Glyn Jackson's Web Design and ColdFusion Blog - Chit Chat and Reviews

ColdBox sites that have gone live.

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0100

A few new Coldbox powered sites pushed live of this month.

EntryMaster. A sports registration gateway for the UK market using ColdBox to power a custom CMS and payment system.

Zurich, but you need to login to access via SimplyBiz.

Whats Next

Coming next month MonsterHunt.co.uk. A AR game powered by ColdBox. Lots of press for this one leading up to Halloween so watch this space, its going to be cool! The Zombies are coming!

Dear ColdBox

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:20:00 +0100

It's been hard for me to get my head around CF9 ORM and ColdBox. The first mistake was using ORM within ColdBox for the first time. My life would have been easy if I had just started at the beginning with ORM. Why did I do it! Why!

Anyhow, I am committed! Truly, exciting and frustrated at the same time. The ColdBox support group is really helpful and if I may say incredibly patient at helping me with my stupid questions!

Over the next few weeks I am going to write up my own experiences with ORM and set up a demo using the M6 version of ColdBox. It won't be from an authority point of view, but from a beginners venture into ORM. In the mean time I want to just remind people of a post Luis made about community and support.

Post Here

Luis gives back so much with this Framework it's made my life a lot easier, if it's helped you, then why not do your bit to.

Layer Example Added to RIAForge

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:50:00 +0100

I have had requests for an example of the CFC I used in the "Creating a simple Layar with ColdFusion" Tutorial. I decided to comment on the CFC and upload it to RIAForge. So if anyone wants it you can find the project there

It's only a example of what's needed to create POI's and Actions. POI, and objects. However you should be pulling these from a database!

I would love to know what others are doing with Layar at the moment.

BBC News Feedback on the ColdBox Application by Gencia Media

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:13:00 +0100

The feedback and press have started to come in for the She Says, She Says campaign created by Gencia Media which used ColdFuson and the framework ColdBox to power a mobile application to help awareness of teen sexual violence and rape. Read the full article on the BBC here

Follow me on Twitter - glynjackson

Sun, 31 May 2009 22:10:00 +0100

I tried, I really did! I didn't want to get pulled into the world of Twitter but I was just missing too much within the CF community. I mean who is really interested in reading my random crap, but I am now finding other peoples random crap strangely addictive!

Anyway, if you DO want to read 'my random crap' then you now can. My user name is glynjackson see you there!

RC9 UK/Europe Version of Cupcake Download

Thu, 07 May 2009 20:35:00 +0100

Are you in the UK and still waiting for your OTA update from version 1.1 to 1.5?

If you are and don't want to wait, like me, then you can download the official update and manually install it yourself [LINK BROKEN]. I know I am impatient but if you're still reading this so are you.

Warning I recommend you have full battery if you do this!

First download the file above to your desktop and rename the zip file to 'update' and place the file in the root of your phones Micro SD card. You can do this by mounthing your SD card while its attached to the computer.
After the files are copied, unmount your phone and turn it off.
Restart the phone by holding the Home+End keys down together.
Wait and an icon screen will appear, nothing will happen, you now need to open your keypad and to view options hit Alt+L. This will display the log
Now press Alt+S to begin the update.
Rename it from signed-kila-ota-115247-prereq.TC4-RC19+RC28.zip to update.zip, and place it in the root of your Micro SD card.
Once it finishes, just follow the onscreen instructions and press Home+Back to finish.

Enjoy cupcake

Do I stop supporting IE6?

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:10:00 +0100

Cross browser compatibility has always been a pain for me, I spend hours at the end of every project tweaking and writing hacks to combat IE6's lack of support for current standards in HTML markup and CSS etc.

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Protx rebrands now it's Sage Pay

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:52:00 +0100

Protx, the UK's leading payment gateway provider as you may well be aware was purchased by Sage last year. Well another change, as of the 21st of April Protx will be rebranded as 'Sage Pay'. Since the buyout I must comment that Sage Pay (Protx) support and their services have improved significantly.

As we are Sage Pay partners we will still be offering the same services as before and customers who use our services will not have to do a thing! Your API and SalesMaxx Cart will be updated for you. For anyone who is not with us or is a developer remember to change your logos. No news yet about the VSP Direct URL's, I assume they will still work and they will let us know if they change them also.

Hopefully this change means in the future we could have closer integration with Sage itself, although you can now use Sage Pay within Sage, the other way, in as always has been a little more tricky.

ColdEXT Helps With Consistency!

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:26:00 +0100

This week I found a gem and cannot put it down, I want to tell everyone! Justin Carter just made my use of the EXTJS library a lot clearer with his ColdExt tags. Everyone else seems to know about this already, but I didn't and just wanted to sing its praises.

I have a current application that uses EXT 1 and over the next 2 months I will be making major updates using EXT 2.0+ and this will really come in handy.

You cannot do everything with these tags and I have hit a few limitations but from what I can tell it's still a work in progress and if something is missing, you can use script directly within the tags so it does not really matter.

For me ColdExt looks like it will help me keep consistency with EXT 2.0 a little better than before, keep up the great work Justin Carter and if you read this, thanks for sharing!

SalesMaxx v4 screen shots using a mix of ColdExt

RC9 UK update for the G1

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:57:00 +0100

Long waiting and much overdue but it finally looks like the RC9 update for the G1 is being rolled out for the UK market. So far only a hand full of UK G1 users seem to of had the update and T-Mobile tech support have stated this is because of testing but everyone should have it over the next few weeks.

However Germany had the same RC9 EU update we are due to get for weeks now with no reported problems so I don't understand the logic behind it.

You may be looking forward to the improvement and bug fixes the update will bring such as finally being allowed to empty the trash! However don't get to excited we are still not equal with the RC33 USA counterpart, we will not be having the voice dial functions it has been taken out due to it not understanding the Queens English!

PageRank, Hilltop and TrustRank does it really matter?

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:26:00 +0100

Having recently posted about PageRank I wanted to expand on it a little here, not the recent update but the confusion and myths often associated with PR. I had a few emails after the post, asking questions about PageRank most making over exaggerate claims and misleading assumptions on its impact in relation to their search engine rankings.

The truth is many Webmasters often obsess over the importance of PageRank in relation to their Page Rank. Note two words, "Page Rank" not PageRank (PR), two different things. PR is just one of the many factors that Google uses to determine a page's actual Page Rank on their search result page (SERP) for a given search query.

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Happy Christmas Coldfusion Bloggers!

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:59:00 +0100

Just wanted to wish the CF community Happy Christmas.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Review

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:33:00 +0100

I am a huge fan of Dreamweaver it's been my main editor of choice for over 5 years. It helps me to conveniently manage all my projects and websites in one place, a feature sadly lacking in Eclipse. I got a change to try out the Beta release of Adobes Dreamweaver CS4, the second release of Dreamweaver since Adobe absorbed it 3 years ago. I have been using the Dreamweaver CS4 Beta now for just over a month, with the final release looming I wanted to review my experiences so far.

The first thing I noticed was how quick Dreamweaver CS4 loaded in comparison to Dreamweaver CS3, however my old version has well over 100 site definitions and many extensions which the fresh copy did not, so it's not an exact evaluation of its performance.

The most obvious change to Dreamweaver CS4s is the new user interface. The new interface now looks like rest of Adobe's Creative Suite, and is much more intuitive to use than before, you can customise it for yourself or pick from a list of predefined workspaces such as coder, designer, coder plus, app developer and so on. It's seems highly flexible in creating a working environment which best matches your own needs.

Dreamweaver appeal has always been because its designed for both the beginner and advanced user, while the designers can use the new integration features such as Smart Objects, coders like myself have always needed something closer to what Eclipse has. Well its now seems like DW has caught up for web languages anyway. The new related files bar, which appears between the document toolbar and the document itself, lists all CSS, JavaScript and server side files linked to the page, you can split the page using live view and watch changes as you make them, very cool. Setup correctly with my ColdFusion server I found the live view very helpful.

I will post more reviews as I play more

Dreamweaver CS4 Requirements

1GHz or faster processor
Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit Windows XP and Windows Vista)
512MB of RAM
1GB of available hard-disk space for installation
1,280x800 display with 16-bit video card

ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial Book

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:32:00 +0100

Until recently the Web Application Construction Kit series were the only books worth purchasing if learning ColdFusion 7/8. I have all 3 of these books and I often find myself picking bits out of each.

Although excellent books for someone just learning CF it can get expensive. This was a concern a local university shared and one of the key factors in the decision not to teach it. "Can students afford to buy all 3 books at almost £40 each just for a 6 week module?"

Today I got my copy of the ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial. One book covering all the basics and even some in depth AJAX stuff.

I just want to say thank you to John Farrar the author of the book for giving the ColdFusion community more options on reading material, and I hope this is the start of things to come. A great book for learning CF and the authors deserve praise.

If you are learning ColdFusion or new to some of the CF8 features I would recommend it. If you are an advanced CF user then it serves only as good refresher.

Universities you no longer have an excuse for not teaching the best web application development language!

Why ColdFusion? Videos

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:43:00 +0100

While browsing YouTube last night I came across these why ColdFusion videos. The first one is by Ben Forta, the second by some random person but funny so worth a watch. Ben Forta - Why ColdFusion? Why ColdFusion? Dance with Lana Rudkovsky