It's Like script.aculo.us and moo.fx, but Half the Calories

Right before I left on my vacation I came across a very nice JavaScript Animation class called Animator.js. In the past, I've switched between using script.aculo.us and moo.fx for various projects, but at times it seemed I would run into problems. Their frameworks sometimes interfere with the latest version of prototype.js, or they were overkill for whatever task I was trying to perform. I think that's why I kind of like Animator.js. It's a self contained class that allows you to perform various animation task. It's lightweight and extremely easy to implement.

I recommend checking out the authors site [BernieCode] to find out more and also, I've created a little demo that duplicates one of WebKit's new CSS animations. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Note: It wasn't really explained on Bernie's website, but you need to return window[Animator][Control Function] after you call new Animator() to get the animation to work.

WYSIWYG Cross Browser Editor

I came across this pretty nifty in-page HTML editor tonight called openWYSIWYG. The claim it was the ultimate cross-browser editor, but it didn't support Apple's Safari browser. Go figure. I liked it though. It's small and light and so far it seems like you can modify it fairly easily. Compared to FCKEditor or TinyMCE, which seems like brain surgery whenever I poke around in their code.

Well as of tonight, the Safari limitation has been changed. I have successfully modified the source to allow my brethren to enjoy it as well.

This has been tested (but not thouroghly) on the following browsers:

Safari v3.1.1, FireFox 2.0.0.14 (Mac OS X)
Internet Explorer 6 & 7, FireFox 2.0.0.6 (Windows XP)

I don't think this is going to work on any pre-3.0 Safari browsers, because WebKit didn't have the needed functions to make this style of editing possible, but if people can try it out and let me know, I'll add em to the list.

Be sure to check out openWYSIWYG at www.openwebware.com to find out more about this cool lil editor.

P.S. If this thing really works well, then I plan on porting CF_iBrowser to it!

The Source

openWYSIWYG (Safari Edition) v1.4.7

[UPDATE 6-13-2008] Fixed table, image, etc. insert. But it doesn't work if the content window is blank in Safari. Add some text, then try it. I'm still working on it, so let me know if you can help or if your getting some kind of error.

[Update 6-16-2008] I'm aware of the alert that says "Problems encountered loading the popup window." on  the table insert. Won't be able to track down the bug until Monday. Sorry!! (If you figure it out let me know)

[Update 6-16-2008] Ok, before I left for my vacation, I had to fix the "loading pop-up" error. It still has the "Blank Content" issue, but you should no longer see the other alert. (I'll work on the other issue when I get back!)

[Update 6-23-2008] I fixed the annoying Safari bug that was occurring when you try to do a TABLE insert into a blank editor window!

Improving Upon Wiki

I've been working on a little ColdFusion side project to improve my site for the past couple of days. I wanted to create a Wiki-Like portal that would allow me to post most of my ColdFusion and JavaScript snippets and also give the users the ability to add their own or make improvements by using a wiki like environment. I took a look at Canvas ColdFusion Wiki and I have to be honest, I really don't like working with the ModelGlue framework. I think it's great for some people, but I like to keep things simple.

It sounded fairly easy and I basically have the framework in place. My problem is when I came to the wiki parser. First I have to admit that I haven't used wiki's extensively. When I have, I always thought the wiki mark-up language was a little complex and cumbersome. And this has been reinforced since I began looking into parsing the language.

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Revisiting SES's

If you read my last post on Search Engine Safe (SES) URL's, you may have noticed that it was pretty basic. But like everything I post, it's kind of a work in progress.

Anyways, I've been working on a project and I had to revisit using SES's and I discovered another trick. Basically what I had before, using a URL parameter, should still be valid. If you don't remember, it looked something like this:

http://www.whatever.com/products.cfm?id=2369/accessories/gloves/Fuzzy+Pink+Mittens/

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Safari Caching Problem

Boy, I don't know how long this one has been a thorn in my side, but if you have ever tried dynamically creating or changing the content of an iFrame and you use Apple's Safari browser, then I'm sure you have run into this issue. For what ever reason, Safari caches the source (url) of an iFrame and whenever you try to change it's content, it wants to use the old data.

Well, not anymore. I came across a great little trick tonight and I though I would share. All you have to do is change the ID of the iFrame and Safari will update it with no problems. So if you're creating iFrames on the fly, just use this little JavaScript snippet:

iFrame.id = "IF_" + new Date().getTime(); // prevent Safari from using old data.

This can easily be modified for other languages. And if needed, you can update the SRC and then change the ID back to another name. (Useful if your using a custom CSS style for the element).

Hope this saves you a headache!

QuMaker v0.1 (Beta)

For those of you that don't know me well, I would like to share a little afflication I have with you. It's called laziness. People normally regard this as a flaw, but I find that it comes in handy at times. Because it forces me to find easier ways of performing menial task, like creating query's. When designing a website, I normally create the front-end, go back-and-forth on designing a database, create a back-end content management and then go back-and-forth on redesigning my database because I missed a column or didn't like what I named the column.

But the real pain is when I have to create query's for a database table that has a gazillion columns. I have always hated creating the <cfqueryparams> that I need to use to perform an UPDATE or INSERT into the database table. And another thing, I don't always keep the FORM FIELD names the same as the table column names. I do this because I feel it protects database from mallelous people if they don't know column names to hack, or sometimes it's easier for me to read in the HTML code. Either way, I do it and it's yet one more thing I do to myself that gives me headaches.

So I decided I was going to create a nice little tool t o help me make this query's and share it with you. (Because you guys are so cool).

It may seem a little complicated or confusing at first, but it's really quite easy to use.

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