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Blogs » Archive for November, 2006
“You want to do what?”
Ok I know this isn’t part 2 of my CFC’s for the common developer but I wanted to share with you something cool I did today. I had a query of locations which needed an extra row inserted into it. Now this sounds like an easy thing to do but there’s a catch, isn’t there always a catch. I had to have the query sort the locations alphabetically but this new row which I needed to insert had to be first in line. So my task was to:
- Query the database and get a listing of all locations and their respective ID’s and order them alphabetically
- Insert into the first row of this same query a listing for Corporate Office with an ID of -99
So here’s my query:
<cfquery name=”getLocations” datasource=”MyDSN”>
SELECT franchiseeName + ‘ (’ + city + ‘, ‘ + stateProvince + ‘)’ AS lookupdisplay, franchiseeid AS lookupkey
FROM franchisee ORDER BY lookupdisplay</cfquery>
This returns a nice query result set with two columns lookupDisplay which has my location name / state and lookupKey which has the ID for this particular location. So how do I …
The Art of Giving
One of the things I find interesting about my business model is that I get to see how other web development companies operate behind the scenes. When it comes to charitable giving, I’ve noticed a clear pattern – most freelancers or small web shops make a donation to charity when tax time comes around (at the end of the year) or when they get a big check in and are feeling generous. Invariably they feel proud and positive about their donations, and express a desire to give more and more as the business grows.
Such generosity is a wonderful thing! Even better, however, is to make charitable donations an integral part of your business, rather than an occasional event. Here some simple ways to increase your overall benefit to charity by incorporating a few simple concepts:
1) Give on a schedule, preferably monthly. Choose a small donation (by dividing last year’s total donations then dividing by 12, perhaps) and schedule a monthly donation as an automated credit card charge. This way, you give the same amount of money, but you are reminded 12 times a year that your business can benefit others and is an asset to the world. Having a monthly …
Usability for Developers
If there’s one thing that’s caught my attention in the past six months, it’s an increase in the variety of web roles incorporating usability. I’ve noticed this across a number of areas: job posts, industry events, online discussions and personal tagging on social networking sites such as Web Connections. SitePoint has even released a Usability Kit and launched this blog. I find it interesting because it signifies a shift in the importance the web community appears to be placing on usability within the development process.
Do a quick job search (go on, I’m giving you an excuse!) and you’ll find it’s quite common to see Front End Developer, Information Architect (IA), Producer and Visual Designer roles all requiring knowledge of usability to some extent. I’m using the term ‘usability’ generically here, to incorporate user testing, user experience and interaction design, but in essence, what I’m talking about is working with a user-centred approach to site development.
But what about me?
I’m Lisa Herrod, a Senior Usability Consultant at Access Testing. I’ve been working on the web for the past 8 years in various roles including: design, development, accessibility, usability and even (in a universe far from here) a teacher of standards focused …
Episode 3: “One of these things…”
This week’s question: “one of these things is not like the other…”
CFCs for the common developer
Recently in the SitePoint ColdFusion forums there was a nice little discussion about CFC’s and how everyone who explains them or teaches them throws in a lot of buzzwords which does more to confuse people then to help them along. Now I know this happens because I’m guilty of it as well as a lot of other seasoned ColdFusion developers. So hopefully with this post I can help move those who are interested but unsure about CFC’s into this wonderful world.
So what is a CFC? First off a CFC is actually called a ColdFusion Component and at its most simple terms it’s just a ColdFusion template (aka a ColdFusion page or file) but instead of a .cfm or .cfml extension it has a .cfc extension.
Now just because a file has a .cfc extension on it doesn’t make it a CFC right away. Once you have your .cfc file created you do have to write some code. Typically a CFC is made up of 2 or 3 basic parts. The first part is the actually CFC tags and they look something like this:
<cfcomponent displayname=”Greeting” hint=”I’m a greeting CFC”>
</cfcomponent>
There is only one tag which makes a CFC and that is the CFComponent …
Answers to Episode 2 (Real-life regular expressions)
If you missed it, last week’s challenge dealt with deciphering regular expressions and finding subtle bugs within ‘em.
As with last week, before getting to the actual answers please indulge while I pontificate a bit.
True Business Success: Giving More Than Just Thanks
This week, many of our US-based readers celebrated Thanksgiving with their family and friends. Thanksgiving is a time to appreciate and be thankful for what we have, and of course to indulge in the obligatory turkey and stuffing dinner. As web professionals, we certainly have much to be thankful about these days. The roller coaster of the dotcom-boom is far behind us, our industry continues to experience steady growth throughout the world, and the technologies and standards that define our business continue to advance at a rapid pace. Many web developers find themselves in a position to work from home, set their own hours, and make more money then they imagined possible. Things are never easy, but life is good!
As for me, the thing I am most thankful for is that my company was able to make substantial monthly donations to charity throughout 2006. To earn a healthy income is certainly something to be thankful for, but to earn enough to donate money (and services) to those in need is even better! The donations aren’t huge, but something is better than nothing and I intend to increase the amounts as the company grows.
Here on SitePoint, we spend lots of time …
Rise of the Robots
Quick factual / historical note regarding Anonymizing RFI Attacks Through Google which Stefan and Ilia both referenced today.
As far as I know the notion of “programming” legitimate 3rd-party web spiders to attack other sites was first raised back in 2001 by Michal Zalewski (also wikipedia) in Against the System: Rise of the Robots.
Not that I’m hunting hacker-cred - ran into it via his book Silence on the Wire (which is a great read BTW - ever thought about how those Javascript key press events uniquely identify you?).
I’ve Never Met a Boxed CMS I Like
I have never met a boxed CMS–open source or store bought–I liked. And here is why.
Episode 2: Real-world regular expressions
If you know how — and when — and why — to use regular expressions, they’re indispensable. So this week, regular expressions will be our theme.
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