Technology

Web Surfers Face Dangerous New Threat: ‘Clickjacking’

pragan — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 03:22:51 +0000

SOURCE : http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20081008/bs_nf/62355

Internet and Web browser security experts are sounding the alarm about a new type of malicious attack called “clickjacking,” a technique that can be used to dupe Web surfers into revealing confidential information while clicking on seemingly innocuous Web pages. Among other things, a clickjacking attack can be used to take control of a computer’s Webcam and microphone without the knowledge of the user.

Clickjacking has been identified as a vulnerability for the Adobe Flash player, as well as for every major browser, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and even the newly released Google Chrome.

“It is a very serious problem,” said Giorgio Maone, the author of a widely praised free Firefox extension called NoScript, which blocks potentially malicious scripts from running in the Firefox browser.

“Clickjacking is a very simple attack to build, and now that the details are out, any script kid can try it successfully,” Maone warned. “There’s no estimate to the number of trap sites, and it’s unlikely that we will see any credible report about the number of sites using this technique, because there are literally infinite ways to implement such an attack, therefore no signature-based scanning can detect it automatically.”

Unauthorized Access to Information

The growing severity of the clickjacking problem was identified by Robert Hansen, CEO of SecTheory, and Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of WhiteHat Security. The two were scheduled to speak publicly about their discovery last month at the Open Web Application Security Project NYC AppSec conference in New York, but postponed their talk in order to give Adobe and browser companies a chance to come up with a solution.

Reacting quickly to the announcement, Adobe released a security advisory Tuesday, describing the threat as “critical” and instructing users on how to turn off Flash access to cameras and microphones.

“We have just posted a Security Advisory for Flash Player,” wrote David Lenoe, Adobe’s security program manager, on the Adobe security blog, “in response to recently published reports of a ‘clickjacking’ issue in multiple Web browsers that could allow an attacker to lure a Web browser user into unknowingly clicking on a link or dialog. This potential ‘clickjacking’ browser issue affects Adobe Flash Player‘s microphone and camera access dialog.” Lenoe said a patch for Flash would be ready by the end of October.

Unfortunately, as Hansen and other researchers have pointed out repeatedly, Flash clickjacking is only one of the variants of this problem. In a lengthy blog posting about the issue, Hansen said that “there are multiple variants of clickjacking. Some of it requires cross-domain access, some don’t. Some overlay entire pages over a page, some use iframes to get you to click on one spot. Some require JavaScript, some don’t. Some variants use CSRF to preload data in forms, some don’t. Clickjacking does not cover any one of these use cases, but rather all of them.”

A Structural Problem of the Web

Hansen warned that it will be challenging to come up with a comprehensive solution to prevent the clickjack threat because of the nature of the code that underlies the Internet.

Maone agreed. “This problem comes from features which are integral to the modern Web as we know it,” he said, “and especially from the ability of Web pages to embed arbitrary content from different sites, or to host little applications (applets) through plug-ins like Adobe Flash, Java or Microsoft Silverlight.”

Maone predicted that a general browser fix won’t be developed any time soon, since the real solution lies in developing a general consensus about changing existing Web standards in the various Internet standardization groups.

Five reasons why Chrome will crash and burn

pragan — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:24:37 +0000

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-219394.html

After all the polished promises of a streamlined new way to tame the web, the blogosphere was ready to predict Chrome would inspire everything from the end of Firefox to the demise of Microsoft itself.

silicon.com spoke to industry experts and Google’s new rivals to find out why Chrome matters and whether the browser reality can deliver on the hype.

Internet Explorer’s stranglehold
The average computer user tends to lack the technical know-how or motivation to change from their default browser, Internet Explorer, giving Microsoft around 60 per cent of the market without even trying. Despite being the only really viable alternative to IE’s domination, Firefox has struggled to gain above 20 per cent of the market.

In spite of Google’s huge brand leverage analysts feel Chrome could still struggle to gain a foothold when faced with consumers who prefer to stick with what they know.

David Mitchell, VP for IT research at analysts Ovum, said: “Internet Explorer is still used by about 60 to 70 per cent of people and there is a big chunk of the population who are remarkably reticent to change platform.

“I think that Google will grab market share but whether they will knock IE off the top spot is another scenario.”

Microsoft itself is confident of IE’s unassailability. The company said: “The browser landscape is highly competitive but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and puts them in control of their personal data online.”

Bad track record
Despite Google’s search dominance, its other homegrown applications have failed to attract anywhere near the same popularity.

It was one of the first companies to enter the social networking market with orkut but the site remains largely unknown outside of Brazil, and despite being launched before YouTube, Google Video always failed to match its popularity, eventually forcing Google to buy up its rival.

Similarly, despite being perhaps the most well-known Google branded app outside of search, Gmail still lags behind Windows Live Hotmail.

Nate Elliott, research director at analysts Jupiter Research, said: “In most cases the products that Google has delivered on its own have failed.

“To achieve success they have had to buy in services from elsewhere and not build them themselves.”

Google backlash
With the Google brand already ubiquitous worldwide, could the sheer scale of the search giant’s reach start to scare consumers? Tor Odland, head of communications for rival browser Opera, thinks the brand’s attempted dominance could prompt an anti-Microsoft style backlash against lack of choice.

He said: “You have to ask whether people want to use products and services from only one company. It is a return to the days of Microsoft.

“I wonder how people will feel about being so tied into one company – the one thing that the online world has taught us is that people like choice.”

Damage to Google services
Google has traditionally taken a cross platform approach to its services and worked closely with its soon-to-be rivals Opera and Mozilla, and recently renewed a deal with Mozilla that puts Google as the default search in Firefox. Focusing on Chrome could see those all-important bonds start to loosen.

Odland said: “It is important that they keep testing their services for compatibility with other browsers.

“We hope that they will continue to work with Opera and Mozilla to deliver a better internet experience.”

Jupiter Research’s Elliott believes Google is hedging its bets: “They have given themselves plenty of time to make progress in the browser market while maintaining a strong presence in Firefox.”

How to get it out there?
There is also the question of how Google will get Chrome onto people’s computers in the first place. Will it take the Apple approach of bundling it with other application downloads as Apple did with Safari and iTunes or Sun’s bundling of Java downloads with OpenOffice.

Ovum’s Mitchell said: “One thing that has not been made clear is what is their distribution strategy? Are they going to rely on downloads straight from the Google site or follow the lead of Apple?”

Jupiter Research’s Elliott said: “Firefox is by all accounts a fantastic browser and still has less than 20 per cent browser share. That speaks volumes about how big an advantage Microsoft has by installing IE on PCs.”

On the other hand, see why Chrome may well be the next big thing…

T-Mobile Dumps Google in Europe for Yahoo

pragan — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:28:46 +0000

Source:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021300918.html

T-Mobile customers in 11 countries will see oneSearch as their mobile search application.

PC World
Wednesday, February 13, 2008; 9:19 AM

T-Mobile announced Tuesday that it will soon begin using Yahoo as its preferred mobile search provider in Europe, ending the operator’s existing relationship with Google for mobile search.

The move was seen by many as a minor coup for Yahoo, which is competing with Google and Microsoft to win the loyalty of a growing number of mobile Internet users. Others noted that mobile search is in its infancy and said the field is still wide-open.

When T-Mobile signed its original deal with Google, it made headlines as one of the earliest partnerships between a mobile operator and a search provider.

“Well done Yahoo, for knocking Google off the Web n Walk home page,” wrote John Delaney, an analyst for Ovum, commenting on the announcement. Web n Walk is T-Mobile’s mobile Internet offering.

Beginning in March, T-Mobile customers in 11 European countries will see Yahoo’s mobile oneSearch by default on their phones. OneSearch is designed to make it easy for mobile users to get relevant search results and navigate through different categories within search results.

The companies plan to offer other Yahoo services to T-Mobile customers, including Flickr, Messenger, Mail, Weather and Finance. Yahoo now counts 29 operators around the world as oneSearch customers.

The deal appears to mark a strategy change at T-Mobile. When the operator launched Web n Walk, the service was designed to mimic the Web by minimizing T-Mobile branded services and prominently offering Google, Delaney said. Since then it has evolved to add more T-Mobile services. It’s not clear yet which strategy end-users prefer. “The risk is that T-Mobile will discover that its users really preferred it when T-Mobile gave them access to the Web, and then got out of their way,” Delaney said.

While the T-Mobile/Yahoo deal is a blow to Google, the search giant had a significant mobile win of its own this week. Nokia announced on Tuesday that it will add Google search, in addition to its own search offering, on select phones. Nokia plans to extend the offering to more phones in the future.

Nokia has begun offering an increasing number of services, such as location-based maps and social-networking services, which could compete with offerings from operators. “Nokia is walking a bit of a fine line because they’re definitely moving into what some consider carrier territory,” said Mike Wolf, an analyst at ABI Research.

So far, the market for branded search services on mobile phones, like those from Yahoo and Google, is still wide-open, he said. The search providers are increasingly interested in mobile because there is strong growth in mobile Internet usage, he said. The iPhone is contributing to that, as a device that aims to make the mobile Internet as similar as possible to the PC-based Internet.

Services from Yahoo and Google also compete with those that are branded by the operator. Companies like Medio specialize in offering technology to operators for branded search services. Operators in the U.S. have been more likely to use the self-branded option rather than partner with one of the online brands. AT&T, however, is one notable exception — it uses Yahoo’s oneSearch.

Success in the mobile Internet is important enough that Wolf believes that Yahoo’s track record in the mobile market was a factor in Microsoft’s decision to try to buy the search provider. “Mobile is probably at least a consideration in the acquisition attempt,” he said.

Yahoo may consider Google alliance, source says

pragan — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 02:47:33 +0000

By Eric AuchardSun Feb 3, 6:33 PM ET

Yahoo Inc would consider a business alliance with Google Inc as one way to rebuff a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft, a source familiar with Yahoo’s strategy said on Sunday.

Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft’s bid, which, at $31 a share, Yahoo management believes undervalues the company, the source said.

A second source close to Yahoo said it had received a procession of preliminary contacts by media, technology, telephone and financial companies. But the source said they were unaware whether any alternative bid was in the offing.

Few natural bidders exist beside Google that could engage in a bidding war, and Google would be unlikely to win approval from antitrust regulators, some Wall Street analysts said on Friday.

Yahoo’s efforts to find an alternative bidder could simply be a measure to pressure Microsoft to boost its bid, which valued Yahoo at $44.6 billion when first announced on Friday.

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay wrote in a research note that “the Microsoft bid of $31 is very astute” because it puts pressure on Yahoo management to take actions that could unlock the underlying value of Yahoo assets, which he estimates are worth upward of $39-$45 a share.

Separately, Google Inc fired back on Sunday at Microsoft Corp’s bid to acquire Yahoo Inc, accusing Microsoft of seeking to extend its computer software monopoly deeper into the Internet realm.

David Drummond, a Google senior vice president and its chief legal officer, said in a blog post that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo could undermine competition on the Web and called on policy makers to challenge the combination.

Microsoft responded to Google’s arguments by saying that a merger with Yahoo would create a “compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising” to market leader Google.

“The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet,” Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement.

Drummond argued that Microsoft’s power stems from decades- old monopolies in Windows — the software operating system used to control most personal computers — and Internet Explorer, which is the dominant browser consumers used to view the Web.

Microsoft’s proposed merger with Yahoo would combine the No. 1 and No. 2 suppliers of Web-based e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and portals, which act as starting points for hundreds of millions of users seeking information on the Web.

The Google executive argued in an official blog post that Microsoft could be looking to favor Microsoft and Yahoo services by pushing customers to other Web services they own instead of letting customers elect to use rival services.

“Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and Web-based services?” Drummond said in a blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/.

In making its case for the deal during a conference call on Friday, Microsoft executives said Google — not Microsoft — was the one company antitrust regulators were likely to bar from buying Yahoo, based on Google’s dominance in Web search.

Microsoft executives cited industry data showing Google has a 75 percent share of worldwide Web search revenue. Collectively, Yahoo and Microsoft attract around 20 percent of Web searches, Internet measurement firms show.

“Today, Google is the dominant search engine and advertising company on the Web,” Smith said in replying to Google on Sunday. “Google has amassed about 75 percent of paid search revenues worldwide and its share continues to grow.”

A person familiar with Google’s thinking said the company believes Microsoft is using the same playbook it did in the 1990s to switch Windows users away from Web browser pioneer Netscape Communications to its own Internet Explorer.

“It is the same old story,” the source said.

Microsoft offers $44.6B for Yahoo

pragan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:19:17 +0000

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer 15 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO – Microsoft Corp. has pounced on slumping Internet icon Yahoo Inc. with an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion in its boldest bid yet to challenge Google Inc.‘s dominance of the lucrative online search and advertising markets.

The surprise offer of $31 per share, made late Thursday and announced Friday, comes with Sunnyvale-based Yahoo in a vulnerable position.

In a statement Friday, Yahoo said it will “carefully and promptly” study Microsoft‘s bid.

With its profits steadily sliding, Yahoo’s stock slipped to a four-year low earlier this week and a new management team has been trying to steer a turnaround but sees more turbulence through 2008.

The announcement sent Yahoo’s share price up 60 percent in premarket trading, while Google fell 8 percent, weighted down by a fourth-quarter earnings report that missed Wall Street expectations.

In a letter to Yahoo’s board of directors, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer indicated the world’s largest software maker is determined to bring the two companies together.

To underscore its resolve, Microsoft is offering a 62 percent premium to Yahoo’s closing stock price Thursday.

Since reaching a 52-week high of $34.08 in October, Yahoo shares have fallen 46 percent. Yahoo climbed $10.40 a share, or 54 percent, to $29.58 in premarket trading. Microsoft shares fell $1.40, or 4.3 percent, to $31.20.

Ballmer revealed in the letter that Yahoo had rebuffed a previous overture a year ago, saying it had a turnaround in the works. But he pointedly noted Yahoo has instead deteriorated significantly.

“A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” Ballmer added.

Microsoft’s previous offer was rebuffed by Terry Semel, who stepped aside last year as chief executive under shareholder pressure.

Microsoft sent its latest takeover offer to Yahoo late Thursday, shortly after Semel resigned as the company’s chairman. The letter is addressed to Semel’s successors, new Chairman Roy Bostock and the current CEO, co-founder Jerry Yang, who is one of Yahoo’s largest shareholders.

“Microsoft’s consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers,” Ballmer wrote.

In a prepared statement, Yahoo said its board “will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo’s strategic plans and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders.”

Under terms of the proposed deal, Yahoo shareholders could choose to receive cash or Microsoft common shares, with the total purchase consisting of 50 percent cash and 50 percent stock.

Microsoft said it sees at least $1 billion in cost savings generated by the combination, and intends to offer significant retention packages to Yahoo engineers, key leaders and employees. The software giant said it believes the takeover would receive regulatory clearance and close in the second half of 2008.

Signaling Microsoft doesn’t intend to take no for an answer, Ballmer wrote that the company “reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.”

Google shares fell $46.55, or 8.3 percent, to $517.95 in premarket trading after the Mountain View-based company reported fourth-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates.

While Yahoo is struggling, Microsoft is thriving. The Redmond, Wash.-based company last week forecast a rosy 2008 — despite broader economic worries — after it blew by Wall Street‘s expectations for a second consecutive quarter.

___

AP Business Writer Jennifer Malloy in New York contributed to this story

Yahoo! Announces Agreement to Acquire Right Media, Largest Emerging Online Advertising Exchange

pragan — Tue, 01 May 2007 18:43:42 +0000

DoubleClick by Google

RightMedia by Yahoo

RightMedia’s Founder and CEO worked In DoubleClick before he started RightMedia:)

Actual News is below :

Key Step in Executing Yahoo!’s Long-Term Strategy to Transform How Online Advertisers Connect to and Engage With Their Customers – Both On and Off the Yahoo! Network

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 30, 2007 – Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Right Media Inc., creator of the Right Media Exchange. The acquisition of Right Media will build upon Yahoo!’s leadership in online advertising and is a key step towards executing the Company’s long-term strategy to transform how online advertisers connect to and engage with their customers – both on and off the Yahoo! network. Under the terms of the agreement, which follows Yahoo!’s 20 percent strategic investment in Right Media in October 2006, Yahoo! will acquire the remaining equity interest in Right Media for approximately $680 million. Shareholders will be paid in approximately equal parts cash and stock, and Right Media options and similar equity awards will be assumed by Yahoo!.”The acquisition of Right Media will further Yahoo!’s goal to create the industry’s most open, accessible and vibrant advertising marketplace, which will help democratize the buying and selling of digitally enabled advertising,” said Terry Semel, chairman and CEO of Yahoo!. “This acquisition is an important step in our long-term vision to build the industry’s leading advertising and publisher ecosystem. We believe that Yahoo!’s open approach is a clear differentiator from others in the industry and provides significant benefits to advertisers, publishers and Yahoo! itself.”

The Right Media Exchange is the industry’s largest emerging online advertising exchange, and as publishers increasingly turn to exchanges to monetize their ad inventory, this acquisition will help Yahoo! establish a leading position in this large, attractive and fast growing segment of the online ad market.
“We share Yahoo!’s vision of a more empowered marketplace, where efficiency, transparency and accountability in online advertising become the norm,” said Michael Walrath, CEO and founder of Right Media. “We are very excited by the prospect of becoming part of Yahoo!, the market leader in display advertising, as it looks to revolutionize the media buying and selling landscape.”

“Yahoo! is the largest online publisher and one of the leading ad networks on the web, and we believe it is in our strong financial interest to make sure there is a widely adopted, neutral, frictionless exchange that enables publishers and advertisers to benefit from a basket of the best solutions rather than having to accept a single solution from one of the larger players,” said Susan Decker, head of advertiser and publisher group and CFO of Yahoo!. “Furthermore, as the industry’s partner of choice and as a leader in both search and display advertising, we believe that we are well-positioned to rally the industry support to make the promise of Right Media a reality for the entire digital media community.”

Open Exchange Will Benefit Advertiser, Publishers, and Yahoo!

Right Media’s open exchange will facilitate a frictionless model where buyers have equal opportunity to engage with the largest, most valuable audiences and to extract the maximum value from their campaigns and sellers can access an enormous pool of advertisers and foster competition for their inventory to maximize revenue. Yahoo! will increase its participation in the Right Media Exchange both as a buyer and seller to help increase liquidity in the exchange while empowering publishers and advertisers to generate more value for themselves within this vibrant marketplace.

An open exchange will provide tremendous opportunity for advertisers, publishers, advertising networks, and for Yahoo!:

• Advertisers will have greater inventory and audience options from Yahoo! and other participants in this exchange, as well as increased control and visibility into the buying process.
• Publishers will be able to bundle their own ad inventory with Yahoo!’s inventory and the exchange’s inventory – thereby boosting demand and generating the highest returns for each ad placement.
• Advertising networks will reap the same benefits as advertisers and publishers, and additionally, the exchange will benefit those ad networks with unique value propositions, giving them an opportunity to compete with the largest players, thanks to reduced friction and increased transparency.
• For Yahoo!, this more open approach will allow the company to increase liquidity, allow advertisers to more efficiently ascertain the true value of display ad inventory, and generate greater returns for Yahoo!’s own display inventory. It will give Yahoo! a new channel and inventory for excess demand and provide an opportunity to derive more value from non-premium inventory.

As the largest online publisher and one of the leading ad networks, Yahoo! can help drive additional participation in Right Media’s open exchange and ensure a level playing field for all parties.

Source : http://www.rightmedia.com/content/news-events/press-releases/5,703

Yahoo Launches Alpha, Do It Yourself Metasearch Engine .

pragan — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 13:12:48 +0000

Note the word “Quietly Launched”. :)

Source : http://caribjournal.com/2007/04/05/yahoo-launches-alpha-do-it-your-self-meta-search-engine/

Yahoo has quietly launched on Thursday a new search engine, called “Alpha”. Still in its Beta phase and currently hosted on its Yahoo Australian domain, the Metasearch engine allows users to customize their search engine results pulled from multiple websites via RSS, like Flickr Photos, Wikipedia, and YouTube. You can take it for a test drive by clicking here.

Alpha also displays all the web searched results onto one page using Ajax. For readers who are not familiar with the Ajax-Web 2.0 hype, click here to read all about it.

Under the hood

With its simple interface featuring only two tabs, the “change my layout” tab includes a feature that allows users the ability to rearrange search results box locations, using a simple drag-and-drop user interface.

The second tab “add custom info source”, includes three text boxes that allows users to enter the name of the website, RSS feed URL, and a query feature to filter the website searched source for specific keywords. This is a useful feature for anyone who is only interested, for example, in Bungee Jumping from a particular website that supports RSS.

Also on the second tab, it displays two privacy options, which asks users to choose whether they want their customized search engine to be shared with others, with two options public or private. Users can also choose how their web results should be displayed, choosing from web listing or image only display. Although unimpressed with its lack of new concepts and foresight, Yahoo still deserves a bronze medal for its effort.

However it’s slow in reacting to Google’s recently launched similar website, oh yes, you guessed it, another custom search engine called “Co-op”, which allows users to also customize their search results using the same method as Yahoo’s Alpha. Another social custom search engine that’s also worth mentioning, a website called Rollyo, also uses a very similar method.

Somehow Yahoo’s past successful ideas usually prevailed in competing with Google through acquisitions and not through innovations. With that said, the internet search engine giant is clearly aiming and trying very hard to capitalize on the latest craze of social networks, and custom search engines.

“Whilst aggregating feeds on one page is nothing new, we wanted to take a federated search concept one step further. With this beta, we have introduced personalisation elements that not only allow users to customise their view, but also to add their favourite search service”, said Brett Poole, Alpha Lead Developer and Member of Yahoo7 Search Team, Yahoo Australia.

Alpha uses search results presentation method, called OpenSearch format, a method that allows search engines to aggregate RSS and Atom, Metadata feeds into search results from any website that supports RSS as a minimum requirement for results to be pulled and filtered.

Dreamweaver CS3

pragan — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:11:41 +0000

One more version of Dreamweaver has been released. This is going to make the work lot easier. It has got many advantages starting from some javascript functions to images from photoshop. The review below explains it clearly.

Dreamweaver CS3

Dreamweaver CS3 the first release of this powerful web-design program under the tutelage of its new owner, Adobe. It’s also the first version to run natively on Intel-based Macs. Dreamweaver CS3 offers useful new tools for designers and provides a preview of how integration with the other programs in Adobe’s Creative Suite can benefit Dreamweaver users.

What’s new

Dreamweaver CS3 offers new features in three key areas: integration with other Adobe products; new features for creating, managing, and fixing CSS (Cascading Style Sheets); and a new set of JavaScript-driven tools for building pop-up navigation menus, advanced form validation, and displaying data in an interactive table.

If you use Photoshop and Dreamweaver now, you’ve probably grown tired of the number of steps required to get an image from Photoshop to Dreamweaver (and all of the steps you have to repeat whenever you edit a Photoshop file). Dreamweaver CS3 now supports direct copy-and-paste from Photoshop.

In Photoshop CS3 you can select a single layer, “slice” or even draw a marquee around one area of a document and copy all layers in that section. Then you can copy that selection, switch to a Dreamweaver document and paste. (You can even skip all of this and just drag a PSD file directly onto a Dreamweaver page.)

The new image optimisation window lets you apply compression settings directly in Dreamweaver (no more, “Save for Web” from Photoshop), save the file into your website, and place the new optimised image into a web page.

Even better, you can launch Photoshop and open the original image file for editing directly within Dreamweaver. After making any changes you want in Photoshop, copy the layer, slice, or portion of the Photoshop file you want, then paste the new, edited image back into Dreamweaver and replace the older image.

All the optimisation settings applied previously are remembered (including the optimised file’s name) and re-applied, making edits fast and painless. Unfortunately, Dreamweaver isn’t completely integrated into the suite so you won’t find support for smart-objects or a similarly simple workflow for getting Illustrator files into your web pages.

The most glamorous new addition to the program is a set of tools for adding dynamic layout elements and visual effects to your web pages. Based on the “Spry Framework” (a collection of JavaScript programs developed by Adobe), these new features make it easy to add pop-up navigational menus, validate HTML forms, include complex, animated, visual effects, and add interactive data tables.

Spry features come in three flavors: effects, widgets, and data sets. Effects are fancy visual effects – such as fade out, shrink, grow, shake – that let you draw attention to images, or other page content. Widgets add interactive layout elements. The Spry Menu Bar, for example, is a navigation bar that supports two levels of pop-up menus – the perfect way to cram a lot of links in a compact space; form validation widgets let you verify entries in a web form before the form is submitted, so you can make sure that a properly formatted date is entered by the end user. (This widget provides a much more powerful solution than the tired, old “Validate Form” behavior that’s shipped with Dreamweaver for years.)

Several other page widgets provide an easy way to present a lot of content in a small space; for example, the tabbed panels widget lets you place content into separate “tabbed” areas. Clicking a tab reveals additional content.

The Spry Data set feature lets you take data from an XML file, and display it in a table. People viewing the web page can sort the table by clicking column headers and even see detailed information about one item inside a table cell – all without every requesting a fresh page from the web server.

What’s improved

Dreamweaver has always had powerful tools for creating and editing Cascading Style Sheets. CSS lets Web designers create beautiful and complex web pages out of ordinary HTML. Unfortunately it’s also a complex and confusing technology. Dreamweaver CS3 adds new CSS tools to make working with Cascading Style Sheets easier.

New CSS management features make it easy to rearrange style sheets by reordering styles in a style sheet, quickly renaming styles, and moving styles between style sheets. New CSS Templates provide ready-made page layouts with basic HTML and CSS to create the most common page layouts (two column, three column, liquid and fixed width, for example). The designs work well in all current web browsers, and since the templates are merely “skeletons” you can modify and add to the supplied CSS files to create your own look and feel.

The new “Check Browser compatibility” tool might save you hours of testing and tweaking to make sure your pages work in all common Web browsers. This tool scans a web page and identifies any CSS or HTML code that might not work in a particular browser. Potential errors are flagged and a single click takes you to information on Adobe.com that explains the problem and possible solutions in depth.

Verdict

Dreamweaver CS3 offers useful new tools for designers and provides a preview of how integration with the other programs in Adobe’s Creative Suite can benefit Dreamweaver users. It offers new features in three key areas: integration with other Adobe products; new features for creating, managing, and fixing CSS (Cascading Style Sheets); and a new set of JavaScript-driven tools for building pop-up navigation menus, advanced form validation, and displaying data in an interactive table.

David Sawyer McFarland(http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=740)

Adobe announces Creative Suite 3.0

pragan — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:19:33 +0000

Adobe announces Creative Suite 3.0

Google, YouTube hit with US$1B copyright suit

pragan — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:55:44 +0000

Lawsuit alleges that thousands of unauthorised clips of Viacom’s programming have been viewed on YouTube more than 1.5 billion times