Adobe Developer Week recordings
If you couldn't make any of the Adobe Developer Week meetings, the recordings have been released here:
http://www.adobe.com/communities/developerweek/
Recording URL and Slides from CF/OS Presentation
For those who missed my presentation last night on open source and ColdFusion, you can watch it here:
http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/p87866843/
I've also attached the slide deck to the blog entry. This was my first new presentation in some time, so I rather enjoyed it. It was also the first presentation without any code that I've done in... um... forever I think.
Presentation tonight on ColdFusion and Open Source
Tonight I'll be presenting to KCDevCore on ColdFusion and Open Source. The meeting starts at 6:30 CST (Cool Standard Time), but I'm going on around 7:15ish. The online URL is http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/kcdevcore. If you can drag yourself away from GTA4, please join me! (And no, I don't have my copy yet, and no, I'm not happy about that! ;)
Reader looking for UK-based (or related) Reseller
I'm just passing this on. I don't like to get into the 'find me a host' type conversations as it isn't an area I'm experienced in (and like religion, it has no final answer), but I figured this request was specific enough where maybe some of my European readers could help out. Anyway, on with the question:
I have a slant on the usual "what CF hosting companies are out there?" I've been searching for a couple of months now for a good CF8 reseller plan. My company is based in the UK which means we fall under the European wide data protection laws and so do all of our European clients. In essence the laws state that all personal data must be stored on a server within the EU. Exceptions are granted to servers located in countries with similar data protection laws which currently are only Argentina, Canada, Guernsey and Switzerland. US companies which subscribe to the US Dept of Commerce "Safe Harbour" scheme are also OK but the only CF hosting company I've found which subscribes is CrystalTech and I've heard the quality of their hosting is hit and miss according to which server you're put on.
Ideally I'd also like a hosting company which can provide english speaking support and is in a relatively close time zone to the UK. I'm not looking for free or dirt cheap hosting but the prices I've found offered by UK companies make you're eyes water (eg. $1000 per year for 1Gb of disk space and 10Gb monthly bandwidth / $5000 per year for 10Gb disk space and 50Gb monthly bandwidth)
Do you have any ideas or recommendations? I've been through Ben Forta's entire ISP list but the European entries are really out of data - this is no reflection on Ben as it's up to individual companies to manage their entries.
I've asked the reader to monitor this thread and if he wants to post his contact information he is welcome to, but if folks could help him out, I'd definitely appreciate it.
Real men write their own forms (or do they?)
I have to admit that I'm kind of a - dare I say - diva - when it comes to forms. I prefer to type them out and do all the validation by hand. In the past I've written form 'helpers' to handle generating and validating forms (*), but I haven't done that for quite some time. I feel like I've written a few million forms in my life time, and I'm sure I'll write a few million more.
This week a coworker introduced me to WuFoo. WuFoo is an online form service. As you can guess, it lets you build forms and host them on their server. It handles storing and processing all the results.
What is truly slick is how they handle all the editing. Everything is drag drop, so to add a form field you simply drag over the type of form field you need. You can then double click on the field to edit the label, set requirement status, etc.
It has a slick reporting UI as well. I can build a form with a radio button and design a form that uses a pie chart to display the results.
When would I use this? Probably never as I know I can whip out a quick form in a few seconds. But for folks who don't have access to Me (I'm not cheap ;) or may not even have a web site, this is sweet service.
Feel free to play with the form I created.
What makes a code diva?
Are you a code diva? Do you demand spaces over tabs? Do you insist on Hungarian notation for variables? Do you get into a hissy fit when the order of attributes for the cffunction tag don't follow name/access/output/returnType/hint format? Do you throw your cell phone at fellow developers who laugh when you insist on strict white space suppression? If so - you may be a Code Diva.
I was talking to Dan Vega yesterday when he (jokingly) (I think) called me a code diva. We got to talking about the various 'rules' that we follow as developers that aren't best practices per se, but just coding conventions that we tend to insist on.
Here's my own personal list of things that I insist on - specifically excluding items that I think are truly critical, best practice type behaviors:
- Tabs instead of spaces. To me it makes it easier to move/edit files.
- Strict whitespace control. cfsetting enablecfoutputonly and output=false all over the place
- Nice whitespace in the code. I'm working for a client now where the CFML code is very tight. This was done on purpose to make very clean HTML, but it bugs me.
- Lowercase tags and functions. And yes, I know I used to do <CFOUTPUT>, but that's Old (Fat) Ray, the guy I pretend doesn't exist (along with the guy who played in Rocky Horror). By lowercase I mean camelcase really, but mostly lowercase. Mostly.
I'm a diva in other ways too. I love to speak at user groups and conferences - but I tend to be a bit needy. Not needy as in "Only Green M&Ms" needy, but needy in, "Tell me where I have to go and when and then tell me when to shut up." Heck though, I figure if I'm speaking at a conference and not getting paid, I can be a bit diva-ish. I'm also at a point now where I insist on a free hotel. It can be a cheap hotel, but I expect accommodations to be paid. (When I demand air fare, then you will know it's time to knock me down a peg or two.)
I'm also a bit of a diva when it comes to publications. I always ask that people use "Raymond", not "Ray", when listing my name on other sites, conference material, magazines, etc. Don't ask me why. I just figure Raymond sounds more professional (so sayeth the man who signs everything 'Jedi Master').
What about you? How are you a diva? And feel free to use Flex code examples too. Heck, even PHP would be fine. (All two of you using PHP out there and reading my blog.)
Ask a Jedi: MVC too much work?
Darren asks:
I've been doing some reading into design patterns specifically mvc, it all started as I got into flex, it all seems a bit scary as well , i've never thought about it for coldfusion and as I come from a design/flash background i've never had any formal programming training, i'm just self taught. I guess i can see the benefits of code reuse but it seems alot of work for normal websites, where do you sit on the issue, do you use design patterns at all. Do you think its worth learning, most of the time I work on my own or with one other person so I don't have large development teams to worry about.
I don't know Darren - can't we discuss something less controversial like politics or religion? ;)
This comes up from time to time in discussions of using a framework. Obviously if you are building a guest book (remember those?) a framework may be overkill. But one thing to keep in mind is that - at least in my experience - very few projects move from complexity to simplicity. Most projects start simple and grow in complexity. With that in mind - I tend to always use a framework like Model-Glue to help me manage the complexity.
I'm very much pro-framework for this reason alone. Having the framework help me organize and set up my application means I'm thinking less about crap and more about business logic.
So to focus on 'is it worth it for normal web sites', I'd say absolutely yes. Is it worth it for a 2 page application on a brochure-ware site? Nope.
is your framework up to date?
I was helping a buddy debug an issue this morning with his Model-Glue web site. The error was being thrown from Model-Glue itself, not his own application code, but he naturally assumed the issue was with his site.
He shared with me the line of code throwing the error, and when we compared his line with my line, it became apparent right away that his version of Model-Glue was a bit out of date.
Once he updated (to version 2.0.304) the issue went away. We are all trained to get our operating systems and other programs up to date, but it probably makes good sense to check your framework versions from time to time as well.
Obviously if everything is fine you may not want to mess with things, and also you want to be careful if multiple sites on the same box are using the framework, but it is something to keep in mind!
Adobe Developer Week
Wow, I just found this out myself, but it may be old news. Next week Adobe is hosting a week full of developer sessions you can attend via Connect.
Topics cover ColdFusion, AIR, Flex, Flash, and other items. If you can't sign up for a session (or be there when it happens), Adobe will be providing recordings 5 days later.
Again - wow!
Lighthouse Pro 2.4.3
I'm happy to announce the release of LighthousePro 2.4.3. For those who may not know what Lighthouse is, it is an open source bug tracker. This version includes:
- New logo, provided by Ron Stewart and Marco Olson. A favicon.ico is also provided. I had mentioned a redesign a few weeks back - this is not it. The only design change here is the logo.
- Support for storing passwords in hash format. This was done by Jeff Smallwood. Also provided by Jeff is a way to disable RSS feeds. He thought some people may be worried about the 'autologin' nature of the RSS feeds, so a simple preference was added to support turning them off.
- I fixed a few minor bugs in printing, and added an alpha sort to the project list.