Some of the applications in Studio 8 have integrated new features. Although these are covered in more depth in the coming chapters, here is a brief overview of what new features to keep an eye out for:

Fireworks’s new features include

Flash’s new features include

ColdFusion’s new features include

Dreamweaver’s new features include

Contribute’s new features include

If you’re reading this section of the introduction, you may be sifting through the dozens of books available online or at your local bookstore, trying to determine which one will suit your needs. Let’s look briefly at what this book focuses on, the instructional method used, and the results that can be expected, and this should give you an idea as to whether the book will meet your needs.

If you are a beginning developer who is interested in learning about each of the studio programs, then this book can help you gain a solid understanding of each application and its uses. Intermediate developers who have experience with applications similar to those included in the Studio suite will benefit as well from learning how the various suite programs can enhance their existing skill sets and reduce development time. Advanced developers will benefit from an understanding of how each of the applications integrates with the others. Although advanced Flash developers might understand the ins and outs of ActionScript, they might not know the best ways to integrate their Flash creations into a ColdFusion-based site or an intranet application developed in ASP.

With respect to the instructional method used, this book uses a writing style that is informal and relaxed. Learning how to use one new product, let alone five, can be a bit on the difficult side, so a little humor can go a long way in communicating the information. So, with respect to the various bad jokes and silly puns you’ll find throughout the book, I apologize in advance <G>.

When you are finished reading the book, you should have a solid understanding of each of the applications and how to use their most common features. After you have completed the chapters and the exercises for each section, the book should also serve as an excellent reference tool for future projects.

This book consists of six sections. The first section focuses on an introduction to the Studio suite as a whole and the other five are devoted to each of the five individual programs that make up the suite.

The first step toward using this book effectively is to read the chapters in Part I. These chapters familiarize you with the common elements that span the Studio applications and give details about additional software that might be helpful as you use the book.

After that, you can either read the book from front to back or choose the application you would like to focus on first. I would suggest the first approach because the flow of the book is similar to the workflow that is commonly encountered in projects where you are asked to diagram out a site, create the underlying graphics, develop rich media, and then pull it all together into a static or dynamic website. By reading the chapters in order, you get an understanding of not only what you can do with each individual program, but the workflow involved in developing a website from scratch and how each program can work with the others to accomplish the end result.

If, however, you choose to dive into a specific section, you’ll be happy to know that you can complete each section and the accompanying exercise without having finished the prior sections. Any files that you need to complete a section exercise can be found on the companion website, so simply download the appropriate files and you’re off to the races.

In addition, I will be maintaining additional reference information on the companion website for the book at website at http://www.xhorizon.com/retroscycles, so feel free to stop by and check those out.

Throughout the book, you are going to find text that is formatted in various ways to indicate code, new features, or information that you should pay special attention to.

Pay close attention to the use of italics throughout the text. Italicized words or phrases indicate the definition of a new phrase or term, so you might see a sentence such as “A path consists of one or more connected segments.” Understanding the language of graphic, rich media, and web development is an important part of working with the Studio suite. Terms such as keyframes, server behaviors, slices, and snippets might not mean much to you now, but after you have completed the book they will have become part of your technical vocabulary.

Initial caps indicate words that appear in the user interface, such as menu items, dialog boxes, or commands. An example might be a sentence such as “Click the OK button to close the New CSS Style dialog box.” Because New CSS Style is capitalized, you should be interacting with a box that is identified onscreen as “New CSS Style.”

Any instances of code used in the book are formatted in a special font so they are easily identifiable. Instances of code in languages such as HTML, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), ActionScript, or JavaScript will look like this:

<p align="Right">Welcome To My Website</p>

Inside blocks of code, italicized words indicate actual code that you need to substitute with your own information. So, using the preceding example, you might see this:

<p align="Right">Welcome To Your Name's Site</p>

Throughout the book, specific naming conventions are used to clearly label specific objects. For instance, a text field might be labeled tfFirstName. If you are new to graphic, rich media, or web design and have not established programming conventions such as these, pay close attention to the way it is done in this book because it could help you understand the importance of following conventions.

In addition, when dealing with the code snippets provided in the book, it is very important the you pay close attention to the capitalization of your code. Certain languages such as JavaScript and VB.NET are case sensitive, so varFirstName and VarFirstName would reference totally different objects. Of all the requests for support with regard to the various books I have authored, capitalization is the most frequent issue.

Finally, be on the lookout for tips, cautions, notes, and cross-reference sections. Each one has a special indicator and can save you time and energy by helping you avoid pitfalls or pointing out additional resources. The sections can be identified as follows: