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Saving my Eyes (Cool Mac Trick)

Wed, 14 May 2008 12:47:00 GMT

I have pretty good vision and even as I approach my mid-30's do not need glasses or contact lenses. All is not peachy though -- reading light text on dark backgrounds causes me pain about a paragraph or two into reading an article.

A solution, which a friend recently pointed out to me, is to 'Reverse black and white' as Apple calls it by holding down crtl+option+command+8. As you have probably worked out this switches the black and white and allows me to read entries without my eyes hurting.

I tried taking a screenshot but Apple takes a screenshot of the orginal settings not the reversed.

Five Cool Additions and One Undocumented Function in 8.0.1

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:00:00 GMT

The release notes for ColdFusion 8.0.1 detail 10 pages of tweaks and new features. Here are five cool additions, and one undocumented function, in no particular order:

Leopard and 64 bit support
Considering the devoted followers of both CF and Apple it was no surprise to see install solutions for CF8 popping up within hours of Leopards release. As cool as that is a supported release along with 64-bit support is extremely nice. And, wow, the speed of CF8 on Leopard 64 bit is impressive; re-inits take half the time they use to.
Nested Implicit Structure/Array
Nested structures and arrays have always been possible. Now the implicit expressions work as well like so:
```
<cfset variables.nestIt = {a=[{no="you did not",
       yes="I did",  
       oh=["and on",["and on"]]}]}>
```
cfwindow refreshOnShow attribute
When using a source for cfwindow the default behavior is to cache the response for when the window is closed and then opened. I recently stumbled into this problem in an application I'm building. When refreshOnShow = true anytime the window is shown the content will be grabbed from the server.
Watermark with html
cfpdf action="watermark" can now take html with formating in addition to an image. A nice, nice addition.
Richtext area for Safari
Finally! WYSIWYG textarea support for Safari (3.0 and up) users. Big thanks should go to the FCKEditor team on this one since its their work along with Adobe's integration that makes it possible to do and have a rich textarea. I am especially happy with this as Safari is my current favorite browser (this can and does change often).

The other addition is an undocumented function: getPrinterList() that well, returns a list of printers that cfprint can print to.

(I will be presenting "Creating, Manipulating and Printing PDFs" and "Intro to CFML as a Language" at CFUnited in June.)

Make Your Users Life Easier Not Yours

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:40:00 GMT

I was checking in online last night for a flight and came across a classic example of asking the user for perfect user input when it would be easy for the programmers to simply clean up any bad data. In situtations like this I believe the onus is on us, developers and programmers, to make our users lifes easier not ours.

Lets look at an example, the Southwest online check in screen which has the following bizarre instruction: "Confirmation Numbers use the letters O and I instead of the numbers 0 (zero) and 1 (one)."

Fixing any user input on the server side could be achieved very easily with a simple RegEx making the page both easier to use and clear of instructions.

A quick note about Southwest: I actually have a lot of luv for Southwest and without them would see my relatives a lot less.

Another quick note: I'm sure I have made my users lives harder than need be in the past with fields like this (though I have also discovered a recent fondness for the masking features in cfform).

cfaui (Adobe User Intelligence) tags and functions up on Adobe Labs

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:22:00 GMT

The most exciting feature of the ColdFusion 8 Updater 1 (now posted to Adobe Labs) is the new cfaui tags and functions. aui stands for Adobe User Intelligence and allows us CF developers to do a whole bunch of new cool stuff (rumors suggest a Flex version is on the way as well).

It is based on the technology in cfajaxproxy and the embedded Apache Derby database and can be added to any page by placing

<cfaui action="track" trackID="#session.userID">

anywhere on the page. This will track all actions a user takes on the page, store it in a database and constantly analyze it. The first cool usage is the action="hover" attribute which after a set period will display the text in any element defined on the page. Here's an example:

<cfaui action="hover" element="hoverTR" milliseconds="1000" 
messageElement="messageSpan" message="Most people pick chocolate" />

<tr id="hoverTR">
   <td>Favorite Ice Cream</td>
   <td><input type="text" name="favIceCrean">
    <span id="messageSpan"></span></td>
</tr>

What this does is after 1000 seconds of a user hovering over the the tr with the id of "hoverTR" it will place the content of the message attribute in the span with the id of "messageSpan".

One UI challenge I have always faced is whether to use a text box or select box for collecting a US state. Well with the new auiInputPreference function its now possible to give the user what they would prefer. Look at this example:

<cfif auiInputPreference(session.userID, "keyboard")>
  <input type="text" name="state">
<cfelse>
   <select name="state">....
</cfif>

The auiInputPreference function will always return a boolean. In this example I ask if the user has shown a preference for using the keyboard and if so will display a text box, if not (and in this case it would mean they lean towards using the mouse to move between fields) show a select box.

There are many other cool functions and features of the aui suite of tags and functions. Head over to the Adobe Labs and check out the documentation on the beta for ColdFusion 8 Updater 1.

Spotlight vs the Dock

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:04:00 GMT

For years I have liked the Mac OS Dock and found it to be very useful. Over the last couple of months, however, I found I had too many programs in it and opening a n application took some time. So, I starting drifting towards using Spotlight to find my programs which is noticeabley faster. To find an application (or anything in Spotlight) the keys are: command+spacebar then the first few letters of the application. Over time Spotlight learns what you search for and highlights them first. I can type command+spacebar s and have Safari listed in a split second.

My next step was to move the Dock from the bottom of my screen, where I found it hard to know what was open in Leopard, to the left side and strip it of all programs except those that I set to open at login (Mail, iCal, iChat). This gives me a little more room on the bottom of the screen and by using Spotloght the ability to open up applications or contacts or documents very easily. It also helps that I have a new Apple Keyboard that makes typing almost effortless.

My new Dock set up is on the left with Finder, Main, iCal, Safari, iChat, Activity Monitor (set to display RAM usage), Eclipse, XCode, MySQL Administrator, Firefox and CSS Edit all open.

Hear me on the ColdFusion Weekly Roundtable

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:18:00 GMT

Alongside the soothing voice of Matt Woodward and the midwestern mellow voice of Peter J. Farrell, the ColdFusion Weekly podcast now has a regular roundtable of opinionated ColdFusion developers to discuss the latest issues. This week you can hear my London-but-most-people-think-is-Australian accent giving my opinions on open source and free versions of ColdFusion.

Its a very interesting discussion made so with the spirited opinions of Brian Meloche, Terrence Ryan, Brian Swartzfager, Kurt Wiersma and Dan Wilson.

Listen to this weeks podcast (Version 3.04) by clicking here or search for "ColdFusion Weekly" in iTunes.

Solution to CVSNT Permission Denied Error Message

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:40:00 GMT

The problem:

A CVSNT user can commit some files but other files come back with a rather cryptic message saying permission denied:

The server reported an error while performing the "cvs commit" command.
version3: cvs server: cannot change mode of file /cvsrepos/test.cfm,v: Permission denied
version3: cvs [server aborted]: cannot rename file /cvsrepos/,test.cfm, to /cvsrepos/,test.cfm,: Permission denied

This is caused by the Windows account associated with the cvs user not having enough permissions to overwrite files saved by another Windows and cvs user.

The Solution:

Grant the Windows user associated with the cvs user more permissions in Windows.

My 30onAir Video

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:13:00 GMT

30onAir is a rather fun site where developers explain why they love certain technologies like CF, Flex, Air, AJAX, etc. Here is my CF attempt:

How to Add a Derby Database with DerbyCFC

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Two simple lines to add a Derby database with DerbyCFC:

<cfset variables.derbyCFC = createObject("component","derbyCFC").init(adminPassword)>
<cfset variables.success = variables.derbyCFC.createIfNotExists(name)>

That will add a database with a datasource of the same name. The createIfNotExists function also takes in all the other potential settings for a datasource (select, insert, grant, etc). I made some small changes to the code base to make the creation possible in two lines and with this comes version 1 of DerbyCFC. I hope it proves useful for open source projects, let me know if you use it and if you have any suggestions.

It has been a fun little project to work on and interesting to delve a little more into the AdminAPI. Lots of good stuff in there.

Two Thumbs Up: Lynda Online Training

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:52:00 GMT

I have been learning Flex for a few months and the best resource I've found is Lynda online training. They have several Flex courses including many that focus on ColdFusion and Flex communication (and some on .NET and Java) and this has been extremely useful. I learn new topics and languages quicker from training and having the video's of all topics available at any time has been a big boost. Most video's are 3-10 minutes long which means I can pick up a new topic or part of a new topic during a moment of scheduled or unscheduled downtime.

One other huge advantage to the Lynda subscription is the sheer number of courses they offer that focus mainly on Apple and Adobe products. There are five ColdFusion courses that are very good and they complete the web development area with classes on CSS, HTML and SQL. Course's exist for many other products, for instance, at work we just bought a XServe and the Lynda training has proved invaluable in setting it up.

Overall I give the Lynda online movies two thumbs up!

New CFUnited Location is Great News Plus Review of Area

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:58:00 GMT

I am very excited that CFUnited has moved to the Washington Convention Center this year as the facility and the surrounding area are awesome. I may well be biased though: I live two blocks from the convention center! Here is a review of what to expect in the center and the area beyond.

The venue

The Walter E. Washington Convention Center (as it will be renamed soon) is a lovely convention center boasting the largest public art collection in DC. Spread over six city blocks the center is well designed and avoids the "big hall" mentality of many older convention centers. One small criticism I had of the Bethesda location was that session rooms where spread out over multiple floors. Having been in the Washington Convention Center many times and talking to Liz it seems that this year all session rooms will be off one hallway about a city block long. Hallway is an inaccurate description since its a 4-5 story glass viewfront of the street. As CFUnited gets bigger I like the idea of it staying intimate and I think that will happen this year.

The conference hotel is a top quality hotel, but one big plus this year, is no need for a shuttle for the overflow. Within walking distance are four or five other hotels and for the bigger conferences I see people walking up to half a mile to the center. Not a fan of hotels then try the Morrison-Clark Historic Inn (ColdFusion site :)) and the DC Guest House. June is a popular month in DC so book your hotels soon.

The area

The convention center is located just a few blocks north of downtown DC (an area also refered to as Chinatown, Penn Quarter and Gallery Place) and right above the Mt. Vernon Square / Convention Center metro stop. Downtown DC has been revitalized over the past 5 to 10 years and is now full of bars, restaurants and museums all partially inspired by the building of the Verizon Center (at the time it was the MCI Center). I'll start with the bars since thats probably of most interest.

Bars

In the convention center but accessed from 9th Street is the Old Dominion Brewhouse. My favorite is the basement Rocket bar with a good beer selection, pool tables and shuffle board. There is also a good Irish bar, the Irish Channel, a so-so one, Fado's and a beer hall, RFD, with over 30 beers on tap and 300 (yes, 300) others in bottles. An American classic is Clydes (ColdFusion site :)), a fashionable bowling and bar called Lucky Strike, which is above Bar Louie a casual American bar and a sports bar called The Green Turtle. All of those will pretty much take you wearing whatever (and make good places for watching Euro 2008 or other sports) but if you are looking for something more upscale these are your bars: Indeblue, Zaytina, Oya, Zola and Poste.

Restaurants

Downtown DC caters for every budget and time of day. At the high end are the four restaurants listed above (Indeblue, Oya, Zola and Poste) in the bars section -- DC liquor licenses are such that most bars are restaurants as well. Of special note is Zaytina which serves tapas sized portions of Mediterranean fare at good prizes. It also has two sister restaurants, the original Jaleo serving Spanish tapas and Oyamel featuring Mexican tapas. Rosa Mexicana also serves up full portions of Mexican food.

If you love wine you will love Proof, part wine bar, part restaurant. Likewise, if you love Vegetarian food go to Vegetate (the only restaurant listed thats north of the center). Two good Indian restaurants are Mehak and the much more fashionable Rasika. Trendy pizza is served up by Ella's and Matchbox which has more of a scene. Burma, serves, well Burmese food (well worth trying even if its just to eat cocaine chicken) and is above the excellent Kanlaya serving Thai, sushi can be found at Sushi Go Round and its sister restaurant Thai Chili serves well you can guess. Chinatown, is extremely small, but has many Chinese restaurants including China Garden.

Interesting, quick to places like California Tortilla (headquarters in Maryland!), Chop't serves up salads and Teaism won't break the bank but will fill you up. Fast food can also be found with McDonalds, Duncan Donuts, Chipotle, Five Guys and Burger King all around. There are some chain restaurants as well like Legal Sea Foods, Ruby Tuesdays and Hooters. Coffee wise there are enough Starbucks around (5 off the top of my head plus one in the center) to cafinate us all plus some more local places also serving breakfast like EuroCafe, Breakwells opposite the center and Cozy Cafe Corner which also has free wi-fi.

Museums & Monuments

Popular sites include the White House, Washington Monument, Holocaust Museum, Vietnam Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, National Gallery of Art, Portrait Gallery (currently featuring Stephen Colbert) all of which are free. And that is a distinctive feature about many of DC's popular museum: they are free. All of the Smithsonian museums are free thanks to donors (including the Federal government) and many others also follow this model. The National Building Museum, my favorite, is a stunning building and with interesting exhibits including one on DC which explains its history and relationship with its federal overlords (we have no representation in Congress).

Moving in to paid museums the most popular is the Spy Museum, looking for wax then there is Madame Tussards, and opening by this summer are the National Museum of Crime & Punishment and the Newseum. Plenty of good art galleries like the Corcoran and the Phillips Collection.

There are also plenty of theaters (second to only New York in tickets sold), blockbuster movie theaters and indie movie theaters.

Everything I've mentioned, except for a few of the memorials and museums, are in walking distance of the convention center and Hyatt hotel but there is more to DC if you are prepared to get on the metro or bus. So come to CFUnited and add on a day or three to visit DC. You won't be disappointed!

DerbyCFC: New Project with createIfNotExists function for Derby Databases

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:21:00 GMT

I've just released version 0.9 of DerbyCFC on RIAForge which is designed to make it easier to work with the Derby database embedded in ColdFusion 8.

DerbyCFC comes with two functions; createIfNotExists which does pretty much what it says and will create a new Derby datasource and database. getDerbyDatasources returns all Derby datasources in either raw format (a collection of structures) or as a query with a slightly smaller set of attributes.

The download zip includes example pages for creating a datasource and listing of current datasources. Go to the DerbyCFC project page.

I'm debating whether to extend this to provide a UI that would list and edit tables in a Derby database so let me know your thoughts. My hope is that this will make it easier to create Derby databases for other open source projects.

Why I Use Instantspot aka My Decision to Use Not Just Write Software

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:29:00 GMT

A little before I started this blog I realized I did not use web software for anything important to me. Sure, I used web mail (both GMail and Yahoo Mail) and paid bills online and read alot online but there was nothing really important to me that I used the web for.

At the same time I had just started with Interfolio and my salary became dependent on people wanting to pay for our software and services so it seemed that I should do likewise. As I am not applying to college I could not really eat my own dog food but I knew a blog would have be important to me and I if I could I would constantly tweak it. I decided to go with a hosting service.

So I picked Instantspot because of its features but also because I wanted to experience the joy, the frustration and all the other feelings of using software. Fortunately Instantspot is pretty damn good so I have way more joy than frustration but there are definitely times when I have thought, "with x tag or function I could tweak y to do z". I know at some point I would have tried to incorporate AJAX comments on my own blog. Instead I have tried to provide constructive feedback from time to time to Dave and Aaron.

Overall, not being able to do tweak my own blog and to experience using web software has been a very good thing for me.

A quick word on Instantspot 2: Its very good and the use of AJAX done in a very thoughtful way. If you would like an Instantspot invite let me know in the comments or use the Contact Form on the right. I have 5 to give out.

A quick word on the new look: I created the image with ColdFusion and reflected it with a function writen by Dave Ferguson. Thanks Dave!

cfdump output attrribute, The What, Why and How

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:25:00 GMT

The What
Starting with ColdFusion 8 Adobe added a new attribute, output, to the incredibly popular cfdump tag. The default value is browser which works exactly how it has since the tags inception.

The Why
So, why use the output attribute? Mostly at a time when the request is not going back to the browser such as a scheduled task or when the data is going to an AJAX request or Flex. Or to log something -- the advantage of using cfdump output= over cflog is cfdump will parse whatever you throw at it into a text format.

The How
cfdump takes any cf variables or pretty much any type of object and returns the data. Here is the classic cfdump of a query

<cfquery datasource="cfartgallery" name="getArtists">
SELECT artistID, city, firstname, lastname, state 
FROM artists
WHERE state = 'DC'
</cfquery>

<cfdump var="#getArtists#">

produces

Place a filename in the output attribute and ColdFusion will dump the contents in a text format to that file. If the file does not exist, CF will create it, if it does exist CF will append to it.

<cfdump var="#getArtists#" output="/artists.txt">

Here is the output in artists.txt

Note the text format of data output, instead of just dumping the html that gets returned to the browser, cf provides a lighter format for the output files.

The third option is console which if you started CF from a command prompt will dump the output to the command prompt. If not CF will place the output in the cfserver.log file. To start CF from a command prompt from a multi-instance install open up terminal and cd to /Applications/JRun/bin and enter ./JRun -start cfusion (Windows startup would be very similar). It is possible to start up the standard edition from the command line but there is little point to doing so as CF will still send the output to cfserver.log.

To send output to the console simply set output="console":

<cfdump var="#getArtists#" output="console">

produces this in Terminal:

Macs have a handy log viewer which works with any log file and automatically refreshes to show any changes. Here is the cfserver.log after running the above code on a Mac CF Standard Edition:

Overall the output attribute adds some useful capabilities to an extremely useful tag.

Many Thanks

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 19:23:05 GMT

Many thanks for everyone who voted for me in the Best Newcomer category in the CFEmmy's. I logged on today after two days offline and was very pleased to see I had won!

I found it very hard to decide who to vote for in most of the categories which illustrates the strength of the ColdFusion community. So, congratulations not just to all who won but also everyone who was nominated.

Happy Holidays!

I am Speaking at CFUnited

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:15:18 GMT

I am delighted to announce that I will be speaking at CFUnited next June. My topic is "Creating, Manipulating and Printing PDFs" and is in the Bootcamp CF track. Full description:

Learn how to create new pdfs, manipulate existing ones and print out the result automatically. This session will create a proposal pdf containing a custom letter with headers and footers, parts of other pdfs, screenshots of other work, a confidential watermark, a password to open and many other features. The created pdf will be printed at the end of the session.

As I scope out the session there may be room for a few more PDF tricks. Two of my last three jobs have involved a lot of work with PDFs and the capabilities in ColdFusion 8 are tremendous. I look forward to seeing you at CFUnited next summer!

Coda Adds Support for ColdFusion 8, Should Adobe do the Same for CFEclipse?

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:03:27 GMT

Coda, a good all round code editor for the Mac, has added full support for ColdFusion 8 in their latest release (version 1.1). Here is a screen shot:

While I like Coda I still prefer to use CFEclipse for coding on big projects due to its integration with CVS, snippets and complete code hinting among many others. Mark Drew has done an amazing job with the CFEclipse but I wish someone from Adobe would help him out with the code hints for CF8 (which are about 90% done). Here is what cfdump looks like in CFEclipse 1.3.1.6:

Surely generating the relevant XML file wouldn't be that difficult for someone at Adobe?

Turn Long URLs in to Short Ones with ShortURL

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:02:00 GMT

I have just released a new project on RIAForge called ShortURL that utilizes the onMissingTemplate function of ColdFusion 8. The full project description:

Short URL takes any URL then creates a random 6 character string and adds .cfm to it. When the link is clicked on onMissingTemplate receieves the URL, looks up the full URL and forwards the user to the full URL. Very similar to tinyURL and other services except this is hosted on your domain.

Jason Delmore suggested a while back that more ColdFusion open-source projects should have an install file. I have taken an attempt at this so install.cfm creates a database table and alters a setting in the Application.cfc file. After downloading the project, unzip it and run install.cfm.

This is a first release so if you find any problems let me know (we have been using this at Interfolio for 6 weeks with no problems).

We're Hiring, either Full-Time or Contractor

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:48:29 GMT

My company, Interfolio, is looking to hire either a full-time employee or a contractor -- we just want the best person we can find. I have been working for Interfolio since January and it really is a great place to work and we are growing at fast rate. We use ColdFusion 8 to do a lot of cool stuff. Job description follows, if you would like to apply send me your cover letter and resume to sam dot farmer at interfolio dot com.

Interfolio is looking for a great software engineer to work on our existing award winning product and new ventures.

Requirements:

Excellent coding ability (preferably in ColdFusion)
Experience with object-oriented frameworks (Mach-II, Model-Glue, ColdBox, etc)
Experience or interest in MySQL a plus
Great command of verbal and written English
Permanent legal right to work in the United States
May require some after business hours work

Benefits:

Work in downtown Washington, DC. Our office scores a 98 on walkscore.com
Competitive salary
Generous health insurance plan
401(k) retirement plan
Work on your choice of OS: Mac or Windows
Paid time off

Insanely Useful: Spoolmail

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 02:49:51 GMT

For years I have programmed all sorts of workarounds for sending email in development. Recently I tried Spoolmail, written by Ray Camden, and have found it to be insanely useful.

Set up is simple. First in the CF administrator set your mail server settings to a non existent mail server.

Second, as detailed in the instructions that come with spoolmail, place the folder in cfide/administrator folder and alter one file. Next time you log in to the CF administrator under Custom Extensions is a listing for Spoolmail.

Click on that and Spoolmail will list the contents of the undeliverable mail folder.

And here is a partial showing of clicking on one of the emails, in this case a multi-part email: