In the past couple of years it has been common for Flash developers to design elastic sites, rather than sites with fixed dimensions. These elastic sites fill the browser window, and content is positioned programatically on the stage according to the size of the viewport. The trouble with this approach is that because the width and height of the embedded Flash swf are set to 100%, the browser will never display scrollbars. If the user sizes their browser window too small then content will begin to disappear off screen. Due to the lack of scrollbars, this hidden content is inaccessible to the user.

By writing a small JavaScript function that is triggered when the window is resized, we can overcome this restriction. When the window size is detected to be smaller than a minimum width/height specified by the designer, the Flash movie will stop scaling, and scrollbars will be forced to appear.

In a recent post on the Microsoft Internet Explorer blog, Pete LePage announced that Microsoft have released a Virtual PC 2004 image that includes Windows XP SP2, Internet Explorer 6, and the Internet Explorer 7 Readiness Kit. Here’s the kicker: you don’t have to buy an additional Windows license, which was previously the case when running Windows under VPC.

One of the great benefits of PHP is that it is quick and easy for non-programmers to learn the basics of the language and begin to add server-side logic to their websites. This simplicity is a double edged sword, as many novice programmers are unaware of PHP’s security vulnerabilities and inadvertently create web applications that are an easy target for hackers and spammers. Most PHP security holes are well documented, but a newer and lesser known vulnerability is header injection, a cunning exploit whereby a spammer hijacks a website’s contact form and uses it to send bulk unsolicited email.

A recent article by Kevin Yank in the Sitepoint Tech Times newsletter drew my attention to TweakPNG, a handy tool that can correct the age old problem of PNG color shift in Internet Explorer.

As a web developer there comes a time when you need to consign a browser to the dustbin of history, and remove it from your testing suite. It’s a decision I find difficult to make – I am a visual designer and hate the idea that a website I built might look less than perfect for anyone at all. But to offer our audience an experience that takes advantage of the best the web has to offer, it is necessary to weigh the needs of the many against the needs of the few. In this article I will look at some best practices for dropping support for a browser, and suggest a list of browsers that make the cut (and ones that don’t).

The inability to bookmark ‘deep’ content has long been an accessibility criticism leveled at Flash. In fact, with a bit of Javascript and Actionscript trickery it is possible to create bookmarkable URLs that provide direct access to a Flash movie’s internal content. And with the introduction of the ExternalInterface class in Flash 8, this two way communication between Javascript and Flash just got a lot easier.

Inspired by the work of Theo Hultberg and Asual, I have developed a simple Flash class that demonstrates the implementation of deep linking in a Flash movie. While I don’t propose that my DeepLink class should be used as a substitute for Ausual’s excellent SWFAddress, it might provide a useful building block for exploring what the ExternalInterface class is capable of.

Over the years I have had the opportunity to collaborate with a number of print designers on website designs. The way these collaborations usually work is that the print designer will mock-up initial static layouts for the website, and it will fall to me to bring their mock-up to life in either Flash or HTML. These collaborative efforts can be very rewarding, but there are a few common “gotchas” that tend to catch print designers unawares when they first try their hand at designing for the web. Most of the problems stem from design challenges that are particular to the web, and wouldn’t typically be encountered by a print designer.

Here’s a roundup of the news articles, weblogs and just-plain-cool websites I’ve been visiting recently and think are worth sharing.

They say pictures speak loader that words. If that’s the case then typeworkshop.com must speak volumes, because its practical lessons in type design utilize both.

Now that Internet Explorer 7 has been released, I imagine many web designers will be running it as their default installation of IE, and using standalone versions to test sites in IE 6 or older. One longstanding drawback of these standalone versions is the inability to use the AlphaImageLoader filter, which enables the display of transparency in PNG images. Thankfully there is now a simple solution at hand.