I eventually came across a solution that had no comments from other people, so I didn’t really know if it would work. The person who provided the solution also provided a link to his/her website with it in action, so I was able to see that it worked.

This solution uses PHP sessions. It works by displaying the full Flash header only if never viewed during the current session. If it has already been viewed, it will display the second (non-animated) header until the session ends, which is on browser close. The next time the website is viewed in a new session, it will display the original animated header.

The first code you need to add is placed at the top, before any other code (DOCTYPE & HTML), in the header. This code checks to see if there are any views during the current session.

< ?php
session_start();
if (isset($_SESSION['views']))
$_SESSION['views']=$_SESSION['views']+1;

else
$_SESSION['views']=1;
?>

The next code is for displaying the Flash, just as you would normally, except it’s using PHP.

< ?php if ($_SESSION['views']>1) //if session views are more than one
echo "Flash embed code here";
else //if session view is one
echo "Flash embed code here";
?>

This code is just saying: If views are more than one, display the second (non-animated) header. If views are one, display the full animated header. It is really simple.

Make sure to remove the space that appears at the beginning of the PHP code: < ?php. Also, when adding the Flash embed code to be echoed, escape any quotes with a ‘\’ (without the single quotes).

Full credit for this solution goes to www.addisoncountyeagles.com. The actual solution is in the Coffee Cup forums.

If you’re wanting to purchase Flash and ActionScript books, try to go with used books. If you look on Amazon, there are lots of used books being sold, some in really great condition. All of the used books I bought look almost brand new, excluding one which really was brand new at a used price!

Some of the books also come with a CD, so if you want the CD when purchasing new, be sure to read all of the sellers’ comments before buying.

There are some great resources available for learning Flash and ActionScript, online and offline. I thought I would share what books I purchased from Amazon and where to find videos and tutorials for learning.

Books

• Macromedia Flash MX Creative Web Animation and Interactivity
• Macromedia Flash MX ActionScripting: Advanced Training from the Source
• Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move!

Look for more Flash and ActionScript books on Amazon.

Videos

• Lynda
• LearnFlash
• CartoonSmart
• gotoandlearn
• TechVideos

Text Tutorials

• W3Schools
• Tutorialized
• LukaMaras

Please leave a comment if you know of some other really good videos, books or tutorials.

Disclosure: This post includes Amazon affiliate links.

1. Using PHP to generate CSS is a great way to centralize your color definitions just by using variables. One fun and possibly useful thing to do with this is automatically generating a color gradient from just one base color! Read this tutorial to generate CSS using PHP.
2. Create a Lightbox effect with CSS, without using any JavaScript! This is one tutorial I am definitely going to try out, because I don’t like to use JavaScript for all those neat effects that are becoming more and more common on websites. Read this tutorial to create a Lightbox effect with CSS.
3. Want to create tables using CSS? There’s an easy to read tutorial over at Veerle’s blog. Read this first tutorial and then the second tutorial for creating tables using CSS.

The tutorial is really easy to follow, so if you need a new way of removing backgrounds from images, try it out! Check out the one I did below. I took an image of a man golfing, and placed the man on an image with snow. It may not look perfect, because I’m very new to this.

Pictures taken from stock.xchng

This has bothered me for some time, but never thought there could be a setting or even a plugin to change this. Yesterday I was doing my usual, going from one website to another, searching for this or that and came upon a blog I didn’t know would make future browsing easier. Humanized is a company helping make the computer experience better for people.

On to the workaround to fix the forever scrolling tabs.

1. Open a new Firefox tab
2. Type about:config into the address bar
3. Type tab into the filter field
4. Change the settings of both browsers.tab.tabClipWidth and browsers.tab.tabMinWidth to 5 (or whatever your preference is)
5. Restart Firefox

To learn more about how these tabs work (the workaround and previously) I recommend reading Firefox 2.0: Tabs Gone Wrong.

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so I told David and learned something new. He told me to do the following:

1. Open up a command prompt. (Start > Run: type cmd and press enter.)
2. Type ipconfig /flushdns
3. Press enter.

I checked Google and the search engine was found!

I’m not going to provide a very detailed step-by-step tutorial, because I hope that most of you know how to follow a few commands. If you’re ready to begin, open a terminal and follow these steps:

1. Enter in the su command to log in as root.
2. After logging in, make sure you’re in the Yakuake directory that was created after extracting the compressed archive. I will assume you know how to use the cd command.
3. Enter in ./configure (this may take a while)
4. Enter in make
5. Enter in make install
6. Enter in make clean to remove files from the source code directory. (optional)

Assuming everything went smoothly without any errors during steps 3-5, Yakuake should be installed and ready to use. As I noted in my previous entry (linked above), I recommend changing the Kerry Beagle Search’s F12 shortcut, if you have that on your system. Yakuake uses F12 to open.

I opened the picture I wanted to use and created a new layer. Then I used the photocopy filter and adjusted the settings for detail and darkness until I was satisfied. Then I created a new adjustment layer and changed the shadow and highlight levels. I was tempted to use the lasso tool to cut the background out of the picture, because I think this would make a better coloring page if it was just the car alone, but that would involve more work and I was just trying this out. Read the tutorial for detailed steps.

I chose to use my last project as the picture for this coloring page. Click the preview on the right to view the full image.

If you are here searching for actual coloring pages of any of the Cars characters, take a look at this Disney Cars page. Coloring Book has the best selection of Cars coloring pages.

Because I thought it was cute, I gave it a try. The steps on the tutorial could go into more detail for some of us who aren’t that great with Photoshop, but I managed to figure things out. I probably could have done better, but I’m satisfied with how it turned out and glad I was able to learn something new. Plus, my son enjoyed seeing it; he loves the movie. As I was adding the eyes to the car, he immediately mentioned the movie.

For my car, I used a picture of David’s Mitsubishi Eclipse that I had taken a few years ago. Since it was raining, the car has a wet look to it. I would have preferred a nicer picture, but I had to work with what I had. For the eyes and mouth, I went with Lightning McQueen because he’s a red car and I knew it would be less of a challenge of getting it to blend in. Click on the preview on the right to view the full image.

A couple other people have tried this as well. I didn’t know this at first, but one of them (Adam) is the one who created the theme I added to my website just yesterday! Anyway, here’s Adam’s car and here’s the other one by Shawn from Sporadic Nonsense. They both did much better than I did, because I’m a beginner at this and don’t have much experience at all. Good job you two!