In this issue of ColdFusion conference and training news: 1. CFUNITED News - New hotel room block at Doubletree 2. ColdFusion Live! Every Thursday 12:30pm 3. "CSS - The Box Model Demystified" interview with Sandra Clark 4. "Verity Fast Text Searching" interview with Raymond Camden
Happy coding - Michael Smith, TeraTech, Inc http://www.teratech.com/ "Creating excellent custom software since 1989" Due to TeraTech's growth we are seeking developers and sales people http://www.teratech.com/index.cfm?go=About.Jobs The CFUNITED-05 Conference is a great way to see what is coming down the pike for coldfusion. It gives developers like myself a chance to step away from application development for a few days and look at the bigger picture of what if going in the world of Coldfusion. Also, networking opportunities are plentiful because many Coldfusion experts attend the conference. All of this sounds good enough without even talking about a chance to get away to America's capital city. - Lindan Elliott 1. CFUNITED News **************** * Only 5 weeks until CFUNITED-05. Regular price $649 expires in 2 weeks 6/10/05 * We have a limited number of partial scolarships to CFUNITED for unemployed programmers and students Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with your situation if you want to apply with "CFUNITED scholarship in the title. * We have a new room block at the Doubletree hotel, which is a mile from the CFUNITED conference hotel and is next to the metro - letting you take the metro to and from the conference and to/from DC nightlife. The rate is $153 per night and the code is CFUNITED (or CFU). * User group manager conference is Tuesday June 28th. Learn how to run your group better and get great speakers and more members. Just $29 http://www.cfconf.org/mmug_managers_2005/ * 609 people have already registered for CFUNITED-05. That is more than CFUN-04 total - and we have 5 weeks left for more registrations! * Join the ColdFusion 10th birthday party at CFUNITED 8:00pm Thursday evening sponsored by HostMySite and TeraTech. http://www.macromedia.com/go/BICG * See CFUNITED presenters at previous ColdFusion Live! meetings at http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/events/?action=pastlist * Upcoming classes: FB201 - Intermediate Fusebox Jun 7 2005 FB301H -Hal Helms FastTrack to Fusebox 4.1 Jun 20 2005 CU201 - Hal Helms - Designing and Developing OO Applications with CFCs Jun 27 2005 CU202 - Simon Horwith - Roll Your Own API - Maximizing Code ReUse with CFCs and Custom Tags Jun 27 2005 CU203 - Geoff Snowman - Intro to .NET for CFers Jun 27 2005 CU204 - Nate Nelson - Beyond Basic SQL for CF Jun 27 2005 CU205 - Charlie Arehart - CFML Leveraging .NET Strengths Jun 28 2005 CU206 - Sandra Clark - Advanced Cascading Stylesheets Jun 28 2005 CU208 - Jeff Peters - FLiP and Fusebox walkthrough Jun 28 2005 For more info http://www.teratech.com/training/ * MiniMAX 2! Join Adam Bell, Simon Horwith and four additional speakers for the prelude to the CF United conference on Tuesday Night, June 28th at 7PM ET. http://www.minimaxconference.com/ It is FREE! (but must register online) * Missed an interview? All previous interviews are now posted at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm 2. ColdFusion Live! Every Thursday 12:30pm ******************************************** ColdFusion Live! A CFUNITED preview every Thursday Two 15 minute "preview" talks from CFUNITED speakers. They will provide an brief introduction to their topic during these sessions. Plus you can ask questions via Breeze chat. This week's speakers: 12:30 - 1:00 US/Eastern Time Meeting: http://macromedia.breezecentra l.com/cfliveno6/ (Breeze v.5) RSVP: http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/events/4712619/ 5/26 Glenda Vigoreaux - Leveraging Web Services with ColdFusion Sean Corfield - Enterprise Integration with ColdFusion Future speakers are: 6/2 Michael Dinowitz - Consuming popular web services Steve Rittler - Farcry: A Free ColdFusion-based CMS 6/9 Charlie Arehart - Integrating CFML and ASP.NET Server Controls Lou Honick - How to Build, Refresh or Rebuild Your Datacenter on Time and Under Budget 6/16 Jeffry Houser - Creating Sound for Flash Movies David Epler - LAMBDA Boxes: ColdFusion Apps on the Cheap 3. "CSS - The Box Model Demystified" interview with Sandra Clark **************************************************************** Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Sandra Clark about her CFUNITED-05 talk "CSS - The Box Model Demystified". So why should a developer come to your session Sandra? Sandra Clark: During this past year, one of the things I have noticed with questions I receive is that a lot of frustration with CSS comes from an incomplete knowledge of the CSS Box Model and the rules that define it. This talk aims to give developers the knowledge they need to be successful with the box model in CSS (and in CSS, EVERY element is affected by the box model). MS: So what is the box model in simple terms? SC: The box model is the way in which each element of an HTML page lays out on the screen. It includes both the horizontal and the vertical space it encompasses. There are very specific rules for this within CSS and an understanding of both the block box model and the inline layout box model helps when it comes down to knowing which properties apply to which. (For instance, text-align is used solely in the inline layout model and is not available to center something such as a div). MS: Thanks. What does inline layout mean? SC: An inline layout model means that the items that use that model can be placed side to side. For example, by using the inline layout model, I can style an unordered list as a horizontal navigation bar. MS: Wow that sounds powerful! Can you use CSS for navigation and menus? SC: Sure, navigation and menus can be structured as unordered lists and then styled in various ways, either vertically or horizontally. Heck, I've even done drop down menus using pure CSS. (Of course they don't work on Internet Explorer, but they look great on Firefox, Mozilla and Opera). MS: That is neat but isn't there a way to get IE to render this CCS? And does it matter anyway with IE's users going down each day to Firefox? SC: Well Microsoft has announced Internet Explorer 7 for this summer. Considering that they are losing user share to FireFox, I am hopeful they will be incorporating more CSS standard behavior within the browser itself. There is also a javascript solution to allow IE to work with more standardized CSS and that is an item called Internet Extensions 7 which is now at beta version 0.8. It is a project on source forge originally created by Dean Edwards. It has gotten Microsoft's attention as well. MS: It sounds like there is a lot to CSS - where can people learn more if your CFUNITED session is not enough for them? SC:: Funny you should ask. I am actually going to be teaching a class the day before CFUNITED (June 28) on Advanced Cascading Style Sheets, this class will cover advanced selectors, pseudo elements and pseudo classes, as well as positioning and layout. You can find more information as well as a syllabus at http://www.cfunited.com/classes.cfm MS: I will look forward to seeing you at CFUNITED, if not before! You can see more interviews at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm CFUNITED- 05 is Wed 6/29/05 - Fri 7/1/05 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $649 until 6/10/05 then $749. For more information on CFUNITED see http://www.cfunited.com/ --- CSS - The Box Model Demystified ************************* Although many developers and designers want to use xHTML/CSS in their web based design, the idea that CSS is either "too hard" or "doesn't work" frequently comes up. >From my experiences, a lot of these views comes from an incomplete understanding of the layout models used in CSS. This talk will concentrate on explaining both box models used in CSS, the block box model and the inline layout model. Aspects covered will include both horizontal and vertical properties; the differences in the box model of both regular and non-replaced elements (including images and form components) as well as a discussion of borders, margins and padding. Speaker Bio: Sandra Clark, an advanced Macromedia Certified ColdFusion developer, is a Senior Software Developer with the Constella Group in Bethesda, Maryland. She has contributed material to the ColdFusion 5.0 Certified Developer Study Guide published by Syngress Media/Osborne McGraw Hill and to the ColdFusion Developers Journal. She has also spoken at various CFUGS and ColdFusion User Conferences around the country. Sandra is an active proponent of applying accepted and proven web standards to development as a way of improving accessibility as well as making life easier on developers. She can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 4."Verity Fast Text Searching" interview with Raymond Camden ************************************************************ Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Raymond Camden about his CFUNITED- 05 talk "Verity Fast Text Searching". So why should a developer come to your session Ray? Raymond Camden: CF has had Verity support for some time, but not many developers actually use it. ColdFusion MX7 has some -very- exciting updates in this area that I think developers will be interested in. MS: So what exactly is Verity and why should a developer care? RC:Verity is a searching and indexing service. Basically what that means is - you can point it at your data (whether it be files or database information) and Verity will create an index of the information. You can then use a _very_ powerful searching language against that data. Verity is a product by itself - it isn't something that Macromedia created. They just ship it with ColdFusion. MS: So it it hard to use from CF? RC: Not at all. I do think it takes a bit of time to wrap your head around it. Some of the more advanced features require planning for sure, but in general, I don't think it is too difficult to use. MS: What CF tags do you need to use for basic Verity searching? RC: Well, for searching there is just CFSEARCH. Plain and simple. For working with Verity in general, there are also a few tags that handle the creation and maintenance of collections (your data basically). One of the things I plan on showing in my presentation is the use of these tags in a CFC. MS: Wow just one tag to implement a google style search! How do you deal with the search results from CFSEARCH ? Are there extra tags you have to learn there? RC: Again - it is one tag to search, but a bit more to actually work with the data when indexing. The search results from CFSEARCH are a normal query, so you can do whatever you would like with them, including simple output, query of query, etc. MS: That is powerful! So what is new with Verity in CFMX 7? RC: Category support - suggestions - search within searches - context highlighting. These are the big ones and the ones I'll be focusing on. MS: That sounds like it will save a lot of custom coding that earlier versions of verity required. Do all these features slow down searching compared to Verity in CFMX 6? RC: These features do have a performance impact, but nothing drastic. I think they would be perfectly safe for 99.99% of the sites out there, if not more. Even if they did slow down the search a bit - you want your users to have the best results possible. I'd rather provide better results, at a slower pace, then results that are meaningless to the user. And just so I'm clear, when I say slower, I'm talking about something you probably won't even be able to notice (again, 99.99% of the time). MS: Amazing, I can't wait to see you at CFUNITED! You can see more interviews at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm CFUNITED- 05 is Wed 6/29/05 - Fri 7/1/05 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $649 until 6/10/05 then $749. For more information on CFUNITED see http://www.cfunited.com/ Verity ************************* Want to do free text searches like Google in your sites? Afraid of ColdFusion's Verity search engine? Come to this introduction to Verity and learn how easy text searches can be. Search database or documents. We also cover the new Blackstone features of Verity. Bio Raymond Camden is Director of Development for Mindseye, Inc. A long time ColdFusion user, Raymond has worked on numerous ColdFusion books and serves as a technical editor and contributor for the ColdFusion Developers Journal. He also presents at numerous conferences and contributes to online webzines. He and Rob Brooks-Bilson created and run the Common Function Library Project (www.cflib.org), an open source repository of ColdFusion UDFs. Raymond has helped form three ColdFusion User Groups and is the manager of the Acadiana MMUG. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tell your friends about CFUNITED-05 - pass this email on ---- Check more about CFUNITED at: http://www.cfunited.com/ We have: * 3 days * 7 tracks * 20 sponsors * 64 sessions * 1000+ attendees * 100% nicer hotel * Includes lunch each day and open bar reception We have seven tracks this year: * Bootcamp - Basic ColdFusion and Flash topics * Advanced - Advanced ColdFusion topics (Blackstone included!) * Manager/Empowered - Fusebox and Project management topics * Integration - Flash, Flex and other technologies integrated with CF topics * Accessibility / usability - section 508, CSS and disabled access * Deployment - tuning, install issues, OS, picking a database * CF Platform Integration - interop with Microsoft and other technologies The regular price of $649 for CFUNITED-05 ends 4/30/05. Save upto $400 by registering now! * Early Bird $449 til 2/25/05 * Timely Bird $549 til 4/30/05 * Regular $649 til 6/10/05 * Late $749 til 6/28/05 * At the door $849 Register today at http://www.cfunited.com/ -- Michael Smith, TeraTech Inc - Tools for Programmers(tm) TeraTech voted Best Consulting Service by CFDJ readers! CF/ASP Web, VB, Math, Access programming tools and consulting 405 E Gude Dr Ste 207, Rockville MD 20850 USA Please check out http://www.teratech.com/ - email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], or call us for more information; in the USA at 1-800-447-9120, +1-301-424-3903 International, Fax 301-762-8185 Thanks! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Logware (www.logware.us): a new and convenient web-based time tracking application. Start tracking and documenting hours spent on a project or with a client with Logware today. 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