Casual Rumblings - Technology

Coldfusion Meetup: "SEO and ColdFusion" - May 27, 2010

Mon, 24 May 2010 17:27:00 -0700

"Search Engine Optimization for the ColdFusion Developer"

TOPIC DESCRIPTION: (provided by the speaker) In today's world, the bulk of our traffic to the websites we create comes from search engines. And with the exception of failed business models burning through VC money, more traffic equals more money. But few developers bother to do even basic search engine optimization, which can dramatically improve their websites performance on Google and the like. The good news is that the basics of SEO is relatively easy to do, especially inside of most CFML applications. We'll go over the fundamentals of SEO and how you can easily integrate these principals into your application. We'll also discuss some free programs you can use to track your progress, and some other techniques to keep you in Google's good graces.

MEETING URL: http://experts.acrobat.com/cfmeetup/

DURATION: Approx. 1 hour

SPEAKER: Jeff Gladnick

Jeff Gladnick lives in San Francisco, CA and has been a ColdFusion developer for over 10 years, since version 4.5. He's developed web applications for a variety of companies including the Produce Marketing Association, Dun & Bradstreet, The Gap, and Adobe. He particularly likes Model Glue as a framework, and also owns http://www.greatdentalwebsites.com, a company that allows dentists to create their own website (using a model-glue application).

WHEN: Thurs. May 27, 12:00pm US ET (UTC/GMT-4)

RECORDING: As always, the meeting will be recorded, and the recording URL will be posted after the meeting at http://recordings.coldfusionmeetup.com.

Have an iPhone? Wish you had an Android? Now you can have both!!

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:00:00 -0700

Check out this sweet hack of the iPhone running Android!

waving a one fingered gesture at Microsoft..wth?!

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:18:00 -0700

Ok..here's the situation...

I'm creating an HTML email with tables and background colors.

Lo and behold, if you nest tables, Outlook 2007 will strip out the background color. Wait...what? Yeah, exactly.

But, when you open the email in outlook and then view message in browser, voila! the background color emerges!

Thank you MS for using 2 different HTML rendering engines. One of the best cases of, 'the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing'

::: waving finger gesture :::

Coldfusion 9 vs latest iteration of Railo?

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:49:00 -0700

Does anyone know of any comparison sites out there that I can view?
Or does anyone know off the top of their head the pros/cons of each?

I know the big glaring PRO of Railo = FREE. But, I've always believed in, "you get what you pay for".

Thanks!

Aptana Standalone + CFBuilder plugin...possible?

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 02:38:00 -0700

I've installed Aptana Standalone, then downloaded CFBuilder. I was hoping that I could install CFBuilder as an add-on to Aptana, but seems like I can't. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Should I do the CFBuilder as a standlone then Aptana as a plug-in? Thoughts? Thanx

Dreamweaver CS4 + SVN...anyone try this?

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:31:00 -0700

I just started a new job where they use Eclipse. No biggie. They just wanted to use it because of it's Tortoise integration and CFEclipse.

I have yet to embrace Eclipse or CFEclipse for that matter. I'm strictly a DW fan.

Since DW CS4 is on my home machine and I don't employ any versioning control on my home machines (does anyone do this?), I was wondering if there were any pitfalls with using the SVN plugin for DW CS4.

Thanks everyone!

Internet Explorer 8: Really?..why?

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:29:00 -0700

Ok, I just downloaded the latest and greatest Redmond browser. I have to say there are some good things and then of course, there are bad things. It's by far worlds better than IE 6, but it's still....Internet Explorer.

Here's a thought...Why doesn't M$ just stop making IE altogether? Seriously? They've made web development a headache since day one of IE. Tried to gain market share and control how to program for the web. That failed miserably.

Suggestion? Why not have M$ partner with FF to help distribute with their OS? MS won't partner with the other browsers (Safari? ha! Ballmer and Jobs partnering?, Chrome? ha! Didn't Ballmer want to eradicate google from the planet?) Just makes sense to me if M$ and FF partner. We'd be so much better off with web development and "standards" compliance.

Ok..time for me to get off the hookah heheheh

Oh...Bring Down IE6!

Overcoming IE's annoying "click" sounds

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:18:00 -0700

I was very intrigued at the new IE 8 so I went and downloaded it and installed it.

After 3mins of using it, I realized, "God this clicking sound with every link click is like a mosquito on your ear while you're trying to sleep". I haven't used IE in MONTHS (if it weren't so damn tied to the WinOS I'd have removed it eons ago), so I've been relieved of it's annoyances.

Then I used the greatest thing since sliced bread, and searched google for "annoying click sounds IE".

Found this: Remove Annoying Clicks IE

Nuff said....

no wait..."DIE IE!!!"

Now...Nuff said..

jQuery + ajax dialog + load external content

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:33:00 -0700

I was intrigued by Ray Camden's blog about simple dialog popups with jQuery. I saw some of his examples and wanted to take them a step further.

http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2009/2/1/Creating-a-Dialog-with-jQuery-UI

His example shows that the content is inline with the document and the jQuery code just extracts it from the page and shows it in a dialog box. Cool, yeah, but...what if you wanted to pull in external content?

This is what I came up with:


$(document).ready(function(){
	//define config object
   var dialogOpts = {
		title: "My First AJAX dialog",
		modal: true,
		autoOpen: false,
		height: 500,
		width: 500,
		open: function() {
		//display correct dialog content
		$("#example").load("beta/loremipsum.html");}
		};
    $("#example").dialog(dialogOpts);	//end dialog
	
	$('#showdialog').click(
		function (){
			$("#example").dialog("open");
			return false;
		}
	);

});

The "example" div is within the page. It's blank. But, get's populated by the open option within the dialog options. That's how I got around it.

Can anyone tell me if this is the "best practices" way of doing this? Is there a better more efficient way?

Dialog Demo

Apple iPhone 3.0 and all that hoopla...

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:12:00 -0700

I've had the iPhone 1.0 a long time ago. Right when they introduced it. I don't own it anymore. I had 3 irritating months with it and sold it. Moved onto the Blackberry. It's become my new girlfriend

I just saw that release notes of the iPhone 3.0 SDK...and am wondering what's all the hoopla about?

This is my Blackberry vs. iPhone 3.0 SDK comparison [More]

Apple Safari 4 Beta...um...why'd ya do that?

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:08:00 -0700

Today I was trying to resist the urge to get more Apple software on my laptop, but I just couldn't resist the "curiosity" urge to see what all the hoopla was, about the new Safari 4 Beta.

First off, let me say that, since my bouts with iPods and iPhones and of course iTunes, I've lost respect for Apple and have repeatedly referred to them as "Crapple" to friends, family and co-workers.

With that, you can guess I was ready to bash Safari, get ready to load up Add/Remove from control panel and smile as Firefox loads up :)

Nope. I was duly surprised. I actually like Safari 4. It's lightning fast (thank you webkit) and the home page that looks like a Jeopardy screen is a nice touch.

But!!! (yeah you saw that coming) there's something that took me aback. First off, "where's the title bar..all I see are tabs." So I double clicked the tabs to see if it acts as a title bar, and sure enough, it restored/maximized my browser. Definitely a paradigm shift.

But the biggest paradigm shift for me (and still bugs me), is the fact that to close the tab, the "X" close button, is on the left of the tab. What!? Why? The whole universe is used to the close button on the right or upper right. That's just the way "it is". Why are you forcing me to look for the new location? I know it's small, but it's really irritating.

I think I'll stick to my Firefox with closing tab items where they should be and the umpteen amounts of plugins to make my life easier.

just my 2 cents

Stupid Stupid Stupid...Don't you hate it when you do something REALLY stupid like...

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:56:00 -0700

FORMATTING YOUR DATA DRIVE TO DO A FRESH OS INSTALL, instead of your OS DRIVE?!?!

AARRGGHH!! Now looking for a good NTFS Data Retrieval software package. ARGH!!

I could just bang my head on a brick wall until I wake up from the floor right now.

:: breathe....breathe...::

UDPATE:
Using a program called GetDataBack for NTFS, I was able to recover most of my files!! yay! Most importantly I got back my wwwroot directory under inetpub...PHEW!!

Now I have to deal with all my MP3 files and photo files named something cryptic like, "AA300DF.JPG" and figure out what it is by opening it up first. OH FUN!!!

Highly recommended...Get GetDataBack for NTFS. Worth the $80 price to get back your data.

"Green" jobs..anyone in the hunt for a green job? I am.

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:49:00 -0700

I live in California. More specifically, San Francisco. So it's no wonder that I'm inundated with a "green" way of life. I do have to admit, it's become more and more upfront in my mind that we do sorely need to get off of fossil fuels if not for this generation but for the next generations to come.

With that said, I thought I'd turn my job search direction in the field of renewable energies. Solar, Wind, Hydro, etc.

I was wondering if anyone doing their job hunt is also targeting this industry. If you are, could you be so kind as to leave a link or 2 on some of the more popular green job boards?

Thanks and just for clarification, I am not a tree hugging berkeley hippie :) No tie-dyed shirts or birkenstocks in my closets. hahahha

Windows 7: Excited or could care less?

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:11:00 -0700

I saw this posting on Yahoo's site: Windows 7 Almost Final

And it made me think are there that many people out there salivating for it's release the way they were with the release of Windows95? (which I never understood).

But, from what little I've read about Win7, it doesn't look like there's much of a change from Vista to 7. I could be wrong, as I haven't been following the blogosphere on this topic. But, I know for myself, I'm torn.

I liked Vista but after a while, I went back to XP Pro. I'm happy, but I feel that I'm missing out on the "latest and greatest". When XP was released, I too held back from upgrading from Windows 2000. Now that I'm fully adopted into XP, the whole "upgrade" history is starting over.

Aside from you Mac zealots, is anyone looking forward to Windows 7?

It's 2009: Are we still programming for 800x600 browsers?

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:49:00 -0700

I'm in the midst of creating a couple of websites and was just wondering what is the "new" standard for screen resolutions.

I do remember a while back that the holy grail of screen resolutions was 800x600. Please please please tell me this has gone the way of the 8-track.

I'm thinking with the advent of cheap and powerful video cards, every up-to-date computer should be at minimum, 1024x768. (I'm hoping higher)

Has anyone looked at their stats program to see what your visitors screen resolution has been lately?