Introduction to Web Experience Factory

In this article by Chelis Camargo and Helmar Martens, the authors of IBM WebSphere Portal 8: Web Experience Factory and the Cloud we will introduce Web Experience Factory (WEF) as a rapid application development tool. We will focus on WEF's capability to build portal applications to run on IBM WebSphere Portal.

Getting Started with Mudbox 2013

Sculpting software has changed the face of the 3D industry. Whether you are creating a character for the next Avatar movie or adding details to a post apocalyptic city in The Last of Us, 3D sculpting has become an essential tool for creating a level of realism in digital art that was much harder to achieve in the past. A couple of things that make Mudbox a better choice than other sculpting software is its ease of use, its industry-leading 3D painting tools, and its solid integration with other Autodesk products, which includes industry-standard software for 3D modeling and animation. Mudbox is also the first software to integrate vector displacement map extraction. This technology takes texture mapping one more step forward, similar to the introduction of normal maps which sparked the era of "Next-Gen" games. All in all, Mudbox is a powerful art creation tool that is only going to get better and more integrated with the industry's leading software.

In this article by Jeremy Roland, author of Mudbox 2013 Cookbook we will cover:

• Installing Mudbox 2013 documentation
• Setting up hotkeys
• Increasing the resolution on your model
• Bookmarking the camera view
• Downloading and enabling stamps, stencils, and base meshes from the Internet
• Adding and adjusting your image planes
• Sculpting on different subdivision levels effectively
• Recording a movie while you work in Mudbox
• Setting up colors and other preferences
• Setting up your Wacom tablet
• Working in expert mode

Management of SOA Composite Applications

Developers typically create composite applications or simply composites that are packaged into single, deployable JAR files. These applications can contain any number of service components that include BPEL or BPMN processes, Mediator services, human tasks and workflows, and business rules. Composites include logic and code that form the foundation of SOA-based integrations. Though the design and development of composites are not the ultimate responsibility of the Oracle SOA Suite 11g administrator, the deployment, monitoring, and management of them are.

In this article, the authors Ahmed Aboulnaga and Arun Pareek of the book Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator's Handbook will discuss the concepts that enable you to manage these composites, and cover the following areas in more detail:

• Managing composite lifecycles
• Structuring composite deployments with partitions
• Setting up ant for automated composite build management
• Promoting code, using configuration plans
• Understanding and configuring composite audit levels

A Quick Tour Of Ephesoft

Ephesoft has two user interfaces. One is intended for use by operators to review and validate Ephesoft's classification, separation, and extraction. The other is intended for use by system administrators in the configuration of Ephesoft. Not all aspects of Ephesoft can be configured through the administrative interface, however. For some of the configuration, administrators will need to use a text editor to modify files in Ephesoft's installation directory.

Before we begin, it is helpful to understand some commonly-used terms. A batch or a batch instance is a set of document images that are processed together. A batch class is a set of rules for processing a batch.

This article by Pat Myers, Ike Lavas, Michael Muller, and Clifford Laurin, authors of Intelligent Document Capture with Ephesoft, will provide you with a brief introduction to Ephesoft's user interfaces:

• The administrative user interface
• The operator user interface

Overview of FIM 2010 R2

Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 (FIM 2010 R2) is not one product, but a family of products working together to mitigate the challenges regarding Identity Management.

Microsoft's Forefront Identity Manager simplifies enterprise Identity Management for end users by automating admin tasks and integrating the infrastructure of an enterprise with strong authentication systems.

In this article by Kent Nordström, author of Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 Handbook, we will get an overview of FIM 2010 R2.

In this article, we will cover:

• The history of FIM 2010 R2
• FIM Synchronization Service (FIM Sync)
• FIM Service
• FIM Portal
• FIM Reporting
• FIM Certificate Management (FIM CM)
• Licensing

Publishing the project in various formats using Adobe Captivate 6

In this article by Damien Bruyndonckx, author of Mastering Adobe Captivate 6, we will focus on making the project available to the outside world by publishing it in various formats.

Publishing the movie is the process by which we make our Captivate projects available to the outside world. Most of the time, we'll publish our movies in the Adobe Flash format or in the HTML5 format so that any student can enjoy the content of our online course across devices. However, Captivate can also publish the movie in many other formats

Publishing

So far, we have been working in a .cptx file, which is the default native file type of Captivate. The .cptx file format is great when creating and designing our projects, but it has two major disadvantages:

• It can become very large. Consequently, it is diffcult for us to upload the file on a website and for the student to download and view it.
• Opening a .cptx file requires Captivate to be installed on the computer system.

Publishing a Captivate movie is converting (the proper word is Compiling) the .cptx file to a format that can be easily downloaded and viewed by our students. The primary format to publish our projects is the .swf format . swf (pronounced swif) stands for ShockWave Flash. It is the file format used by the free Adobe Flash player plugin installed in more than 98 percent of the computers connected to the Internet. It has two advantages as compared to the .cptx file:

• A .swf file is usually much lighter than its .cptx counterpart, making it much easier to upload and download across the Internet.
• Any browser equipped with the free Adobe Flash plugin is able to open and play the .swf file. This makes it incredibly easy to deploy our Captivate courses.

That being said, the .swf format has some major disadvantages:

• It requires the Adobe Flash Player plugin to be installed. If, for whatever reason, the plugin is not available, the .swf file cannot be played back.
• There is no more Flash Player plugin available for mobile devices. Consequently, a .swf file cannot be played back on a Smartphone or on a Tablet.

That's why other publishing formats are available in Captivate. In Captivate 6, the most effective alternative to the .swf format is to publish the project in HTML5. When published to HTML5, the project can be played back in any modern browser without the need for an extra plugin. HTML5-enabled projects can also be played back on mobile devices including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch! HTML5 also has its caveats. At the time of this writing, (June 2012) HTML5 is still under development. Consequently, some features of Captivate are not yet supported in HTML5.

In this article, we will explore and discuss the various publishing options at our disposal in Captivate.