Revolution Web Design Blog - Adobe

Programming is like a dream

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:28:00 -0600

I don't know how many times I've tried to explain this phenomena to people in my company, or others who work with/for programmers, but the truths espoused here are so very self-evident to us programmers, but maybe not so much with everyone else. Anyhow, great article and here is a link to it: "Programming is like a dream" Here's my favorite excerpt:


My brother contends that it is this same phenomena that makes programmers so bad at estimates. The problem is, as he says, that the programmer already knows everything that needs to be written. When you have it all in your mind, it seems like it should be easy to write it all down. But it's not. The physical act of writing the code takes a long time. But more importantly, your mind never thinks about all the "meaningless" details. It knows how to code them so well it doesn't even need consider their existence anymore. Unfortunately, the computer still needs them. It can't infer. All those loose ends, niggling details and corner cases end up eating a great deal of time... sometimes more than the rest of the program.

Navtrak releases it's newest website navtrakgps.com

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:46:00 -0600

So, yesterday my company launched it's 6th or 7th incarnation of our website. Here's a link to the first one :) Starting back in 1999 we had this crazy idea to start tracking vehicles on the internet, and now here we are 10 years later and still kickin! Things have come a long way, the product has matured into a VERY stable platform complete with a tracking API, a newly released AIR Application (interface designed by me), Flex application and a Coldfusion driven reporting system (done by your's truly.) So go check it out, and if you or someone you know could use vehicle tracking for their company, give 'em my name, and our website http://www.navtrakgps.com

iPhone and Flash - It's about to become reality!

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:23:00 -0600

That's right folks... just announced at Adobe Max 2009 - With the advent of Flash CS5 flash developers around the world will be able to make games and other applications for the iPhone using flash! it's about time, and you can go here to read more about this amazing new feature! This is NOT flash in the safari browser inside the iPhone this is native iPhone application support. One great step towards a more Flash Filled Future on my iPhone! By far the best comment of the day on this comes from Ryan Stewart - Adobe's Flash Platform Evangelist

"When Apple is ready to bring the full Web browsing experience to iPhone users, we'll be ready to bring Flash Player to Safari."

Smells like Football (NFL is finally almost here!!)

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:36:00 -0600

how cool... it's my favorite tv to program and code and design website's to... NFL Football... and tonight's pre-season "Hall of Fame Game" and that mean's it's almost time for Nerdfootball.com And that means also, that it's almost time for the Oakland Raiders (my team) to play the San Diego Supercharger's at the Coliseum in Oakland on the very first Monday Night Football game of the year. nerdfootball.com is a really fun football pool that i built many moons ago, and in our now 8th year of running we have one of the largest pools yet! it's a pick and confidence type pool, where you assign a "Confidence Factor" to each game, and for each game you get right, you get those points. points range from 1-16 (if there are 16 games that week) and you better pick wisely, because every point matters! Oh and of course there is a "Smack Down" area where you can let your opponents know just how you feel! there is also a suicide pool on the site, where you can run each type of Nerdfootball pool on your own, and it's all self manageable! if you'd like to setup a pool for this season, we are open for business and would love to host your pool. each pool can be purchased with a credit card, through paypal, and we are real honest nerds, who just love football and website geek stuff :) the cost is very reasonable, and negotiable. in addition to the football pool website, we also have Nerdbasketball.com that enables you to run and be a part of the coolest NCAA MARCH MADNESS BASKETBALL POOL! It's built using Adobe Flex and is possibly, the coolest RIA Basketball pool on the planet! We are "The House of the Nerd" and we welcome you to a time tested tradition of football pool and basketball pool fun! Below is an image and if you click on it, you will see the larger version of it, which gives you an idea of the interface for picking games.

a change i'd like to see in the flashplatform

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:50:00 -0600

id love to see coldfusion and flex/flashplatform converge into a tool that us coldfusion diehards can more easily migrate to. there doesnt seem to be any reason we couldnt use cf-like tags inside mxml to replace what happens in actionscript... actionscript is hard to migrate to after all these years in coldfusion tag-based-land. make it happen :) please, thanks.

Adobe Browser Lab - limited preview open

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:09:00 -0600

From Adobe's website:

BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. BrowserLab is a powerful solution for cross-browser compatibility testing, featuring multiple viewing and comparison tools, as well as customizable preferences. Since BrowserLab is an online service, it can be accessed from virtually any computer connected to the web. Also, Adobe Dreamweaver® CS4 software users have access to additional functionality such as testing local and active content.

Great little testing tool, that took a lot of work I'm sure! View the Browser Lab Website (FYI: i was able to login with my Adobe credentials that I use for forums, Alpha stuff, etc) Some gripes... there is no choice for Chrome, which I realize is new-ish, but come on guys :) Also, no choice for Mobile Browsers? I guess these things will be coming soon enough!

Avoid the GPS service Black Hole

Tue, 12 May 2009 09:11:00 -0600

Avoid the GPS service "black hole"
Most fleet owners and managers recognize that knowing the precise location of your vehicles and their daily activities can quickly lead to substantial savings on fuel, overtime, insurance premiums, and other critical operational costs. However, this is only one small part of the picture the part anyone can see, even before they decide to use a GPS tracking system. The rest of the picture emerges only after a system has been installed. Once you experience the financial boost that comes from your initial trimming away of wasteful driving patterns, side trips and fuel usage what comes next? All too often, the vendor that installed the system hasn't bothered to train you and your staff on how to make the most of the information you're getting in the long term - to incorporate it into your everyday processes and routine. They get you up and running, but you never see them again. This is the GPS service "black hole" that exists for most vendors of fleet management "solutions." But the truth about GPS services is that the more you use them, the more valuable and indispensable they become for your daily operation. [Check out this customer success story for just one example of what we mean.] And the responsibility for making sure this is the case shouldn't be all yours. Click here to read more about Avoid the GPS service "black hole" by Navtrak GPS Tracking Navtrak Proudly uses ColdFusion 8, Flex, LCDS and many other products from the Adobe Stack of web technologies.

Create a Wordle of your tweets, a Twordle!

Tue, 05 May 2009 20:16:00 -0600

i thought it might be neat to see what words i most use when tweeting in my favorite twitter application, Wordle to see if i could generate a beautiful word cloud. first i went to my twitter page, and made sure that all of my tweets from all the way back to the first day i signed on "April 17th, 2008" and simply copy and pasted them into my favorite text editor, adobe dreamweaver cs3, and from there removed some words i didnt care to see in there "twittelator, twhirl, am, pm, etc" Anyway, here is my Wordle very cool to see... go try it with yours!

to all my non-geek friends (shameless blog promotion)

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:22:00 -0600

you can hide these blog postings if you'd like... i understand... they are not for you... and would bore me if i were you... facebook has a great feature whereby you can link your blog to your facebook page and draw interested web searchers that way. conversely, to all of my geek friends, you might want to try adding your blog's rss feed to facebook's "notes" system and see if help's generate traffic! i know that i have enjoyed a 280% increase on my Google Adsense payouts this month, and i'm looking to get that return to increase even more. why not. we have good knowledge, that new people in the industry want - more and more each day! good luck, im sure you will be able to figure it out. but if you cannot... here is some information that i found here at SiteProNews "5 ways to Import and Promote your blog on Facebook"

Import Notes
Notes is an application that allows you to create notes, which are almost like blog posts, for your friends to see. Every time you post a new note it shows in the public timeline for all to see but, many do not know that you can import a blog into your Facebook notes. From the Notes application you will see an option in the right hand column under "Notes Settings" to import a blog. Setting it up is pretty easy, you'll just need to enter either your blog or RSS feed URL. After going over the preview of an imported blog post and confirming the import you'll be all set. Facebook will then check your blog every couple hours for new posts. As I mentioned above, this is also great to set up with your Facebook page.

htm/html file parsing by ColdFusion 8

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:30:00 -0600

Ok, I know this isn't widely accepted as "ok" and not many people will ever do this, but having the ability to do this, is nice if you need it. And I needed it for a new project that is wrought with a boatload of .html files that I need to utilize and I do not have time to re-create things right now. Anyway, thanks to a couple sites (and oddly enough the final bit of information came from an Experts Exchange post) I have put all the pieces together to make this work with Coldfusion 8. Here is a link to the Adobe Technote on this process. For the webserver side of it: Windows 2003 (IIS 6.x)
In IIS manager, right-click the website and select properties. Select the Home Directory tab. Click Configuration. Select the .cfm extension in the list and click Edit. Copy the path in the Executable box to the clipboard. Click Cancel. Click Add. Paste the path in the Executable box. Type .html in the Extension box. Deselect the Check That File Exists option. Click OK. Restart IIS. Apache 2.2.x
Go to the configuration directory for Apache. Edit the httpd.conf file. Locate the "AddHandler jrun-handler" entry. Add the .html extension at the end of that line. For example: "AddHandler jrun-handler .jsp .jws .cfm .cfml .cfc .cfr .cfswf .html" Save the file. Restart Apache. Sun One Web Server 6.1 (iPlanet)
Go to the configuration directory for Sun One Web Server. Edit the obj.conf file. Locate the following line and copy it to the clipboard: ObjectType fn=type-by-exp exp=*.cfm type="jrun-internal/ext" Create a duplicate of the code block by pasting it below the original. In the duplicate code, modify the exp attribute as follows : ObjectType fn=type-by-exp exp=*.html type="jrun-internal/ext" Save the file and Restart the server. Then for the Coldfusion side of it... edit this file: C:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\WEB-INF\web.xml Modify and insert at the end of the other mappings (making sure to change the id="" sequential):


       CfmServlet
       *.htm
   
   
       CfmServlet
       *.html
   
   
       CfmServlet
       *.htm/*
   
   
       CfmServlet
       *.html/*

(*note - one visitor has noted that removing the id="" altogether worked for him, and that having numbers in there in fact, did not work) Step 2: Open a command window (Start --> Run --> type "cmd")navigate to: C:\Coldfusion8\runtime\bin enter this line exactly: .\wsconfig -server coldfusion -ws IIS -site 0 -coldfusion -map ".htm,.html" -v Restart the webserver. (using iis reset from a command line prompt) Restart Coldfusion. (from the services panel in administrative tools)

Quick Reminder: OnRequest method and Webservices

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:40:00 -0600

Just a quick reminder to anyone who may run into this... When using Coldfusion and the Application.cfc - if you have an "onRequest" method in your Application.cfc file, you will NOT be able to expose CFC's as Webservices. I ran into this today while trying out something new, and for the life of me could not remember this key little fact! Big shout out to the Coldfusion JediMaster - Ray Camden for the tip. Click here to visit his blog, it's the best way I can re-pay him for the memory jogging! I don't really see it as that big of a deal, since the OnRequestStart() method exists, and I've always just kinda used that anyway... Can someone please explain the difference? and then also explain why the OnRequest method doesn't work in this setup? That kinda doesn't make sense to me at all.

TweetDeck Autocomplete new feature released in v0.21.6

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 12:37:00 -0600

great new feature, and this includes a host of new features for TweetDeck. for this new Autocomplete feature you get the following behaviour:


Here is a small but useful update to TweetDeck - username autocomplete. The autocomplete window is triggered by either
typing "d " at the beginning of a tweet
typing "@" anywhere in a tweet

and this not-heavily-released vesion also included the following changes from v0.21.5:


Added TweetDeck Services tab to Settings window
Added Powered by Twitscoop message
Added "reset window" command to Windows system tray
Added auto shorten url in shorten url box when user hits enter
Added auto include hashtags from original tweet when replying
Added persistent last 10 used hashtags dropdown to tweet box
Added twitter.com connectivity check to login screen
Added preference to view profiles via web page (saves 3 api calls)
Added global messaging/alert system
Added preference to control brightness of icons
Added StockTwits Friends, Portfolio, All, Recommended, Commentary columns
Added new "Other actions the tweet box

Updated Tweetdeck to pull twitscoop API every 2 minutes
Updated column title to link to twitscoop.com

Fixed profile follow/unfollow button to use extra API call to friendshipexists
Fixed duplicate posts in group columns
Fixed inconsistencies with unseen tweet count
Fixed "in reply to" when user changes the recipient
Fixed favoriting in profile tweets
Fixed links with # in not displaying in tweets
Fixed reply column showing already cleared tweets
Fixed overlap issue in remove column confirm window

Removed Tweetdeck Services auto insert
Removed maximum character limit on tweet box

the only feature im REALLY waiting on at this point, , its coming so thats cool!

Don't want to edit your PDF Form in LiveCycle Designer?

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:34:00 -0600

i have to admit the first time adobe snuck editing my pdf forms in LiveCycle Designer, rather than Acrobat 8, i was a bit peeved. however, i figured out that i had to do all form editing, whatever in it, and learned it and do not mind it all now. however, sometimes in a pinch, i'd rather use Acrobat 8 to make a new one, as it's just a bit easier to use as far as the user interface goes... anyway, i've figured out an EASY way to kinda hack around that, and create a new PDF form in Acrobat 8 and prevent it from handing off the creation to Adobe's LiveCycle DesignerAcrobat 8 the rule became that if a PDF form was originally done in Acrobat 8, that all future changes to that PDF can be handled in Acrobat 8. However, if it was a new one, you were pushed to Adobe LiveCycle Designer. until i figured this out :) basically you take an existing pdf form that you have edited or created in Acrobat 8. from there, you add the pdf you want to make a form out of to the existing document. then you click the "Pages" button on the left side (in the gutter, looks like a document) and delete the original pdf page(s) and you are left with yours. manipulate the form do whatever you want, save it and you are done! that easy. and you didnt have to leave acrobat!

Navtrak in the News - this time Wall Street Journal

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:05:00 -0600

So, my company Navtrak, partnered with Cynergy Systems to introduce a new RIA version of our software and we are about to full scale release it to our entire client base. Well, leading up to the release, we sent a few of our C# developers to Flex training, as well as myself, and this wooing of developers from Microsoft technologies to Adobe technologies is making news, and guess what... Navtrak's Product Manager, Todd Hodges, was interviewed by a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, and you can read the entire story here.