Viewing by month: September 2005
Selecting a Radio Button in a Flash Form
Posted on Sep 23, 2005
A colleague of mine was trying to figure out how you could select a radio button based upon a value returned by Flash Remoting in a CF Flash form. The answer turned out to be fairly simple it seems. You can select a radio button in a group based upon its value. Here is a vary simple form to show illustrate this:
_root.r1.selectedData = 5;
</cfsavecontent>
<cfform format="flash" name="form1">
<cfinput type="radio" name="r1" label="Radio 1" value="1">
<cfinput type="radio" name="r1" label="Radio 2" value="2">
<cfinput type="radio" name="r1" label="Radio 3" value="5">
<cfinput type="button" name="button1" value="Click Me" onclick="#action#">
</cfform>
All this does is select the radio element with the value of 5 when you click the button. You can change the value and see that it will change which element it selects. So, to use this with Flash Remoting it should be as simple as saying selectedData equal to the value returned by your remoting call (my colleague is testing that out...if it isn't that easy, I will add an update).
CSS - Ignored by Firefox
Posted on Sep 22, 2005
In reading Pete Freitag's CSS Post, one of the links talks about !important is ignored by IE (as well as the CSS child selector). In trying to fix my stylesheet, I happened upon something that is ignored (it would seem properly) by Firefox and not by IE (which I use to make IE only margins or placement):
//top: 155px;
The second top is read by IE and overwrites the first, while it is ignored by Firefox. This may be well documented, I have no idea. I found it by accident trying to comment out an item (and as I often note, I am not a designer). However, I have found it a simple and useful technique to use when things (as they usually do) just don't look right in IE.
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Firefox "Greater Security Risk" and OSX "False Sense of Security" - Symantec
Posted on Sep 19, 2005
MacCentral is reporting that Symantec's most recent Internet Security Threat Report says that Mac users are "increasingly becoming a target for the malicious activity, contrary to popular belief that the Mac OS is immune to traditional security concerns." In addition, it states that "over the past six months, nearly twice as many vulnerabilities surfaced in Mozilla browsers as in Explorer." This is also contrary to the popular belief that the Firefox browser is more secure than IE.
Flash Form Validation Using Remoting
Posted on Sep 16, 2005
One of the great features of Flash forms (or cfform overall for that matter) is the built in client-side validation. ColdFusion MX 7 expanded this greatly, not only by adding to the list of supported validation types, but also by enhancing the user-interface through the use of Flash forms. That being said, there are certain types of validation, particularly when you are talking about business rules, that are either overly complicated or redundant to add to your cfform validation. Typically, you might handle this by adding your client-side validation into your flash form through the use of the required and validate attributes, and then process the server side validation once the client side validation has been passed and the form is submitted. Of course, your user may be a bit surprised that you allowed them to submit the form only to return a new set of errors related to business rules, especially since much of the beauty of using the Flash interface is the ability to do all of this without the page refresh. Well, using Flash Remoting we can combine both the built in Flash validation with our server side validation into a single custom error message.
Flock Firefox-based Open-Source Browser - Wired News
Posted on Sep 14, 2005
Wired News is reporting on buzz surrounding a new open-source browser built upon Firefox called Flock. Many of the members of the Flock team come from the Mozilla Foundation, and they are apparently planning to send their new browser into beta in October (I signed up out of curiosity).
While I am not completely clear on what will make Flock unique, the creators are calling it a "social browsing experience" or "two-way web." Ha? Well, apparently it will integrate blogging tools, "play nicely" with web sites like Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us, and "detect and authenticate all those user accounts automatically." However, the goal is apparently not to compete with Firefox.
Ok...still unclear on what it is? So am I. You can read the article and go to the site yourself, and if you are clear...can you fill me in? Like I said, I signed up to maybe get an invite to the beta anyway...what the heck, right?