Web Biz

    ColdFusion Weekly is among the many ColdFusion resources available to us CF programmers in an attempt to make us all better at what we do.  I was once told that if you want to be great at what you do you must love what you, always take the road less traveled, and do it all the time.  Another words you should constantly be improving your game.  Like when we we’re young, if we wanted to good at a sport we had to love the game, love to practice, and learn by challenging yourself.  Too often many programmers (and not just CF programmers) follow the same routine, using the same old code, and never progress while the technology continually evolves.  One important role of any technologist is to keep abreast of new technologies, methodologies, solutions, and more.
    There are many ways a CF programmer can widen and deepen their knowledge and love for the language including attending CFUG meetings, listening to CF podcasts, taking CF quizzes, reading up on Forta’s Web Application Construction Kit or Advanced CF MX 7 Application Development books, reading gurus’ blogs (such as this ), and more.
    A great CF learning resource I came across the other day is ColdFusion Weekly, which hosts CF_QUIZ to challenge your CF knowledge as well as a CF Podcast that you can even call into with your own questions.  There is also the CFUnited Podcast, The ColdFusion podcast, and Helms and Peters Out Load.
    Also, try to regularly check out the several great blogs dedicated to ColdFusion such as (in no particular order):

• Pete Freitag’s Blog
• Simon Horwith’s Blog
• Sean Corfield’s Blog
• Robi Sen’s Blog
• Ray Camden’s Blog
• Mark Kruger’s Blog
• Ben Forta’s Blog

    I have been a longtime (actually, more like maybe a year) user of Pete Freitag’s CFDocs.org web site (I should also mention that he has a new cssdocs.org up and running now too!).  This is a great shortcut to the Adobe Livedocs for ColdFusion instead of using their terribly slow search.  I often just go to cfdocs.org/tagname.  For example, to go to the cfloop docs page, just type cfdocs.org/cfloop into your brower, and BAM! you’re there.  If you don’t know about this extremely valuable tool, I suggest you check it out.
    The main reason for this posting was to also make people aware of the great bookmarklets and search plugins that Pete has created for us!!  If you have ever used the bookmarklets used by del.icio.us then you will find these quite similar.
    Just press the bookmark on your browser toolbar , a popup will ask for the name of the ColdFusion tag you want:

type in the tag name, and you’re there!  Also, the search plugin is available for Mozilla/Firefox browsers.  Gotta say, I wish I had found these earlier!

    A relatively unknown feature of CSS 2 is the ability to define styles to not only just specific tags but also elements based upon their attributes using the bracket notation "[ ]".  A common use for attribute selectors in CSS 2 is to create CSS rules that apply to different anchor tags dependent upon their href attribute; such as providing hyperlink cues.  Hyperlink cues will often use a graphic representation of the target of the link to provide a hint to the user if the link is to a PDF or Word document, to an external web site, for a popup, etc…  If you are interesting in using hyperlink cues, check out the article entitled Showing Hyperlink Cues with CSS by Ask the CSS Guy.
    Although providing generic images for use in hyperlink cues is a great step in the right direction of increasing the usability of your web site for the user’s benefit, you can also use favicons to relate a graphic identity with the hyperlink.  Wondering how to do this?  Check out the article Hyperlink cues with Favicons.  Thanks CSS Guy!

    I am sure that most of you have heard the argument that Microsoft’s newest operating system Windows Vista is very similar (perhaps too similar) to Apple’s current Mac OS X Tiger operating system.  Well, here is a interesting article: Mac OS X Shines in comparison with Windows Vista, and check out this video that is quite funny.

    I thought this would be a fun posting, so here is my list of New Years resolutions for all ColdFusion programmers:

• I will always scope my variables and learn when to use which scope when
• I will learn to use unit testing using CFUnit
• I will try out Flex instead of just ignoring all those article in CFDJ about Flex
• I will truly take advantage of the capabilities of CFMX 7 including the various event gateways
• I will write Ajax applications that are rock solid, degrade gracefully, and are not bloated
• I will actually use what <!—Comments—> are used for: commenting my code
• I will take advantage of the Object-Oriented Programming capabilities that ColdFusion offers instead of ignoring them
• I will try all of the Frameworks to determine if which one (if any) I should use
• I will start using application.cfc instead of the various application.cfm, onrequestend,cfm, etc… files that clutter up my applications
• I will write at least one useful open-source application and release it for use by the entire ColdFusion community instead of tucking it away in the vault
• I will attend at least one (and hopefully more) ColdFusion User Group meeting
• I will perform better error catching and checking in my applications that actually notify me when an error has occured
• I will finally donate to those groups/people whose applications and code I use on a daily basis

    If you are using AJAX to make asynchronous calls to your server it is extremely important to provide an indication to the user what is going on.  Otherwise they may become frustrated and repeatedly hit the button or call the action several times, which will only increase the time they have to wait for a response and make them even more frustrated!  Also, I try to have a loading indication as close as possible to where the user is on the page (or where we expect them to be).  You could always use a small ‘Loading’ box in the upper-left or right hand corner (such as the one that Google uses in Gmail), but I like to use the animated gif indicators.

    I used to have a folder with a bunch of indicators in it which I would use for the various projects I am working on until I ran across this highly valuable web site: Ajaxload.  The site provides the ability to specify the type of indicator, the foreground color and background color (or transparent) of the indicator.  Yep, its that simple… thanks guys!

    Ran across this article and thought it was pretty interesting: Swooshy Curly Quotes without image on the 24 ways site.  The infamous curly quotes that are often used in comments on blogs and such are often created using images to ensure consistent appearance and style across all browsers and platforms. 

    This article suggests using large text with CSS styling to create the desired appearance rather than using images.  A simple yet different approach to create the large quotes without the use of any images.

    I’m looking forward to a new series of 24 ways for 2007, any suggested topics?