Rob Gonda's Blog

cfQuickDocs is officially using ajaxCFC

If you don’t have it bookmarked yet, visit http://www.techfeed.net/cfQuickDocs/ which I can assure you will replace your Macromedia / Adobe LiveDocs. You probably know LiveDocs is JavaScript based, with tons of redirects, slow, heavy … cfQuickDocs is a light-weight Ajax driven version with excellent structure and search abilities.

Thanks Jacob for this worderful tool, and check out his latest post about switching quickDocs from cfajax to ajaxCFC.

Audible Ajax Episode 15: Kevin Hakman of TIBCO

Ajaxian.com put together a nice podcast with Kevin Hakman of Tibco. They covered all the points below.

  • When did TIBCO start in the Ajax business?
  • Why did you decide to get into the Ajax business…why now?
  • What exactly is TIBCO GI? Is it a tool? Is it an API? What do you get with this?
  • Do you see people actually using the libraries separate from the GUI builder or do most customers use them directly together?
  • What does your tool do to make parsing SOAP messages easier?
  • A lot of users start with something like Prototype of Dojo for Ajax. What does TIBCO GI offer (use cases, applications?) over one of those frameworks?
  • What is the authoring experience like with your tool?
  • TIBCO GI sounds a lot like the modern incarnation of Flash (xml markup for vector-based UI, ActionScript, JavaScript event handlers). How does your tool compare? Are they similar or distinct in implementation?
  • How sophisticated is your auto-completion? How limited is it and what other IDE static-language type goodies have you given the environment?
  • The GI Builder is a JavaScript app that uses your technology (you eat your own dog food). Are you waiting for a JIT to come out to help with performance issues or are you finding in practice that JavaScript can perform adequately on the client?
  • Why is your product limited to Internet Explorer? Do you have plans to expand that?
  • What were some of the porting issues that you found going from this IE codebase to Firefox?
  • We’re excited to see a business application for some of Firefox’s newer more exotic features like SVG and Canvas. Are you going to be able to utilize some of those in your product as well?
  • Java engineers think about multi-threaded applications a lot. With JavaScript being single-threaded, do you have performance concerns? What are some techniques you’ve used to achieve this very responsive UI?
  • IE is known for its memory leaks. Does your tool handle some of those? How do you work around it?
  • Is your tool capable of creating something like Zimbra’s UI?
  • Is your tool agnostic; integrating with any backend?
  • RE: Desktop UI technologies. How competitive is your windowing system with more traditional desktop technologies? Do you acknowledge a point where someone should look at a desktop technology, or do you think your tool can facilitate the creation of arbitrarily complex user interfaces?
  • Have you done any benchmarks on what makes sense to use for exchanging data (XML, JSON, etc.)?
  • What’s the model for creating custom widgets in your tool?
  • Can you tell us about today’s release? Where to download, etc.?
  • So someone can create a free web-hosted alternative to Zimbra or MS Office using your tool to visually create it and do all the data manipulation — then release it for free?
  • Once I start charging for access to the website/product, what is the pricing model? What about charging for a commercial software product release?
  • Why should we check out your product in today’s overwhelmingly crowded toolkit/framework market?

Need opinions: FlashCom Vs. XML Socket

I'm researching the world of gaming and thus far I have to candidates: Flash Communication Server (1.5, or 2.0 Media Server), and XML Sockets.

I successfully deployed XML Gateways using a modified version of the default ColdFusion XML Gateway. For my purposes, both are working fine.

I'd like to hear comments on why I should decide on one or another… here're some queue points: price, scalability, reliability, and deployment time just to name a few.

FlashCom is way more expensive; even paying CF enterprise licenses. On the other hand, FlashCom has built in HTTP tunneling, allowing XML sockets to penetrate large corporation's packet filtering.

Both can be easily clustered. I have no benchmarks at all, but I could guess that FlashCom will handle load better.

Please provide your opinions; I'm hiring consultants on this topic, so expect to see more on this topic soon.

Elmer Fudd uses ColdFusion

I just found the strangest comment … ColdFusion hacks by cartoon impersonators; you can find the full story here.

To the weadew that commented on how to change a pwopewties fiwe to ewiminate the devnet watewmawk: Yes, this is twue. You can unjaw the cfusion.jar, uh-hah-hah-hah. jaw fiwe and edit the CFPage.WatewMawk pwopewty in cowdfusion\wuntime\wesouwce.pwopewties. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit! Wemove the watewmawk text, wepwace it wif an empty stwing, then webuiwd the cfusion.jar jaw file wif the new pwopewties fiwe, and westawt CF, uh-hah-hah-hah.. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit!

Spring < br /> Conference 2006

I'll be speaking at a rather large Macromedia UserGroup Conference (Ohio MUG). It's a full day with four different tracks, which some unfortunately I'll miss while I'm speaking :) I'll present two sessions, one on Ajax basics, and the second one will be for ColdFusion users.

The conference is extremely inexpensive too, but do not be fooled by the price; if you're in the area, do not miss this for anything.

Stop cfmail messages being flagged as spam

This is being an issue for me for a while: it seems like all cfmail emails are being caught as spam. Perhaps not by bldns, but outlook for example.

I found this post a few months ago that I think I should share.

In summary, do the following:

1) Change the cfmail from atrribute to '"#mailoutSender#" <#mailoutSenderEmail#>'
Apparently this makes the sender look more like a real account.

2) Add headers that cfmail doesn't include by default:
•    <cfmailparam name="Message-Id" value="<#createUUID()#@yourdomain.com>">
•    <cfmailparam name="Reply-To" value="#get_mailout.mailoutSenderEmail#">
•    <cfmailparam name="MIME-Version" value="1.0">

For more info, check out the original post.

Flex 2.0 + Flash Player 8.5 = RIA

"With Flex 2.0 and Flash Player 8.5, we can finally deliver the kinds of rich applications our clients demand without compromise. That's Web 2.0! With these words, a VP at Cynergy Systems today gave his ringing endorsement of the Adobe Flex 2.0 product line and Adobe Flash Player 8.5"

  • Flash Player 8.5 -- the latest high-performance client runtime for engaging Web experiences
  • Flex Framework 2.0 -- the core programming model and component library for Flex
  • Flex Builder 2.0 -- an Eclipse-based IDE for developing rich Internet applications with the Flex Framework
  • Flex Enterprise Services 2.0 -- essential data services and an open adapter architecture for delivering data-intensive rich Internet applications and deeply integrating with enterprise service-oriented infrastructure
  • Flex Charting Components 2.0 -- extensible components for advanced data visualization
Read more at the new Web 2.0 sys-con e-magazine.

Speaking at our local South Florida CFUG

I will be speaking at the South Florida CFUG this coming February 23rd. Guess the topic, lol, Ajax indeed. I will be covering all Ajax101 basics. Overview of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) including ajaxCFC, CFajax, and JSON. I’ll talk about 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 with helpful tips of do’s and don'ts.

If you’re local, I hope to see you there. BTW, iChameleon Group is hiring, so if you’re interested in a career boosting opportunity to work at the greatests CF projects of the year, stop by and drop your resume.

Going to CFUnited / pre-conference classes poll

I forgot to mention, I bought the conference pass to CFUnited last week! This is the first year I get to go; I've been trying for the longest time, but there is always something.

By the way, I will be teaching a pre-conference class: Intensive Ajax for ColdFusion Developers. I putting together my class material now, so it there is anything you wish to see, now is the time. (link to be posted soon)

I will also be participating at the Birds-of-Feather open discussions. I hope to see you guys there.

Google stats down?

Has anyone else noticed that the Google stats have not been accurate in the past few days? I have five sites there, but luckily, I do not rely solely in a third party free service to keep track of important information. It’s too bad though, I had I faith high in Google services.

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