Adventures in Web Application Develompent by Phil Duba - General

Good User Interface Idea

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:25:00 -0400

Today, I booked my registration for CFUnited, the hotel, and tickets for traveling to DC for CFUnited. The one thing I saw in each was something that I hadn't seen before, the ability to send a confirmation email to more than one address. I was able to send one to my personal and one to my work. Maybe I'm late to the party on this concept, but seriously, whoever decided that was a good paradigm in a user interface, kudos to you.

New Job

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:29:00 -0400

This week I have started a new job at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as a Web Applications Engineer. In my new role, I will help guide the Information Services division from its current architecture to a modern, more complete architecture. The big things on the horizon are get out of a really old ColdFusion setup (that's all I'm going to say) and a legacy Java app server as well as establishing processes to enable the area I work for to be able to respond to the needs of the rest of the organization. I know there are a lot of challenging assignments ahead and I can't wait to get started.

New Layout

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 08:24:00 -0400

Over the last few nights, I updated the layout of my site. The previous layout had 3 columns, 1 main content area and two side navigation columns. It was also a fluid design. After looking it over for a while, I really didn't like it, so I thought I would take another shot at it. I found this current design over at free-css-templates. It is the DkBlog design. I worked on converting the BlogCFC rendering to the design in the template as well as created different images for the backgrounds. If anyone has any issues viewing the site, please let me know.

Eclipse and the Compare With Each Other

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:45:00 -0400

Ray Camden released yesterday version 5.9 of his BlogCFC application on which this website runs. I have always struggled with getting Ray's changes into my site, particularly when they affect areas of the application I might have changed to get the layout or functionality (like the inline comments) to what I want. I have used Eclipse's (within CFEclipse, of course) "Local History" to revert back to something I might have done earlier while working on a particular file. Today, for the first time, I used the other option within the Compare file-context menu, "With Each Other". Boy I wish I had discovered this much earlier as it would have made my life easier (and saved some ink) when comparing what changes occurred between the base BlogCFC code base and what I had on my system. It just goes to show, take a few minutes to look at the IDE you use to develop in your particular programming language as you will most likely find something that will make your job easier.

Rangers vs. the NHL - Battle for Digital Rights

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:37:00 -0400

An interesting battle is shaping up between the New York Rangers and the NHL over the Rangers' website. Since a NHL Board of Governors (all owners in the NHL) in 2006, the NHL started the process of centralizing all of their teams' websites and digital assets into an NHL run operation. The intention of this was to provide a more unified appearance for each team across the league as some sites were very poor while others were excellent. Well, MSG, the owners of the Rangers, Knicks, the Garden, and other operations in NYC are not giving up control of their site and have sued the NHL essentially claiming the NHL is infringing on its own digital rights to promote the Rangers as they see fit and the revenue its website can bring to the team. The NHL claims that combining all of the sites will allow for greater advertising and other streams of revenue for all teams as they can offer a package with more far reaching impact than a local team can. The NFL, MLB, and NBA have all consolidated their online efforts. A very good post can be found over on the hockey blog Kukla's Korner which also contains a link to an interesting article form the Sports Business Journal.

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I love Google Analytics AIR Suite

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:40:00 -0400

For the past couple of weeks, I have been using the Google Analytics Reporting AIR Application authored by Nicolas Lierman for this site. While I don't get a great deal of traffic for this site, I always like looking at the stats Google provides, especially that map/location of visitors and browser/OS versions. I used some of this information when reskinning the site. I like the AIR application because it lets me get to all the information without going through the clunky interface that Google has. I also like the fact I can add in more profiles and switch relatively easily between them. Most importantly, though, the AIR application has provided me with a sense of what can be done with an AIR application and how, I think, the main value of these types of application is the dissemination of information across a business quickly and easily, very much like the web-based portal.

0 for 2007

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:54:00 -0400

Now that Adobe MAX has started, for the first time in almost 6 years, I will have not made a significant technology conference during a calendar year. Most of that time, I have attended CFUnited and one time I was fortunate enough to go to MAX in New Orleans. I have always liked going to conferences for more than the technical discussions. The social aspect is extremely hard to beat and you can make great friends (and resources) for life at these events. There is also the great feeling of being one of the first folks to see something in action in public. As 2008 starts to approach, I know I'll probably only get the chance to get to one conference (at least I hope so) so I will have to figure out which of the big three ColdFusion events (and maybe an east coast Flex360 in Philly? ;) I want to go to and start prepping my management now. Hope everyone is enjoying MAX and keep the blog posts coming!

Back to Regularly Scheduled Programming

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:57:00 -0400

Ok, so this is the obligatory "I'm Back" posting and it's somewhat cheesy to do, but I don't care. I have finally finished my blog redesign. I'd like to thank all the folks that redesigned their sites in the past 3-4 months as that's about how long I have wanted to do this. I used Dan Vega's postings on what he did for his design as well as making the comments form a part of the posting. I also like the 3-column layout Russ Johnson had on his site. So, I redid the graphics and the design, incorporating my Naval Academy colors instead of the orange-and-black of the Flyers.

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Apologies for the reposts in the aggregators

Wed, 09 May 2007 07:43:00 -0400

I apologize for the multiple re-posts that showed up in the aggregators today. Some of my posts had been timing out for reasons I am unsure of at the moment. The best explanation I can give is that each of the posts had a '--' in the alias entry which is used in the SES URLs for BlogCFC. For some reason, the web server at my hosting account would not load these entries. I replaced all of the entries I could find this morning that had the '--' and that is the reason for the aggregators reproducing the entries. I know I don't necessarily like when seeing posts on MXNA or FullAsAGoog that aren't present. Again, I apologize for this happening, just working through some kinks.

It's Friday! But I'm sad anyways ...

Fri, 04 May 2007 07:10:00 -0400

Well, I'm glad the weekend is here. I have a friend coming in from California and that means all my friends will be getting together over the weekend so it isn't all bad. What made me sad is that I logged on this morning and just about every one of the RSS feeds I have on my Google home page had something like "Off to Cf.Objective" or "Arrived at Cf.Objective". Seeing all the great presentations, I wish I was there as I think there's a lot of information that is going to be shelled out. Hopefully the blog world gives good accounts of the presos and maybe there will be videos coming out after? Anyways, I'm going to make it a resolution to get there next year no matter what. Oh well, back to work ...

Philly CFUG is on for tomorrow!

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:16:00 -0400

From the manager email:

Meeting Information
Date: March 13, 2007 @ 5:00 PM
Adam Lehman on building Flex applications powered by ColdFusion. A two-hour can't-miss talk!
Plan on skipping out early tomorrow for some free high-intensity ColdFusion training as Adam Lehman from Adobe rolls in to town to speak on building Flex apps powered by ColdFusion! After the excitement of 360Flex it's time to settle down and learn how, as ColdFusion geniuses, we can integrate pieces of Flex in our apps to improve user experience. It's not everyday we are able to host a speaker from Adobe so PLEASE come out and help make a strong showing for the Philly market!

Parking is available at 18th and Arch, though as always we recommend using mass transit whenever possible. Starbucks is on the ground floor for any caffeine junkies planning on attending, plus we'll have the usual soda and pizza for a light (read: not good for you) snack/dinner.

Location: 1801 Market Street 15th Floor

I hope the room is full with everyone from Philly's CF Community. Go here to register. I'll be going, taking Patco in from Jersey. See ya there!

Always Learning

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 07:20:00 -0400

One of the things I have always been a true believer in is one should try and learn something new every day. In the past few days, I came across a few things in my work that I didn't know before:

1. OpenOffice documents can be opened right inside of Eclipse. I didn't know this, I accidentally clicked on a document while in Eclipse and presto, I was viewing the document.
2. MS SQL Query Analyzer can be launched directly from Enterprise Manager. The client I am working for now, has Enterprise Manager configured on all of the workstations, but never gave out the Database user passwords to the developers so we couldn't reconfigure the database connection if we wanted to. So I needed to run some SQL files yesterday and wanted to go through Query Analyzer, but couldn't get past the Connection dialog, obviously. Then a coworker told me to go into Enterprise Manager, highlight the database and then click Tools -> Query Analyzer and that launched with the connection already done. Sweet shortcut!
3. Lots of XML manipulation in ColdFusion. As you may know, from reading my blog, I have been working with SAML and trying to setup a Service Provider using pure ColdFusion. Yesterday, I spent most of my time developing a canonicalization function and all I can say is thank goodness that ColdFusion represents XML as a series of Structures and Arrays. It makes life so much easier. I hadn't done much XML manipulation in the past, but I think I got a few months worth of it yesterday.

Hopefully I find some time outside of work to go into details on the canonicalization in ColdFusion and post a component or two out there as well as continue the SAML series.

A New Frontier

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:39:00 -0400

I haven't gotten a chance to do a lot of the things I have wanted to lately (User Group Manager, SAML series, Flex, etc.). But there is a good reason, I just completed my first week at my new job with WinMill Software. I am excited about the opportunities available and the diverse projects I'll have the opportunity to work on. I enjoyed my time with ADP VirtualEdge and will miss all of the great people there. So, hopefully I can get back to doing the things I had back on my plate to do in mid-January and work towards those resolutions.

Going Ons

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 06:40:00 -0400

It's been almost a week since I last blogged (blame it on being depressed by the Eagles' loss) but I wanted to post something real quick to update on some of things I've been up to.

Almost done part 2 of my SAML series as there is somewhat of a difference in packet definitions from version 1.1 to 2.0 that I need to check on before releasing the post
I have been working mostly on the User Group Manager application and a progress report can be found here. Hoping to have a released product by February5, with a 1.0 release about 2 weeks after that.
Still learning Flex, trying to get through the last few chapters of the Training from the Source before I begin work on a pet project. When I'm done that pet project, I'll release it as I hope others will look at it and critique it for me so I can continue to learn.

There are a few other things I am working on, but details on those items will have to wait for another day.

A Question of How Many forms?

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:25:00 -0400

The other day, our QA manager was trying to develop a simple List/CRU application for managing all of his test plans and was asking the development team for help at work. This lead to an interesting conversation between myself and a colleague on form development. He was of the opinion that there should be one form to execute both the add and edit of an item. I was arguing the point of having one for the add and one for the edit based on the type of execution one was doing based on the fact that one type of action would have proper values and the other wouldn't. We talked a little more and then ultimately, we left the QA manager to his own devices to finish his project (we sorta helped, but oh well, he's QA, right?).

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