Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

Welcome to my blog, my re-designed blog! So, finally I get rid of that *mustard* colour, and back to my usual angry red, but fear not, I have added some rounded corners so you dont feel so angry when reading the post (clever eh? a red padded room) One of the things that I am thinking about is the fact that there are several things one has to do when simply changing the stylesheet of a blog:

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Hello, yes, I am back, from outer space, well, not exactly. I have taken a month or so away from development of CFEclipse and my other projects (including this blog!) which has been great. Of course one of the reasons for this has been that I have been very busy at work, and that kind of takes it out of you. This is normal for me, but the work has been rather oppressive rather than creative so my brain needed a bit of space. Some news: I shall be speaking at Adobe MAX in Barcelona in October! I am very excited about this as I shall be demonstrating not only CFEclipse but the ColdFusion Extensions for CF8 (something I love using by the way) as well as hopefully the debugging capabilities that you now have with CF8. With regards to CFEclipse, I am currently taking a bit of a hard look at features and fixes that will make it into the next version. I am working on a complete re-design of the interface, basically following the rule of making actions available (no more hidden menus etc) so that access stuff easier. Apart from that, I am looking at re-compiling and coding the plugin so its compatible with Java 1.4.x since, even though I much prefer Java 5, it seems that is the most common error that people are getting (by looking at the Trac bugs!) On a final side-note: I have started a course each week in Film Directing! I did my first class last night and its absolutely awesome! We read a number of screenplays (Thelma and Louise and Brazil being the main ones) and dissected them to get a feel for the responsibility of a Director with regards to examining and expanding on the ideas within a script. Don't worry tho, Hollywood is still safe (after all, I only have done one class so far!) Well, that is it for the moment, I hear there has been lots of exciting news in the community whilst I have been away (I havent been reading blogs or news) but I just like to state that I took this vacation away from development without consulting the ColdFusion Weekly guys, it seems they have started up again after the summer!

Rumors of my site's death have been greatly exaggerated, although, my old site is down I am in the process of attempting to get the database backup so that all the old posts can be restored. Of course, this is just a temporary blog for the moment, and I shall be overwriting it and letting you all know what has happened. Back online soon! I promise!

A little twitter message from Kev got me thinking about something totally unrelated really, but it might explain a few things. Let me fill you in with a few facts first:

• Eclipse just released version 3.3. Last year, at the same time, they released 3.2 and the year before that 3.1
• Adobe's ColdFusion going to be 12 years old tomorrow (10th of July)
• I am going to be 33 on the 11th of July

Take all these facts together and you start seeing a pattern! I share (nearly) a birthday with a technology I love. I work on CFEclipse which is built on the Eclipse platform, which releases a version for the last 3 years that matches my age, within two weeks of my birthday, hmm... this is real synchronicity at work here don't you think? Anyway, Happy (Early) Birthday ColdFusion, may Adobe keep releasing great software for many years to come! (just as a thought exercise, do you think they will release CF tomorrow???)

Following on from Mark Mandel and Andy Jarrett, here is I, as a Simpsons character, go figure...

I wanted to put down (for the help of new Switchers and myself) a list of applications I consider a top 10 of commercial (have to pay) applications for OS X. There are so many applications that are free on the Mac, that cover nearly everything you want to do, but for this post I wanted to cover some of the paid for applications. I know there are Open Source alternatives for most of this software, but sometimes there is just software that *IS* worth the few pounds/dollars/euros that it takes to buy them. Please bear in mind, that I am a web developer (or application developer depending on the time of day) so these are focused on what I do. So without further ado here is my list (in no particular order): 1) TextMate http://macromates.com/ &euro 39 This is the "Missing Text Editor" for the Mac. I use this all the time, and there is a CFML plugin for it, for when you need to edit those random CFML files. Obviously for projects I use CFEclipse, but a text editor is always a handy tool 2) QuickTime Pro http://www.apple.com/quicktime/pro/ £ 20 QuickTime already comes with OS X but what you really want is the very cheap Pro edition, if only to watch stuff in full screen, and not to mention its export capabilities! 3) Parallels http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/ $79.99 /VMWare Fusion http://www.vmware.com/beta/fusion/ $ 39.99 (for pre-orders) With the advent of the IntelMacs, we can now run Windows natively or in Virtualisation, so these are the best (maybe only) tools for the job! I classify both of these as one since they do the same job (I have been checking out VMWare Fusion for a few weeks using my BootCamp drive, and I am really enjoying it, it seems faster than Parallels) Don't boot up your Mac without at least one of these! 4) iWork http://www.apple.com/iwork/ $79 I do a lot of presentations and the best software for that is Keynote, it just runs rings round PowerPoint (now if only Adobe Connect would support either PDF or Keynote files!!) I dont use Pages as much, but its still a lot nicer than the interface-cluttering Microsoft Word. 5) Coda http://www.panic.com/coda/ $69 We all have some small sites to manage, and Coda, a new kid on the block brings in some real nice features for this. I think its worth it alone for the CSS and the Site panel (which it automatically creates thumbnails of your sites!) I haven't bought this yet, but I am really liking it. EDIT: the latest version of Coda supports CFML too. 6) Adobe Fireworks CS3 http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/ $299 I am not a designer but I love Fireworks. I have been using it for years and its the best web graphic design software I have used. I know Adobe Photoshop is the daddy but the ability to do everything web design related in one package (down to creating the HTML for you) is just too good. I love this app! 7) Aqua Data Studio http://www.aquafold.com/ $399 There are apps for every database out there, but if you are connecting to a variety of databases this rules. Unfortunately because of the price I have to install Windows and use Microsoft MSSQL Enterprise Manager, but if I could afford this, Windows would end up just being a shell for Internet Explorer. This is a must if you do a lot of database work. (Aqua Data Studio v4.7 is actually free, but it doesn't have all the features I would like it to have) 8) OmniGraffle http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/ from $79 If you are doing a lot of diagrams, be they UML to system architecture, OmniGraffle makes it really nice with very impressive results. 9) OmniPlan http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniplan/ $149.95 I always hated Microsoft Project, there is something evil about it (maybe just because I am a developer) but when I had a go on Omni Plan, I thought "hey, I *CAN* get into project management!". As with OmniGraffle its results are impressive as well as pretty, and hey, if you are going to be staring at something all day, you might as well be staring at something good right? 10) Delicious Library http://www.delicious-monster.com/ $40 This is a great little tool if you have lots of DVD's (and books) as well as appreciative friends who like borrowing them. The main thing about this is that you can very easily create a whole library of your DVD's simply by scanning the bar-code using your iSight camera. You can then have a list of who you have lent out your DVD's too as well as loads more info and suggestions (driven by Amazon I think?) So, there it is, my 10 must-buy applications for OS X. Edit: If you think this post was usefult, why dont you Digg it?

Yep, I am looking for a talented ColdFusion developer to come and work for/with me at Design UK's offices in the centre of London. If you want more information about the role, head over to the Design UK Careers section of the website and apply via there. You don't have to use CFEclipse, just be damn good... are you that good? Apply now! (the obvious bits...)

• You need a valid EU working permit
• This is an on-site role, sorry
• No agencies, how many times??? NO AGENCIES!
• Experience in frameworks is a must

UPDATE: this role has now been filled! Woohoo!

I just got back from my first flying lesson, I am over the moon (even though I didn't fly that high)! Nadia (my Significant Other as Sean Corfield says) got me a flying lesson for Xmas which I finally redeemed today. We set off early-ish this morning to go to Redhill Aerodrome and got there with plenty of time to spare. Which was lucky as the trainer wanted to go up early, fine by me! We were meant to go off in a small Cessna 152, but since there was a bigger plane (a PA28 Archer), we decided to pay a little more and Nadia was able to join us in the back.

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My previous post about CFEclipse and DuckTyping got me thinking about how I develop applications. In a couple of systems I have written, I create a number of services. What do I mean by this? Well, a service (in my terminology, I am not CS graduate, just an old hacker) in my code is a single component (singleton) that returns objects (such as pages, products, users, you get the idea). So for example, lets take a simple PageService: <cfcomponent displayname="PageService" output="false">
      <cffunction name="getPage" returntype="any">
         <cfargument name="pageid" required="false">
            ... some code ...

         <cfreturn pageObject />
      </cffunction>
   </cfcomponent> This component returns my pages which is all fine, but lets say, I am going to change the way I get pages (for some crazy reason) and instead of using a database, I want to use a file based storage, or an XML file. Instead of changing it, I create a couple more services:

• XMLPageService: gets pages from XML
• DBPageService: gets pages from a Database (my original service)
• FilePageService: gets pages from a FileSystem

Now, how do I instantiate these services? Well, I create a PageServiceFactory. The PageServiceFactory's role is to get me the right type PageService, with a function such as: <cffunction name="getPageService" returntype="Any">
      <cfargument name="servicetype" hint="type can be:db,xml or file">
         <cfswitch expression="arguments.servicetype">
            <cfcase value="db">
               <cfreturn getDBPageService() />
            </cfcase>
            <cfcase value="xml">
               <cfreturn getXMLPageService() />
            </cfcase>
            <cfcase value="file">
               <cfreturn getFilePageService() />
            </cfcase>
            <cfdefaultcase>
               <cfthrow message="unknown page service requested">
            </cfdefaultcase>
         </cfswitch>
      </cffunction> This is a great example of DuckTyping for programming and not just the for ( the celebrity harlot which is) performance since, when I do my call, in my controller I call the Factory asking for a Page as follows: <cfset myPage = PageServiceFactory.getPageService('db').getPage("some page")>
   <cfset title = myPage.getTitle()>
   <cfset content = myPage.getContent()> I am able to call the same method on each service even though the service type can change. One of the requirements for duck typing to work in your code is that all the methods that you would expect to be there, ARE there (otherwise you get a function not found exception). You would have to either very rigorously test your code or setup unit tests that all of the PageServices have to pass. In Java, you can define an interface that all the PageServices comply with, basically the interface is a contract that the PageServices must follow with the functions and arguments that they have. Most java IDE's and editors, whilst you write your class, will alert you that you are not conforming to this contract and provide ways to overcome this. This kind of functionality I would love to put in CFEclipse, if ColdFusion had interfaces. How would the code change? The getPageService function in my Factory would then have a returntype of "IPageService", which would be my Interface, defining what functions all my PageService's have. In CFEclipse, whilst you are writing a new PageService, you would say it implements the "IPageService" interface. If you missed out any functions, CFEclipse would warn you that your new Service is not compatible, all before you have even saved the file. Now you could have function insight when you type "getPageService("db")". This wouldn't be DuckTyping anymore, of course, but it would definitely remove a lot of the architectural mistakes that you could do in your application. Or have I missed something?

There is an application I built using some Spry related drop downs. It has been working for months (since the summer really) fine and all of the sudden the drop down boxes disappeared. Without going too much into what it does, its basically a page list and it stopped working. After a lot of checking config and what have you, it basically come down to Internet Explorer chocking on the page names, even though they were in a CDATA block it still didn't like them. To cut a long story (of debugging, using a lot of profanity and most of the characters above the numbers on a keyboard) short, if you are not in control of what is going to be in your XML, add XMLFormat() to your output <pagelist>
... loop...
<page>
<id>#id#</id>
<pagename><![CDATA[#XMLFormat(pagename)#]]></pagename>
</page>


</pagelist>