If there ever was a blog entry that should be removed...

Take my advice on this, crack open one of your favorite beverages and settle into your desk chair. You are in for pure entertainment on this one... Flash Sucks. I can't believe I wrote that link that way, but it's the title of the blog entry.

The comments are beyond funny.

I was recently asked to present on the benefits of Flex and I pulled much of the data for the presentation from Adobe's whitepaper on the product. I also incorporated responses from a prior blog entry. Thank you for your comments.

Please feel free to download the presentation so that you can do the same in your neck of the woods. Flex is truly an amazing product and the only one of its kind, which will provide benefits in many ways not only to the customers you create applications for, but for your professional development as well.

Download the .swf (277 k) here.  Thanks Derek!

Download the .ppt (1.2 meg) here.

I was working with Peter Ent's demo today at (Example of Flex 2 Coldfusion Connectivity).

Peter's demo. is excellent but it falls a bit short on the db integration. His sql file integrates perfectly with MySQL so I fired up my 4.x version/service and setup the db. I had not installed the new jar for ColdFusion jdbc driver support documented here: knowledge base article and didn't think I had to as I used odbc due the failings of the 3.x drivers installed by default on ColdFusion.

Once the datasource was setup I was able to see it through the RDS Dataview CF extension in Flex builder. Beauty right? Wrong. I attempted to go through his walkthrough and when I got to the part where you right click on the the table to get to the cfc wizard, nothing happened. What's weird is that the first table displayed the table fields and the wizard worked. It was only on the subsequent tables in the list that fields did not show and the cfc wizard did not work.

I thought that it must be driver related because all other datasources seemed to work fine and they were not ODBC. So, I found the MySQL upgrade knowledgebase article and that did the trick. Once I setup the datasource to use the new driver via the "other" option in the driver dropdown I created the datasource and the RDS Dataview showed the fields for the tables and allowed me to use the cfc wizard.

If you haven't checked out Peter's blog, I highly recommend that you do.

I was recently chatting with a former co-worker who is working for an office which sells a product that is need of a decent front-end rewrite. The current product is clunky considering it is all dhtml/javascript.

They are considering AJAX with the "it's free" concept in mind. I am a proponent of AJAX as it has its place, but there is no doubt that the requirements of the application in question align with Flex and what it brings that AJAX doesn't.

I would appreciate any comments as to why flex is a better choice. I am looking to compile a list for future and current customers, etc. I do have a list already, but appreciate any and all outside opinions in favor for or against flex as a solution of AJAX. I will organize all comments and post in a separate blog after compilation.

It's rare to find something in ColdFusion that one can't do. I recently found something...

A client of mine was tasked with retrieving mortgage data via a http request. The location of the file was safeguarded with client certificates enabled via IIS; here's a picture of what the settings look like:

If you did the whole keystore method it will not resolve this issue (only works for server side certs) as cfhttp does not support client certificates. There is a custom tag at cftagstore.com that will do the trick though and it is only $45 dollars per server. Now, if you are wanting to put on your java or c# hat for a half days work you could write your own solution as well.

I don't have the time currently, but when I do I'll post it here. Stay tuned.

I recently attended the ORR (Operational Readiness Review) for the Flash Forms application that my team has been developing over the past 2 months. It was accepted and will be released to production Mon. 7/15.

One of the main features that was commented on throughout my presentation in the ORR was the user friendly layout. The application was built for HR and office personnel (non-technical) individuals and will ultimately be used by all individuals across NASA. If you have not yet looked into using flash forms or Flex, you are falling behind. This technology is and will reshape how information is utilized on the web. It provides an incredibly robust platform for application based solutions.

The timeline in relation to the requirements associated with support across multiple platforms and operating systems would never have been met if it was not for Flash Forms in ColdFusion. My thanks go out to Mike Nimer and the CF team at Macromedia now Adobe for their integration of Flex into ColdFusion 7 as well as asfusion.com Nahuel Foronda and Laura Arguello for their contributions to the community and incredible support in addressing Flash actionscript and ColdFusion integration.

If you are a newb to CF Flash Forms you should first check out the getting started examples that ship with the application server or go to adobe here (click on Code Snippets by Features and Task) or this link.

First go to Quick Tour from the tree view and select the flash form examples there. Next click on the Tags folder and select Rich Form Tags subfolder (plenty of examples with code there as well).

Now that you've seen what can be done with flash forms out of the box you probably will have plenty of great ideas for your application. But continue your research by visiting ASFusion. If they haven't done what you're looking for or at the very least a derivative of it, I would be very surprised. ASFusion was at the forefront of the Flex/CF integration tips and tricks initiative. A truly great site for Flash Form examples.

What is very different from what ASFusion has for examples compared to the Adobe supported Snippet examples is that they truly begin to bridge the CF and AS gap, with ColdFusion ultimately controlling mostly data submittal and retrieval and AS connecting to CF via remoting. The true trick is to have the Flash IDE open at all times along with Dreamweaver or at the very least browse to the on-line Adobe Flash 8 help Livedocs to get a true handle on the properties and methods associated with the Flash Form components that are presented to the CF/Flex integrated server here. This approach will also get you closer to working with the true Flex 2.0 product and understanding how to enhance or add advanced gui functionality to your Flex applications with actionscript.

I have come across quite a few developers that find the Livedocs confusing, daunting, painful (you get the point). But the truth is, getting a handle on the Livedocs is very simple if you spend 15 minutes on the "How to Use Help" feature. Then you will most likely want to hang out in the ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference. Another key point here is that the components for form development are all documented under the Components Language Reference area. All of those components are available in ColdFusion via Flex.

Quick Tip:

You can actually expose the contents of the mxml that is created via the CF form tags behind the scenes by using the following code at the bottom of your cfm file.

I'm guessing that this will make the transition from a CF server based solution to a compiled Flex, swf file solution via Flex 2.0 very straightforward. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Due to time constraints I didn't get into detail as to my trials and tribulations on my recently completed CF Form application, but they will be addressed in Part II. Good luck!

Have you wanted to count your lines of code recently? In short, I wrote a quick and dirty line counter to vindicate an incredible effort put forth by my team for a recent project and it is spot on, though it does count every line including comments.

There is a file extension list that enables the code to filter on specified file extensions. Seeing that it is written in approximately 11 lines of code one can easily see what cfml has over other languages. I hope it comes in handy for you.

Also notice that I incorporated the cf_directorylist_enhanced custom tag which I included in the zip. Download it here.

Update: please see code for recursion using recurse parameter for cfdirectory in place of cf_directorylist_enhanced for MX 7 users, it has also been added to the zip. Thank you Jeff!

So you missed MAX 2005! HA! You so missed it dude! Actually you didn't. I just had a chance to sit down for a couples of hours and check out the keynotes. Go check em out now and catch up with everyone else when it comes to the incredible suite of products Macromedia... oops Adobe will offer you to architect, design, and build unstoppable applications for your customers. Check it out here.

Some of you may have read about what "Web 2.0" is or what it will be. Web 2.0 is and will be the influx of RIA (Rich Internet Applications) delivered across the web the same as the elder Web 1.0 HTML based applications are/were.

I have personally made it a goal at this point in my career to move away from HTML other than sustaining existing applications and embrace Flash technology as it is the leader in the arena of RIA and appears to be for the foreseeable future. AJAX you may think is the way to fly these days. This is not the case, though it is breathing a bit of life back into DHTML the overhead associated with making a technology engineered for static content dynamic continues to slow web project lifecycles.

If Adobe/Macromedia is successful in creating a Flash OS (which I've heard grumblings is in the works) they will secure the majority of the pie. At this point I think the OS as we know it is becoming "old hat", meaning that we spend most of our time on the web as it is and this trend will influence the OS of the future.

The technologies related to Flash, i.e. Flex, Cold Fusion, remoting, etc. are skills that will become all the more valuable if the foundation that has been laid withstands the onslaught of Microsoft and others to break into RIA. If you haven't gotten up to speed with Flex or Flash forms in CF you are falling behind the curve. Catch up 8-)...