Building Blocks

Project Tracker v2.0 Released

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:28:00 -0400

A new version of the Project Tracker has been released today. This version incorporates over a dozen major feature upgrades and enhancements - plus a whole lot of bug fixes as well. The improvements go something like this:

New Administration area for settings, projects, clients, users, etc.
Email and/or SMS Notification system of new files, issues, messages, milestones, tasks
Granular permission system for each project and item
New issue system featuring statuses of new, accepted, resolved, and closed.
Enhanced code for speed: JavaScript libraries trimmed down. Less reliance on Interface, more on jQuery and now using lates jQuery. Minimized number of external CSS and JS calls.
CSS has been made more "bullet-proof"
Streamlined UI when only 1 project. Allows for auto-login of guest user to provide for public projects.
Includes SQL upgrade scripts for version 1. Better internationalization. Better mySQL compatibility.
Forgot username/password functionality.
Moved to JavaKit SVN for UNIX SVN browsing. Now includes Diff functionality. Includes JavaLoader.
Client management included and linked to projects.
Attach files to messages.
Assign due date to tasks.
API for reading projects data.
General bug fixes...

Head on over to http://projecttracker.riaforge.com for the code!

Generating OpenDocument Files On The Fly

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:16:00 -0400

Although Microsoft is not happy about it, much of the world has been moving in the direction of the XML-based OpenDocument format, otherwise known by it's much longer, full name: the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications. This opens up new possibilities for document generation and allows the creation of all sorts of Office-type documents using only a text editor (assuming you know what you're doing). A number of applications, including OpenOffice, already support the OpenDocument format. Microsoft Office does not, but there are plugins available. [More]

Amazon Launching Database In The Sky

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:34:00 -0400

Amazon continues their transformation from retailer to web application backend-service-provider with the launch of their new SimpleDB service. The service allows you to offload your database storage and processing to Amazon's Web Services. By combining the use of Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), this new service provides the ability to store, process, and query data sets in the cloud. Amazon's continued transformation gives developers an option for one less thing to worry about. It also has the ability to scale up instantly, providing another layer of insulation against the "Slashdot" effect. The service is currently in Limited Beta. You can sign up for the beta from the Amazon Web Services homepage.

The Importance of HTMLEditFormat()

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:46:00 -0400

I got a call today from a user who was having a weird problem when trying to save data on a form. Upon inspection, it turned out that there were a set of double-quotes in the data. So why is this a problem? As far as ColdFusion cares, it's not, and the data was actually getting saved to the database correctly. The problem appeared when doing an edit. Everything after the first double-quote was being cutoff. Upon further inspection of the HTML being generated, it seems that is where the problem came in. ColdFusion was doing it's job by outputting the double-quotes, with no knowledge of where in the page that data is being used. And if you use it in a form, you've got problems because it will appear to the user that the data is not saving. The solution is to use HTMLEditFormat() when outputting values into form fields. This will cause any HTML special characters to change to their entity notations. So the HTML that is generated will actually look something like this: but it will display on the form as normal double-quotes, and will submit as that too: This may be common knowledge to many of you, but I'd bet there's a whole bunch of developers who don't even realize this could be an issue. Hopefully this will help prevent some hard-to-track bugs!

Project Tracker 1.0 Beta Released

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:48:00 -0400

So here we have my first full open source application. I've released a few CFCs, but this is a whole 'nother story. Project Tracker is somewhat of a clone of the Basecamp application created by 37signals. It is designed to let you manage and collaborate on your projects. Some of the features include:

Post messages and comment with team members
Create to-do lists and items
Set milestones
Track issues and bugs
Share files with team members
Dashboard view of all current activity across projects
Integrated SVN browser and source viewer
Default and per-user styles
FCKeditor included for rich text editing
Avatars supported on CF8 (cfimage required)

This is an active project with improvements and fixes being made regularly. Please send me your suggestions! The project page and download is at http://projecttracker.riaforge.com

Disabling Text Selection For Drag-and-Drop

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:05:00 -0400

A common usability problem encountered in Ajax apps is the unintentional selection of text when trying to do a drag-and-drop operation. This javascript function allows you to disable text-selection for a specific element on the page and should work in all modern browsers:

You can't disable text selection with CSS alone because returning false from the onselectstart event is necessary to disable selection in Internet Explorer. You may want to also change the cursor when mousing over your draggable item with a style of "cursor:default" or "cursor:pointer". Even better yet, you can use "cursor:hand" to indicate that dragging is possible. Here's how you would call it in your page:

Should you actually need to copy and paste, you can always view the source.

Ext Javascript Library Launches

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:55:00 -0400

Jack Slocum's wonderful Ext library, which was originally based upon the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) components, has now gone live with a universal version that supports jQuery and Prototype/Scriptaculous as well. You can actually customize your download package based upon your JS library of choice and the widgets that you'd like available. Kudos to Jack for putting out such a professional package - lots of good stuff to play with for creating some serious desktop apps! Check it all out and download at http://extjs.com/

Welcome To The Future

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:19:00 -0400

For those of you who haven't seen this article from Fast Company, I highly recommend giving it a read. It seems the future is upon us. Jeff Han is a 30-year-old engineer who is changing the world by thinking outside the box. He has reinvented the touch screen interface by turning it into something more real. Reminds me of my favorite inspirational poster: "Vision is not seeing things as they are, but as they should be." Peep the video below.

Yahoo! Benefits/Suffers From The Ajax Effect

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 13:45:00 -0400

So the big news this week is that MySpace is now the number one site on the net in terms of monthly page views. Yahoo! was the previous leader, but there was a drop off this month which put them in second. While this is kind of a good thing for ColdFusion - assuming they keep things running smoothly :) - it's a bit misleading for Yahoo! as this exact day was predicted long ago before they even launched the new home page. But reading a little more into it, one can see that the drop-off in page views can be attributed to Yahoo!'s recent foray into Ajax. Everything from the Yahoo! front page, to mail, news, television, etc., has been getting an Ajax once-over at Yahoo. But what's better for the consumer is not always better for the site - on the surface anyway. People have been warning that the web is in need of better metrics than the page-view. That has never been more true than now. I can only imagine how some of the better-designed, one-page Ajax sites might show up as a mere blip on the radar screen which can be misleading. Going a step further, it could be argued that MySpace has stayed away from Ajax on purpose just to pump up their page views. I'll refer you to this study by Mike Davidson of Netvibes.com which points out how MySpace could cut their page views by over 2/3rds if they wanted to. So until traffic analyzers learn to deal with Ajax, take what you read with a grain of salt!

Why Do Developers Hate The <label> Tag?

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:46:00 -0400

One of the most common usability faux pas I find all over the internet is the lack of developers linking up radio buttons with their labels. Why should we be forced to click a tiny little circle when we should be able to click the actual text for that choice? It's built into the HTML spec so why don't developers use it? Even some of the biggest sites on the web are guilty of this one. I just don't get it.. it's not exactly rocket science. Just give an ID to your radio button, like so:

then wrap the text that goes with that radio button in a label tag, as such:


selection 1

Here's a full example with a few selections to choose from.. notice how you can just click the text to select the choice you'd like: selection 1
selection 2
selection 3
The full code for that was:


 selection 1

 selection 2

 selection 3

With all of the attention being given to usability in this Web 2.0 world, let's make sure we've got 1.0 covered first.

Adobe Labs Releases A Very Kule Project

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:05:00 -0400

Adobe Labs recently released a new web application called Kuler for discovering and sharing color schemes. As someone who struggles with color schemes for sites, this is a really handy tool. I can do the programming, I can do the UI, but colors have always been a challenge. I've used a lot of different color scheming sites, but none that I've found has come close to what Adobe is offering. There close to 1700 color schemes available already, and I think this site launched pretty recenly. I came across it while visiting labs.adobe.com. The interface (Flash-based but not Flex) is great for selecting color schemes as well as creating them. You can also save your favorites, and even download palettes that can be used in the Adobe Creative Suite. Good work Adobe and thanks in advance!

Why jQuery Rocks

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 17:41:00 -0400

Up till now, I've been a big fan of the Prototype/Scriptaculous combination to get some nice web20 functionality built into my apps. I always keep an eye out for other cool libraries, but Scriptaculous provided a nice feature set out of the box, and it's really easy to implement a lot of the solutions. And I think Prototype still has the best syntax for making XmlHttpRequests. But props go out to Rey Bango for pointing me in the right direction and turning me on to jQuery. I always thought jQuery was just another javascript library until I saw the amazing array of plugins available. There are over 100 plugins to do all kinds of stuff - even one to get back prototypes handy $F() function :). It seems like most of the neat tools and tricks that Scriptaculous offered, be it autocompleters, in place editing, effects, etc., are all available as plugins. It's always important to have a strong developer community, and with the easy plugin architecture, jQuery has just that. I can already see a whole bunch of things I'd like to try out and implement in my applications. Props go out to John Resig for creating jQuery and to the many plugin contributors. You've made lots of difficult things very easy!!! Oh yeah, and it's lightweight too.. Just 15k for the jQuery and many plugins coming in at under 1k. Awesome!

Essential Debugging: Get Firebug!

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:57:00 -0400

As good of a browser as Firefox is, it's still missing some essential tools for developers. Of course, with the many extensions available, those holes can usually be filled in pretty easily. Firebug is one of those extensions that has been an important part of my debugging process for months now. It overcomes some of Firefox's major weaknesses: Javascript debugging and a view of the XmlHttpRequest object so you can see what's really going on behind the scenes. You gotta hand it to Joe Hewitt. He's just taken the wraps off of the beta version of the 1.0 release, and it seems that he's managed to take a great tool and make it even more amazing! We still get access to the same great debugging as in the past, but now there's even more good stuff to be had! You can view and edit the CSS and HTML of a page and view your changes live, inspect the Document Object Model of all the objects loaded in the page, execute javascript on the fly.. plus what I think is the coolest: the Net view which allows you to see exactly how long each element and script in your page is taking to load. Very, very cool! Never have all of these tools been so easily available all in one place, and best of all, it's free and open source! For those of you using an alternate browser like IE or Opera, there's even a lite version available. Head on over to GetFirebug.com and get it while it's hot! Good work Joe!

Amazon S3 & Smartermail REST Wrappers v1.2

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 02:19:00 -0400

Some more refreshes of these tools. The Amazon S3 package was updated to include the full <cf_hmac> custom tag. The previous zip was incomplete. The Smartermail update includes 3 new methods for managing domain aliases. Thanks to Igor Ilyinsky for coding the new functionality. Both CFCs are now at version 1.2. You can view full details on each via the Related Posts links below.

REST Wrapper Refreshes (v1.1)

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:54:00 -0400

I've updated both the Amazon S3 and the SmarterMail REST Wrappers to version 1.1. The Amazon S3 distribution now includes the custom tag which is needed to calculate correct signatures for the REST requests. The SmarterMail CFC was updated to remove some hard-coded URLs. The address to the web service is now part of the CFC initialization. Thanks to Geoff Bergey for pointing out the problems. See the Related Posts at the bottom of this message for full details about these CFCs as well as links to download them.