Tax day is fast approaching, and I've been working (on and off) on my tax forms. The IRS lets you download just about every form you could need from a
forms page - pick the form you want and save the PDF, simple. The forms are not just printable forms, they really are PDF forms, in that you can fill in the forms using Acrobat Reader and save them locally while you work. And then when you are done, print them, sign them, and send them in. The big advantage is that the final printed forms are far more readable than my handwriting, oh, and making edits while you work is a whole lot easier.
But I am filling in the forms and see instructions like "Gross profit. Subtract line 2 from line 1c. " and "8 Total income (loss). Combine lines 3 through 7. " and "Cost of goods sold (Schedule A, line 8) " (that's right, just copy a number you entered elsewhere on the same form), and I can't help but think: No! I just typed in the numbers, you calculate them for me! Come on IRS, in 2004 you started distributing fill-in PDF forms, that's great. Now take the next step, it's not that complicated, you just add some very simple computation logic when you design your forms, and you'll have more accurate returns and happier users. For 2008? Please?
cf.Objective() is the only ColdFusion conference that focuses solely on Enterprise-level development. The
cf.Objective() 2007 site has been updated with new schedule information, a managers guide (in case you need help convincing your boss to let you attend), a chance to win an iPod, and more.
<cfgrid> has been around for a long time. It started life as a Java applet, then in CFMX7 we added a Flash grid and XML generation, and in
Scorpio we plan on adding an Ajax powered DHTML grid.
You'll be able to pass a query to the grid as you did previously, like this:
<cfquery datasource="myDSN" name="myQuery">
SELECT * FROM myTable
</cfquery>
...
<cfgrid name="staticgrid" query="myQuery" format="html" />
But where things get really interesting are when data is retrieved asynchronously (in much the same way as in the auto-suggest example I mentioned earlier this week). Look at this example:
<cfgrid name="asynchgrid"
format="html"
pageSize="10"
bind="cfc:data.getData({cfgridpage},{cfgridpagesize},{cfgridsortcolumn},{cfgridsortdirection})" />
The bind attribute specifies the CFC and method to be invoked, and the current page, page size, and sort information get passed to the CFC method which then returns the appropriate query data. And yes, this does mean that paging is supported, the grid contains paging controls and when you move through pages (or resort columns) the CFC method is asynchronously invoked and the grid is updated accordingly.
And of course there is more, for example:
<cfgrid name="asynchgrid"
format="html"
pageSize="10"
bind="cfc:data.getData({cfgridpage},{cfgridpagesize},{cfgridsortcolumn},{cfgridsortdirection})"
stripeRows="true"
stripeRowColor="##e0e0e0">
<cfgridcolumn name="firstName" header="First Name">
<cfgridcolumn name="lastName" header="Last Name">
<cfgridcolumn name="phone" header="Phone">
</cfgrid>
Of course, this is all subject to change. :-)
We've confirmed two European venues for the upcoming
Scorpio usergroup tour:
And later that week you'll get to see even more of Scorpio at Scotch on the Rocks in Edinburgh, Scotland.
A meeting in Italy is planned for later in the year, but no date has been set yet.
