Tom Green

Macromedia Studio MX includes a number of relatively unheralded gems. Perhaps it's because Macromedia hasn't hyped these features enough, or maybe users spend so much time focusing on a particular tool that they have simply overlooked or ignored how the other pieces of Studio MX actually work with each other. A great example of this is the stepchild of Studio MX: FreeHand MX. For some odd reason FreeHand has fallen into the role of "always a bridesmaid, never the bride."This started even before Macromedia existed. When PostScript drawing tools hit the graphics industry in 1988, the two heavyweights that fought it out for supremacy were FreeHand from Aldus and Illustrator from Adobe. Those of us who were there had ringside seats to an amazing slugfest between these two products as they attempted to dominate the market by "out-featuring" each other. When Adobe bought ... (more)

Web Typography

I love oxymorons - phrases whose words, when placed beside each other, don't make much sense because they contradict each other. One classic, "military intelligence" got a lot of play in M*A*S*H and Catch 22. My all-time Web development favorite is "Web Typography." Typography simply does not exist on the Web. Type? Yes. Typography? No. Flash developers, for example, seem to have embraced 6-point for everything. What you see, in this instance, are Web sites that look more like the fine print at the bottom of used-car financing ads than digital media communications vehicles. Many... (more)

Freaks and Geeks Unite Part 1

This past summer I decided that my courseware site needed a complete overhaul. It was, in fact, a bit of an embarrassment. As a teacher, writer, and lecturer I had been sticking my courseware and lectures notes up on a site that was designed more for convenience than anything else. After quietly suffering through the jabs of my students and my colleagues, I decided the time had arrived to bring order to the chaos. In August 2003, I sat down with a very talented Toronto graphic designer, Shawn Butchart, and asked him, as I succinctly put it, "to give my site an enema." After a lo... (more)

Fireworks Flash Buttons in a Flash

It ever ceases to amaze me, whenever I am speaking at a conference or hanging out with the "Flashies" at various user groups, to hear them tell me how they create their really "cool" buttons in that behemoth from a company named after a building material. When I ask them if they have the Studio, the answer is an inevitable: "Well 'duh,' of course I do!" Somehow, it seems, the message still hasn't gotten out that Fireworks MX 2004 is one serious "button creating behemoth" when it comes to Flash. Here's how to create a button in Fireworks MX 2004 that also functions as a button in... (more)

MAX 2005 – Macromedia Flash Video For The Masses

Writing in MX Developer's Journal recently, Tom Green (pictured) mused on the benefits of the Macromedia Video Kit, and described how a $99 investment gets you easily and painlessly into the Web video game. When I first published my observation that "QuickTime is dead" in this publication, I never expected the response that article would garner. It ranged from, "Dude, you are sooo wrong!" to "Finally, we are free." Earlier this year, Macromedia, as is so typical of the company, quietly dropped the "Macromedia Video Kit" on the developer community and suddenly, video was available... (more)