The Creative Juices Bo. Co. (CJBoCo) RSS 2.0 Feed

CJ Flashy Slide Show (Project Entry)

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:43:45 GMT

CJ Flashy Slide Show is a JQuery plugin that allows you to create a photo slide show that has some "flash-like" transitional effects. The plugin has various settings which you can manipulate to achieve a multitude of effects, such as sizing, timing, transparency and shape style. Integration is a snap, you basically create a set of images and wrap it within a simple container. Unlike most Flash solutions you do not need to create an external XML file or embed your images within a hard-to-change Flash project.

This version fixes various issues reported by users as well as incorporating a few new features. I've also rewrote the plug-in to incorporate a brand new framework which should be more compatible with other libraries.

CJ File Browser 4.0 (Beta) (Blog Entry)

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:23:45 GMT

CJ File Browser 4.0 (Beta)

I know a lot of people are using my file browser with tinyMCE or for standalone applications. I just wanted to let everyone know, that I have been working feverishly on a major revision and you can check out the progress or lend a helping hand of support by checking it out on GitHub.

What's New

This version is meant to squash some long standing bugs, but also to take care of some of the many request people have been making over the past year. Some of the things that are on my hit list:

Drag and drop file uploads.
The ability to drag and drop to move files and folders around.
Making it themeable with jQuery UI (I'm still not sure about this, since I'm not sure how tinyMCE will handle this).
Allow renaming of files and directories.
UI improvements: Easier to understand tooldbar, adjustable sidebar width, etc.
Ability to view larger previews of images (Might incorporate lightbox or colorbox for this, suggestions welcome.)

This is not a complete list, but most of the major items that I wanted to incorporate or features my clients have been asking for.

What Can You Do?

If you want to join in on the fun, download the source from GitHub and start playing around. It's beginning to become a beast and I'm not sure if I can handle doing everything and keep on top of my normal clients workload. But I want to make sure I take care of everything you guys have been asking for. If you have more suggestions or know of any bugs, please let me know.

And as a side note, my new hero, Jona, took the time and wrote a PHP handler. I haven't had time to play with it yet, but you can check it out here: https://github.com/teeny/CJ-File-Browser-PHP-Handler. Thanks Jona!

A Weird Thing Happened To Me Today When Submitting A Form (Blog Entry)

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Apparently With ColdFusion You Can't Always Rely On form.fieldnames

I've been using ColdFusion for a long, long time and today I came across something that just totally stumped me. When submitting a form, you could always, and I mean ALWAYS, use ColdFusion's "form.fieldnames" field to get a list of all of the names of the submitted form's fields. At least that's what I thought.

CJ Sparkly (Project Entry)

Sun, 4 Dec 2011 16:27:17 GMT

Sparkly is an image filter to be used with Apple's Quartz Composer. If you don't know what Quartz Composer is, then don't worry. This is not the CJBoCo project you are looking for. But for those of you that are in the know, then here's a little present to brighten your day. I have been dabbling with Pixelmator trying to wean myself of all things Adobe. One of the features I like, is that Pixelmator allows you to use Quartz filters. One of the things I like about Quartz filters is that you can create your own. But alas, it seems as if the Pixelmator community is lacking in people making some of these filters available to the public. Well, not anymore.

Where did I go, I do not know. (Blog Entry)

Wed, 2 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

jQuery Date Navigation Bar

I know it's been awhile since I've posted anything, but I've been a very, very busy bee. Hopefuly, I will get some time to start making some updates to some of my jQuery plug-ins soon, but in the meantime I would like to share something new. It's not fancy, but I required it for some of my client projects as of late and I thought I would share.

Lion Server. The Little App That Should, But Doesn't. (Blog Entry)

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 07:00:00 GMT

I've Given Up on Mac OS X Lion Server 10.7... For Now.

As some of you may know, I run a small development server that I use for my clients. Today I thought I would try to upgrade it to the new 10.7 Lion Server and see if I could get Railo up and running. Well, eight hours and three clean installs later, I have utterly given up. I never got to a point where I could even start playing around with Railo. All of my time was spent trying to get the server up and running properly.

I'm not one to gripe much, but I'm slowly seeing a pattern with Apple that I don't particularly like. I'm not sure if it's management or their programming teams, but the famous Apple "polish" seems to be slowly diminishing on some of their projects. And by some, I don't mean everything. I've upgraded my normal work flow computers to 10.7 and so far I'm not having any issues. But the Server software, well, I can only describe it as a fancy dialog box, that hides a horrendously buggy, poorly thought out and lacking major features piece of software.

I Appreciate It Guys, I Really Do! (Blog Entry)

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 07:00:00 GMT

CJBoCo Fan Appreciation Day!

I'm not sure if its my work or perhaps my extremely busy social life, but sometimes I forget why I do this whole "blog" thing. When thinking back to the day when I created my very first blog entry over 7 years ago, I don't think I really fathomed the warmth and sense of community I was about to give life too. It trully has been remarkable. You see, I started this blog for one reason and one reason only. To give back to the tech community that had been so generous and giving to me when I was struggling to figure things out in my early programming days. It was the only way I could think of to say "thank you" to the hundreds of the anonymous internet people that helped me out.

Over the years people have have questioned why I do a blog. They wonder why I don't fill my website with Google ads and make money off my traffic. They say, I should be making money for my time, work and advice instead of just "giving" it away for free. I try to tell them that I wouldn't be where I am today, if it wasn't for others that did the same thing during the early days of the internet, but alas they just laugh at me a call me a fool.

What they don't realize is that I get some satisfaction out of helping people out. Its one of those "Good for the Soul" type of thing. As I witness more and more "content-farms" taking over Google search terms for tech related information, I feel as if these types of sites are slowy fading away. Well, let it be known, I will keep doing this as long as I can!

I'm sure people come to this site and think that I'm some kind of anonymous wizard behind the curtain, but I always reply to queries and give help whenever I can. Over the years, the CJBoCo community has grown leaps and bounds and it hasn't just been a one-way streak. Messages, with warmth, love and intelligence, pour into my in-box almost daily. It's trully heart warming. Heck, just this evening I received this...

HTML5 Drag And Drop File Uploader (Blog Entry)

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Teaser: Drag and Drop File Uploads with jQuery and ColdFusion

I've been a busy little bee as of late, but I wanted to let you know I've been working on something that I think you might enjoy. A way to incorporate file uploads using drag and drop!

jQuery handles the UI and ColdFusion handles back-end magic. Drawbacks of course being that this only works with HTML5 enabled browsers (i.e. all modern browsers, accept Internet Explorer). It also uses the form "PUT" method, so I'm not 100% sure which versions of ColdFusion it's compatible with (I'm using the latest Railo and I've tested it on CF9).

Anyway, I've slapped together a quick video of it in action, so check it. Hopefully I will be able to get around to releasing the code on how I'm doing this soon, but I need to wrap a few things up first. Enjoy!

Click the "read more" link to watch the video...

jQuery UI Dialog Stopped Working (Blog Entry)

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:00:00 GMT

A Fun Bug Hunt with jQuery UI and My JavaScript Libraries

As I was trying to wrap up a client's website this morning, I started getting some weird errors that took me the better part of the day to figure out. It all started when I began working on their contact <form>. As I began bulding out the validation checks, I noticed my nice jQuery UI dialog box was not triggering. I pulled up the console and saw the following errors...

Safar: TypeError: 'undefined' is not an object (evaluating 'this._handles.mouseover')FireFox: this._handles is undefined

Not very helpful. And as you may know from your own experience, anytime you see generic messages like these, be prepared to scan through a lot of code and have some coffee handy.

Problems Combining jQuery Draggable, Droppable and Sortable (Blog Entry)

Fri, 3 Jun 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Combining jQuery UI Draggable, Droppable and Sortable Functionality

I was having some issues trying to incorporate jQuery UI's droppable, draggable and sortable on a project I'm currently working on. I was receiving some weird errors and I'm still not 100% what was going on, but I broke out the code and simplified it to get it working and I figured I would share.

Essentially, my project calls for a navigation bar that has psuedo-buttons (div's) which need to be dragged upon multiple areas that in turn, need to be sortable. I've illustrated a layout, so you can better understand what I was trying to do (Fig. 1).

Adobe Illustrator Version of the Final Shuttle Lift-Off (Blog Entry)

Fri, 27 May 2011 07:00:00 GMT

The Final Space Shuttle Lift-Off and the Adobe Illustrator Cloud Study

I've been knee deep in coding for the past few months and was starting to go a little bonkers. I needed a few breaks this week and one of the things I like to do, when my brain is fried, is take things to a whole different dicipline. For me, that happens to be graphics. I came across the photo taken by Stefanie Gordon of the final Space Shuttle lift off and I thought that it would make a nice Adobe illustrator study because of all the clouds (I've been on a weird cloud kick lately!)

A Fix for Paul Irish's imagesLoaded jQuery Plug-In (Blog Entry)

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Quick Fix For Getting Called Twice

Paul Irish has a great jQuery plug-in to detect when images are loaded, called imageLoaded. If you've experienced problems detecting cached image loads, then you probably need to check out this great script. I have been experiencing a few quirks with it though. And one of the those seems to be that it gets called twice on occasion. But I think I figured out why.

I think what's happening, is it's firing the load event on both the data uri (for the blank gif) and then for the real image source. To stop this from happening, all we need to do is check the image src before we handle the callback. Here's the fix I came up with:

The Code

(function ($) {    $.fn.imagesLoaded = function (callback) {        var elems = this.filter('img'),            len = elems.length,            // data uri bypasses webkit log warning (thx doug jones (cjboco))            blank = "data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==";        elems.bind('load', function () {            // check image src to prevent firing twice (thx doug jones (cjboco))            if (--len <= 0 && this.src !== blank) {                callback.call(elems, this);            }        }).each(function () {            // cached images don't fire load sometimes, so we reset src.            if (this.complete || this.complete === undefined) {                var src = this.src;                // webkit hack from http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-dev/browse_thread/thread/eee6ab7b2da50e1f                this.src = blank;                this.src = src;            }        });    };}(jQuery));

By the way, who is that cool guy Doug Jones that recommended the data uri in the first place!

Edit: I merged the src check for the callback with the len check for simplicity. Paul has also updated his version as well.

Online Doodle Graveyard (Blog Entry)

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:10:47 GMT

Doodle-Dee - Doodle-Dah

Wikipedia says, "A doodle is a type of sketch, an unfocused drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. They are simple drawings which can have a meaning, a shape or just irregular forms". I've drawn hundreds, if not thousands of these over the course of my lifetime. My doodles are typically cartoony people doing average things. At one point in my life, I thought about becoming a cartoonist, but I soon realized that this might be slightly tedious, so I abandoned that dream.

It's Friday, How About A Few Things On jQuery (Blog Entry)

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Just a Couple of Jquery Things I would like To Share

I've been working on a fairly robust website the past few weeks and I wanted to share a couple of small utility plug-ins as well as post some cool things I've discovered. The plug-ins are very rough. I'll eventually clean them up and post them in the projects section, but for now I just want to have a nice reference for them while things are fresh in my head.

Oops, I broke JSLint (Blog Entry)

Wed, 9 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

I think I just discovered a bug in JSLint, Cool!

You would think I would be used to breaking things by now, but I just discovered a weird bug in JSLint! How cool is that?!?

Anyway, the bug most likely isn't really a bug, it's more like a weird error result based on my screwed up JavaScript. I was working on one of my scripts and I kept getting a weird error result that looked like this:

Have A Cool jQuery Idea? Let Me Know, I'll Try To Make It (Blog Entry)

Mon, 7 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Come Up With A Cool jQuery Plug-In Idea and I'll Try To Make It

I was thinking the other night of writing a new jQuery plug-in and I was tossing around a few ideas of what to create. Then I started thinking... instead of making something I wanted, maybe I should let you guys tell me what you want. I know, weird, huh. But seriously, I think it might be kind of cool to see what the jQuery community is craving for. Most of my plug-ins focus on the problems I encounter on my client sites and to be honest, they can be a tad bit utilitarian. So if you have a great idea for a plug-in, lets hear it.

How It Works

I think we should lay down a few ground rules first.

I don't think we need to recreate the wheel. If there's already a plug-in out there that does what your asking, then I won't do it. Lets be original folks.
I don't think this should be a monster of a plug-in that's overly complicated. Lets try to come up with simple, elegant ideas.
I'll let the community vote on the ideas in the comments, but ultimately I'm going to decide what I work on. Hopefully, if something doesn't get chosen, then this can be a great resource for other developers to get some ideas.
I'm not going to setup an official "end of submission" date. We'll see what kind of community feedback we start getting and leave it up to everyone to decide what should be worked on and when we're ready to go.
Whatever gets developed is completely open sourced and available to the community to download. Most of my plug-ins are MIT licensed and I think this should be the same.
This is not a CONTEST. NO PRIZES WILL BE GIVEN!!! What you will get is accolades from the community and I think we will attach your name as the originator of the plug-in in the source code!
And finally, my client work takes precedent. So if I say I'll have it done by a certain time and don't. Then don't hate, I'm probably working on something that pays the bills.

I think that covers all the bases. If you think I missed something let me know. If not, then what are you waiting for. Start posting your ideas below and lets get started!

CJ Session Timer (Project Entry)

Sun, 6 Feb 2011 02:36:21 GMT

Let's set up a problem I like to call the ColdFusion 30 Minute Session Limit monster. You have a secure back-end management page. It allows your client to edit a portion of their website content. One of the edit fields is using tinyMCE so the client can change an entire page worth of content. They start banging away at the keyboard, typing out what is sure to be the greatest webpage in the history of the internet. They take a phone call, talk for a bit and then jump right back to typing. It's truly awe inspiring. They finish and go down to click "submit". The form posts the data and BAM! Sorry, the session timed-out. Silly client, didn't you know you are on a shared ColdFusion hosting plan and the ISP has only given you a maximum of 30 minutes to do all your work!

No longer are you going to be bound to the maximum session time set by your ISP...

Yeah, admit it, we've all been there. I'm sure you took care of the problem by either telling them to type it in DreamWeaver first and then copy and paste it into the field, or maybe you're super talented and created some sort of time consuming coding trick to save the data for them. Either way, it's a pain in the ass. Well, no more. Again, I have worked countless hours in my secret underground programming lab and have come up with a solution that is sure to win me a Nobel prize. Maybe even a date with Jennifer Aniston. No longer are you going to be bound to the maximum session time set by your ISP, this plug-in gets around that limitation! Yeah, its that cool. OK, maybe not that cool.

CJ jQuery Plug-In Template (Project Entry)

Fri, 4 Feb 2011 17:56:10 GMT

Using jQuery had been both exciting and exhilarating from day one. Ever since my first attempt at a plug-in, I've continiually been in awe of its power and ease of use. Unfortunately, I've also have my moments of frustration trying to figure out the best way to write them. A few of my earlier attempts failed rather spectacularly. I had problems when they were used with multiple objects, weird things were happening with methods and instances of my storage variables were bleeding across objects. It was a sad state of affairs.

Since those days, I have slowly found solutions to most of the problems and have been putting what I learned into a jQuery plug-in template that I have been using for most of my newer projects. I'm sure it's not perfect and to be honest there may be things I still need to learn. But I think its at a point that I can release it onto the world and step back and see what happens.

CJ Object Scaler (Project Entry)

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:33:33 GMT

CJ Object Scaler will scale an object to either fit or fill within the boundaries of a destination object. I based this plug-in off another JavaScript project I made awhile back, you can read what it does in the CJ Image: Easily Calculate Image Scaling blog enry. It was a nice little function that would help you calculate the size and offsets to use when scaling an image to fit (or fill) within another element. It didn't actually do any scaling, per say, it merely provided you with the numeric amounts to use. The function introduced two scaling methods, Scale To Fit and Scale To Fill.

Installing MySQL 5.5.8 on Mac OS X Headache (Blog Entry)

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:20:57 GMT

MySQL We Have A Problem

Argh... So I wanted to update my internal server to the latest and greatest version of MySQL. I downloaded the nice Mac OS X ver. 10.6 (x86, 64-bit), DMG Archive installer package they have and low and behold, MySQL won't start-up!

Well, no need to worry. Seems to be an issue with the installer package. To see if you have the same problem I'm having, do the install and then fire up ye ole terminals and type:

sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server startPassword: XXXXXX

If you see a fun message that looks like this:

/usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server: line 256: my_print_defaults: command not foundStarting MySQLERROR! Couldn't find MySQL server (./bin/mysqld_safe)

Then you have the same problem I'm having. Here's how you can fix it.

Commenting Woes (Blog Entry)

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:33:34 GMT

My Commenting System Was Bonked

Sorry folks, I was having a problem with the Disqus commenting system on cjboco.com. It should be fixed now, but if anyone else has any problems, then please let me know. Sorry for the inconvenience!

ColdFusion: Unable to create temporary file (Blog Entry)

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

GetTempDirectory Needs To be Added To Your SandBox Security

Over the past few weeks I have been seeing a nice little error message coming from a few of my customers shared hosting sites. It seems to happen whenever I am using CFIMAGE to read or resize an image. I did a little digging on Google and came across a nice thread discussing the problem. I'm posting it here so I have easy access to it, but you might find a need for it as well.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3060530
http://www.cfexecute.com/post/coldfusion-verity-unable-to-create-temporary-file

"If you are using Sandbox Security you'll need to add the value of the GetTempDirectory function to your Sandbox with read and write permissions and it will start working again."

I'll keep you updated on the response from the ISP.

CSS3 Webfonts (Blog Entry)

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

This post is primarily a reminder for myself, but it might be useful for others as well. One of the cool new features of CCS3 is the ability to use customer fonts by declaring @font-face. I've been using some of the cool @Font-Face Kits from Font Squirrel on some of my new sites. One of the things I just discovered is that some of there included .eot files do not seem to work as expected on Internet Explorer (.eot fonts are what IE is supposed to use).

Anyway, I fixed the problem, by converting the included TrueType (.ttf) file into an .eot font using the ttf2eot service and everything seems to be working correctly now.

A Great HTML5 Website Template Called Boilerplate (Blog Entry)

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

A Rock-Solid Default for HTML5 Awesomeness

If you're looking for some examples of website development "best" practices, then look no further the the HTML5 Bolierplate by Paul Irish (As well as a slew of other contributors). The site says that this thing is "badass" and I couldn't agree more. I personally have been using a slightly modified version (Made it ColdFusion compatible) of this for the past few websites I've created and a few older sites that I converted. I'm quite impressed.

Why am I impressed? Well, for starters, Google Analytics is showing that the traffic on the sites that I converted jumped 500%. This is essentially telling me I had some problems with the way I was structuring my sites.

One of the really cool features of this collection, is that it includes something called an Ant Build script. I'm still not 100% everything this thing does, but in a nutshell, it optimizes everything in your site. It will minimize JavaScript, CSS, HTML and reduce the size of JPGS, PNG's. Very cool indeed. To use, all you have to do is open terminal (I know, but it's not that hard) and then CD to the build directory (located inside the bolierplate framework) and type ant build. Then sit back while it does its thing.

Don't just take my word for it, check it out yourself and see the awesomeness.

CJ Simple Slideshow (Project Entry)

Sun, 9 Jan 2011 22:45:12 GMT

JQuery Plug-In: Simple Slideshow v3.0

It's been a long and interesting journey since I first wrote the first CJ Simple Slideshow. As you may or may not know, this was literally my first attempt at writing a jQuery plug-in. And as luck would have it, I needed to use it for a project I'm currently working on. The problem is, it sucks. I've never claimed to be a jQuery expert. I'm basically just like you, a simple web developer learning and experimenting with the awesomness that is jQuery. Trying to implement version 2.1.1, I soon realized how sucky it was. I was doing a lot of things in javascript that I could have done a lot easier in jQuery. So I took it upon myself to fix this terrible wrong that I have bestowed upon the world and present you with CJ Simple Slideshow v3.0. New, improved and full of slideshow might! It's now about 30% smaller than the previous versions. So you have a nice lightweight footprint to boot.

U.S. Currency Conversion Using Javascript (Blog Entry)

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

A Small JavaScript U.S. Dollar Formatter

If you're like me and work on a lot of e-commerce sites, I'm sure you have come across the need to have a simple function to convert a number to a U.S. Dollar formatted string. If you have scoured Google looking for something, I'm sure you've come across the plethora of "currency" formatting libraries/functions out there. The problem is (at least with me) is that all these functions seem to be large, complicated, monstorous libraries that give you the ability to convert a number into a gazillion different localized currencies. That's fine and dandy if your customer plans on going global, but what if they just want to sell things in the U.S.? That pretty much sums up the majority of my customers.

I've come up with a very simple JavaScript prototype that will convert a number into a nice U.S. Dollar formated string. This function will add the thousands seprator (comma), add the dollar sign ($), add two decimal places and handle negative numbers.

Easily Detect iPad, iPhone or iPod Using Javascript (Blog Entry)

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

An Simple Way Of Device Detection

I'm currently working on a website and one of the jQuery plug-ins I'm using is really just for eye candy and it only works with mouse overs (or mouse hover events). The problem is mouse over events don't work on the multitude of "touch" devices out there. I needed a quick little script to determine the device in order to stop this plug-in from activating, but also needed an easy way to add other devices down the line (like Android) when needed. Here's what I came up with...

// detect touch devices to turn off any mouseover only functionswindow.is_touch_device = (/iPhone|iPod|iPad/i).test(navigator.userAgent);

We are using a regular expression (ignoring case) to determine if our product name is located in the navigator user agent string. If it is, then we set our touch variable to true. This method should be compatible with all major browsers (old and new)

I'm not 100% sure if I like using the userAgent to detect the device, but I couldn't think of an easier way of doing this. If you have some thoughts let me know.

We're You Surprised? (Blog Entry)

Sun, 5 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

At One Point I Wanted To Be A Cartoonist

I found this the other day looking through some of my older stuff. Not sure why, but I think this is funny. My younger self seems to have a whacked sense of humor.

Using RegEx to Remove Line-Breaks, White-Space From HTML (Except PRE Tags) (Blog Entry)

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Remove White-Space from HTML Except from <pre>'s

If you have ever used ColdFusion's function (<cfprocessingdirective suppresswhitespace="yes">), you may have noticed that it strips white-space formatting from any HTML <pre>'s you may have in the code. 99% of the time you would never have this problem, but if you have a programming blog, this can be some what of a hassle.

Well, as I was re-writing my cjboco.com site, I decided to take up the challenge and create a function using RegEx that ignore's anything in-between the <pre>'s. It will also remove any comments, but since I was using this to strip all the white-space out of my generated HTML, I soon realized this wasn't working to well with my conditional comments for Internet Explorer. Oh well, at least it's in here for future use. Let me know if you have any problems.

TinyMCE HTML5 Media Plug-In (Project Entry)

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 07:00:00 GMT

HTML5 Media Plug-In for TinyMCE is a modification of MoxieCode's built inmedia plug-in to allow HTML5's new <video> and <source> tags. It's far from perfect and there are a few known drawbacks with this first release. The biggest issue is that the plug-in GUI dialog doesn't allow you to easily add/edit multiple <source> elements. It should be easy enough to integrate, but I wanted to release the code to make sure there are no other major issues before I continued.

YapMe.com Website Redesign (Blog Entry)

Fri, 8 Oct 2010 19:12:12 GMT

Yap, cool coftware and now a Cool website to go along with it!

Yap is a pioneer in cloud-based automated speech recognition. And when they needed to update their website, they came to the pioneer in web-design and development... well maybe not a pioneer, but I think we did a pretty nifty job.

I'm as proud of the design as I am as what we put under the hood. Of course, you can't see that aspect of it, but trust me, there's some pretty cool content management going on here. All the code is optimized to ensure a small footprint and quick load times.

Check it out at yapme.com and let me know what you think.

HTML5, Sessions and LocalStorage... Hoorah! (Blog Entry)

Fri, 8 Oct 2010 19:29:22 GMT

HTML5 Tip: Using localStorage to Retain Form Data when Sessions Expire

Most of the websites I design have a pretty nifty Content Management System which allows my clients to edit a majority of their website content. One of the biggest problems I've been trying to address over the past few years has been the short session limit on some of the shared hosting plans we use. It seems like the ISP's only allow a maximum of 30 minutes when using session management. 90% of the time, this is fine, but if my client is in the middle of an edit and then takes a phone call or leaves the computer, it's possible the session will expire and then they will lose the form data they had entered.

ColdFusion Error (Blog Entry)

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:28:54 GMT

Can not read response from server. Expected to read 4 bytes, read 0 bytes before connection was unexpectedly lost.

I recently started getting this error on most of my client's websites that were being hosted on a ColdFusion shared server. At first, I thought it had to do with something I was doing with a cfquery inside the application.cfc. Doing a little googling on the subject, I soon realized that this was my old friend "Java.lang.NullPointerException" in disguise.

The Solution

To fix this problem you need to have the server admin disable the ColdFusion admin setting "Maintain connections with the Coldfusion Admin". After that is set properly, you should no longer see this message.

CJ File Browser (Project Entry)

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:24:02 GMT

CJ File Browser is a file management system to allow you to view and modify a server's directory contents through the use of a web browser. It can be implemented as a plug-in with tinyMCE or work separately in standalone mode. With it you will be able to upload any file type (including images) as well as a limited ability to modify directories. Some of the actions you can perform are: upload files, delete files, navigate directories, create directories, delete directories and if the file is a supported web image (GIF, JPG or PNG) you will be able to see a small preview of the image.

The main interface is completely written using standard HTML and JavaScript. There is no Flash or Shockwave used! The actions the interface needs to perform are handed off to a Handler Engine System using AJAX calls. This allowed us to create a plug-in architecture to allow the use of multiple server technology. If the a Handler Engine Plug-In is not available for your particular language, then you can create your own by following the CJ File Browser 3.1 Custom Engine Guide on my blog.

Help Speed Up Your Website Load Time Using GZIP! (Blog Entry)

Thu, 8 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Using GZIP Compression with ColdFusion

As some of you might of heard, Google recently announced they are factoring in site speed as a criteria in their web search ranking. I have about 30 websites being monitored by Google's Web Analytics and over the past month or so I have noticed a significant drop in all their traffic. Now, I'm not 100% sure if this has to do with the new ranking rule or the fact that most US schools are out for summer, but either way this has me a little perplexed and I'm starting to wonder if this has anything to do with my code.

Reading up on a bunch of speed enhancement tips, the one thing I kept coming across is to use HTTP Header Compression. Basically, if the web browser supports it, you can GZIP your Scripts and CSS files and serve them instead of the uncompressed text files. Typically you can save over half the normal file size by doing this. Since I use ColdFusion for most of my sites, I had to find a way to integrate GZIP with ColdFusion. Here's what I came up with.

CJ Image Video Previewer (Project Entry)

Sun, 4 Jul 2010 17:29:58 GMT

CJ Image Video Previewer is meant to mimic the video preview boxes you see on many Video sites. It displays a block that contains an image thumbnail and when the user moves their cursor of the box, it dynamically loads and then displays a group of images in sequence. Kind of like a flip-book. This is an excellent way to provide an preview of the video, without the user actually downloading the video file.

Installing Railo 3.1 On Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) (Blog Entry)

Sat, 3 Jul 2010 03:03:21 GMT

A Step-By-Step Guide To Install Railo Server 3.1 On Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

This week I went ahead and purchased a Mac Mini to replace my very old Apple G4 server. One of the first things I had to do was to get Railo 3.1 to run on it. You may recall, I already created a nice blog entry called Installing Railo 3.1 On Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), to help people get Railo running on Mac OS X 1.5. I really didn't think that installing it on 10.6 (Snow Leopard) would be that difficult, but I was wrong.

First of all, the original source of my guide was based off of another blog entry by Luis Majano. But apparently, his website had changed, and as of this writing, was not even working. I remembered he had a nice entry on enabling 64 bit mode when installing, but without his reference, I was SOL and on my own. But fear not my fellow Railo fans, because I spent a better part of a day figuring it out.

CJ Image Flipbox (Project Entry)

Thu, 1 Jul 2010 17:10:12 GMT

CJ Image FlipBox v1.1.1 is a jQuery plug-in that displays a series of images based on the mouse position within the display box. The left-most side of the FlipBox displays the first image, where as the right-most side displays the last image. Moving between the two, displays any other images that fall between. This is an attempt to mimic Apple's iPhoto software and the way it displays events. As an added bonus, I actually took the time and tested it in the following browsers: FireFox 3.5, IE6, IE7, IE8, Safari 4. (Lesson learned from my first jQuery Plug-In!)

CJ Site Radar (Project Entry)

Sat, 22 May 2010 01:22:00 GMT

CJ Site Radar, formally CJ Website Visitor Tracking, is an experimental tool to help you visualize the live traffic on your website. This project is using a variety of technologies, including jQuery, Processing.js and ColdFusion. It should work with any modern web browser. But do to the fact that this is an experimental too, Internet Explorer is not supported at this time. (It can be, I'm just being lazy!)

Problem: ColdFusion and MS-SQL NTEXT Returning Empty String (Blog Entry)

Tue, 18 May 2010 00:54:12 GMT

ColdFusion Or MS-SQL Returning [Empty String] Value For NTEXT

Oh MicroSoft, why must you be the bane of my existence? Seriously, if it's not your buggy web browsers, then it's using another one of your products. And this time it's MS-SQL. Ok, in all seriousness, I'm really not 100% sure if this is MicroSoft's fault or perhaps Adobe's ColdFusion. But either way this one through me for a loop. (And on a side note, why does it seem like this crap always happens on a Monday)

If you have been forced to use MS-SQL on one of your projects. And perhaps you've been banging your head up against your computer monitor for the past three hour, because you've been trying to pull data from an NTEXT column and it keeps coming back as an [empty string], then boy do I have a solution for you.

Table of ASCII Characters and Symbols For ColdFusion (Blog Entry)

Fri, 14 May 2010 07:00:00 GMT

A Single Table Listing All The HTML Entities and ASCII Codes

I needed a simple table that listed out all the ASCII entities and their decimal codes for ColdFusion the other day. Doing a little Googling, it seemed like every single table out there broke the list into different groups and not all of them seemed complete. So I figured I would make my own and share it.

CJ Parse Tools (Project Entry)

Wed, 12 May 2010 18:45:02 GMT

CJ Parse Tools is a jQuery plug-in that contains a collection of various parsing functions to help you convert strings to various formats. Tools include converting HTML markup and Latin 1 entities to Ascii, converting a string to valid XML Latin 1 entities and converting ASCII back to HTML & XML entities. Essentially if you need to convert something like & to &, then this JQuery plugin is for you.

CJBoCo.com Website Feedback (Blog Entry)

Wed, 12 May 2010 07:00:00 GMT

I Can't Make It Better, If I Don't Know What's Wrong!

I've been slowly making improvements to the cjboco.com website over the past month. Trying to get it to a point where it wont be in the "beta" stage. I know there's still a lot to do, but I was hoping to get a lot more feedback from users than what I've received so far. Which is nothing.

I'm noticing some weird user habits, that I'm not sure if it's my site design or this is just what people tend to do on blogs. But, I'm noticing:

People are using the contact form, instead of posting comments.

Is the comment form to hard to see? Is it to confusing? Are you getting any errors using it?

People are not registering.

This is to be expected, but I'm getting a lot of repeat users, so why are you not registering? Is the registration link to hard to see? Are you getting errors?

People have not subscribed to ANY blog or project post.

For some of the people that have registered and posted a comment, asking a question, they have not subscribed. Not sure why, again is it to hard to see? Not working?

My ultimate goal is to make the website a great experience for everyone, but I can't get to that point unless I get some feedback. If you have something that's bugging you about the site, please let me know. I would appreciate it.

Behind The Graphic Design Scenes: The Billy Bucket Logo (Blog Entry)

Thu, 6 May 2010 07:00:00 GMT

A Step-By-Step Description of How the "Billy Bucket" Logo Came To Life

As some of you may already know, we here at Creative Juices Bo. Co. do a lot more than just web design. We happen to be a full-fledge graphic design company to boot. And to our delight, one of our clients, The Library Annex, in St. Louis, Missouri, was in need of a new logo for a novelty drink they were about to introduce. You may have taken a gander at one of our recent post where we posted all the different mock-ups we did for the Flannery's logo. Sometimes logo inspiration comes easy, sometimes not. Fortunately, the design for the "Billy Bucket" wasn't to difficult and didn't have the need to make a gazillion logo mock-ups. The following write-up, breaks down the steps that were taken to come up with the final concept and design.

Problem: IE8 Caching AJAX Results (Blog Entry)

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Internet Explorer 8 Is Having Problems Caching Returned JSON Results

As you all know, I released CJ File Browser 3.1 the other day and I thought I had tested the heck out of it. Well, a user discovered that it wasn't working properly in IE8. The script relies heavily on jQueries getJSON function to communicate with the handler engine (The code the does all the grunt work for the browser). The problem was occurring when the user uploaded or deleted the file. He had to close the browser window and the re-open it to see the results.

Immediately, I knew it was a caching issue. My first guess was the HTML file that handles the browser layout needed to have the no-caching META tags placed in the header. I added those, but the problem still persisted. Then it dawned on me, I had a similar problem with Safari and a problem it was having with caching iFrame content. This was solved by adding a simple URL parameter with it's value set to the current time. Safari would then see that something was different and would no longer cache the page.

Improving Bad Design Work (Blog Entry)

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Photoshop And A Little Design Sense Can Do No Wrong

A friend of mine was in need of a little design help the other day on a postcard she had. Unfortunately, she didn't have the original artwork or photo. No worries, I got mad skills.

One Word. Awesome. (Blog Entry)

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Cool HTML5 Canvas+Video Effect

Blowing up HTML5 video and mapping it into 3D space.

CJ File Browser 3.1 Released! (Blog Entry)

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT

My Attempt At The Ultimate Image/File Manager.

Finally, after two weeks of non-stop work, I have finally released version 3.1 of CJ File Browser, my image/file manager that can be used as a tinyMCE plug-in or be used in stand-alone mode. To anyone that downloaded the previous couple of versions, let me apologize to you.

Since the very first release of my ColdFusion File Manager, I have always tried to make it simple and easy for people to figure out how to use it. When I converted the code to make it a tinyMCE plug-in, it added a layer of complexity that I never really had time to deal with. The result of that led me down the path of releasing a bunch of sub-par projects to the public.

A few weeks ago, I decided I was going to re-write some of the code and try to clean things up a little bit. I quickly released version 3.0, found some little bugs and released version 3.0.1. Well, I got to be honest with you. That one was pure crap. And for that, I apologize.

Guide To Creating Your Own CJ File Browser Handler Engine Plug-in (Blog Entry)

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Create Your Own Handler Engine for CJ File Browser 3.1

One of the main features of CJ File Browser is the capability to use various server technologies besides ColdFusion, to handle all the server calls. In order to do this, you may need to create your own plug-in for the new Handler Engine System. This guide will provide you with the layout, required functions and function responses that are needed in order to do this.

Unfortunately, in order for you to create your own Handler Engine plug-in, you are going to need at least some basic knowledge of programming language. There's just to much going on on the functions to effectively explain it all here. You are going to need to be able to open up one of the existing handler engine plug-ins to get a grasp of what it's doing. If any of this is not making sense, then don't hesitate to ask a question. I'm more than happy to provide any insight into making these!

Monday Morning Teaser (Blog Entry)

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT

CJFileBrowser 3: Multi-Platform, More Functions, Cool New Interface and More!

How's that for a teaser. Stay tuned!

How InvalidTag Destroyed My Morning (Blog Entry)

Wed, 7 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Incorrectly Blaming TinyMCE for My InvalidTag Problems

My entire morning was wasted on a perplexing little problem I was having trying to get TinyMCE to embed YouTube videos for one of my clients. I must have tried a gazillion different little hacks, mods and anything I could think of, but each time I hit the submit button, it seems as if the <object> and <embed> tags were being converted to <InvalidTag>. No matter what settings I used in the TinyMCE init script, it still was converting these tags. Guess what? It wasn't TinyMCE at all. It was ColdFusion all along! Go figure.

Google Has Ignored the Keywords META Tag for Years (Blog Entry)

Tue, 6 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Major Search Engines Ignore the Keywords META tag.

For years, I've been using a few online tools to analyze my web pages to check for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I've always suspected that page content was more important than anything you could ever place in the META tags, but today I was sent an article that put my suspicion to rest. On the Google Webmaster Central Blog there's an article from September 21st, 2009 titled "Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking".

CJ Simpler Slideshow (Project Entry)

Tue, 6 Apr 2010 04:10:34 GMT

JQuery Plug-In: CJ Simpler Slideshow v1.0

CJ Simpler Slideshow is a basic slideshow plug-in for jQuery. It dissolves between a series of images located within a user defined block. This project is based off another one of my projects, CJ Simple Slideshow. I had a few request to allow the user to supply links for some of the images. The only problem with changing the other project was that it wasn't a simple fix, so I decided to create a brand new plug-in based on it. The other plug-in was designed to use a mouseOver to pause the script. This interfered with any mouseClicks, so a new project was decided upon.

iPad ready? How about just Valid Web Standards ready! (Blog Entry)

Thu, 1 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Validating The Top 50 Websites of 2009

Apple revealed an iPad ready webpage today. A list of websites that support the latest web standards, including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. This is kind of an "in-your-face" to Adobe and it's flagship Flash product. If you're not familiar with the Apple HTML5 and Adobe Flash war, do a search for "Apple snubs Adobe Flash" on Google, you should get brought up to speed fairly quickly.

After looking over the list, I began to wonder about how many of the top sites are actually standards compliant. What I found was a little shocking...

CJBoCo Website Updates: Part III (Blog Entry)

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:00:00 GMT

New and Improved Download Manager

I was getting some comments about the the file downloads not working properly in the CJBoCo Projects Brew House. I've completely re-written the ColdFusion Boko File Download engine. Hopefully this fixes some of the issues people were having. This is a bleeding-edge stuff, so if you have any problems... please let me know ASAP! Thanks.

CJBoCo Website Updates: Part II (Blog Entry)

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:25:32 GMT

More CJBoCo Website Updates

I made a few updates to the site again today. A few people have been mentioning problems accessing the project demos and downloads. I'm using Fancybox to display the demos inline and I noticed that there was a new version available. In order to get it working I also had to install the latest jQuery 1.4.2 on the site as well. Not sure if this is going to break anything, but since this site is supposed to be a testing ground for the latest available technologies, I figure I might as well make the switch.

If anyones experiences any problem, please let me know.

CJBoCo Website Updates (Blog Entry)

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Still In Beta, But It's Getting Closer

I tweaked a bunch of stuff on the Creative Juices Bo. Co. website today. The Boko engine is still in it's beta phase, but what doesn't kill it, only makes it stronger. He's a brief break down of what I fixed:

The RSS feed is now working.
Login/Logout will now keep you on the same page.
The password recovery page was broken.
Tweaked security settings on all the input forms. (Contact Us, Comments, Registration, etc)
Fixed some of the entries which still had old or out-dated links from the previous blog.

The site should run a tad bit smoother for you. If you have any problems, you can always drop me a line on the contact form. Thanks!

A New CJ File Browser Released (Blog Entry)

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:00:00 GMT

A ColdFusion File Manager That You Can Use With TinyMCE or In Standalone Mode

Well boys and girls, It's been over two years since the last time I released a version of my ColdFusion file manager. Where has the time gone? Today I would like to introduce CJ File Browser version 3.0. Not only can you use it as a plug-in with TinyMCE, but now you can also use it in standalone mode. Of course, the standalone mode will require a little tweaking on your part!

When I first released my file browser 5 years ago, I had one goal. To provide you with a basic ColdFusion File Browser so you could modify it, create your own or just delve into the code to learn how it works. That goal hasn't changed, but this one definitely is not simple. It's using a ColdFusion component as the file handler engine, jQuery to make the JavaScript easier to code and a few new options to ensure a secure deployment.

Branding: How To Make A Logo (Blog Entry)

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Logo Design Steps

So, if you read in one of my past articles, a bar/restaurant in Italy is using a logo I designed for one of my clients. They modified it somewhat, but its quite obvious that they stole it. I do a lot of logos, some I'm proud of, some I'm not. But this one, the Flannery's logo, I'm somewhat proud of.

When designing a logo, usually the client has a pretty solid idea of what they want. As the designer, it's your job to take what they say and help them reach that vision. This particular logo job was a little different, the client really didn't know what they wanted. All the really knew was what they didn't like. So it was my job to come up with a design, present the mock-ups and continue based on the feedback I received.

DaTruthBoxing.com Website Design (Blog Entry)

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

I just put the wraps on phase one of a new boxing news website. Check it out at www.datruthboxing.com.

Logo Theft! (Blog Entry)

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Logo Identity Theft

Not sure if I should be a little flattered or pissed off, but a friend discovered a restaurant in Italy that stole one of my clients logos. (One in which I designed).

They're just using it on a Facebook profile, but still it's a little insulting because they did such a bad job on it.

[Updated: 01-25-10 02:59PM]

Crisis: New York Underwater (Blog Entry)

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Supposed to be a pretty cool new show.

Poster graphics provided by yours truly! Be sure to checkout the trutv.com message boards after the show.

Determining An Elements Width And Height Using Javascript (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:05:59 GMT

Prototyping the Element's Dimensions

I was browsing through my utility scripts today and I came across these two little gems and I thought I would share them with you. These functions will determine an elements width or height and return it's value. Very useful if you ever plan on doing any animation or dynamic user interaction on your web page.

The Ultimate openWYSIWYG Editor (Their words, not mine) (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:31:08 GMT

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.

Problem Using OnFocus and OnBlur Events with FireFox 2.x (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:35:54 GMT

Brian comments on FormFieldinator:

...I tried the [FormFieldinator] tester and found some problems. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.14:

...I get an error message when I tab after pasting invalid text, but it moves to the next field anyway. Shouldn't it stay in that field until it's correct?

I have to admit, I was wondering when someone was going to call me out on this. If your not familiar with FormFieldinator, it was my attempt to create the ultimate JavaScript form and formfield utility library. I developed, what I thought, was a fairly robust set of tools to allow you to capture, validate and format form input. Heck, I even came up with a cool name.

IE6 and IE7 does not like you using setAttribute on style (Blog Entry)

Wed, 8 Apr 2009 06:00:08 GMT

setAttribute("style","YOUR STYLE INFO")

I'm right in the middle of a couple of large projects right now, hence the lack of posts lately, but I wanted to share a little problem I just ran into with everyone.

I like to keep my JavaScript condensed, so I like to use setAttribute for style information. But one of my clients reported a problem with a simple survey window I created recently. Apparently, Internet Explorer (go figure) wasn't playing nice with the script I created.

Javascript and I Need Some Closure (Blog Entry)

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:07:41 GMT

JSLint Keeps Warning Me About Calling a Function Within A Loop

I use JSlint to check my JavaScript on a regular bases, most of the time it just for light scripts that I just need to check to make sure that I don't have a typo. But occasionally I check more robust scripts and I find myself presented with an error message that says "Problem at line XXX character XX: Be careful when making functions within a loop. Consider putting the function in a closure".

I know I've come across this in the past and I know that I fixed it, but the problem is I can never remember what the heck I did to fix it. Then I remembered that I have a blog! I can just put it there and never have to search far for the answer ever again!

Here's the problem:

function myHappyFunction() {   var a = document.getElementsByTagName('a');   for(var i = 0; i <= a.length - 1; i++) {      a[i].onclick = function(e) {         alert('Ouch!');      };   }}

indexOf problems in Internet Explorer (Blog Entry)

Thu, 4 Jun 2009 17:46:15 GMT

Reason #592 why I hate Internet Explorer

My last step on any website design is to go through it and make sure that it works and look correct in the various flavors of Internet Explorer. I can't really say that the time spent doing this is blissful. I compare it to going to the dentist, because I never know what I'm going to find and when I do it's rarely good.

So today as I was debugging, what I thought was a very simple, JavaScript page. I came across one of those nifty "This method or function is undefined" errors from the Internet Explorer debugger. And as we all know, the IE debugger is as worthless as playing "I Spy" with a blind person.

MySQL DATE_FORMAT() Returning Binary Data (Blog Entry)

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Taming the MySQL Date_Format Function

This is just a quick post of a little problem I've been running into lately. I'm not sure if it's a bug or some kind of intended MySQL thing, but it's annoying as heck. Also, I'm using MySQL version 5.0.32. I'm not sure if this applies to older versions of MySQL or not, but it seems to be something new with the 5.0 variants.

Big Update to CJ Html Parser (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:01:52 GMT

Ok, it's been some time since I revisted this handy lil' script, but since I've been in an overhaul'n kind of mood lately, I thought I would give this one another crack. If your not familiar with Cj Html Parser, it's my nice little function that converts an HTML encoded string to ASCII text.

Check out Cj Html Parser over on the projects page.

Get Hit Count On Multiple Domains Using CJ Hitman (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:15:29 GMT

CJ Hitman Tip & Trick

One of my clients is using the CJ Hitman link manager script I created to track various links on their website. They use about 15 domains that point people to different areas of their site and they we're curious if they could use the information gathered through the script to determine the total hit counts for each domain.

We sure can. CJ Hitman is recording the entire path, so all we need to do is perform a little SQL QUERY magic to group the results for the domains.

Finally, I'm Back! (Blog Entry)

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Creative Juices 4.0. Bigger, Stronger and Now With Moxie!

If you haven't noticed, the site had gone though it's fourth major revision, since I originally launched back in 2005. It's been a slow and painful process but instead of using some off-the-shelf solution for the site, I decided to write something completely new from the ground up. Why would I ever do this, you ask? Well, sit back and prepare yourself for a little story.

When I first launched, it was a very simple ColdFusion site. It didn't have a blog and it really didn't have any content management methods in place. Everything was hand coded and manually updated. It was time consuming, but it fit better with what I was trying to do. I could spotlight some of my clients, show some examples of my work and to provide some sample code to give back to the community. About 6 months after I launched, I soon realized that the site was taking more time to maintain than I had available. I had to come up with some sort of solution to let me focus on the content and not the code.

CJ Image (Project Entry)

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:54:53 GMT

CJ Image: An Image Scaling Algorithm

One of the most requested functions that my customers seem to ask, is that they want to upload their own images to the website. Technically, it's not difficult, especially if your using a server technology like ColdFusion, php, etc, but from a design perspective, it's a big headache. When designing a website, you create "blocks" (for lack of a better term) that are either going to be used for text or images. You might use an image editing programing like Adobe® Photoshop® to scale and crop the images to make sure they load fast and fit into the block's dimensions. Unfortunately, most of our customers do not have these tools and wind up trying to upload an image that are to large and weren't really designed to fit within our designated "block".

We needed to create a function that would take our customers uploaded image and scale it into these blocks. Not knowing what the customer was going to upload, we had to create something that was dynamic enough to adapt to what ever size the final destination image was going to be and also to the source image the user uploads.

Spammy (Project Entry)

Sun, 5 Apr 2009 19:21:53 GMT

Mango Blog Comment Spam Keyword Filtering

Meet Spammy! a fairly straight forward spam filter for comments. I need to do some more work, but I wanted to go ahead and release it, because I don't know when I'll have more time to play with it. Check it out and let me know if anyone has any suggestions or problems.

GetSomeGreek.com Website Redesign (Blog Entry)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:18:46 GMT

It's All Greek To Me

After many long hours and lots of RedBull, we have finally put the wraps on the redesign of GetSomeGreek.com. GetSomeGreek designs and sells only the most original, unique custom and retail Greek apparel and accessories for fraternities and sororities all across the country. In a market where vendors reuse designs over and over again, where clipart is not only standard, but expected, where goods are overpriced and customers are underappreciated, GetSomeGreek stands out, a sole vendor ahead of the pack, where no one else ventures to go. GetSomeGreek respects you, your style and your attitude.

If you're looking for the best in greek apparel, be sure to check them out at www.getsomegreek.com.

Use jQuery to Queue Your Animations (Blog Entry)

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:48:11 GMT

Using jQuery's ready() method and callback functions to get your animations to queue smoothly

One of my long time followers and most likely my biggest fan, ran into a little jQuery problem the other day and e-mailed me to see if I could help out. Here's what he had to say:

I am trying to get jQuery to do a fade, a slideDown, and a fade. I need to delay each by a few seconds, or ideally have them trigger after the previous effect completes. I can't seem to figure it out. Your an awesome guy, think you can help out?

The secret to getting me to look at something is to call me "Awesome"!

Giving Railo a Chance (Blog Entry)

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:29:08 GMT

Transitioning From Adobe ColdFusion To Railo On Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

I've been developing ColdFusion sites for a good 10 years. I remember the Allaire days, eased through the Macromedia days and suffered through the Adobe days. ColdFusion 4.0 was my first taste of the CFML language. I'm not sure if it was it short learning curve or it's ability to allow me to create websites so quickly, but either way I fell for it instantly.

I'll be the first one to tell you that ColdFusion always had room for improvement. My complaints were fairly simple, from wanting server side image manipulation without using a plug-ins, to making it less of a resource hog. The biggest complaint I have nowadays, is the fact that Adobe seems to be focusing ColdFusions attention to Flash and Flex. Two technologies, which I will admit, could care less about.

I'm sure some of you would argue with me, but I think the days of developing Flash sites are numbered. With HTML 5 on the horizon, there's really no need to bother with this buggy, resource hogging, technology. It saddens me that Adobe (or more to the point, Adobe's sales department) is pushing this technology so hard. I wish they would focus more on the core language and features, but alas they don't seem to be going that direction.

Then this week something happened. My ancient Apple G4 development server which was running Adobe ColdFusion 8 crashed. I decided to do a clean install of everything and at the same time upgrade the operating system from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. I really wanted to take advantage of Apple's Time Machine to do my back-ups, which unfortunately is only available for Leopard users. The upgrade was going smoothly up to the point where I installed ColdFusion server. Oops! Apparently ColdFusion doesn't play well with Leopard. IT has something to do with the Apache contector or something. Honestly I just didn't care anymore.

Installing Railo 3.1 On Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Blog Entry)

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:12:34 GMT

A Step-By-Step Guide To Install Railo Server 3.1 On Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

When I was ready to install Railo server I hit up google to see how you would go about installing it on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). There wasn't a lot out there. Actually, there was only one good article I could find, but it didn't allow me to do everything. I've decided to post the steps I took to install Railo Server on my Apple G4 running Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. But first, I have to give credit where credit is due. I based this entire article on what I found here at Luis F. Majano's blog. Everything is built upon this post. Thanks Luis!

My Goal

The goal of this install is to get Railo running on my server and to have all web files located in a common folder and accessible from the outside internet. I need to do this, so my clients can check their site as I am developing them. I have not tried installing PHP or Adobe ColdFusion server along side Railo. This is something I may look into down the road.

My Setup

Here's a quick list of my setup:
Apple G4 Server running Mac OS X 10.5.8
Railo 3.1.1 w/Resin for Apache (www.getrailo.org/index.cfm/download/)
MySQL 5.1.38 (This is not really important for this tutorial, just listing what I'm using)

Pre-requisites

You are going to need to have a text-editor of some sort, I use BBEdit. It allows me to edit hidden/protected files, by providing my Admin password. I'm going to assume that you can figure out how to edit these files if you plan on using something else. You are going to need to use the Terminal.app (don't be scared, I'm by no means a Terminal master). And finally, you are going to need to have XCode installed on your development machine in order to make the install the Railo Apache connector. And lastly, you need to be logged in as an Administrator. I don't think this will work, if you cannot do this.

This may seem obvious to some, but just in case, you also need to have Apache running. To do this, you need to open up System Preferences > Sharing. Make sure that Web Sharing is checked. You can test if Apache is working by pointing your web browser to your server (localhost or 127.0.0.1 if it's on the machine locally) and see if you get the default Apache welcome screen. If it is, your ready to roll. If it's not, then you need to get that working before you can continue.

TeleArts Productions Website Redesign (Blog Entry)

Fri, 4 Sep 2009 17:22:39 GMT

TeleArts Branding Makeover

TeleArts Productions is a full service creative production agency staffed by innovative thinkers, seasoned producers & highly skilled editors who are committed to providing our clients with cutting edge creative video services, commercials, infomercials and entertainment content that are effective, entertaining and informative.

A company with these credentials needed to have a look that showed it. We came up with a new company logo and then redesigned the website with the new look. We made sure the code was error free and search engine friendly. Check them out and if your looking for a company to help you out with your video needs, be sure to give TeleArts Products a try.

You can visit them a www.telearts.net.

CSS Pulldown Menu Displays Behind An Element (or Picture) in IE7 (Blog Entry)

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 22:57:11 GMT

Problems with css menu items hiding behind elements in Internet Explorer 7 (ie7)

Holy moly, this one was a doozy. I was just about to go live with a site that I've been working on when my client informed me that my nifty CSS Pulldown menu wasn't working properly in ie7. The "pulldown" portion of the menu was being obscured by other elements on the page. It works perfectly in the usual suspects (Safari, FireFox and even ie8). After a day and a half of searching and trying a multitude of tricks I finally stumbled across a very elegant and simple solution.

First of all let me give credit where credit is due. I did not come up with this solution, I found it here on Jonathan Stegall's blog. And a big thanks goes out to him for providing the answer. I won't go into a lot of the details, visit Jonthan's site for that, but I wanted to post the solution on my site mainly so I can reference it myself in the future.

Mr. Smith Resigns From Washington (Blog Entry)

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:27:28 GMT

Well, he didn't resign from Washington, but he did from Missouri. For those of you not familiar with the situation, I worked on a documentary project awhile back that followed a 2004 congressional race between Jeff Smith and Russ Carnahan in Missouri. I handled all the graphics and design for the marketing material as well as some other stuff. Jeff wound up losing this race with Carnahan, but eventually went on to win a seat in the Missouri state senate. This was largely possible because of the success of the "Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore?" documentary. After the movie, there wasn't to many people that didn't know who Jeff Smith was.

The movie portrayed Jeff as a very charismatic, for-the-people type of guy. You couldn't resist liking him after you met him. Unfortunately, looks can be a little deceiving, because apparently Jeff was a very bad guy.

Sometimes I miss doing little art projects (Blog Entry)

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:02:58 GMT

I drew this picture on the left years ago in college. It always bugged me that I never finished it. Today I decided to scan it in a see what I could do to it in Photoshop. If I was smart, I would have made it into one of those photoshop speed painting movies, but I didn't think of that until I was almost done. Sorry. Hope you enjoy it though.

Opinion: HostMySite.com Problems, or The Worst Shared Hosting Company I've Ever Dealt With (Blog Entry)

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:40:26 GMT

First let me say that I understand that no hosting company is going to be perfect. I understand that they have to deal with issues every single day and sometimes an issue may not get resolved immediately. And now that I have gotten that off my chest, let me tell you of my experience with a hosting company called HostMySite.com.

It all started last year when I finally had it with CrystalTech. CrystalTech's tech support at the time was horrendous. I could no longer deal with the constant site crashes and abysmal support responses. So after a few weeks of scouring the web, I made the decision to move a couple of clients to HostMySite. On average, people were giving them praise and said that their tech support was superb. They were a little more expensive, but I made the assumption that this was the price I had to pay to receive better service. I had my clients buy their top shared hosting ColdFusion 8 plans.

Almost immediately after moving the site over to their server, we began to notice problems. HostMySite uses a ColdFusion server management application called "SeeFusion". I'm not 100% familiar with this program, but from what I can gather it keeps the different sites in check by making sure that they don't overload the server, kill request that take to long and handle server restarts. The error message we started to see was simply called the "java.lang.ThreadDeath" error.

It's as if every web designer screamed "Hooray!" in unison... (Blog Entry)

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:33:34 GMT

Rarely do I link to news articles, but this is the best news I've heard in 5-6 years...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/youtube-will-be-next-to-kiss-ie6-support-goodbye/

Manually Add Items To The WP-eCommerce Gold Cart (Blog Entry)

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 04:49:10 GMT

WP-eCommerce Gold Cart Plug-In Hack

A friend of mine asked if I could help him out with a project he was working on. He had a client who was trying to sell some products online and the previous developers gave him exactly what he asked for. And unfortunately all they asked for was a way that their visitors could fill out a form to purchase a product. They didn't ask for the ability to view orders, update products, customer data retention, etc.

The problem was that the client really wanted a shopping cart. Something that he could use to manage his business, but because my friend and his client are a little new to the online world, they didn't specify what they wanted to the developer. And unfortunately this developer didn't take any initiative to offer additional options and suggestions.

So I took a look at the website and I realized what the developer had done, which to say the least, wasn't a lot. They basically had a form, and a PHP page that processed the form data. They didn't even take the time to e-mail the customer a receipt. Sheesh. Oh well, I told my friend that I'd look around and see if there was an off-the-shelf PHP solution that could help them out. I'll be the first to tell you that I do not specialize in coding in PHP. My background is ColdFusion, but I've done a few little PHP sites in the past and to be quite honest, I'm not scared to dive into PHP and figure something out. I have a theory, and that is if you know programming logic, you can pretty much program in any language as long as you have good reference material. Hello Google!

ColdFusion Tips & Tricks: Components (Blog Entry)

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:09:37 GMT

ColdFusion Components and Var Scoping Trick

Var scoping is essential when dealing with ColdFusion Components. You can get weird results or even some hard-to-track errors if you don't do this. I'm not privy as to why this happens, I just know that it does. It's one of those mysteries that I just never bothered to research. All I know, is that sometimes it's a pain in the butt, especially when your writing a fairly complex function and you forgot to var scope an "i" in a cfloop or some other quick and dirty variable you made.

Well a few months back, I started doing something with my function variables, that I thought I would share. Not only does it solve my var problem, but it winds up making the top of my function shorter (I'm a stickler for cleanish looking code). Essentially I create a generic local struct in the begining and I'm sure to var scope it, like so:

<cfset var local = StructNew() />

Shared Hosting Woes (Blog Entry)

Wed, 8 Apr 2009 18:20:53 GMT

ColdFusion Site Timeouts? Check To See If Your Database Server.

Awhile back I had switched one of my clients websites from CrystalTech to HostMySite. The site on CrystalTech was inaccessible at least 2 times a day, due to either a ColdFusion/JRun restart or some other problem. Talking it over with the client, we decided it would be a good time to update their code and move it on over to HostMySite.

Almost immediately, we noticed some speed gains, but again we started to see that the site would go down once a or twice a day. I was starting to wonder if it was my code, but I had been running it internally on my server with no problems at all. My server is about 7 years old with only 1 gig of ram. Surely, if it could run on this junker, it should run fine on our ISP's shared server.

You've Just Entered the IE6 Dead Link Zone (Blog Entry)

Wed, 8 Apr 2009 05:57:41 GMT

A Quick Fix for the dreaded Internet Explorer 6.0 (IE6) Unclickable Links

Every once in awhile I create a website and start testing things in IE6 only to find that my navigation or another links is "unclickable". I know I've Googled this about a zillion times, but to be honest I can't remember the exact problem (I think it might be a box-model positioning error or something like that).

Anyway, I was testing a site today and ran into the problem again, so I thought I would share it with you. The fix is fairly simple, all you need to do is set your CSS position rule to relative in your CSS stylesheet for any links having the problem.

Example CSS

#myNav a { position: relative; }

Pretty simple, huh? So happy coding and let me know if you have any insight into this.

My Blog Dilemma (Blog Entry)

Fri, 3 Apr 2009 18:27:58 GMT

Mango vs. BlogCFC

Awhile back I switched my blog from BlogCFC to Mango Blog. The reason I made the switch was simple. I wanted more control over the layout and BlogCFC seemed overly complicated for this task. I have been patiently waiting for version 6, that Raymond Camden has been hinting at for the past 6 months. (Maybe even a year). This version was supposedly more geared towards using templates. As exciting as this news was, it seemed as the progress was moving slowly. And I had to make a decision on my own blog, hence I made a switch.

I really like some aspects of Mango Blog, especially their plug-in architecture and their administration controls. But at the same time, I miss some of the more robust features the BlogCFC had, like subscriptions, stats, etc. And another key point, was that BlogCFC would never pass the W3C's XHTML Validator. It was laced with errors and warning. Mango on the other hand was perfect in that aspect.

Tutorial: Realistic Vector Hair (Project Entry)

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:46:30 GMT

That's a fairly bold statement, but what the heck, I'm still a tad bit cocky after making my cool biker jacket graphic. As promised, I have another fun tutorial for you. As the title so boldly states, this one is going to walk you through the steps to make your very own realistic vector hair. Unfortunately, I'm not going to show you every frick'n step that was involved to make the cover graphic, but instead show you the steps taken to create the main parts of it. Hopefully, with this knowledge you should be able to create your own cool artwork with hair.

Fitness Factory Website Redesign (Blog Entry)

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:47:02 GMT

Fitness Factory Image Makeover

The St. Louis Fitness Factory is a historically renovated 18,000 square foot, full service, fitness center and gym in the heart of Washington Avenue's Loft District. Located in downtown St. Louis, the Fitness Factory provides easy access for the downtown workforce to get a workout in during a lunch break, or of course before and after work.

Check them out at www.stlfitnessfactory.com

Illustrator Brushes: Thorns (Project Entry)

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:13:27 GMT

Yep, another stupid title, but to think that's the only thing you have to endure to get some awesome Adobe Illustrator brushes. In this set you'll find a scary set of thorny brushes to give any of your projects a dangerous edge! Once again, these were made using CS3, so give them a try and let me know what you think. Enjoy!

Illustrator Brushes: Tentacles (Project Entry)

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:48:15 GMT

Yeah, I know... that's a pretty pathetic title, but you try coming up with something with the word "tentacle" in it! Well, I have some more goodies for you, some slippery, slimy, stringy, tentacle thingeys. I didn't know what else to call them, but they reminded me of tentacles, so here you go. They were designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3, so they should work from there on up. Enjoy!

Photoshop Brushes: Clear Tape (Project Entry)

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:09:17 GMT

I've been making some nice little brushes over the past few months and the first set I would like to share is a very basic set of clear tape brushes.

They were made to work with Photoshop CS3, but if you would like them in another format let me know.

BlueUrban.com Redesign (Blog Entry)

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:54:00 GMT

We just wrapped up the re-design for the Blue Urban website. The main goal was to create a standards compliant design that allowed the folks at Blue Urban the ability to update just about every aspect of the site.

They can update slide shows, floor plans, new developments, text, pictures, themes, thumnails... the list goes on. All this while passing the W3C's HTML and CSS validators. Unfortunately the true magic happens behind the scenes, and unless you work for Blue Urban, you'll most likely never see it. It's one of the finest content management systems we've made to date.

Very nice indeed.

So anyway, jump on over to the Blue Urban site at www.blueurban.com and check it out. Let us know what you think.

Lighting Associates, Inc Website Redesign (Blog Entry)

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:41:24 GMT

A Website So Bright, You Gotta Wear Shades

"Where the heck have you been?", you've probably been asking yourself. I'm here, I swear! It's been a crazy roller coaster of a ride the past few months and I apologize for not posting more frequently, but I have been swamped.

I'm going to post about a few of the projects I've been working on and to start things off, let me introduce you to the brand new Lighting Associates, Inc. website. Lighting Associates prides itself on being the foremost lighting manufacturer's representative agency in the eastern Missouri and southern Illinois area. And they needed a website that both dazzled and informed their customers. Hopefully we full-filled their needs.

Check it out at www.laiweb.net

Midvale Industries, Inc. Website Redesign (Blog Entry)

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:40:49 GMT

Who says industry can't look cool!

Midvale Industries, Inc. specializes in coating removal, ultimately which leads to giving things a face lifts. We basically took that idea and applied it to their website.

For over 100 years, Midvale Industries has provided process solutions for a multitude of industry applications, including surface preparation, coating removal, foundry, and metal finishing.

Check them out at www.midvaleind.com

Tutorial: PS Glowing Electrified Streamers (Project Entry)

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:28:00 GMT

A Graphics String Theory

For those of you that don't know, my first passion is graphic design. And I thought I would take a little break from all my programming articles and show you a nice little Photoshop CS3 trick. This tutorial will explain how you can create those nice little glowing strings or streamers that you see in a lot of commercials and print ads lately. If your not familiar with what I'm talking about, take a look at the final image below.

The image on the left is our Base image or starter file. On the right we have the Final image with our stream effect applied.

Happy New Year! (Blog Entry)

Fri, 2 Jan 2009 23:07:25 GMT

Happy New Year Everyone!!

You might have been asking where I went, well rest assure I'm still around. I've been completely swamped with projects and as I wrap one up another seems to start. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I think I'm still a couple of weeks away from some freedom.

In the meantime, how about a little present? Maybe CJ File Browser v2.0 (Beta)!!!

Thought you might like that. I've had this for awhile, but I just didn't have the time to clean up the documentation, comments etc. But I'll let you play with it and let me know if you come accross any problems.

The big change, that I've made this into a tinyMCE plug-in.

Download here: CJ File Browser

P.S. It's a ColdFusion File Browser for tinyMCE, in case you didn't know.

jQuery Editors (Blog Entry)

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:53:21 GMT

Now that I'm diving head deep into jQuery, I've been cruising the intra-web looking at the different plug-ins and extensions for it. I have to admit, there are some pretty impressive scripts out there. One of them caught my eye, mainly since they deal with inline WYSIWYG editors. Its called Small Rich Text Editor, which boast a small footprint (~18k), cross-browser compatibility, Ajax Image upload, HTML clean-up with PHP back-end (bet I could make this for ColdFusion!) and basic Rich Text functionality capabilities.

I haven't had any time to play with it, but it looks promising. Once I get some time, I'm going to play with it to see what it can do. But in the meantime, I thought I would share with you guys.

I've Choosen My Javascript Framework (Blog Entry)

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:26:33 GMT

Hello jQuery! Be Gentle.

Over the past year or so, I've been switching back and forth using two popular javascript frameworks, jQuery and Prototype. I don't always use them, I prefer to make most of my javascript non-dependant, but at times its unavoidable. An example would be trying to do some AJAX stuff, I just find it easier to implement one of the frameworks to handle the grunt work and I just build my script on top of it. For the most part I was leaning towards Prototype.

A Nice Book On Learning JavaScript (Blog Entry)

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:27:24 GMT

Beginning Javascript with DOM Scripting and AJAX

In my lifetime I can honestly say that I have only bought two books on JavaScript programming. The first one was called "Special Edition: Using JavaScript" [Que-1996]. This was basically a reference book that described, and provided an example of, every function and method in JavaScript at that time. I don't think I have opened this book in about 8 years.

During this time, I have relied heavily on Google to provide information on any new tips and tricks that have come out. If I came across something that intrigued me, I would spend countless hours learning all I could from the internet.

A Nice Find, Animator.js (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:32:05 GMT

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 (edit: deactive) 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.

function AnimatorTest() {   ani = new Animator({duration: 1500})      .addSubject(new NumericalStyleSubject($('CB'), 'opacity', 0, 1));   return window['ani']['play'](); // return the ani window variable and intiate "play"}window.addEventListener?window.addEventListener("load", AnimatorTest,false):window.attachEvent("onload", AnimatorTest);

Update, openWYSIWYG Is Now Working With Safari (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:30:14 GMT

I fixed the bugs, now what?

Well, I'm back, relaxed and dove straight into working on the Safari fix for openWYSIWYG. I figured out the issue when attempting to insert a new TABLE into a blank editor window. That little bug has been squashed. You can grab the the Safari version by visiting this CJBoCo Brew House.

So, what next? Well, that's a darn good question. I still think this editor needs some improvements to make it more cross-browser friendly, make improvements on the some of the core functions (especially some of the node functions), improve how it handles the HTML code and a few other things that I think it needs help on.

How Would You Improve Wiki? (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:21:37 GMT

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.

ColdFusion and Dynamic SES (Search Engine Safe) URL's : Part 2 (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:19:15 GMT

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/

Prevent Apple's Safari Browser from Caching an iFrames Source or URL (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:15:50 GMT

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!

Ported CJ Html Parser to ColdFusion (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:14:25 GMT

Now that I wrapped up the JavaScript version of this function, I thought I would go ahead and create a ColdFusion version as well. The big difference between the two functions is that JavaScript will allow you to use a function pointer in the replace-string portion of the regular expression replace function. ColdFusion does not allow us to do that, but there is a pretty cool function that I used, ReplaceList(). This function will find a match in one list and replace it with the corresponding list index item in another string. Other than that it's pretty identical to the CJ Html Parser function.

Note: CJ Html Parser was formally known as Html2Ascii

I Just Had A JavaScript Zen Moment (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:59:04 GMT

The Big Breakthrough!

Well guys, I've been working on one of my projects for the past couple of days trying to make improvements and I just had one of those Ahhhh-Ha moments. Seriously, this thing has been eating away at the back of my brain for days. I was having dreams about it at night and right now, I'm all giddy with excitement.

Unfortunately, your going to wait a day or two until I post it. It needs to be cleaned up and comments need to be added. Also, I think I can add a couple of new functions.... it's pretty frick'n cool. You guys are going to love it.

I'll have it online as soon as I can!

Creating Realistic Objects Using Illustrator and Photoshop (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:58:16 GMT

The Evolution of a Bottle Cap

When I began converting the website to the current format, I needed to update some of the graphics along with it. And one of the things that bothered me from day one, was my ugly bottle cap. It's the one located in my website header that has my logo in it. If you don't remember what the old one looked liked, trust me, it was ugly. I decided to make the new one and I thought I would give you a quick run down of the steps I went through. First thing to know, it's not a photo. The entire bottle cap is made from scratch using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

Weird Clouds Photography (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:56:45 GMT

A time of turbulence

I remember a long time ago, back in college, I was on a road trip with a group of friends. We were headed back home and it was fairly late at night. Everyone on the bus was drinking partying and having a good time, but me? I was sittting, staring out into the darkness like a zombie. One of my friends came up to me and asked if I was o.k. It startled me and I turned around and said, "huh?" She said, "Are you all right?". I was like, "Yeaaahhh??!?". She asked if I was going to be sick or something and then I laughed and said, "No, I was looking at the night studying how the light was bouncing off of things. It facinates me."

Shhh... Don't Tell Anyone, Super Secret CJBoCo Resources (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:44:54 GMT

Useful Resources

One of my clients recently asked me how I test my websites to check to see if they have any errors and if they are valid or not. Of course my response was "My sites are perfect, there's no need to bother checking."

I pretty much left it at that with them, but I thought I would share a few of my secret resources with you guys. I'm pretty big on cross-platform standards and these are some of the tools I use to ensure this.

Oops... I didn't do it. (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:44:09 GMT

I was making some tweaks to our website last night and I think I broke it. Everything should be back to normal now, but if you have any problems, let me know. Sorry!

*Thanks for the heads-up Seth!

Arghh... Or After Using Photoshop's Save for Web, The Color is Not Matching (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:39:44 GMT

Photoshop Tip & Trick

I seem to go through this about once a year. I'm not sure if I change something or if Photoshop just hates me. But if you are ever working with an image in Photoshop and it will look totally different after you perform a "Save for Web". then take a look at the small little dialog on the "Save for Web" dialog box. In there you should see a setting that says "Convert to sRGB". Make sure that's not checked. It should save you a headache or two.

ColdFusion And Dynamic SES (Search Engine Safe) URL's (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:34:51 GMT

My First Attempt at Tackling SES

Okay, I have to admit, I'm not sure if people are going to find this as interesting as me, but I'm kind of weird. I love to create dynamic websites, but I've always hated the ugly url's they tend to create. You know what I mean. Let's say you have a product page. In the old days, you could do something as simple as this:

products.cfm?pid=2369

... and your ColdFusion code for the products.cfm would look something like this:

<cfparam name="url.pid" default="0"><cfquery name="GetProduct" datasource="mydns">   SELECT  Category, SubCategory, ProductName, PID   FROM Products   WHERE PID = #url.pid#</cfquery>

Welcome to Creative Juices... Again. (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:31:43 GMT

We finally had some downtime and decided to re-work our own website and hope you enjoy the improvements. The first thing you might notice is that we incorporated Raymond Camden's excellent cfcBlog blogging software for ColdFusion. It allowed us to add a true blog to our site, while at the same time allowed us to throw a skin on it that closely resembles our old site.

We hope to update the site with more coding examples of ColdFusion, JavaScript and CSS tricks and hopefully you'll be able to contribute without all the headaches that came with the little website we had before.

As of right now, we have only moved a few of the items over from the old website, please bare with us, our old system was put together with duct tape and bailing wire. (I think there was some Fortran in there too!) Moving the old data into the new system is basically a manual process.

In the future we plan on putting even more of the "things we do" on the site. Apparently a lot of people did not realize that we are a full fledged graphic design house. Go figure. So we're going to be sure to put some of that type of stuff on here as well.

We appreciate you visiting and if you have any questions or comments, please drop us a line and let us know.

Validating E-Mail and Web Addresses Using Regular Expressions with ColdFusion (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:20:39 GMT

Two Useful Form Field Validation Functions

Here are two quick ColdFusion scripts to validate if a user supplied a real e-mail address or website URL using Regular Expressions.

To validate an e-mail address:

<cfif REFindNoCase("^[\w\.-]+@[\w\.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}$",form.EMAIL) lt 1>    <--- E-mail address was not valid.... ---></cfif>

... and to validate a website url:

<cfif REFindNoCase("^(http://|https://)[\w\.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(/?)$",form.WEBSITE) lt 1>    <--- Website URL was not valid.... ---></cfif>

I wanted to post these real quick just so I have them handy, but also you might find them useful as well.

Gone Fishing (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:17:16 GMT

Taking a Much Needed Break

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that I will be taking a small vacation until next Monday. My top priority will be to finish debugging openWYSIWYG for Safari, and once that is complete I plan on finishing a few of my other projects. This includes the new ColdFusion Wiki Thingy I've been working on (if you haven't already figured it out, openWYSIWYG is an integral part of that)

And in true vacation form, I am not taking a laptop with me... it wouldn't be much of a vacation if I did! So the blog posts may be light or non-existent until I get back.

Enjoy your week everyone!

Use Idioms To Make Your Intentions More Concise (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:52:34 GMT

To "===" or not to "=="

About 6 months ago, I came across an online tool called JSLint. It's a JavaScript program that looks for problems in JavaScript code. I began using it to check most of my scripts to see if I had any errors in them (I know, I know... you thought I was perfect). Well as it turns out, I had a lot of little mistakes, like using a function or object before it was defined or little formating issues. But one error I kept receiving made no sense to me and I honestly didn't understand why I was getting it.

Expected '===' and instead saw '=='.Expected '!==' and instead saw '!='.

Granted, it wasn't like I didn't understand how to fix the issue, but JSLint wasn't very forthcoming on why I needed to make these changes. So, without fully understanding what wasgoing on, I began using "===" and "!==" whenever I needed to make a logical comparision. And I've been doing this for the past 6 months, without a clue as to "why".

CJ Hitman (Project Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:43:37 GMT

If you are looking to track file downloads or url links on your website or blog, here's a quick tutorial on how you can add your very own link manager.

First thing we need to do is to create a simple database table that will keep track of our file downloads. I use mySQL, so that's the example I'm going to provide, but it's simple enough that you should be able to modify it to suit your other DB needs. You can name your table whatever you like, but be sure to update it throughout all the files.

Hello Again... Again. (Blog Entry)

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:14:54 GMT

Creative Juices Website Redesign, Act II

The past few months has been crazy. When I teased you a awhile back about relaunching the website, I didn't realize the amount of work I was about to undertake. Not with redesigning the site, but with my normal work load for my company. I've been working non-stop on client projects and I just didn't have time to tackle the giant task of redesigning and switching over the Create Juices website.

Well, I finally had a few spare hours and I decided to complete the task. So here it is, the new and improved (hopefully) Creative Juices website. The big difference is that I decided to switch the blog from Ray Camden's BlogCFC to the open source Mango Blog engine. So far I'm very impressed. I think this is going to allow me to post and organize projects a lot easier. Also, I love the fact that Mango allows me to create themes. This is going to allow me some freedom to stylize the site anyway I like.

CJ FormFieldinator (Project Entry)

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:42:34 GMT

FormFieldinator is a collection of JavaScript functions to help you filter, validate and format HTML form input fields. You can perform text input masking, format phone numbers, validate e-mail address and much more. It was created to be fairly easy to incorporate and modify. The functions are broken up into three main categories:

Filtering: Filter what the user can type into a field.
Validating: Validate what the user typed into a field.
Formating: Format the field once a user is done typing into a field.

GetSomeGreek.com Redesign (Blog Entry)

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:05:00 GMT

Apparently we're getting old. Back when we went to college, the coolest shirt to have was a simple black t-shirt with the word "College" on the front of it. In retrospect Blutto was probably not the best role model.

Now days, colleges across the country are becoming fashion aware and the number one place to get your "fashion on" is GetSomeGreek.com. My how things have changed.

When you have a client that makes a bold statement like: "GetSomeGreek designs and sells only the most original, unique custom and retail Greek apparel and accessories..." , you have to be prepared to offer them the same. We think we did that.

So if your in college and want to be cool or if your out of college and still grasping onto the days of youth, check out www.getsomegreek.com and see what they have to offer.

Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore? (Blog Entry)

Sat, 8 Jul 2006 00:50:00 GMT

Who would have thought that we would go all Hollywood on you. Frank Popper, went out a created this great documentary about a little guy named Jeff Smith who was running for political office in 2004. You'll laugh, you'll cry and be amazed by this heart wrenching story that won tons of awards and almost received an Oscar nomination. We would like to think that the slick movie poster and DVD graphics had a small part with that.

If you haven't seen this movie, then go out and see it!

Clayton Dreamyscape (Blog Entry)

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:40:00 GMT

I think one of the under utilized services we offer has to be photo or image manipulation. A client asked us to design a invite for a function they were having and wanted a dreamy photo of a Clayton, Missouri. After looking around for some stock photos, we couldn't really find one that we liked or fit the theme of the invite.

Mosaic Rave to Raise Invite (Blog Entry)

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 21:04:00 GMT

A fine example of what you can do with Infini-D and PhotoShop. If you're not familiar with Infini-D, it's a 3D program that has not been developed for about 6 years. In fact to use it, you need run it in Mac OS 9. Everything, except for the bottle, was manipulated in Photoshop. (The light and shadow effect is Photoshop as well.)

Flannery's Logo Design (Blog Entry)

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 02:42:00 GMT

If your ever in downtown St. Louis, be sure to check out a great little sports bar called Flannery's Pub. We think it's great because they have good food, cold beer and walls of TV's to catch our favorite sports team getting the snot beat out of them, and oh yeah... the awesome logo plastered all over the place.

This was a fun project mainly for all the research... I know what your thinking, but honestly we didn't sample THAT much beer. No the fun part was researching the name Flannery and incorporating what we discovered into the logo. The tree, the colors, the symbolism all scream Irish and we are fighting proud of what we came up with.