I nuked my MacBook last week and this morning reinstalled ColdFusion using these instructions that I found earlier. I also installed the latest MySQL 5.1 which required some extra work detailed here.
technorati tags:coldfusion, mysql
A newly available flash plugin supports full-screen video. You can download the plugin here, then try out some samples here. It looks great and is very welcome on the Macintosh where full-screen video is hard to come by. Quicktime doesn’t support running embedded movies as full screen. Real does, but few use it anymore and DivX also supports it but again is rarely utilitzed. Prepare to see it everywhere.
technorati tags:flash
Today is the deadline for presentation submissions for the National Educational Computing Conference occuring in Atlanta next summer. I got mine in last night. I proposed a three hour workshop covering the creation of web pages using web standards (xhtml, css, xml, etc.). I’m not real hopeful as it sounds dull and I was tired when I wrote the submission so I may have not sold the idea real well. Sometime in December I’ll learn whether I’m in.
Adobe Labs has posted new information regarding Apollo â?? their upcoming build-an-application-out-of-html-css-javascript-and-flash development environment.
Looking to add a few new programming languages to your repertoire? CNet has 10 suggestions.
The development community is divided into two halves: the designers and the coders. I never know which one I am. Many may look at my designs and code and say that I'm neither. I would prefer (for my own self-confidence) to think that I'm both, although the two disciplines tend to sabotague each other. It's very difficult to design effectively after days of looking at source. It is equally difficult to build and maintain an application of any size when the design part of you shuns conformity and structure.
My latest clash of these tendencies is version control. For those of you that are familiar with Dreamweaver but unfamiliar with version control, consider the check-in/check-out feature in your Site Definition a light version control sytem. Check-in/check-out in Dreamweaver prevents multiple people from editing a file at the same time and thus, hopefully, prevents versioning errors that could occur if multiple people edited and uploaded the same file around the same time.
Preventing multiple simultaneous edits is one thing, but there are many other things to consider that Dreamweaver does not tackle. What if you want to return to a previous version of a file? What if you do want to 'fork' a document allowing development to continue on the original while also allowing development to begin on a new version of the document? What if you need some accountability as to who changed what and when? What if you find a need to merge two versions of the same document? All of these things and more can be handled by a true version control system.
The most popular (it seems) system today is called subversion. It is a server application that can run on nearly any platform and, once installed, can be accessed by numerous client applications that have been written or by the native command line interface.
So here I am. I know I should do this. I know it's needed. I want to know how to use one. I have downloaded Subversion and installed it on my laptop as a way to begin learning it. Now I need to force myself to learn and use it. I hope that this is a great experience and something that will improve my development... If only the design part of me will allow it.
technorati tags:subversion, dreamweaver
I found these instructions by Mark Andrachek to install ColdFusion on an Intel-based Macintosh via Ben Forta’s blog. I tried them originally with a fresh install of Apache 2 and it didn’t work very well, but I removed the Apache install and used OS X’s built-in Apache and it worked fantastic!!
technorati tags:coldfusion, macintosh, intel, macbook, apache, jrun
While Adobe develops and sells THE ColdFusionMX server, there are cheaper and even free alternatives. A post on the Inside Out Outside In blog details some of these.
technorati tags:coldfusion, adobe, railo, bluedragon
Today I’m beginning the process of creating a new design for the LPS web site. I’m not sure at this point if it will be a dramatic change or just an update of the current design. The first step that I’m starting today is evaluating other web sites. It’s difficult to find well-designed K-12 sites, so I’m mostly visiting University and College sites. My link dumps this week will likley contain a number of sites that I thought had some good ideas or design. I’m only considering sites that are standards-based. If the sites aren’t based on CSS and xHTML, I’m moving on.
15 to 20 brave folks will be joining me for the next two days for a sort of web development boot camp. We’ll be hitting all of the Web Development acronyms and will hopefully have a site to show for it all at the end of Wednesday. Participants can learn more on the workshop page.
Yesterday, I think, Opera (the company) pushed out the finished version of Opera (the browser) 9. If you haven’t tried or used Opera before, this is a pretty good time to try it out. Opera could probably be considered the original ‘standards’ browser. While IE and Netscape were battling over features and market share, this browser from Norway was steadily creating a browser that followed the rules.
Opera has become a browser that tries to do everything, similar to the way that Mozilla suite (they call it seamonkey now?! ha.) included all that one should need to use the internet. Opera sports a pretty good email client, a note taking system and a news reader. The new version also has widgets that are similar to dashboard widgets on OS X and Yahoo widgets (used to be konfabulator).
Opera is the only real browser on the macintosh that I know of that supports a true full-screen mode and if you work with CSS, it can emulate other user-agents such as a terminal or low-visibility display to let you see how your work will appear. The new version of opera can also respond to voice commands and read page text. One suggestion from Opera that I'd like to try is creating a slide presentation using pages, displaying them in full-screen mode, then using the voice recognition to have Opera navigate the slides.
Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX 2004 on the Macintosh used Opera to do it's in-application page rendering, but Dreamweaver 8 now uses Safari (WebKit). Opera was recently announced as Nintendo's choice to embed browsers in their current Gameboy DS portable devices, ensuring that many youth will be using Opera for every day browsing and requiring that web developers consider it when designing sites.
So what's wrong with it? First, the UI is a little kludgy. Opera 9 doesn't suffer from the window overload that previous versions did, but you can still end up with a lot buttons trying to get your attention. Second, like Firefox, the application is not really 'native' to any operating system, so while it runs on just about anything, it doesn't run as well as applications that were written specifically for a single operating system. Third, many developers just don't consider opera when they are developing sites, so many sites don't appear as they were intended.
While I still prefer Flock for my everyday-allday browser, Opera is worth having and knowing for when you need to do something were one of Opera's many tools can help you out. Every web developer should maintain this as one of the primary browsers that should be tested against along with IE, Firefox and Safari.
Thanks to those of you who attended my Dreamweaver workshops this week in Columbus. I have updated all of the class notes with the resources I mentioned through the days and have provided downloadable project files on the page from the second day. You can find these pages by clicking on 'events' on the right side of this page.
We covered a LOT of stuff and I'm sure that you probably feel overwhelmed. The best suggestion that I can offer for getting something out of all of that is to start using it. You don't need to be the designer for a school (or other established) site to apply this. Make up something and build a site just for fun. Build just a page. Do anything.
When I started applying CSS to the LPS web site a few years ago, I didn't change the layout at all. I created some simply style sheets that did nothing more than style the text. I set the font, size, color, etc. For the first many months that I worked with CSS, this was all I did. Whenever I got a small site to work on (maybe only one page) I would try designing it with CSS. In the name of productivity, I often had to throw in the towel at first and build the sites in ways that I was more proficient. Eventually though, things started clicking and I got decent at creating CSS designs. This also gave me a long time (2-3 years) to establish my own 'best practices'. Finally, I applied my knowledge to re-styling the LPS website in the late summer of 2004. It took about six months to go through the site and recode the pages to work well with the styles. (I could probably do that same thing now in a few days).
Hope you had fun and find this something that you enjoy. Keep hackin'
technorati tags:dreamweaver, columbus, css
Adobe - MAX 2006 has been announced. Max is the conference for anybody doing web development using Adobe (Macromedia) tools. There are tons of sessions covering ColdFusion, Flex, Flash and Dreamweaver along with other Adobe apps. It’s a fun time to meet other developers and sit shoulder-to-shoulder in sessions with people that work for big-time companies. This year it’s in Las Vegas at the Venetian - October 23rd through the 26th.
Freedom Interactive has a fun site that shows posterboard carriers walking through New York City trying to sell web sites.
Today I have started the first serious effort I can remember in the 8 years that I have been with Lincoln Public Schools to clean out all of the orphaned junk on the web site that has collected over that time. I have just completed one of the smaller sections of the site. I figure I removed over 70% of the files that were on the server in the five hours that it took me to go through it all.
Lessons Learned?
Dale Dougherty from O’Reilly created the term “Web 2.0” to describe the recent rebirth of web development that has brought us cleaner interfaces as well as AJAX-powered behaviors. As a part of this, O’Reilly has organized a couple of Web 2.0 conferences around the topic. Now, O’Reilly is trademarking the term “Web 2.0” and people are very angry about this. If this were a company like Microsoft, I would have no doubt that they had plans to either lock down the term in a way that nobody could use it, or they would popularize it in a self-centered way that would bring more attention to them. O’Reilly has done nothing I know of to give me a reason to immediately jump to the conclusion that they are doing this for selfish reasons. I think that it is fair that they have exclusive access to the term when it is used to describe a conference (that is all that they are requesting). Considering their history with Web 2.0 conferences, I agree with them that if I saw a conference billing itself as a “Web 2.0 Conference” that I would assume that it was an O’Reilly conference. This is the confusion that they are trying to avoid. I’m sure that O’Reilly would be pretty understanding if contacted about a conference title that used the term “Web 2.0” as a way to clarify the topic of the conference and less as a title for the event.
I'm actually glad that they have taken the step to take some ownership of this. Next thing we would know, Web 2.0 would be a menu item/feature/search/option in Internet Explorer 7 and the term would be off limits to everyone.
Adobe has published a new link set up on delicious. They have product categories like After Effects, Acrobat and Dreamweaver, as well as content categories like Video and Design. They do not have ColdFusion up there right now, but they said that they are not done setting this up yet.
Sexton has joined the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) as a plaintiff in a lawsuit that charges Target with violating the federal Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and Disabled Persons Act.
The lawsuit, scheduled for a hearing next month at U.S. District Court in San Francisco, could have a broad impact because Target’s site is hardly the only one that could be accused of having access barriers, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.
An alpha version of sIFR 3.0 is available. sIFR is a package of javascripts, css and flash files that allow site designers to replace html text with flash text, allowing for text in any font that is crisply anti-aliased. Version 3 supports new flash features such as drop shadows. LPS uses sIFR 2 for many of it’s page titles.
This comprehensive guide covers the design of software and hardware systems for web applications. Using scores of examples and leading-edge tips, it details proven methods for scaling web applications to millions of users. Topics include application architecture, development practices, technologies, Unicode, and general infrastructure work. Ideal for anyone ready to realize the cost and performance benefits available to web applications today.