Viewing by month: November 2005
Drop Shadows Using CSS
Posted on Nov 30, 2005
Found this on Digg this morning...a way to add drop shadows to your images using pure CSS that works in both Firefox and IE. While the author readily admits that the markup required is a bit ugly (it requires a total of 5 divs), the final result looks good.
qBrowser - new CF open-source project
Posted on Nov 29, 2005
Ryan Guill just released a new open-source project he calls qBrowser. It allows you to test queries against a ColdFusion datasource in your browser. It will also code highlight your executed queries. It can save both a library and a history of your executed queries. It's still in its early stages, but can be a useful tool. Personally, I test my MS SQL queries using SQL Query Analyzer and think it is an excellent tool, but I have coworkers and friends who rarely touch it (no idea why) for whom this will be useful. Also, it works against any CF datasource, not just MS SQL, so it will work on datasources that don't have a tool like Query Analyzer. Finally, all it takes to install it is to unzip the files to your web root and browse...quick and easy. Good work Ryan, I am looking forward to seeing the project progress! (oh, and I added it to the CF open source list)
Application CFC and UDF Libraries
Posted on Nov 28, 2005
I am working on a project at work where I decided to finally make the leap into using application.cfc instead of application.cfm. I have found this to be a slightly tougher transition than I anticipated. One thing I came across today is that I usually included a common library of functions in my application.cfm file just using a simple cfinclude so as to make the functions available on every page. Either my brain is totally fried right now or this isn't as easy to do using application.cfc, but I have come up with three options and not sure which one I might choose.
Upgrade to CF7 and BlogCFC 4.0 with a New Look
Posted on Nov 22, 2005
I have finally updated to BlogCFC 4.0 and in tandem, I have moved to a CF 7 server. Hopefully now I can actually place live examples of the projects I do. I did run into a the problem Ray blogged about in BlogCFC 4 and fixed it in a similar fashion to Ray's fix (though for the life of me I could not understand the cause of the problem). I also modified the look of BlogCFC using a modified version of the Small Studio design from OpenWebDesign.org. It still has a couple minor issues that I am working on having alot to do with the original design not being the same in Firefox and IE...the CSS needed alot of tweaking. Also, my Sleight script for PNG transparencies in IE has a slight pathing issue. Otherwise, I am happy with the look. Lastly, I have added a direct link to the CF open source list I blogged about since it seems it was useful and I have been working to keep it up to date. That's it, just a brief update for now.
ColdFusion 7.0.1 Hotfix Warning
Posted on Nov 17, 2005
You may be aware of this already, but I became aware of an issue with the hotfix when Crystaltech installed it. I had code such as obj.read(argumentCollection=form) or obj.read(argumentCollection=url) and, although this had been in place and working for years, it was suddenly broken. I needed to do obj.read(argumentCollection=duplicate(form)) but unfortunately this code was everywhere on all the sites I did when I had my business. Fun! For the most part, I don't maintain any of these sites anymore, but I try to be a nice guy ;-) Anyway, according to the comments on Ben Forta's post about the updater, it is a bug filed by Macromedia (#61485).