Thought Delimited

I didn't realize how easy it was to disable Flash in Firefox until I needed to troubleshoot a problem with a user who had just had their web browsers re-installed after an incident with a computer virus. The web page they were having trouble with included a jQuery-powered file uploader that also leveraged Flash to generate an upload progress bar, and after the browser re-install the page no longer worked correctly.

So here's how you can disable/re-enable Flash in Firefox:

1. In the Firefox menu bar, click on Tools -> Add-ons
2. Click on the Plugins button in the Add-ons window.
3. Click on the entry for "Shockwave Flash" and click the Disable button.

That's it: you don't even need to restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

Today I found myself needing a way to access the current contents of a FCKEditor instance on a web page via Javascript (I needed to create a "preview" dialog box that would show the user what the content would look like when published).  After some searching on Google, I learned that by instantiating FCKEditor on the page, I had access to the FCKEditor API and could access the content with the following statement:

var editorContent = FCKeditorAPI.GetInstance("postText").GetXHTML(true);

...where "postText" is the id value ("instanceName") of the editor.

As a whole, I like the new ColdFusion Builder IDE. I've run into a few quirks and roadblocks while trying to install it and set it up the way I want it on my machines, but I suspect that's more a result of how my machines are set up than a failing of the product, and hopefully I'll get it all straight soon.

But CF Builder is missing one feature that I need to make it my sole, do-it-all IDE: support for the WebDAV file transfer protocol. At the university where I work, WebDAV is THE protocol used to allow developers to upload, download, update, and delete files on the web server because it makes it easy for the web hosting unit to delegate a certain amount of control to departmental representatives in what is essentially a shared webhosting environment.

This isn't exactly a new problem for me: CFEclipse didn't provide any WebDAV support of its own either. While there is an Eclipse plugin in existence that provides both FTP and WebDAV support, it's old, doesn't support the secure WebDAV implementation that we use, and is no longer being worked on/developed further. So while I've been doing my coding and testing locally using CFEclipse, I've had to rely on Dreamweaver or a stand-alone WebDAV desktop client to actually upload my files to the server. It's not the worst process in the world, but it would be nice to be able to handle it all in one program/IDE.

At CFUnited, I asked Adam Lehman (Product Manager for ColdFusion at Adobe) if there were any plans in the works for adding WebDAV support to Builder (seeing as how Dreamweaver supports WebDAV). He indicated that he didn't think so, but suggested that I submit a feature enhancement through the CF Builder bug database.

So I did: it's request #79437.

If you have any interest in seeing WebDAV support added to ColdFusion Builder (whether because you also have a need to upload files via WebDAV, or because you simply feel Builder should be capable of handling any file management protocol), please visit the CF Builder bug database, log in with your Adobe ID and password (if you don't already have an Adobe account, it's easy to sign up for one), go to the request record, and use the "Bug Votes" option to vote for the request and/or the "Comments" option to weigh in on the topic.

One of my favorite podcasts is Buzz Out Loud, a weekday live video stream and podcast from CNET.com that reports, analyzes, and banters about the tech news of the day. This past week, they conducted an interview with Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, which I just finished listening to today.

The entire interview was quite interesting, but there were two particular discussions that struck me.

The first one was about broadband penetration: the Buzz Out Loud podcasters wanted to know what plans, if any, were being made to promote the rollout of broadband to those areas where such service was limited or unavailable. Chopra said that they hoped to address that issue with a national broadband plan due to be revealed in February 2010, but he said that his personal focus was more on encouraging innovation in developing applications that would further the adoption and development of a robust broadband infrastructure. In other words, it's not just about building the infrastructure for people, businesses, and government organizations to have, but creating compelling applications of that infrastructure that bring people on board and give them more reasons for wanting ubiquitous Internet access.

As web/Internet application developers, we tend to think of broadband, high bandwith, and Internet access as the infrastructure that allows us to build robust applications. It's kind of exciting to look at it the other way around, that creating useful, effective, compelling applications that people want (or perhaps even need) could promote and justify the expanse of the broadband infrastructure.

The second discussion was in response to a viewer question about the use of open source software within government agencies (SUSE and RedHat were specifically mentioned). Chopra said that that was really in the federal CIO's arena of concern, but that he personally was more interested in promoting the principles of "open collaboration" and the "sharing of intellectual property as we build value." He went on to explain that what he meant by that was that he didn't care so much if an application built for the government was built on a proprietary platform so long as that application became shared intellectual property between government agencies. That again was another point that I hadn't heard anyone make before.

I'd encourage anyone who has an interest in how the federal government hopes to leverage technology to the country's advantage to listen to this podcast episode. You can watch the video version or listen to the audio version, either streaming or as a download, at the following address:

http://www.cnet.com/8301-19709_1-10302978-10.html?tag=mncol;title

I decided, mostly on a whim, that my blog needed a new look. It hadn't changed much since I first launched it back in October of '07, and it looked pretty stark compared to many of the current blogs out there now.

I was aware that a number of fellow ColdFusion bloggers were using a ColdFusion-powered blog engine called MangoBlog, but I didn't know much about it until I downloaded it and started poking around. Installing it on my local development machine was a breeze, and I was impressed by the skinning and plugin features, so I decided to give it a shot.

Installing it on my actual website proved to be more of a challenge due to my hosting environment (a shared server on HostMySite). For one thing, the 50-second execution time limit imposed on the server prevented the MangoBlog installation code that copies data over from BlogCFC from completing, but I was able to hack the code in order to break up the import process into several steps. I also ran into a weird issue that prevented the comment subscription functions from working (more on that in a separate blog post), but I got around that as well.

The "skin" I'm using is a personally-modified version of one of the skins that comes packaged with MangoBlog, called "Glossy Blue." I added a picture of Yosemite Valley my wife took in the summer of '06 as the page background, used some CSS hackery to widen the content area and give the side column a different background color, and expanded the size of the calendar icons so I could include the year as well as the month and day. I may make a few additional tweaks, but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

There's a lot going on in the ColdFusion community now that ColdFusion 9 and the new ColdFusion Builder IDE are now in public beta. I'm eager to delve into both products (but especially Builder because that will hopefully benefit me immediately), so I expect I'll have a few blog posts about those.

The whole reason I started blogging in the first place was so I could share some of the things I've come up with coding-wise, techniques and thoughts that might be of value to others, so I hope to continue blogging in that vein.