Ah, the simple, venerable trace command. Everyone who has ever written even a single line of ActionScript -- from the newbiest of designers to the most seasoned programming professional -- has doubtless become intimately familiar with this most basic, approachable, and useful command. But love turns to hate if you ever need to see what's going on when your Flash movie is playing in a browser, where seeing a simple trace can rapidly become an exercise in frustration. Fret no longer, fearless readers, as this guide aims to get everyone in on that sweet, sweet browser tracing action.

Let's face facts, folks: sometimes just scaling your entire Flash movie to an arbitrary window size won't cut it. A prime example of one of those times would be if you're using Flash to create Web-based applications, where your users would rightfully expect to have the application interface scale intelligently to the size of their browser window. Flex Builder can do this through a simple GUI panel, but the process is a little more involved if you're using Flash CS4 Professional, which is where we'll pick things up.

Believe it or not, there are still folks out there using Director for multimedia authoring, even as Adobe pushes the Flash platform ever forward and preps AIR as the technology of choice for desktop-based applications. And while it's been more than a year of silence since the "Director is not dead" proclamation was issued by Adobe's former Director Product Manager, in the interest of keeping the fires lit, here's a tidbit for how to make Director projectors (with the help of the essential Buddy API Xtra) recognize whether they're running on an Intel or a PowerPC-based Mac.

Regardless of what you may specifically think of the CS3 iteration of the venerable Dreamweaver visual Web editor, even the most hardened skeptics would probably be forced to (grudgingly) agree that the integration of Adobe's Spry framework for Ajax into Dreamweaver CS3 is, to put it very technically, pretty freaking cool.

LightWave 9 has been available for months, but it's taken the promise of the forthcoming Universal Binary release to finally get me to slip out of the cozy old slippers that were version 8.x. And despite my being behind the curve, gentle reader, I hope you won't mind me stopping by from time to time to convey some LightWave 9 knowledge, much as I did for earlier versions. So I'll stop pretending I'm writing a teaser for Masterpiece Theater here and just get to today's screencast, which just so happens to be an introduction to LightWave 9's amazing Node Editor.

If you were with me for the last installment, you're already hip to the palpable excitement in the air that has already worked its way into a fever pitch. Today we're going to--wait for it--take the content we made last time in After Effects and put it all together in Flash. I, for one, can't wait, so let's get this party started.

Only in a time of incredible blurriness between formerly separate disciplines like motion graphics and interactive design could programs such as After Effects and Flash be considered complimentary, but in this age of the proverbial blending of chocolate with peanut butter, the two aforementioned Adobe stalwarts have enormous crossover potential. And while citizens of the world (or, at least, users of Flash and After Effects) wait for both programs to emerge from the midst of their respective product cycles, we're going to examine a few ways that you can apply skills and techniques acquired in one program to the other.

For our final foray into ways to beef up the Web server included with Mac OS X, we might as well delve into technologies that actually require the server to be running in order to work. Today we're going to learn how to switch on two such server-side technologies that are built into Mac OS X but disabled by default: PHP and SSI. And considering how tantalizing I've already made our final installment sound, how could you not read further?

We've been rolling through one of the decidedly unsexy (albeit often necessary) aspects of being a Web designer: the need to actually use an honest-to-goodness Web server to test out your sites. Mac OS X makes this process pretty easy, but there are some extra steps one can take to make the whole experience a tad more full-featured. Let's go over a few more tips for adding some extra bling to Mac OS X's indigenous Web server.

OK, so you're a Web designer. Perhaps it's all you do, or perhaps it just a small part of what you do, but wherever you happen to be on the Web design food chain, you can definitely benefit from setting up and using the Web server that is included with every installation of Mac OS X. And while many of you may already have the server running, there's a lot more that could conceivably be done to soup things up a bit.

Timing stuff in Flash isn't exactly the glitziest of tasks, but sometimes it just has to be done. In our last installment, we went over two relatively basic methods for creating timers, each with varying degrees of simplicity and/or accuracy. Today we're going for as much accuracy as we can, and we're going in two completely opposite directions. Intriguing? I thought so. I am, after all, the master of suspense, so let's get down to business, shall we?

In part one of this fantastically riveting two-part series, we learned all about the insane fun that goes along with IE conditionals. Now, in part 2 (which I know you have been waiting breathlessly for), we're going to—wait for it—actually write some of said conditionals all by ourselves! I know, I know—the air is thick with excitement. So, without further ado, let's get this party started.

'Round about Thanksgiving time last year (late November for those outside the U.S.), I wrote a piece on how to use non-standard ("bad") CSS to present different content to different browsers. Now, with IE 7 threatening to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public, it's high time to revisit the basic concept and see if we can't clean it up a bit. In part 1 (of 2), we'll be setting up an example and going through what IE conditionals are, which will ultimately make designing sites for IE a little less messy once IE 7 gets thrown into the mix.

I hope you're already having a blast playing with the Tween class after our last riveting installment, but there is still much to discuss. Today, we're going to go over methods, properties, and event handlers for the Tween Class, but since those sound so, well, "programmerey," let's just say we're going to learn how to monitor and control our Tweens as they go about their little Tween errands.

For the three (or perhaps even four) of you who regularly follow my Flash tutorials, you are well aware of my repeated rantings that Flash designers can do themselves solar systems of good by learning at least a little ActionScript. One of the better illustrations of that mantra is the Tween Class, which I'm going to make you try and fall in love with over the course of these next couple of articles.

If you do any sort of ActionScripting in Flash at all, eventually you're going to come across a situation where you'll need some kind of timer. Whatever the need—a countdown clock, a simple pause before directing some sort of action, or even a timeout feature for a kiosk application—there are a bunch of ways to do it, so let's start with the two simplest.

Well, folks, here we are. If you've lasted this long, you're about to get a taste of some long-awaited satisfaction. Finally, we're going to start writing some real ActionScript by way of a sample project, one which we'll start slowly with and continue to improve upon in the coming installments. I'm going to try to focus on different aspects of ActionScript (you know, the boring stuff from part 5) as we initialize and augment the project, so hopefully by the time we're done, you'll have a good jumping-off point for your own creations.

It's not exactly a huge secret that you can use a photo-enabled iPod to make presentations with. Just export out your slides as still images, sync 'em to the iPod, hook it to a TV or projector, fire up slideshow mode, and you're in business. What? You've never done that? Well, let's rectify that situation and see if we can't make you the superfly-est presenter around.

'Tis the season where an inordinate amount of giving and receiving is going on, so it's a safe bet that many of you out there will be either gifting or getting a shiny new iPod video this year. And while the audio side of the equation is well established and largely dead simple by now, getting video you may already have lying about to play on the iPod isn't quite as mainstream just yet. Fortunately, it's not terribly difficult, so may we present a brief overview of what you need to know.

When we left off, we had just finished modeling the various pieces for our oh-so-exciting "cylinder going through a tube" masterpiece that, I'm confident, will earn us a much-deserved Academy Award nomination in the category of best Animated Short. It's just that good. Anyway, today we're going to move over to Layout, set things up, and apply Trailer so the cylinder will actually conform to the tunnel it will be traveling through.