current weather ;-) but if you've got a user-oriented tip I'll definitely read it, thanks.

Can you have an interactive Received stamp? I need to stamp incoming mail with the date I received it, although it would also be nice to stamp items with my own text.

Well, sure! I produced a set of four stamps (Paid and Received) that can either:

Stamp with the current date

Ask you for information and stamp that on the document

Follow the MORE below for:

• How it works
• Download
• Installation
• How to use the stamp

Enjoy!

If you've read my previous post about on Dynamic Exhibit Stamps, you leanred that JavaScript can be used to add functionality to Acrobat. JavaScript is available in a many different areas of Acrobat, but one area it is especially useful is in forms.

To create the special PDF Stamp file (downloadable below), I created some artwork in Adobe Illustrator, then converted it to PDF. In Acrobat, I added form fields which have a JavaScript calculation. One script simply adds the current date. A different script interactively asks for information when the stamp is placed on a document.

Credit for the scripts used in this document go to Tom Parker of Windjack.com and Ted Padova. Both are great resources for Acrobat scripting and forms. Ted's book on Acrobat Forms is the best I've found.

Download the File

Paid and Received Stamps (67K)

Installation

You must install the file in order for it to work. Here's how:

1. Quit Acrobat
2. Place this file in the Acrobat Stamps Folder
3. Restart Acrobat
   

Stamp Folder Locations for Acrobat 9
You MUST copy the stamp file into the appropriate folder on your computer or the stamp will not work.

Below are the default locations for Acrobat 9. The stamps should work with Acrobat 8. The installation locations for Acrobat 8 will be similar, but you'll need to figure that out on your own.

Mac OSX
/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_x86/Stamps

WinXP
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\9.0\Stamps

Win Vista and Windows 7
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\9.0\Stamps

NOTE: If you customized your installation path, or your IT folks did it for you, the stamps folder may not reside in this path. In some cases, Acrobat will not create a stamps folder until you create your first custom stamp. You can follow the steps in this article to create a stamp which should create the folder for you.

Using the Dynamic Paid and Received Stamps

1. Choose View> Toolbars> Comment and Markup
2. Click the Stamp Tool
   
   
3. Choose the Received and Paid Stamp Category
   
   
   
   

   Four Types of Stamps I included four types of stamps in this set: - Received Stamp with current date - Enter your own info Received Stamp - Paid Stamp with current date - Enter your own info Paid Stamp

   
   
4. Choose a stamp and click to place it on the document
   
   

   Note:If you choose a current date stamp, no further action is necessary.

5. If you choose one of the "flavors" which allows you to enter your own info, a window opens.
   
   
   
   
6. The stamp will be placed on the document.
   
   
   
   

Sorry, No Custom Versions

Unfortunately, these stamps cannot be customized because I used art, not native Acrobat elements, to build them.

In my last article on Dynamic Exhibit Stamps, I shared a bit about how Stamp files are built.

If there is interest, I can put together an article on how to build a custom stamp from scratch. That content is definitely for the Acro-geeks only!

Nice job ABC!