A few people have asked how to foce a page break inside a Word document when generating it through HTML/XML/CSS as I described in an earlier post. You can force page breaks by using a <br> tag with a page-break-before style setting, as in the following code.
Page One
Page Two
This particular CSS property is actually not MS Word specific and works in standard HTML pages with modern browsers including Internet Explorer 6 and Netscape 7.0. It’s safely ignored by Netscape 4.7. When used in a standard HTML page displayed in a browser, the display appears like a normal break on screen but foces a new page when printed.
It’s called “The Bastard Operator from Hell”, and if you are a computer nerd and you like evil comedy, you will enjoy reading some of it.
Thanks to Jonas for the link
There’s been a little discontent about the Flash content in DRK 5 on some mailing lists. If people paid for DRK 1-4 then they already have the components in DRK 5, they just don’t work with Flash MX 2004. The question is why should people pay again for components they already own?
As it turns out, all the components in DKR 5 that are upgrades of earlier components (everything except the new TabBar), will be made available for free from Macromedia to DRK 1-4 customers.
Continue reading ‘DRK 1-4 Flash MX components to be upgraded for FREE’
SOAP Web Services are almost always talked about in relation to HTTP, as HTTP is the most common transport mechanism. However, the SOAP specification is written such that the messages can be sent over a variety of protocols. Persistent connections such as Jabber or HTTP-R could provide improved performance when multiple calls are required.
Or, if you have other needs, carrier pigeons are also fully supported. Read the RFC.
I found some interesting information in the Breeze Presentation released today by Macromedia. This Breeze Presentation covers their financial information for the quareter but has some little things in there that some might find interesting.
- There will be an update to Flash MX 2004 in November. I have no idea what they will be doing but i’m assuming this will be targetting many of the issues that people have expressed about the release.
- Royale will be showcased at MAX and will be released early next year.
- Macromedia’s server products are selling better than expected.
- Macromedia’s 2004 product family did not sell as well as expected.
- Macromedia will be purchasing eHelp. eHelp has great products and i’m sure this will be a good addition to Macromedia’ products.
- Overall it was a good quarter for Macromedia!
This utility converts a Flash MX Reference XML file to a set of HTML help files with the same information. It creates a single HTML file for each reference entry, an “all-in-one” html file for searching, a table of contents with a DHTML tree, and a frameset.
Continue reading ‘Generate HTML Help from Flash MX Reference XML Files’
I’ve written tutorial for ultrashock.com introducing the topic of developing components for Flash MX 2004. Components have really come a long way since MX and in this article I introduce some and go through building a v2 component. I left a few things out purposely as there really is a lot to cover and I wanted to keep it approachable.
Also, this tutorial was part of a new series of tutorials released by Ultrashock.com. If you have not checked them out and want to get up to speed on Flash MX 2004 I highly recommend them.
Since the new version of Internet Explorer was announced, I’ve been curious to know why an alert box nullifies the patent issues. It turns out that since the patent only covers automatic loading of plugins, the fact that IE pops up a message box and requires user interaction makes the loading of plugins no longer automatic and thus the patent no longer applies.
Thanks to Macromedia for providing this explanation. They have a lot of great content on their Active Content Development Center.
Microsoft posted a few work-arounds on their developer network to deal with the Eolas patent covering plugins. The three work-arounds include embedding the plugin content directly in the HTML page as base64 encoded data, tagging content as non-external, thereby disabling external communication, and using external script to instantiate the content. Of these, only the last is backwards and cross-browser compatible.
The changes we’ll all need to make to our sites are quite straightforward…
Continue reading ‘Eolas patent workaround ready for implementation’
