DevCon at your Doorstep

Couldn't make it to DevCon but still want to see some of the presentations? Phillip Kerman has made his Building your own Flash MX Components presentation available on his Website.

Raymond Camden's Security in ColdFusion MX presentation can be found on his Website.

Flash Tools

Isn't there someplace on the Web where I can find a list of tools for use with Flash? Yes! Swftools.com has descriptions of and download links to tons of Flash tools.

FLash Blog Aggregator

Tired of surfing all over the Web just to see if your favorite Flash Blogs have new posts? Check out flog, a Flash Blog aggregator which shows the latest posts from lots of different Flash Blogs (with links to each Blog, of course).

Popup Fever

Hate popup ads? The Realistic Internet Simulator Flash game encourages you to kill (close) as many popup windows as possible. I got 16 before the Blue Screen of Death appeared...

November Director Meeting

The November Minnesota Director User Group meeting will take place this Thursday (14 November) at 5:30pm. See the MN Director User Group homepage for more info.

Introducing Macromedia Contribute

Macromedia just announced their latest product: Contribute. It is Web page creation tool for people who never learned and/or who don't want to learn HTML. Because it only contains a WYSIWYG editor--there is no code editor and in fact it is impossible to edit the HTML code in Contribute--you will not learn or see HTML when you use it. You can create new pages from templates, but you can't create or edit templates. You can't edit server-based data. You cannot create or edit CSS files. According to Erik Larson of MACR, the product is mainly for templates and static Websites. Erik went on to say that there are three main target audiences for Contribute:

1) small business or non-profit sites
2) middle-tier corporate, educational and government sites
3) corporate, government and university intranets

So Contribute does not seem to be aimed at anyone in the IT industry or anyone who already knows HTML. From what I can tell, it is meant for people who don't know and who will never learn HTML, and who only want to create and edit pages visually.

It costs $99US, $79US for the educational version.

At present it exists only for Windows in English. Visit Macromedia to download a trial version.

BTW, when you see the marketing info from Macromedia about Contribute, you may notice that they stress the accessibility features of Contribute. For example, when you add an image, Contribute prompts you to enter an < alt > tag. Accessibility is the new buzzword of our industry; expect to see it mentioned prominently in future press releases from MACR and other companies.