Author: tpryan

I started the day with RIA Design Best Practices: Theory for Developers session. This was really well done. I tend to have a soft sport for theory, but I felt they did a great job with it. The had great illustrations of their principles, and showed you exactly how they were conforming to their principles with each example.

The same could not be said for Securitng ColdFusion MX 7. I left after 50 minutes. At the point at which I left they still hadn’t gotten to any security for Cold Fusion. It was focused on securing the OS and the webserver. I would avoid this class. There used to be a great white paper from Macromedia about securing CF7, but I can’t find it now. I’m sure it address the most common problems with ColdFusion servers, that is that the OS is poorly secured, but I was looking for more than just how to filter packets.

The keynote was good but not really explosive. They did the whole “App of the Future” thing, which was cool, but nonexistant. I was happy that Macromedia acknolwedges their competition, and I hoep their estimation of Redmonds forays into Flash killing are correct. However my view of the keynote might have been negatively influenced by airplane like seating conditions.

Finally there was the monster 3 hour Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Features Exposed. It was good. Some part were old hat, but they really did a good job of explaining why these features that I never used before were worth using. I found myself saying “I could do that here” or “That could help with that project” which is a very good thing to come out of such a session. If nothing else, their section on combining Flex and CF has rekindled my interest in Flex.

All in all a god day. Looking forward to the Cold Fusion Birds of a Feather presentation tonight.

After a crappy flight I’m out here in Anaheim and looking forward to MAX.

Every once in a while I get fired up that I need backups of my remotely hosted site. At work this isn’t a problem, just copy all the files via a network share. But at numtopia.com I lack that access. (Rightfully – I am not complaning, Dataride.) However, FTP’ing all 700 or so files that comprise the Aarrgghh!! empire gets a little tedious.

This time instead of giving up dejectedly, I decided to use zip.cfc from Webclarity to make my own backup solution. I wrote a cfc (function really) that can take both inclusion and exlusion parameters for files, extensions and directories. In short it allows me to create tailored lightweight backups of my ColdFusion site. Want to find out more. Check it out here:

Remote Backup

Once again I am hiring for an open position. Here’s the description I put on Forta.com:

Wharton Computing at the University of Pennsylvania is looking for a full time ColdFusion/ Flex developer in Philadelphia, PA. Duties primarily involve application development, though some server maintenance is involved. Contact: tpryan@wharton.upenn.edu.

Just so you know, knowledge of ColdFusion and Flex are not mandatory for being hired, though they are primarily what you’d be doing. I see three ways that someone could come at this job.

1. Applicant with ColdFusion and Flex experience already.
2. Applicant with a solid foundation in programming, who is willing to learn ColdFusion and Webstandards based web design.
3. Applicant with design background, familiar with Webstandards based web design who is willing to learn programming, through ColdFusion.

It’s a great place to work, with a distinct workplace culture. So drop me a line if your interested: tpryan@wharton.upenn.edu.

Dan posted yesterday about Google Sitemaps. I wanted to fool around with them, but the kit that automatically creates them uses Python, which I don’t have access to. So I decided to build my own out of CFML. If anyone else could use it, or pieces of it, feel free.

Google Sitemap Creator

I meant to blog this a while back. One of the things I think is really cool about Cold Fusion 7 is the fact that it can dynamically create Flashpaper by way of <cfdocument>. I think there are two big advantages to using Flashpaper over PDF’s in web applications: 1. Since they’re just .swf files, they load much faster; 2. Since they load faster you can embed them in pages. However when you use <cfdocument> the existing website interface is completely replaced by Flashpaper’s interface. I believe there are some cases when you wouldn’t want that. According, I have written a cfc that will allow you to pass content in and embed <cfdocument> created Flashpaper in line.

Check it out: Flashpaper Embedder.