Jeffry Houser's Blog - User Group News

CFUGitives User Group

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 23:56:00 -0400

I just got back from the CFUGitives user group; and had a few ramblings that I thought I'd share with the world. First off, I spoke a bit about Flex and demonstrated some of the proof-of-principle demos I'd been working on. Nothing mind-blowing; but it's good to be moving forward w/ the technology. Second; in earlier meetings they discussed creating a group application. Well, it looks like this is actually going to get off the ground. The 'leader' on the project signed up the project on cfopen.org. Since a lot of the group has high interest in Flex stuff, the decision is to try to implement things as an API; so that any front end can be built on top of it (And theoretically so that future features could be easily tacked on ). I offered to do some object modeling for it. I believe I'll be walking a fine line between Simplicity and Flexibility. Kudos to Erik for getting it started. Third, we spoke a bit about Woot.com's RSS feed. Some of the items have colons in them, such as "media:thumbnail". How do you access them by name; as opposed to hard-coded array positions. We didn't walk away with a specific solution, but I stepped through the problem when I came home. This was my approach. First, we need to get the feed:

When traversing feeds like this, I often like to dump them to make it easier to see visually:

I see the top level channel is 'rss', so let me dump that:

After, RSS is Channel (it's only child)

Now, we're going after media:thumbnail. We can skip the iTunes stuff and go right to the items. I'm not quite sure how to sort out product listings blog entries in the woot RSS (I believe the coder was doing that), so for this example i'm assuming that we're getting item 2, the first woot product (at the time of this writing)

From there, I got the media:thumbnail. The ':' is invalid in a variable name, so you can't access it using the structure dot notation we've been using. I used the associative array notation:

From there, we can get the thumbnail location:

When dealing with foreign RSS feeds, I often use this type of drill down approach to get at the data I want / need.

CSS Training in Hartford, CT

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 18:10:00 -0400

Sandra Clark, is going to be giving a 4 day hands on CSS training class in Hartford Connecticut. The dates will be May 9th to May 12th. Here is the message from her I just saw posted to a mailing list. It doesn't look like I'll be able to afford it this time around, but we'll try to get her to speak at [one of] the CT User Groups. Maybe we'll try a combined meeting. Her message follows: --- I will be conducting a Hands on 4 Day Cascading Style Sheet Class in Hartford Connecticut May 9th- 12th. A syllabus of the class can be found at http://www.shayna.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=training.syllabus_display&id=1. I currently have 8 open spots available. Cost of the class is $1,399 per student. Hope to see some of you there Sandra Clark ============================== http://www.shayna.com Training in Cascading Style Sheets and Accessibility

Go to CFUnited for free!

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 11:51:00 -0400

That's right folks, you too can go to CFUnited at no cost. No, you don't have to buy Micheal Smith one beer too many on the day before the conference. But, you do have have to be from Washington. The Seattle User Group is sponsoring the trip. Details are from their press release, below. I wonder if I know anyone from that area who might be eligible. Unfortunately, it looks like they're only buying you the ticket. Travel, lodging, and food are your own responsibility (in my experience that is often the bigger piece of the financial pie when it comes to conference going). FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information contact: Garrett Wiedmeier 206-613-3215 info@seattlecfug.com SEATTLE COLDFUSION USER'S GROUP CFUNITED 2006 REGISTRATION SCHOLARSHIP This "scholarship" shall pay for the registration fee of the CFUNITED 2006 conference in Washington, DC, for one individual. The individual will be responsible for all other conference expenses (travel, lodging, etc). This is not a cash award; the Seattle CFUG will pay for the winner's CFUNITED registration on their behalf. All people interested and currently using the ColdFusion (CFML) web programming language in Washington state in any capacity may apply. The winner will be selected based on a short application and reference check, and will be at the sole discretion of the Seattle CFUG founding members. Decision is final. Application requirements: 1. You must live or do business in the state of Washington, and verify this in some form. 2. A simple one page essay on why you use ColdFusion and why you need this scholarship. 3. Demonstrate current use of CFML in *any* capacity or skill level (project management plans, documentation, live website link, or other...) The decision will not be based on how advanced the CFML code is, but extra consideration will be given to projects that solve specific problems that needed solutions. 4. Self-employed: One professional reference. Employed: Reference letter from your supervisor indicating support of your attendance, and, beyond unforeseen business circumstances, you will have the time to attend CFUNITED 2006. 5. Current founding members of the Seattle CFUG are not eligible. Submission Deadline: April 15, 2006 4 p.m. Pacific time. Submit to: Garrett Wiedmeier, CFUG Manager, via email: info@seattlecfug.com The Seattle CFUG is an equal-opportunity volunteer user group community. About the Seattle CFUG: The Seattle ColdFusion Users Group offers speakers, programs and professional development opportunities for webmasters, programmers, database admins, designers or anyone with an interest in dynamic web applications while meeting and sharing ideas with other like-minded people in the greater Seattle area. The group meets on the first Thursday of each month in Downtown Seattle. www.seattlecfug.com. Garrett M. Wiedmeier Manager of IT Services Downtown Seattle Association Mission: To Champion a Healthy, Vibrant Urban Core 500 Union Street, Suite 300 Seattle, WA 98101 206-623-0340 206-625-9940 fax www.downtownseattle.com

Goodbye Tim

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 10:18:00 -0400

Tim Buntel, the ColdFusion product manager has turned in his resignation. Tim has been a part of the ColdFusion team since the Allaire days and he was always prominent at various conferences and the blogsphere. It will be interesting to see who replaces him. I hope he got a nice chunk of cash from various stock options throughout the mergers. It will be interesting to see who steps up to fill his shoes.

No New Atlanta cfObjective

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:30:00 -0400

I just heard that New Atlanta will not be a sponsor at CFObjective. I have no idea if they were interested in doing that, but the organizer used the "No BlueDragon, No Microsoft" in a way to entice Adobe to increase sponsorship money. It apparently worked, as Adobe is paying four-times as much than was initially discussed. I think the real shame is that this prevents the *BEST* speaker from last year's CFUnited from presenting. When I say best, I'm not giving an opinion, I'm talking about scores from the speaker evaluations. Charlie Arehart gained the highest score of all presenters. I think I'll give my presentation in my BlueDragon MySpace T-shirt.

The future of User Groups at Adobe

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 23:34:00 -0400

Adobe President & COO, Shantanu Narayen, talks about the future of User Groups at Adobe: http://adobe.breezecentral.com/drupdate0106/

cf.Objective()

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 14:50:00 -0400

cf.Objective() is coming. It is a conference focused on advanced ColdFusion development. I'm a confirmed speaker. Currently they are accepting topics from other speakers too (you have to log in first). It should be a nice intimate crowd (comapred to CFUnited which has grown too big)

The future of Coldfusion

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 11:01:00 -0400

Simon Horwith interviewed David Mendels, the new Adobe head of the Flex / CF business for the CFDJ. Here is the article: http://cfdj.sys-con.com/read/161456.htm I didn't see any major relevations in there. It sounds like things are same old same old and the next version of CF will have more integration w/ Adobe products (PDF and LiveCycle). The skeptic in me wants to see it to believe it. Quite frankly, given the amount of functionality in CF, I can't imagine what additions would constitute a major release. There has been speculation that CF will get an influx of marketing money. While I hope that will be the case, I'm not convinced it will happen.

It is Official

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 10:20:00 -0400

Macromedia.com is now owned by Adobe Words from Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen Adobe releases software bundles with MM software Adobe Web Bundle (Adobe Creative Suite and Macromedia Studio Adobe Design Bundle (Adobe Createive Suite with Macromedia Flash)

Merger News hits the MM web site

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 14:35:00 -0400

A Macromedia Press Release about the merger (tomorrow) hit the MM web site: http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/acquisition_clearances.html

Adobe plans to move quick after the Merger

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 23:00:00 -0400

Click Here, the URL is long

Microsoft's Letters

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:56:00 -0400

There has been a lot of talk lately about Microsoft's "Software as a Service" move. These are the original memos from Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie (now the MS CTO). Read them here

CFUNITED 2006 Call for Speakers

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 01:53:00 -0400

The CFUNITED 2006 Call for Speakers is out. Do you want to present? Now is your chance. It looks like there will be four days this year instead of 3 *AND* if I'm capable of reading a Calendar at this late hour, some of them are on the weekend, which is good for a consultant such as myself (who hates to take time off during the week). I submited proposals for 2 presentations. One was on CF Code Generation. I wasn't sure whether to put that in the "advanced" or "CFML PLatform." I did the latter. The other was on "Encapsulation in ColdFusion." which would be in the Bootcamp vein. I believe I'll be giving a predecessor the "encapsulation in CF" presentation at the CFUGitives meeting in January.

ColdFusion Podcasts

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 01:40:00 -0400

I just became aware of 2 sites that are podcasting on CF-related issues. The first is Halm Helms and Jeff Peters site: http://www.helmsandpeters.com/. These two are behind Fusebox and Mach II and have a natural talent at doing writing about development-related topics and making them sound interesting. Based on the Framework Shrink podcast I just listened to, it appears that they are bringing that talent into the podcasting world. ( They need to bump up that compression to even out the disparity between voices, though ) The other site is at http://www.coldfusionpodcast.com/ and I haven't had a chance to listen to anything from them yet.

Houston MUG Holding Web Design Contest

info@theflexshow.com (Jeffry Houser and John Wilker) — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 21:53:00 -0400

The Houston Macromedia User Group is holding a design contest. Anyone (who is a member of any Macromedia user group) can enter, and the top prize takes a copy of Macromedia Studio 8. There are other prizes too.