SOSensible Blog

CSS Is Dead (Tables are Back, kinda)

2008-11-19T00:00:00-06:00

Now those of us in the ColdFusion world will not let Kevin Yank forget his inpetuous article about the demise of ColdFusion. Especially with all the cool news coming out of Adobe MAX right now. That boy needs some help for sure about application server languages. Ignore his ignorance and consider looking for some good knowledge he does have to offer... he has a new book out that is marvelous. And it is FREE for two weeks as a PDF at SitePoint. (Note, your going to have to follow them on Twitter to get the free book.)

With that being said there is something us developers must deal with on a regular basis. CSS... what a pain it can be. Though his history is partially off the general context is right in this YouTube video. Check it out. (If you don't want to get the free copy be smart enough to get a print copy... in fact get one anyhow!)

DB in the Amazon Clouds

2008-09-23T00:00:00-06:00

I just received an email for Amazon on the new database hosting for the clouds. Yes, they are still doing Amazon SimpleDB, but they are now going to be offering Oracle and MySQL support also!

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MySQL has long been a popular choice with Amazon EC2 developers, and with the addition of Amazon EBS it is even easier to use it with the AWS cloud. For those with a MySQL Enterprise subscription, MySQL now offers full support for Amazon's industry-leading virtual computing environment. Developers can now cost-effectively deploy an open source database in the cloud with full software and production support by the database experts at MySQL. MySQL enterprise on Amazon EC2 offers developers optimal performance, reliability, security, and uptime. See more details about running a MySQL database on Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS, including a tutorial for the best practices on setting up a high availability MySQL database cluster using AWS.
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Hopefully that will be enough info to get you started... if not jump over and check it out at Amazon. :)

Comic Relief Intro: GOOGLE's new Browser

2008-09-02T00:00:00-06:00

Check your calendar, this is Sept. and not April 1! Yes, you read the blog post correct. Google is going to be trying out the browser market. Hey, it sure helped Microsft... now they want to take this for a spin. One nice thing is you get the intro in comic book form... sadly static comics. They must have gone to scroll comics, inc. to have this one put together! Yes, don't worry... still get to flip the pages... and pages... and pages... HEY, didn't someone tell Google we read comics so we get to do less reading! LOL

We are told the browser 'may' ship today. Oh... they agree with Adobe and Apple and it is reported they are building on WebKit. (Links to follow when they are posted.)

ADS Technology Ratings

2008-08-28T00:00:00-06:00

This is a new standard that we at SOSensible are promoting. It is our creation and we find it very helpful. Let's get right into the explaination.

A - Accessible Technology

Technology should be used to make things more approachable. It's not just about what it can do but how it does it. I can remember growing up when we used to get out the slide projector or we would be in a public meeting and they would get out the movie projector and load in the media. This is nothing like today when we drop in a plastic disc to a player and hook a cable up to the projector or screen. We have taken many technology advances and wrapped them up into something that is clearly more approachable. Well, we should be doing the same thing in our code. Yes, there may be 'technical' arguments for why a complicated system may be a better solution. Yet, what often happens is the the common developer finds the code to difficult to follow and maintain. This can be because it has been written with spagghetti weaving of logic or because it has been written with design patterns that make sense technically but can not only make it less approachable but less sustainable if the correct tallent is not available. A good policy would be hire the technical superiour developer to come in and simplify the maintenance of the application.

D - DRY

This stands for "Don't Repeat Yourself". If we package up our logic that we use over and over then we can reuse it rather than rewrite or paste and edit it over and over. This is called encapsulation and it also has some other benefits. It allows for testing of the reused components and elements. Testing can make applications even more stable because it is tested. When updates are done regression testing will make sure none of the former tests are broken by bug fixes or enhancements. There is one more common advantage we have found. It often happens that because we eliminate redundant time consuming work and our code is packaged we find some common feature we would like to have but never get to can be added to this DRY package. This means because we develop DRY it often provides for extended features. (NOTE: jQuery, Prototype and other AJAX libraries are examples of programming DRY.)

S - Sustainable

It follows that normally just making things more approachable and DRY will make them more sustainable. Yet, that is not all that is needed. This could be an entire session or seminar for that matter. I will just say that (A) or (D) should never be done to the exclusion of being sustainable. All of these should be considered together and a decision made based on what implementation is being used.

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Well, I hope that gives people an idea of what DRY is. We do project consulting also if anyone needs any help. You can email us at ... info (-at symbol-) sosensible.com and we will see how we can help.

How did you learn to program?

2008-08-14T00:00:00-06:00

There is an interesting survey going on at Tech Republic we might want to add our answer to. One great thing about this survey... it's one question. You will see the stats immediately so that is nice also. Of course if you want to take 15 minutes on a survey you could sit and do up the history of your life and answer on a weighted stats average! lol

Tech Republic How Did You Learn To Program Survey

Browser Dependence Day

2008-07-04T00:00:00-06:00

Browser Dependence

Yes, the play on words is intentional. As I write this post it is "Independce Day" in America, July 4th. Yet when it comes to working with the web we find we are still very dependent. Here is a question for everyone.

Is there anyone out there besides me who is still not free from issues based on what browser you are using?

The Little Pictures

OK, veterans can skip this chapter but the rest should read it. When we build a web site it has to run in a way that works for the whole world. You have Mac Users, Windows Users, Linux Users... and then you have many operating systems on each machine, AND you have have many browsers and versions of browsers! Getting your stuff to run on all of the machines is possible but there is of course the issue of the return on this investment. How do you conquer this? Well, it will be different from one company to the next. You could go out and buy enough machines to test all of these use case instances but that would be a great investment in terms of space, time and maintenance. Just imagine trying to keep all those machines virus free! So at the end of the day the big picture is all the little pictures that tell the true story of how dependent our design is and how successful we are with that design.

The First Solution

Now... to the better solutions. My first suggestion is to go to something like Browser Shots where you can get a view of how your site will look on about any browser out there. This is a great service and it is not anything new. Yet, how many of us are taking the time to do this? Many of us that are reading this blog will note that we are code developers and not designers. Well, in that case it is even more important for us to learn to use a tool like this. We don't deal with the design aspects of HTML and CSS enough to know the issues with all the different browsers.

The Second Solution

There are many versions of this solution and they basically end up being called by two names. Layouts and Skins. We could test every last page we deliver to our customers from our web sites but this would take a solution to a problem and trade the old problem for a bigger problem. Our return on investment would likely get worse and not better. This is why we need to skin our web sites. By creating common look and feel solutions that can be impressed on page content from one page to the next we make fixes and investment much better. The topic is far to big for this post but it should help us to get thinking in the right direction. It also would be a failure if we failed to mention that because without it again this solution would turn into another problem. ColdFusion and other application servers have ways to make skinning and templates work. Watch for more blogs on those subjects later.

By the way... hope here and abroad your holiday and or week end is great!

Happy 4th of July!

Firefox 3 Download Day

2008-06-17T00:00:00-06:00

Firefox 3 is due to be released today and they are going for a http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord (yes read the end of the URL) WORLD RECORD. Hey... FireFox changed the browser world by leaps and bounds. Most of the new features in browsers are inspirations to do more with the browser. No one has done more in recent years to inspire browser innovation than Mozilla with FireFox. Join in and help them out!

Oh, I will be taking a train to CFUnited 2008 for the 10th anniversary. I will have to do this in the Hotel late night at the last moment! Hope to see everyone at CFUnited running FF3!

Gears Rolling Closer

2008-06-13T00:00:00-06:00

If you haven't heard of Google gears yet you should at least become familiar with what they are doing.

http://gears.google.com/

Here are some of the great features in the newest version ( 0.3 ).

Support for Firefox 3!
Ability to create desktop shortcuts
Improved support for customizing the installation flow and permission dialog
Better support for sending complex objects to workers
Detailed progress events for managed resource store updates
And more...

This is not all the features but the latest features to be added onto the framework. Check it out.

jQuery Selector Cheet Sheet

2008-06-12T00:00:00-06:00

OK ... this will be mentioned at my session at CFUnited... but in case you missed the conference go grab some free Cheat Sheets for jQuery selectors at http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/jquery-selectors

Adobe Labs CS4

2008-05-27T00:00:00-06:00

Go to labs.adobe.com and you find the links there.

Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth.

Great improvements for all these. DW and FW have great interface improvements. DW added SVN, AIR dev stuff and AJAX hinting. FW added AIR prototyping and Adobe type technology. Soundbooth has serveral great enhancements like MP3 compression preview. Check them out. ( remember of course these are beta )

SimpleDB Gains Visibility

2008-02-15T00:00:00-06:00

There is a great new site online called "InsideRIA" that is an O'Reilly web site. Check out the site and this great article on SimpleDB by Amazon.

SQL Lite IDE

2008-01-28T00:00:00-06:00

At last! Yes, for those of us who want to use localized database with AIR there is finally a tool out there to assist with this. I understand why Derby is included with ColdFusion and SqlLite is with AIR apps, but it is still frustrating not having universal schema abilities. At least there is some good work being done with an IDE for SQL Lite and this will help. It's still beta but well on the way to being a complete product. Check it out.

Get SQL Lite Administrator Here

Inside RIA Launches

2008-01-24T00:00:00-06:00

Adobe and O'Reilly pull together to launch a new web site. This site will include great coverage on Flex, AIR and other technologies.

Inside RIA

Google Android

2007-11-20T00:00:00-06:00

Have you heard of the GPhone. Well it doesn't exist, exactly that is. Android is a platform for creating GPhone devices. The device makers is called the Open Handset Alliance. Now if you are interested there is a nice bank of payouts for people creating the best applications. This is found at the challenge page.

We can guess that everyone will not be open minded and will not provide these devices or access to them at first. The list of companies in the Alliance is exciting just the same. John Doe Inc may not want to play ball with an Open Alliance but it is growing just the same. There are 7 Mobile Operator companies, 9 Semiconductor companies, 4 handset manufacturers, 10 software companies and 4 commercialization companies. The bottom line is there are enough power hitters to form a winning team. Members Page

Flash Media Encoder 2.0

2007-11-14T00:00:00-06:00

Adobe® Flash® Media Encoder 2 is designed to enable you to capture live audio and video while streaming it in real-time to Flash Media Server (FMS) or the Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS). When high-quality streaming is your top priority, Flash Media Encoder 2 helps you broadcast live events and 24x7 broadcasting such as:

* Sporting events
* Concerts
* Webcasts
* Educational or promotional events

With an intuitive user interface that works seamlessly with plug-and-play cameras and microphones, and compatible analog-to-digital converters, Flash Media Encoder 2 features Flash video (VP6) technology to deliver high-quality footage that provides size and bit rate flexibility. You also get full audio control with bit-rate efficient Nelly-Moser or MP3 encoding.

Flash Media Encoder 2 can also be tightly integrated into your streaming pipeline with command-line control both locally and through a remote connection. Auto-restart after power failures or other system re-starts helps ensure that your live streams are reliably available 24x7, 365 days a year.

Here is a link to the product page. Good work Adobe!

Prototype UI

2007-11-13T00:00:00-06:00

I have no idea why some are billing this as a new library because it is anything but new. Maybe the label of being prototype UI is new

It is a great library just the same and here is the page to check it out.

Scriptaculous Matures

2007-11-12T00:00:00-06:00

This is just a quick note of interest but this library is now at 1.8 as of Nov. 6th, 2007.

It says it has been updated to Prototype 1.6 final. You can get details here. Change Log

DOJO reaches 1.0

2007-11-10T00:00:00-06:00

Dojo descripbes itself like this...

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Dojo is an Open Source DHTML toolkit written in JavaScript. It builds on several contributed code bases (nWidgets, Burstlib, f(m)), which is why we refer to it sometimes as a "unified" toolkit. Dojo aims to solve some long-standing historical problems with DHTML which prevented mass adoption of dynamic web application development.

Dojo allows you to easily build dynamic capabilities into web pages and any other environment that supports JavaScript sanely. You can use the components that Dojo provides to make your web sites more usable, responsive, and functional. With Dojo you can build degradable user interfaces more easily, prototype interactive widgets quickly, and animate transitions. You can use the lower-level APIs and compatibility layers from Dojo to write portable JavaScript and simplify complex scripts. Dojo's event system, I/O APIs, and generic language enhancement form the basis of a powerful programming environment. You can use the Dojo build tools to write command-line unit-tests for your JavaScript code. The Dojo build process helps you optimize your JavaScript for deployment by grouping sets of files together and reuse those groups through "profiles".

Dojo does all of these things by layering capabilities onto a very small core which provides the package system and little else. When you write scripts with Dojo, you can include as little or as much of the available APIs as you need to suit your needs. Dojo provides multiple points of entry, interpreter independence, forward looking APIs, and focuses on reducing barriers to adoption.

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I am just checking this out for now. We don't have plans to use it yet but they deserve Kudos for a project well done.

News Summary

2007-11-09T00:00:00-06:00

OK we have lots of great articles in the works... and we are back from our excursion to refactor SOS.

General News...

Flex Builder standard (without charting) is now 249 instead of 499!
DOJO is going version 1.0
COOP is on the verge of the official 1.0 release.
SOS is being rewritten with several things refactored out... and will have the same features, but in modular fashion.
We are about 1/2 way through creating our ColdFusion Bootcamp book.
We are started in refactoring out our Skinning to CFish (called Cuttle Fish)
We are going to refactor out our routing technology as a library also
... and much more to come!

COOP Live:Take 1

2007-05-30T00:00:00-06:00

Come and meet wtih us Thursday, May 31st 2007 for a live presentation of COOP where we will focus on the Forms features. (This is 0.3 so if this impresses you there will be more to come!)

http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/calendar/5830887/