Casual Rumblings - Web20

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.

HELP: CFC+jquery+JSON

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:48:00 -0700

Ok, I've been at this for a couple of hours now. I thought I was on the right track, but it looks like I'm still a bit lost :(

I have a modal login form using jquery and colorbox plugin.

Here is a snippet of my jquery ajax call: $j.ajax({ url: 'cfc/security.cfc?method=login', data: datastring, dataType: 'json', success: function(data) { var response = eval(data); console.log(response.MESSAGE); $j('.ajaxMsg').css({"display":"block"}).html(data); $j.fn.colorbox.resize(); } });
When calling this CFC from a URL using the correct parameters, I get this: {"MESSAGE":"Verified! Logging in...","FNAME":"John","LNAME":"Smith","VALID":true} This is exactly what I want.

However, when running the ajax call above I get:

{"MESSAGE":"Verified! Logging in....","FNAME":"John","LNAME":"Smith","VALID":true}

And this is screwing me up.

Here is my CFC snippet: .... sql statements ... if valid if invalid

Ok...what am I doing wrong? :(

Why does IE suck so #$(*# much!? Great error message!

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:28:00 -0700

Now if only I can find line #131,265,925 I'd be able to fix it.

I don't have 131k lines of code on this page! How do you diagnose this? None of the available tools out there work well for IE.

Gawd...IE is going to drive me to give up web programming and become a used car salesman.

::: hair pulling :::

Adobe Flex 4 for Coldfusion programmers -- all day training -- Nov. 20 -- San Francisco -- FREE!!

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:02:00 -0700

I'm not sure if everyone is aware of the subject of this posting, but if you're not, please visit this url for more information: http://ria.meetup.com/12/calendar/11859336/

If you're in the bay area and want to get your feet wet with Flex this is the place to be.

Hope to see you there!

jquery ajax + xml + IE = hair loss

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:01:00 -0700

I've done ajax before with jQuery with good results on all browsers...until

I used an XML return with IE (all IE's that is).

When returning XML from a CFC (or any other server-side script), IE doesn't treat the XML document as, well, XML.

It actually barfs on it unless you tell it to load up the ActiveX control to parse your XML doc. (psst..Thanks Microsoft).

Just look at this:


$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "ajaxtest.cfc?method=getallblogs",
data: datastring,
success: function(data) {
var xml;
if ( $.browser.msie ) {
xml = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");
xml.async = false;
xml.loadXML(data);
} else {
xml = data;
}
$(xml).find('blog').each(function(){
var id = $(this).attr('id');
var title = $(this).find('name').text();
var url = $(this).find('url').text();
$('
').html(''+title+'').appendTo('#blogInfo');
});
}
});

See that little blurb in the ajax call for "if ($.browser.msie)"? That's the call you'll need to do to make IE behave like 99% of the other browsers out there.

I've put together a short demo. I know the code is duplicated, but this is for demo purposes. Hope this helps you guys doing XML data returns.

Oh and once again "Thank you Microsoft" for making my web development career such a wild adventure.

XML data return demo

p.s. the data returned is from my blackberry bloggers site. If you're a blackberry fan, check it out (http://www.blackberrybloggers.org). It might look a bit familiar :)

Restaurants + flash website + mobile = FAIL!

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:43:00 -0700

When will restaurants realize that full flash websites suck for those of us on the go?

Situation: I'm out with friends wondering where we should go for lunch. Someone says, "Let's try XYZ restaurant". I pull out my blackberry. Other non-descript friends pull out their iPhones and we get to XYZ Restaurant's website. Guess what? It's a FULL FLASH site. None of us can render it and we all groan and go to some other directory like Yelp, CitySearch, menupages..etc.

How do we get the word to web designers/programmers who do restaurant websites that they need to do 2 versions of the website: Mobile and everything else.

SVN/CVS: Any good Commit Comment templates?

Fri, 08 May 2009 11:11:00 -0700

We're implementing SVN in our office and well, things are well under way.

However, people are going to start committing their changes in various ways. So reading commits from multiple developers (might) prove to be confusing.

I was playing around with SVN for eclipse and it's got a great feature called, "Commit Templates".

Being new, I created 2 templates for myself and was thinking about making Commit Templates a standard among the developers.

Here's what I made up so far:

=BUG FIX=

Bug Description:

Fix:

Project:

=NEW FEATURE=

Description:

Project:

Again, these are just for me. I was wondering if anyone else has any other templates that you use and like?

Thanks!

jQuery + ajax + logout form

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:17:00 -0700

I love jquery! Let me just say that now. I'm a true convert from prototype/scriptaculous. I love prototype for all it's pros. But, I can't deny the support from the jQuery community and the momentum it has in the web world.

With that said, I dove in and started playing around with the jQuery UI plugin (built by the jQuery guys of course). The dialog plug in is simply DOPE!! (is that a youngin' term?)

I was playing around with a logout confirmation dialog and here's what I've come up with. It's a bit verbose for my taste and by NO means the best way to do this. But, I do hope it points people in the right direction if they're looking to do something like this.


$('#logout').click(
		function(e){
		e.preventDefault();
		
        $('Are you sure you want to log out?').dialog(
			{
			modal: true,
			height: 100, 
			width:350,
			show:"blind",
			hide: "blind",
			buttons:{
				"Yes":function() {
					$.ajax({ 
						url: 'someActionCall.cfm', 
						complete: function() {
							$('#confirmLogout').html("See you next time!");
							$('.ui-dialog-buttonpane').css('display','none');
							var dlg = $("#confirmLogout").parents(".ui-dialog:first");
							dlg.animate({ width: 200},50);
							setTimeout(function(){$("#confirmLogout").dialog("close")},3000);
							setTimeout(function(){location.reload();},1500);	
							} 
						});
					},
				"No":function() {
					$("#confirmLogout").dialog("close");
					}
			},
			close:function(){
				 $("#confirmLogout").remove();
			}
			});

        return false; 
	});

The demo can be found here: Logout demo

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

jQuery ajax with coldfusion

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:42:00 -0700

Ray Camden blogged about this recently and I thought I'd take time out to do some of this jQuery/Ajaxy stuff myself.

I was in the midst of trying to figure out how to to a simple login authentication process with CF8 and jQuery.
I've done this in the past with Prototype and this wonderful ajax library JSMX. Simple library to use..just love it! But, with the times, I figured I should try this "jQuery" thing. Seems to be alot of momentum behind it and there's been a lot of raves. So I dove in. [More]

Adobe Flex Groups for N00bs?

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:57:00 -0700

Does anyone know of any flex groups (google or yahoo) that are geared towards those just getting their feet wet with Flex?

I'm in the midst of doing some coding in it and have a ton of questions. I'd love to have post some of my questions and get some feedback from the guru's of the flex community.

Thanks

Web 2.0 Expo 44% discount code

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:19:00 -0700

If you're planning on attending Web 2.0 Expo coming up, you are going to want to use this discount code.

Registration Promo code: obama22 = 44% discount.

It works! I just did a faux registration with it and the full conference pass @ $1,395 was chopped to $781.20.

Not sure how long it will work (meaning time or # of uses), but get on it fast if you want to save some big bucks :)

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?