Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) will introduce a beta version of Adobe® Photoshop® CS3 software, the next release of the world standard in digital imaging, on Friday, December 15th. Adobe is delivering a widely available Photoshop CS3 beta to enable customers to more easily transition to the latest hardware platforms, particularly Apple’s new Intel-based systems. The beta is available as a Universal Binary for the Macintosh platform, as well as for Microsoft® Windows® XP and Windows Vista computers. The final shipping release of Adobe Photoshop CS3 is planned for Spring 2007. The software can be downloaded at:
http://labs.adobe.com. [source]

Check out my 2h 17mins Ajax presentation recording. I presented Ajax in various flavors to the Scottish CFUG last week and I promised to post the slides and files.

You may check out the Adobe Connect Presentation, download the slides, and download the source code. Code includes examples for ajaxcfc, dojo, jquery, prototype, spry, and well as hand-coded XmlHttpRequest objects. AjaxCFC examples also include some using the Model-Glue and MachII frameworks, not included with this download.
Everything should run w/o any setup, there is no database, the only requirement if you run the Model-Glue and MachII examples is to drop this exact structure in your webroot, or create a mapping called CFUnited. Most of the examples are covered in the Connect Presentation.

Quick note re: jQuery. One of the examples I posted is using the $.post() function, which has been deprecated in the lastest 1.0.4 release that came out yesterday in favor of the $.ajax() function. I will update the examples shortly and update the same link.

Enjoy.

[digg this]

jQuery 1.0.4 it out; 247 bug fixes, plus a few nice additions... The Ajax libraries have been fully refactored plus there are a few new properties to the $.ajax method. Important note, $.get and $.post are deprecated in favor of the $.ajax function.
Also, check out the new jQuery API site. Thank you John!

Back in April I perform an egosurf test, so I chose to re-take it and see that changed... here're the updated resutls.

Resutls for "Rob Gonda"

Motorola launched today a new noble site called ImproveYourKarma.com. It as site for a good cause, telling the story of Sven Goodsson, a good Karma coach that will teach you how to improve yours.

The site is hilarious and extremely funny, yet, carrying a nice chuck of technology behind it. The site has a few sections, but the Karma monitor is my favorite. It provides a widget that you can embed in your myspace page and it will scan your entire profile, blog, and comments, and will try to gage and quantify your Karma by analyzing the content in your page. I know, some would argue that the method is not scientific, but c'mon, we're talking about Karma here. Another really nice widgets is the Karma photo analyzer; it allows you to upload a photo, and it will analyze your aura, scanning the points of energy expressed by the colors in the photo. After analyzing the aura, it will provide a nice description of the findings.

Overall, this site is clean, attractive, high-tech, and really funny.

Oh yes, if the intro aerobics dance if not funny enough for you, press a few keys to find some easter eggs, which makes it even better.

Remember, this site is for a good cause -- Motorola will contribute portions of the profit to the global fun to fight AIDS in Africa, so enjoy and spread the word.

I'm speaking tomorrow for the Scottish CFUG, nevertheless, free and open to whoever wants to join us. It will be a Adobe Breeze, sorry, Adobe Connect presentation, very similar to the one I did for the Boston CFUG back in September, but I will slow down and explain more this time, since I pretty much have no time restriction.

The _official_ topic for the session is:
Ajax, Web 2.0, RIAs, single-page-applications are just a few buzzwords that every developer needs to know in 2006. Learn the history of Ajax, what it means to you, why you should pay attention, who is using it, what is available, and how to implement it. This session will get you up to speed with Ajax, compare the different existing frameworks, and provide you helpful tips of do's and do not's with Ajax.

However, I will show plenty of examples, use different frameworks, and respond to as many questions as possible.

Time: 8pm (GMT) / 3pm (EST)
URL: http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/r21774523/

Scorpio is the code name for the next major release of ColdFusion from Adobe. They just added it to Labs, including brief information on 2007 events, wallpaper downloads, and faqs. Expect to see more there early 2007.

The public beta version is not available yet, but trust me, you will want to jump into it as soon as it's out.

Ping-O-Matic is a service that allows you to ping various arregators. Ping will trigger them to scan your blog and index your content. Nothing extra-ordinary, but, the cool thing is that they provide you a direct link to come back to their site and automatically re-ping your submitted data.... so what can you do? You can set up your own blog to ping that link (simple http get), which will automatically ping all the major aggregators.

With blogCFC, all you have to do is paste that url into the pingurls config setting in the blog.ini file.

After my last post of SQL, Case sensitivity, and views, Brian Kotek brought up an excellent point, bringing up performance concerns.

It turns out that views are very handy, but not very optimized for performance. Tables are generally indexed. SQL has the ability to index data of particular columns so it doesn't have to deep-scan the data each time you query that table. All primary keys are indexed, but you can create as many additional indexes as you want (when and why for another post).
If you use a view, your columns will not be indexed automatically. With SQL 2000, Microsoft introduced View Indexes; SQL Server View Indexes are dynamic and changes to the data in the base tables are automatically reflected in the indexed view. Your columns will be automatically indexded only if your view complies with certain pre-requisites:

• Must be created the WITH SCHEMABINDING view option
• May only refer to base tables in the same database.
• If there is a GROUP BY clause, the view may not have a HAVING, CUBE, or ROLLUP.
• May not have an OUTER JOIN clause.
• May not have a UNION.
• May not have DISTINCT or TOP clauses
• May not have full-text predicates such as CONATINSTABLE
• May not have a ROWSET function such as OPENROWSET
• May not use derived tables or subqueries.
• Must be created with ANSI_NULLS ON and QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

CREATE VIEW OrderDetailsXSB   WITH SCHEMABINDING 
AS
SELECT OD.OrderID, OD.ProductID, P.ProductName , OD.UnitPrice
     , OD.Quantity, OD.Discount
FROM dbo.Products P
    INNER JOIN dbo.[Order Details] OD

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

Josh Adams from New Atlanta gave an Ajax presentation to the NCFUG a couple of days ago, covering most of the basics and a few frameworks -- Atlas, Spry, and AjaxCFC. The presentation is 1.5h long and it well worth it for people looking for a good intro / overview. John mentions he mostly uses AjaxCFC and asked a couple of questions I want to address, plus I have a few comments.
First, John asked about the second argument in the _execute function, yes ... that null, hehe. Like the docs say, it has no real use for ColdFusion, but the same JavaScript functions power DWR in the Java World and this argument indicates the class to be executed; the third argument indicates which method inside that class is to be run. The way I have AjaxCFC set up you don't really override any class, you just indicate which method on the CFC you wish to run.
Second, the new log4javascript integration was brought up. If you add debug:true to the config arguments when setting up AjaxCFC, you will enable log4javascript, which by default will pop up a new window and log every single Ajax request, including the responses and errors. As Aaron mentioned, this could eliminate the need for http sniffers to see what happens in the background, nonetheless, I would strongly suggest you use one. Aaron also mentioned other libraries at the end, like jQuery, which I hopefully cover this Thursday in my next breeze presso for the Scottish CFUG.