Thoughts, ideas, tips, musings, and pontifications (not necessarily in that order) by Ben Forta ...
NOTE: This is my personal blog, and the opinions and statements voiced here are my own.
Unnamed client (Atlanta, GA) is looking for a 2-3 ColdFusion developers with Flex experience. Oracle and Java experience preferred. Contact recruiter Steve Douglas at Kinetix.
Unnamed client (Ann Arbor, MI) is looking for a ColdFusion developer for a 16-18 month contract. Requirements include experience with CF7 or higher, a good understanding of CFCs, and familiarity with object oriented development. ActionScript experience a plus. Contact recruiter Lancet D. Brothers at TEK Systems.
Posted At : 12:12 PM
Related Categories:
ColdFusion
To the delight of many a ColdFusion developer, in CF8 we added support for implicit array and structure creation. And now we're taking this one step further in the ColdFusion 8 updater (due out shortly) to allow for arrays and structures to be nested. As an example, the following should work (and I did say "should", this is planned, and plans change):
The Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has started a blog to post security related information pertaining to Adobe products and technologies.
Microsoft is a common target for rants, dislikes, and disdain. And the negative views and opinions are frequently justified. But Microsoft can also be surprising, and I had that experience this week.
I have only ever contacted Microsoft Support twice, both in regards to my home network. The first occurrence was a year and a half ago. I had made some significant network changes, upgrading my home servers to Windows Server 2003, installing a new firewall, changing how Active Directory was configured, completely revamping DHCP and how IP addresses are assigned, and more, and I ended up with a rather bizarre Active Directory/WINS/DHCP/DNS issue which was causing painfully slow network login times for many clients. I spent hours, many hours, trying to figure it all out. And finally, in frustration, I paid $99 and opened an e-mail based support case with Microsoft. The case was assigned to a support engineer named Ewen Tang who sent me a long e-mail with things to try so as to report back to him. I collected the information for him, and he then followed up with utilities that he wanted me to run to help diagnose the problem. In the course of a lengthy e-mail thread that ran for several days (the delay caused by my traveling), Ewen figured out what the problem was, and offered me a series of solutions. I opted for the quick hack workaround solution just to get things working, and Ewen offered to leave the case open for a while (it ended up being months) until I had the time to implement his other suggestions. Yes, I paid for support, but time is money, and that was $99 very well spent.
But did I just luck out, or is Microsoft's e-mail based support actually as good as my experience seemed to indicate?
This week I ran into another issue, this time with Terminal Server licenses that I was relying on to manage my headless servers. After wasting many hours tinkering, I paid the $99 and opened another e-mail based support case. This time the case as assigned to Steven Shao, who immediately sent me an e-mail telling me that he'd look into my issue, and then sent me a detailed follow-up e-mail that essentially explained that I had misunderstood Terminal Server licensing and requirements, providing me with links to clarify things, and explaining what I needed to do to fix the situation, saving me money by pointing out the configuration I need so as to not have to buy additional TS client licenses. Steven's advice did indeed help me solve my problem (and he saved me money, too), but he didn't actually have to do any real technical troubleshooting. And so he offered to refund the $99 I had paid, and I then received several follow-ups to confirm that all was now well, and to ensure that I was indeed getting my refund.
Bashing Microsoft is a common occurrence, and is sometimes lots of fun. And yes, there is definitely a lot to bash and make fun of. But, at the same time, when a company like Microsoft gets something right, that really should be noted. And Microsoft Support has indeed impressed me.
Tom Jordahl has announced that he'll be presenting a Connect session tomorrow on BlazeDS to The Online ColdFusion Meetup Group. He'll cover exactly what you get in BlazeDS and how it relates to LiveCycle Data Services, and will detail some of the reasons why you might want to use these server technologies. He will also explain how ColdFusion developers can take advantage of BlazeDS in their applications.
AIR includes the SQLite engine, but it is just that, an engine, and it has no UI for creating and working with tables. To address this, Christophe Coenraets created a great little AIR app called SQLite Admin, and earlier today he posted an updated version for use with the released AIR 1.0.
Adobe Developer Connection has published an article by Todd Prekaski on the details of digitally signing AIR applications. This one is required reading for anyone building AIR apps.
SQLite is a vital core component of newly released AIR, providing a local SQL data store for your desktop AIR applications. Dave McAllister has announced that Adobe has joined the SQLite Consortium, supporting the continued growth and improvements in SQLite.
Posted At : 12:31 AM
Related Categories:
Flex,
Adobe
We've been talking about the open sourcing of the Flex SDK for a while, and now you can check it all out online at the new Adobe Open Source Flex SDK wiki.
I am in Atlanta to take part in 360Flex starting here tomorrow morning. I previously presented at 360Flex in San Jose and Seattle and both were amazing events - so I am looking forward to this first East Coast venue. Matt Chotin is presenting the opening keynote, and both Greg Wilson and myself will be helping him out with that. And then I present a session on ColdFusion Powered Flex. Oh, and Matt has some fun content prepared, so don't miss the opening keynote (and yes, I know it's at 8:30am!).
TrialSmith Inc. (Austin, TX) is looking for a ColdFusion developer. Requirements include BS degree in Computer Science or related coursework, experience with ColdFusion 7/8 and SQL Server, and familiarity with framework methodologies. Preference will be given to Adobe Certified ColdFusion Developers. Details posted online.
Unnamed client (Atlanta, GA) is looking for 2 or 3 Flex developers right now, and another 2 or 3 in the future. Experience with Flex, Java, MVC development, and SQL are required. Contact recruiter Melany Goulding at American Systems.
Unnamed client (New York, NY) is looking for multiple Flex developers with strong Java skills. Contact recruiter William E. Nelson.
Posted At : 8:40 AM
Related Categories:
ColdFusion
Jared Rypka-Hauer had the opportunity to interview former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, and chatted about the future of ColdFusion and more. Jared has posted his notes and comments online. Included is this quote by Bruce:
"We see ColdFusion as being tightly married to Flex, AJAX and AIR. We understand that ColdFusion is a powerful Rapid Application Development platform in its own right, but there's a great deal more at stake here than just what you can build with ColdFusion. From our perspective, there is no other platform in existence that can be used to build powerful, flexible backends for Rich Internet Applications as quickly and competently as can be done with ColdFusion. It will support any RIA technology, be it Flex, Flash, AJAX or AIR. It's really, from our perspective, the glue that holds everything else together."
Discovery Channel recently released Earth Live, a 3D Rich Internet Application that can be used to interact with climate data and more. The site is intuitive, engaging, and allows contributors to post stories to enhance the data collected from the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and NASA. It's a cool app. But what I like most about it is that it looks like the type of application that would have been built in Flash Authoring. And yet it was built in Flex. It's always amazing to see what talented individuals do with our tools and technologies.
First the disclaimer: I am not the creative designer type (in case you thought otherwise). But, that being said, I tried. Here is my "Why Flex?" video for 30onair:
30onair is a series of 30 second videos answering "Why Flex?" "Why Flash?" "Why ColdFusion?" and more. These YouTube videos (all with the tag "30onair") were recorded with a wonderful little video camera called Flip which lets you shoot and post quickly and easily. And, I have a stash of these Flips to give away. Want one? Just tell me what 30 second video clips you'll record. If you come up with 10 great 30 second clips, I'll send you a Flip for you to use to record them (and yes, you'll get to keep it). And it need not be 10 videos of you yourself, you could play cameraman and director and enlist friends and relatives and coworkers. Check out the examples already posted, and then come up with your own list of videos. You can post your list here in the comments, or e-mail them to me directly, and I'll pick the ones I like best. I will expect you to record and post your suggestions rather quickly, so come up with ideas that are fun, creative, but also practical. Oh, and I don't have an endless supply of video cameras, and when I run out, so does your chance to win one of these babies. And with that ... Lights! Camera! Action!
Have a great idea for a 30 second clip on AIR, Flex, ColdFusion, BlazeDS, and more? Please share, I have some really cool giveaways (hint: you can use them to create these 30 second videos!).
Dealer Tire (Cleveland, OH) is looking for a ColdFusion developer. Requirements include degree in Computer Science or Management Information Systems or 4+ years of I/T experience, experience developing ColdFusion applications using methodologies (Mach-II, FuseBox, cfObjects), and SQL Server skills. Experience with Flex, Flash, AJAX, and/or ActionScript is a plus. Contact Beth Gibson.
Posted At : 2:29 PM
Related Categories:
AIR,
ColdFusion
ColdFusion 8 added a rich text control, embedding FCKEditor via a simple to use <cftextarea richtext="true">. The biggest gotcha with the control is that at the time we released ColdFusion 8, FCKEditor did not support Safari. This morning I had two different users ask me when we'd address this issue (they were asking about AIR which uses WebKit for HTML rendering, the same engine that drives Safari), and the answer is that we plan on including an updated FCKEditor in the ColdFusion 8 updater due out shortly (the same one that adds support for Leopard, 64bit Windows, and more).
Posted At : 4:24 PM
Related Categories:
ColdFusion
ColdFusion 8 introduced the <CFPRESENTATION> tag that can be used to build Connect style Flash based presentations. The CFML tags provide some control over the UI, but earlier today I was asked about how to better control the default player colors and look. The colors and fonts and more are defined in a file named vconfig.xml in the /coldfusion8/lib/preso folder, and this file can be edited if needed. And many of the entries are clearly named making it easy to tweak them (although, of course, back up the original before doing so).
