'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.

Ah, yes...the venerable Aqua buttons Apple unleashed on the world lo those many years ago. Sure, they may seem a little turn-of-the-century these days, but you still see them littered about like so much confetti. And since the basic Aqua button was heretofore unattainable in Flash without the use of some creative Photoshopping, I can't think of a better model to use for a tutorial on how you can implement Flash 8's new filters and blends to create clean, scalable interface widgets like our old friend the Aqua button.

LightWave is one of those programs that is heavily dependent on plug-ins, so when you hit upon something that LightWave can't easily do by itself, it's not real difficult to find a plug-in to pick up the slack. One particular shortcoming that frustrates many a LightWaver is that while you can have an object follow a motion path, there's no real built-in way to have an object deform along the path it's following. But fret not: there's a darn good plug-in that will ultimately save the day, and it's free to boot. Let's check it out.