I’ve been a Fusebox gal from way back in the version 2ish days, before versioning was something that was done with any kind of discipline. I still remember the old mailing list days very fondly - there was a very close community that grew up in the early days of the framework, and with those guys in my inbox I wrote a lot of code and had a lot of fun doing it.

So while Fusebox is still my weapon of choice - I’m using version 5 these days - I am amazed at the depth and breadth of choice available in the frameworks world, and I find the communities that spring up around them fascinating. Which is why I started a series of interviews on SitePoint with framework developers, to try and get a better idea of how their approaches and philosophies are bourne out in the frameworks themselves and the people who rally around them.

So far there’s two that have been published - one with Geoff Bowers on FarCry, not traditionally seen as a framework, and one with John Farrar on COOP, a fairly new system with a unique and interesting focus. Take a look and don’t forget to leave a rating so I know what works and what doesn’t, in terms of the articles themselves. There’s a few more on the way - my beloved Fusebox, Machi-ii, ColdBox, Transfer ORM (yes Mark, that’s you - answer the bloody questions!) - and if you’re a framework developer, no matter how big or small, please drop me an email so I can include you too.

And tonight I’ve put up a poll on the SitePoint ColdFusion blog, to get some feedback from readers - do you use a framework? Pop on over and put your 2c in. It won’t even cost you that!

Frameworks, frameworks everywhere: a poll on SitePoint

Post from: kay lives here - coldfusion, fusebox, web standards and stuff

Like frameworks? I do

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The Web Directions conference franchise is truly something special. I’ve been going to the “south” version of the conference, held, in Sydney, each year since 2005, and I wouldn’t miss it. The “north” edition of the conference has been held in Canada twice now, and it looks like a ton of fun although sadly a North American trip is a little out of my conference budget.

Fabulous conference organiser extraordinare Maxine Sherrin has announced that all the slides and podcasts from January’s WDN are now available. There’s some awesome stuff there, both from the international super stars like Derek Featherstone, Jonathon Snook and Anil Dash, and some of the lesser known up and coming stars like Australia’s own Man In Blue, Cameron Adams.

So check it out!

Post from: kay lives here - coldfusion, fusebox, web standards and stuff

Web Directions North slides and podcasts

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There’s been a long thread on the CFAussie mailing list this week: recruters say “CF on the way out”? … FFS! not FUD from them too?

The discussion has been at various times hilarious, inspiring, boring and tiresome (often all at once) and has moved from how recruiters are out of touch, to how the whole world is moving to .NET, to how Adobe is not doing enough to promote CF, to how we should be converting PHP developers to CF en masse, to how Scott Barnes is the devil.

Talk moved at one point to things that we as developers should be doing to ensure the longevity of our platform of choice. Gary Barber posted some thoughts and then followed up with a blog post on the state of ColdFusion with some ideas and a bit of a dig at the ColdFusion community for being too closed. Gary’s post spurred some strong reactions - Mike Henke posted ColdFusion is dead (yet again) and claims it was a carbon copy of other “CF is dead” articles. Really though, Gary was trying to spur people into action, which Jim Priest recognised in his post The Closed State of the ColdFusion Community.

For the record: I agree with Gary. He’s based in Perth too, and this topic is one we’ve spoken about at length, over beers at Port80 meetings. Port80 meetings where there are PHP, .NET and Ruby developers, graphic designers and front end developers, search engine optimisation experts, recruiters, business owners and students of web development all networking and sharing knowledge (and free pizza). But there’s never any ColdFusion developers other than the two of us, and Gary doesn’t really count himself as a CF developer, for the most part.

This may not be the case in other parts of the world, but it’s definitely the case in Australia.

I responded in the thread, but what I said was things that I’ve said before, many times. Because I’m sick of typing it out again and again, here’s my take.

ColdFusion developers, in my personal experience which now spans nine years, do not participate in the web community outside of their own circle. Many do not participate in the community at all, but that’s an entirely different problem which we’ll leave for another day. In Perth, a city of merely 1.5 million people, we have Port80, the web industry networking evening run by AWIA, which has been held every  month since 2002. In the past year have had our first BarCamp, Australia’s first PodCamp, a WebJam, installment 4 of the Ideas seminar series, and the third annual WA Web Awards. Although not of interest to everyone, there’s also monthly blogger’s meetups, which have been running since 2004, and last night was the third PTUB (Perth Twitter Underground Brigade). When I first started going to Port80 back in 2002, many of the people I spoke to had never met a ColdFusion developer or didn’t know of anyone using CF. Some had never heard of the language at all (I always explain with “it’s like ASP or PHP, but better”).

So here’s my call to CF developers who want to convince the world that CF is alive and well: get involved in your local web industry community. If there’s a healthy contingent of CF developers at these events then CF must be thriving, right? But don’t go because you want to convert everyone you meet to a ColdFusion programmer… go because it’s fun. You’ll meet people outside of your circle (and if your city is anything like Perth, you’ll drink beer with them), and if you get an opportunity to present, your love of and enthusiasm for CF will shine through and people won’t be able to help but take notice. It will make you a better developer, a better networker, a better business person. There’s absolutely no downside.

Go for it!

Post from: kay lives here - coldfusion, fusebox, web standards and stuff

Opening up the ColdFusion community

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Andrew Powell has weighed in his thoughts on developers and how well they do (or do not) know SQL in You Think You Know SQL, Don’t You? While I work on one project with a dedicated DBA, for most projects I am in charge of designing the database and writing the queries myself. On a general scale I would consider my database skills to be quite good - but there are definitely situations where I will seek out the help of those with more specialised skills.

The points Andrew raises are interesting because in my mind, you could quite easily substitute “HTML” for “SQL”, “front end coder” for “DBA” and “CSS” for “queries” - and his post would reflect my thoughts on that matter entirely.

A lot of developers get forced into writing SQL HTML as part of their jobs. Should they be doing it? I don’t think so. It’s not necessarily the best of ideas, and in MOST cases should probably be avoided at all costs. Besides, developers cannot be experts in every language or technology right? Something has got to give somewhere. It’s usually their SQL HTML skills that suffer.

Developers are, sometimes, forced into situations where they have no choice but to write their own SQL HTML. There is either no DBA front end coder, a DBA front end coder who isn’t interested in helping developers with their queries CSS, or a DBA front end coder who isn’t even in the development loop (never a good sign). In these cases, developers may have to write their own SQL HTML. Sometimes developers have to know their limitations when it comes to writing queries CSS, especially complex queries CSS. I don’t think a lot of developers do truly know their skill limitations. Yet, these intrepid souls will trudge on thinking they can write SQL HTML just fine. When, in reality, they really and truly do not know the little tricks and tweaks that can make the SQL HTML perform better.

Heh, it does work, doesn’t it? Like SQL, I think HTML/CSS suffers from being considered less important than the application code itself. Also like SQL, optimised HTML/CSS can make a huge difference to not only how well the web application or site works (think cross-browser issues, loading speed, etc), but how easy it is to maintain going forward.

Andrew rounds out his post with some tips for developers to improve their SQL skills, and once again with just a few word substitutions we can borrow his ideas to apply to front end code.

First, he suggests using an ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) framework like Transfer. For HTML and CSS, I would suggest looking at a CSS framework. Blueprint received a lot of coverage when it was launched late last year. More recently, the 960 grid system has been released, which is interesting in that it provides a “kit” of supporting materials including templates for Fireworks, Omnigraffle, Photoshop and Visio. There are others out there - Smashing Magazine has a handy round up of some of the more popular CSS frameworks and also quickly covers the advantages and disadvantages of CSS frameworks.

Next, Andrew suggests using a good DBA. This most definitely applied to HTML and CSS - use a good front end developer, graphic designer and interface designer. In some cases you’ll get all of those wrapped up in one individual, but sometimes that’s not the case. Typically the amount of front end coder time needed will be tiny compared to the amount of application programmer time needed, and an investment in just a few hours can make all the difference.

Finally, when other options are not viable, Andrew suggests engaging an outside consultancy. The same most definitely applies to front end coders - and luckily, good designers and front end people are are far easier to find than database experts!

So what do you think - is having a good, solid presentation layer just as important as having a good, solid database layer? Do you think that writing good HTML and CSS is an art form, like good SQL? Are application developers forced to write HTML and CSS when they shouldn’t be? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Post from: kay lives here - coldfusion, fusebox, web standards and stuff

You think you know HTML, don’t you?

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When compiling my “week in ColdFusion” blog posts for SitePoint, I sometimes come across JavaScript “frame-busting” scripts that drive me around the bend. Let me explain…

After a long time as a FeedDemon user, I switched to Google Reader. Much as I love FeedDemon’s smart interface, I found more and more that I needed all my browser-based toys (extensions, social bookmarking tools, etc) close by. Grabbing links that I had flagged in FeedDemon to open in Firefox was slowing me down. I subscribe to over 200 feeds, so getting through them all quickly is important.

Google Reader is great, and with the Better GReader Firefox extension it’s even better (haw haw). I’m particularly a fan of the Preview button the extension adds, which lets you open the full page inline in Google reader. It’s great when working with partial feeds, like those delivered by Fullasagoog and MXNA - I can quickly check out the full post without leaving the comfort of Google Reader.

But there’s one annoying and rude “feature” of some blogs that is causing me grief - JavaScript which, on page load, checks if the site is being framed by another, and if so, busts it out into the full window. This is annoying because when I use the preview function in Google Reader, sites with this script replace my current Google Reader window with the full site in question and I lose my place in what I was doing.

I can understand why people don’t want their content being framed by another site - but people, it’s 2008, you make the content in your feeds freely available and it gets repurposed in so many ways it’s not funny. Trying to control how a site is viewed is rude and pushy, as far as I’m concerned, and it’s making it hard for me to bookmark, Digg or otherwise share the content, which is to the site’s detriment. It goes against the open and flexible nature of the semantic web.

I do acknowledge this is partially a browser issue - my browser should stop rogue sites from misbehaving in ways I don’t like. Unfortunately neither Firefox 2 nor 3 offer this level of control, the Preview Greasemonkey script does not yet include this functionality (although it has been suggested) and using a JavaScript blacklist extension like YesScript on just offending sites stops my bookmarklet tools from working on these sites as well, which really defeats the purpose.

So let’s all share the love and drop the 1999-style frame-busting scripts. How about it?

Post from: kay lives here - coldfusion, fusebox, web standards and stuff

Annoying blog trait: please stop trying to hijack the browser window

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