Important Notice for Web DevCenter Readers About O'Reilly RSS and Atom Feeds  O'Reilly Media, Inc. is rolling out a new syndication mechanism that provides greater control over the content we publish online. Here's information to help you update your existing RSS and Atom feeds to O'Reilly content.  [Web DevCenter]

Hacking PayPal  The authors of PayPal Hacks offer two hacks designed to make PayPal more customer-friendly, profitable, and accountable, plus an additional hack to catch IPN system errors.   [Web DevCenter]

Manipulating Space with CSS  One of the main strengths of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is how the technology handles web typography. In this article, Christopher Schmitt shows how to use CSS's letter- and word-spacing properties to easily adjust the space between two letters or to separate whole words within a paragraph. Chris is the author of O'Reilly's recently released CSS Cookbook.   [Web DevCenter]

Hacking IRC  IRC Hacks author Paul Mutton has selected some of his favorite hacks to excerpt here. This week find out how to add your IRC nickname to your webcam, and how to make your own IRC bot for passing on short messages to other users. Be sure to check back to this space next week for hacks on performing feats of math; announcing newsgroup posts; and using IRC within a screen.   [Web DevCenter]

The Page Turn Effect in Flash MX  In Sham Bhangal's Flash Hacks, he shows how to create a page turn effect in Flash MX by looking for symmetry in the effect. What is not covered in the book is how to develop code that can be used to create the page turn effect. This article fills in that gap.   [Web DevCenter]

Top Ten Tricks and Tips for New IRC Users  Millions of people around the world use IRC to chat with friends and family or to collaborate on projects, but if you're new to IRC you may be intimidated by its unfamiliar look and feel. Paul Mutton, author of IRC Hacks, presents ten tips and tricks--from advice on picking the right client for your needs to good IRC etiquette--that will get you on the road to becoming an everyday IRC user.   [Web DevCenter]

ActionScript for Non-Coders  Sham Bhangal uses real-world examples to show how the Flash authoring environment allows an ActionScript coder to work and share ideas with designers who have no ActionScript experience, while at the same time allowing the designers to make full use of scripting. Sham is the author of O'Reilly's recently released Flash Hacks.   [Web DevCenter]

Hacking Flash, Part 2  Today we offer two more hacks excerpted from O'Reilly's Flash Hacks. Learn how to create a performance budget that shows where your money is going, and how to secure your online Flash content. And if you missed them, be sure to check out last week's hacks from the book.   [Web DevCenter]

A Random Collection of Photoshop CS Tips  Deke McClelland, author of Adobe Photoshop CS One-on-One, has gathered 14 random (and occasionally bizarre) Photoshop CS tips, plus one bonus tip to grow on. The tips cover a wide range of helpful topics that include manipulating pixels, working with the Camera Raw dialog, and dealing with shortcuts. If you have Photoshop tips to share, let us know about them at the end of the article.   [Web DevCenter]

Hacking Flash  In these two excerpts from Flash Hacks, learn how to simulate pixel-based fades and wipes, as supported in Macromedia Director; and how to use complex shapes as masks.   [Web DevCenter]

The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 5  Ken Milburn, author of Digital Photography: Expert Techniques, offers the latest installment in his series on creating ideal (and least destructive) workflows for digital photography. This week, he offers step-by-step routines for performing the three stages of sharpening that are almost always necessary: rescue, effect, and output. And he offers advice on a few things you should do before you even start sharpening your images.   [Web DevCenter]

The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 4  Ken Milburn continues his quest to create ideal (and least destructive) workflows for people working in digital photography. In this installment, he shows you the most efficient way to scan your images, which in turn insures that you've preserved as much of the data that was in the original image as possible. Ken is the author of Digital Photography: Expert Techniques.   [Web DevCenter]

Cookie Specification Vulnerabilities  For years, privacy-minded people have distrusted cookies in web browsers. While recent advances have improved privacy concerns, the specification leaves room for easy attacks. Alexander Prohorenko explains the situation and tests several recent browsers. Is it time for a new cookie specification?   [Security DevCenter]

Resizing an Image  O'Reilly has just released Adobe Photoshop CS One-on-One. To give photographers and web designers a sense of what they'll find in the book, we've excerpted a lesson from Chapter 5 that explains how to modify image size, when to resample, and what to do about resolution. And to make things crystal clear, we've also included one of the QuickTime-based video lessons, called "Image and Canvas Size" (26MB). (If you're not interested in a long download, check out the one-minute excerpt instead. Note: To download either file, you must have QuickTime installed on your machine.)   [Web DevCenter]

What's New in Photoshop CS?  Photoshop CS may have fewer new features than version 7, but quality counts more than quantity, and Ken Milburn is pretty jazzed about the quality. In this article, he covers the new features in CS he's most excited about. Ken is the author of the just-released Digital Photography: Expert Techniques.   [Web DevCenter]

The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 3  You can achieve greater control over the quality of the images produced by your new digital camera if you shoot them in RAW format. Trouble is, it can take an inordinate amount of time to convert RAW images into something your image-editing program can use. In Part 3 of Ken Milburn's series on creating ideal digital photography workflows, he details several steps you can take to save hours of RAW-process work after every shoot. Ken is the author of the upcoming Digital Photography: Expert Techniques.   [Web DevCenter]

Getting Started with Microsoft InfoPath 2003  Wei-Meng Lee introduces newcomers to the power of InfoPath 2003 and shows how to build a simple form to start collecting data. InfoPath provides three ways to define the types of data you want to collect: using an XML Schema, a database, or a Web service. For this article, Wei-Meng uses an XML Schema. Wei-Meng is the author of Windows XP Unwired.   [Web DevCenter]

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