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July 27, 2006

Spry Presentation Rocked!

First off, hats off the Ray Camden. He COMPLETELY impressed me with his preso. He was clear, energetic, and straight to the point…well…code, in this case. :-)

Spry is thoroughly sweet. I’m going to start toying with it more for client Ajax needs now that I see how powerful it is. The thing is TRULY amazing. You can do so much with so little code. Honestly, it is like the Ajax version of ColdFusion. IT ISN’T FOR COLDFUSION ONLY! I’m just saying CF is so easy to work with for some seemingly complicated tasks. Well, Spry is the same and can be used with ANY language. Let me show a quick example of what I mean.

Continue reading "Spry Presentation Rocked!" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 8:26 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 17, 2006

AJAX Code Camp: Free 10-week AJAX Training

Read more here.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 4:45 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 7, 2006

FMUG.az: Adobe Spry Framework preso by Ray Camden

Come out and see what Ray Camden has cooking for Spry (Ajax framework). You can read more on GotoAndStop.org (see below). Breeze will be available for this meeting, as normal, but please come out and support FMUG.az and AZCFUG in person. If you can’t make it, we understand but don’t expect us to save any pizza or drinks for you. ;-)

For more info go here.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 10:00 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 12, 2006

Virtual Tradeshow on Ajax

Ajax conferences are popping up everywhere and it makes you think. Is it [ajax] here to stay? Obviously it is but all of these conferences somewhat solidify it, to me at least. Anything a company can pay to have their employees learn is more tangible than something that may be a fad. That isn’t a knock against open source. I like “SOME” of the open source movement (will save why for another post when I have a good amount of time) but you don’t see the majority of Fortune 500’s (or even 1000’s for that matter) moving everything to open source, and for good reasons.

Anyways, let me stop there before this post gets way off course. :-)

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Posted by John C. Bland II at 12:48 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 30, 2006

Reflection.js

Jim Jeffers sent this to me a few weeks ago. It is pretty nice. Sometimes reflection on images looks great. Now you can achieve it without being a graphics master. :-)

Check it out here.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 7:13 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 18, 2006

So Adobe likes Ajax?

Adobe released the Spry framework for Ajax a week or so ago. It was a bit surprising but goes to show Adobe isn’t set on Flex controlling the market. The Spry framework provides some pretty solid functionality and the examples look really nice (to the point I want to use the Photo Gallery one on our family site).

It seems to be a competitor to Atlas from Microsoft. I don’t know how robust Spry is but it seems to be pretty easy to use.

What do you think?

Posted by John C. Bland II at 4:46 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 27, 2006

Backbase Updates

I finally had a phone call with Backbase last Thursday and it turned out pretty interesting. I’ll highlight my questions/comments then below that will be the rep’s response.

Continue reading "Backbase Updates" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 10:09 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 20, 2006

Mix '06: Atlas

Consider this my intro email about my experience here at Mix ‘06. I’m going to keep this simple though so I don’t stray too far from Atlas. Just know Microsoft is working on some pretty phat things as well as some breakthroughs. Let’s stick with the topic of Atlas though.

Continue reading "Mix '06: Atlas" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 12:49 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 15, 2006

Ajax + cross-domain.xml

I ran across a few posts today on google regarding the use of a cross-domain.xml within Ajax. There seemed to be several views here but one specifically stuck out. A guy, don’t remember the name and don’t really care, made the statement some people like to do cross-site data calls. Hrrrmmmmm…that’s understandable but for the vast majority who love to keep things secure it seems a cross-domain.xml would fit perfect.

Continue reading "Ajax + cross-domain.xml" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 9:32 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

March 14, 2006

JSMX Testimony

Todd Kingham from AZCFUG created an Ajax wrapper called JSMX. As you know I recently posted about using Sajax and gave it MUCH praise. Well, I went last night to create an Ajax interface for another KM product and had serious trouble getting the ColdFusion version of Sajax working. I fought with that thing for about 5 hours and couldn’t get it to work to save my life.

The problem was I couldn’t return anything but simple values. If I returned a struct, array, or query (complex values) I wouldn’t get a result. It was terribly annoying. I even used 3 different versions of Sajax+CF and none of them would work. It was quite puzzling why this was working. I decided to move on.

Continue reading "JSMX Testimony" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 12:18 PM | | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

March 11, 2006

Backbase Forums

I got an email follow-up from Backbase and they gave a link to their forum. My reason for posting is to showcase how sweet it is. It has to be one of the best forums I’ve seen yet.

Check it out here.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 10:08 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

March 7, 2006

Sajax 0.12 and the Admin

I just finished the admin for a client and it turned out SWEET! I wish I could open it up as is for everyone but I can’t. What I am planning on doing is duplicating it, changing graphics, and opening it up to the public for viewing/testing.

So, what makes it so sweet? Sajax! Sajax is nothing but an Ajax engine but it is very simple to implement, after you figure a couple things out. This isn’t my first stab at Ajax stuff. I did a portion of a site in Ajax for a big client about a year ago. It was quite the slick process but Sajax seems to be a bit better here. Let me go ahead and give a brief overview of how to implement Sajax (with PHP).

Continue reading "Sajax 0.12 and the Admin" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 9:36 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sajax 0.12 and the Admin

I just finished the admin for a client and it turned out SWEET! I wish I could open it up as is for everyone but I can’t. What I am planning on doing is duplicating it, changing graphics, and opening it up to the public for viewing/testing.

So, what makes it so sweet? Sajax! Sajax is nothing but an Ajax engine but it is very simple to implement, after you figure a couple things out. This isn’t my first stab at Ajax stuff. I did a portion of a site in Ajax for a big client about a year ago. It was quite the slick process but Sajax seems to be a bit better here. Let me go ahead and give a brief overview of how to implement Sajax (with PHP).

Continue reading "Sajax 0.12 and the Admin" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 9:36 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 5, 2006

Backbase: Examples Review + Mini-Synopsis

Well, the examples they provide are quite nice. Several of them have a real Flash feel to them. Looking at the examples makes you want to start implementing pieces into your own sites. They all work in IE 6 too so that is a plus. With that said, there are some downfalls I see.

  1. Speed
  2. A new “language”
  3. XML data (not 100% sure here but xml is used a lot)

Continue reading "Backbase: Examples Review + Mini-Synopsis" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:32 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Backbase: Follow-up

I saw an ad in Gmail about Backbase so I figured I would try it again. This time it still had a problem but after my second try the site worked fine and I was able to validate my email address. I downloaded the community edition0 of their software and will be reviewing it.

So far it seems like it is a whole new language you have to learn. Instead of relying on your present skills/abilities you have to learn a whole new “language” tailored to backbase. It may be worth it…maybe not. Look for more information as I go through the docs and toy with examples.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:10 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 2, 2006

Backbase: Are you serious?

What’s up with Backbase’s pricing for their Ajax solution? I’m sure it is high quality but I can’t even get to the point of reviewing their product because their site isn’t working. I’ve heard of Backbase and have previewed their demos in the past, and present, but I have a few gripes.

Continue reading "Backbase: Are you serious?" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 2:41 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

February 22, 2006

IE Bites: option disabled doesn't work

IE has once again bit the big one so I figured I’ll start posting my IE Bites messages here instead of IM’ing Cody or Mike and venting to them about IE. That is kinda like preaching to the choir. :-) Well, maybe not…the choir has issues too.

I’m working in IE 6 but forgot to test one piece of functionality before sending this site live. As usual, everything works great in Firefox so I had no idea there was even potential for an issue. Come to find out the disabled attribute for an option doesn’t work in IE. Here’s what I had to do.

Continue reading "IE Bites: option disabled doesn't work" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 1:52 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 21, 2006

Ajax App: cfQuickDocs

cfQuckDocs is PHAT. It is built on ajaxCFC that integrates LiveDoc content for ColdFusion. For my daily use it is invalueable and way better than LiveDocs in terms of speed. LiveDocs still has a place but I am definitely a believer in cfQuickDocs.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 1:58 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 20, 2006

class...Reserved in IE?

I guess so. It doesn’t seem to matter in Firefox or Safari but having a function paramater called “class” in IE will cause it to spit on you. Let me show you what I was doing.

Continue reading "class...Reserved in IE?" »

Posted by John C. Bland II at 4:40 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 15, 2006

Freedom, Mobile Ajax?

That’s right…Ajax is going mobile. I read today on Marco Casario’s blog about Majax (Mobile Ajax) and it sounds pretty sweet. The product is offered by Opera and is called Freedom. I’m not going to go through all of the details because I don’t know them but it is, in my opinion, a cash cow for Opera, pay-per-view services.

Read more about the Freedom announcement and draw your own conclusions. :-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 9:39 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)