learncf.com Launched!

learncf.com has been launched (ahead of schedule). The site is now live and function and we will be looking to add a minimum of 1 tutorial per week to the site.

Enjoy!

http://learncf.com

learncf.com is Coming!

A new training based website aimed at providing a collection of good quality tutorials will be launched on the 1st of September AEST. This is a 100% free community based website, there will be no advertising.

Every tutorial must meet the following requirements

1. Must run on CF8
2. Must be self contained (ie not require frameworks or third party libraries)
3. Must use the coldfusion demo databases if it uses databases
4. Must have a working example

We are looking for people to either author a tutorial or offer an existing tutorial that they may have blogged, simply post your interest here or email me. We will take the tutorial, ensure it is appropriate and not too similar to existing tutorials. Authors will be credited.

Visit the site learncf.com for a sample tutorial so that you can see what they will look like.

Color Coding ColdFusion Code

I've been working on a website, one of the things I needed was a code formatter.


It's a work in progress, and I won't post the code yet, but it seems to be working. It's based around the code from BlogCFC which looks to be originally written by Dain Anderson.


It had a few bits that I didn't understand, and some formatting that I didn't want. So I have severly hacked it for my own purposes. Here's what I did:

1. Change it from being script to tag based (refuse to use script until 100% support)
2. Made use my favourite var local = {} to ensure all variables are scope.
3. Added a colorCode from file method
4. Added line numbering to the output
5. Change the formatting and some of the colors to match DreamWeaver (might add an eclipse option also)
6. And just a general tidy up of variables that were not being used etc.

Because of the way that it works, lots of regular expressions on <> combo's it won't color it's self properly, not sure I need to fix that.

If your interested in a simple example. NOTE: Link removed, this has been released, see the New Blog Entry.

As usual all comments and suggestions welcome and I will share the code once I finalise it.

.NET for ColdFusion Developers

I saw a blog entry today, that linked to some videos on .NET for ColdFusion Developers, the link didn't work, but I found the videos and thought I'd post

Introduction to ASP.NET for ColdFusion Developers (Part 1 of 3)
Introduction to ASP.NET for ColdFusion Developers (Part 2 of 3)
Introduction to ASP.NET for ColdFusion Developers (Part 3 of 3)

Free Poker Blind Timer

I wanted a Poker Blind timer for the poker night with the Guys, did a quick search and couldn't find anything that was even half decent.

So I thought I'd write one, I started in Javascript, then lost interest quickly, then whipped it up in Flash using ActionScript 2. I got that working using timers, but wasn't really happy, found that a 1 second timer isn't very accurate.

I then rewrote it in Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3. This time using Date object thus keeping the countdown in sync with the clock. All was good and working, but it looked a bit drab.

So I thought I'd try it again in Flex 2, actually used the Flex 3 Builder beta. And the port from Flash CS3 to Flex 2 was fairly painless, actually quite liked it. Creating the interface in Flex is much easier and linking into methods was easier also.

I'll probably compile this up as a Adobe AIR product soon, just need to read the docs or find a quick tutorial. I've never really looked at AIR.

Anyway, have a look, all comments and suggestions welcome.

Poker Blind Timer

Minutes: Minutes between blind increase
Blind: Small Blind Starting Point
200 / 250: Balances blinds such that when they reach 200, they go to 250, so that you get 250, 500, 1000 etc.

Start: Start the timer, also allows Pause and Resume.
Reset: Stops the timer and resets all options the entered values.

I think it's self explanatory, if you play poker.

NEW VERSION! http://dale.fraser.id.au/2010/02/poker-blind-timer-version-2.html

CF8 Server Monitor Quandary

I have an issue with CF8 Standard and lack of Server Monitoring.

Adobe, say this is not an issue as you can us it in the developer version, so you can develop, test, tweak and monitor the performance. Cool right?

Well not quite, as if your planning on deploying on Standard, then some features are throttled. But when your developing on developer they are not throttled, so monitoring performance is not really a true indication of performance once you push to prodution on Standard.

So what is needed here, is something, either.

1. Add single server monitoring to Standard
2. Add the ability for developer version to go into throttled mode.

Obviously I prefer 1 over 2, but even 2 would be better than nothing.

ColdFusion 8 vs Flex 2

I posted a while back that we were not moving to Flex 2 but we were waiting to see what ColdFusion 8 had to offer.

I have evaluated the features and benefits of both languages and have made the decision that ColdFusion 8 is a better solution.

The addition of DHTML widgets, such as Tabs, Grid etc, etc has been a welcomed addition for us. We develop applications that are for use within Clinical Trials and a lot of our customers simply do not have the permission to install the flash player. This makes it hard for us to use Flex or any of the CF7 flash features.

But the new HTML options available in ColdFusion 8 will now allow us to have a Web 2 dynamic application that is both functional and attractive.

The other thing that hurt Flex in this evaluation is that compare to ColdFusion, Flex is hard work. ColdFusion excels better than any other language that I have ever used at making complicated things easier.

I did tout that we might consider our future with CF and move to .NET (which would be our second choice) given the price hike, but I'm over that now and we purchased standard edition.

So pricing issues aside, this is just a great product, probably 25% better than ColdFusion 7 and the speed increases are fabulous. So in a market where we were tossing up between Flex, .NET and ColdFusion 8, even though the other two are free, ColdFusion still wins.

Ive Come To a Sad Realisation - Disable User Access Control in Vista

Several months in on Vista, and I'm sick of the User Access Control. It really annoys me, some things you do ask you 2 or 3 times to confirm. What makes it worse, is that it's not intelligent, it doesn't have the ability to remember the things that you want to allow.

I have also never (0 times) had it pop up where I didn't want to allow it, so to me it's just a waste of time and annoying. This would have to be the worst feature ever introduced into Windows and I'm turning it off.

Here is a helpful like I found on how to disable it.
http://www.petri.co.il/disable_uac_in_windows_vista.htm