Best PracticesMaintaining Security Patches on Your Web Server Applications

Running a web server application on your local workstation can expose your computer to risks that previously did not exist. By enabling a web server, you can expose your files and databases to snooping eyes, so being aware of (and promptly testing and installing) all security patches is necessary to ensure that your data is protected. This advice is not limited to Windows systems running IIS, either. Apache and SunOne are often the target of attacks as well, so be sure to check the knowledge base of the company that provides your web server application and keep those patches up to date!

Chapter 2. Getting Comfortable with the Studio 8 Environment

In this chapter

Studio 8: Common Application Elements 18

Main Menu Bar and Toolbar 20

Panels 20

Property Inspector 21

Tools Panel 22

Tools 22

Working with Text 32

Character and Paragraph Attributes 34

Troubleshooting 37

Best PracticesFamiliarizing Yourself with Panel Functionality and Customizing Your Workspace 37

Studio 8: Common Application Elements

To provide continuity between the development applications within Studio (except ColdFusion), Macromedia has created a set of common user -interface elements that are shared across each application. Familiarizing yourself with how these tools work and their distinctions across the individual programs can help you work faster and smarter .

Note

ColdFusion is not considered a development application, but rather a utility for managing the ColdFusion environment, so it does not share any common elements with the other programs in the Studio suite.

Studio's common elements include

A central workspace for creating pages, movies, or images. In Flash, the workspace is called the Stage . In each of the other development applications, the workspace is called the document window .
A main menu bar at the top of the screen, with File, Edit, View, Insert, Modify, Commands, Window, and Help menus .
A secondary toolbar located below the main menu bar.
Panels that provide access to specific functionality. The panels all work the same in the way they are opened, closed, minimized, maximized, docked , and undocked.
A Property inspector that enables you to see and modify common attributes of the selected object.
A Tools panel (in Fireworks and Flash) located, by default, on the left side of the workspace.

Figures 2.12.3 show the main interface features for Flash, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver, respectively.

Figure 2.1. The Flash interface.

Figure 2.2. The Fireworks interface.

Figure 2.3. The Dreamweaver interface.

In addition, many of the applications share common options within the various menus, common commands on the main toolbar, and common keyboard shortcut keys.

Main Menu and Toolbar

At the very top of each of the development programs within Studio, you can find a typical menu bar that allows you to create, open , close, and save documents, as well as perform activities such as cutting and pasting, printing, and finding help.

The main menus also indicate what shortcut keys can be used to accomplish the same task. For instance, when clicking on the File menu in any application, you also see that the Cmd-N or Ctrl+N shortcut allows you to create a new document in the same way that the File, New menu command does.

Note

In Flash, the main toolbar is not displayed by default. Instead, you need to choose Window, Toolbars, Main to activate it.