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	Thursday, September 12, 2002

TIP - Can I use multiple copies of Dreamweaver on the same network? -  If you have one copy of Dreamweaver installed on more than one machine, you can only use the one copy. If you need Dreamweaver MX installed on multiple machines, you need to get multiple copies of DMX with unique serial numbers or you need to buy a multi-user license. If you try to use the same serial number on the same network only the first one running will work. 12:32:55 AM      comment []

MattReview - ColdFusion MX From Static to Dynamic in 10 Steps - Barry Moore, New Riders OK, time for my first MattReview and this is a great book to start with, both for me as a reviewer and for you if you are learning ColdFusion MX. Who can use this book - You are a developer and you have been working on HTML for years, now you are feeling the squeeze. Customers want more from you. They want shopping carts, they want to know who their customers are, they want to be able to show their catalogs and they don't want to have thousands of static pages. What do you do? You look at the new (at least for you) world of databases and application servers. I can, and have, written whole articles on which app server to choose, and I think that it ie pretty clear that for ease of use and ease of learning, there is no competitor to ColdFusion MX. Moore makes that absloutely clear. Contents - The 10 steps in the book are a good breakdown of the basics of the technology. Chapter 1 has a good explanation of the basics of what CFMX actually is and how it fits into your Web site with a set of simple pages that give you some idea of what can be done. From there, he covers how to use include files for code reuse between pages, setting and using variables, how to use SQL to connect to a database and to return data to the browser. Moore covers flow control - if, when and loop clauses - forms, updating inserting  and deleting database records and using email with CFMX. In the last three chapters or steps, Moore covers what I need the most help with - the overall application framework, security and complex variables like lists, arrays and structures. This is the part where I turn the music down, open a can of coke and really dig in. The Good... What I personally like best in the book though, is his thorough explanation of how to use the CGI variables. I can never remember these and they are dang important to know. They are covered well in the book, but there is a more complete CF reference at the web site at: http://www.learncoldfusionmx.com/Reference/index.cfm. My math teacher in high-school, Mr Faure, said that you need to get in and get your hands dirty to learn anything and you will be doing that here. Moore talks about Dreamweaver MX and ColdFusion Studio, but the entire book is set up for hand coding. "Well if it is all hand coding, why are you recommending it on a Dreamweaver blog?!" Simple. To be successful. Really successful. You HAVE to know the code you are generating. That holds true for HTML and it holds true for CFML, the language for ColdFusion MX. Once you know how to hand code, you know how to debug and you know how to create code for situations that aren't covered with prebuilt server behaviors and objects. The bad... What could use a little more work in the book is the first chapter. There are some larger looking code examples there. Even though they are really just exactly enough to show off the concept, there are a little daunting. Moore uses these examples well, but I don't think I would go into so much detail at the very beginning. Rather than showing the date format function (DateFormat()) simply, he takes the opportunity to show all the formats available. Small criticism... I would probably have one chapter to look at how DMX works to do some of the same things that you learn through hand coding in the book. One chapter at the end to tie it to DMX a little more, not to really go in depth, but to show how it all ties together. The website for the book, http://www.learncoldfusionmx.com/, is clear and concise. There are links to news and information about ColdFusion. I think that this is a great resource for users that are going to be learning ColdFusion and very much worth looking at. The Review... Overall review? I think I give it 7 out of 10 Matts... Recommended reading for intermediate CF developers and a must have for beginning CF developers. Well worth the money ($35, $25 at Amazon). 7:47:57 AM      comment []

Microsoft exec's Web services blues - Mike Ricciuti and Charles Cooper, CNET News.com - Jim Allchin at Microsoft expresses frustration that Web Services have not caught on as fast as Microsoft would have liked. Personally I agree. Web Services represent a real boost to the entire Web. As developers we create applications all the time. Often functions of those applications are reusable and the information they generate, of use to many other developers. If we can make our work do double duty and sell the service as well as build the app then we have something that we can harvest over time not just something to sell once. For instance, if you are an online retailer, you need to be able to calculate shipping costs. If you build that internally, you have an application that you need to amortize over some period of years or months. It costs you. If you open that or duplicate it and sell it as a Web Service, then you have a money generator that earns you money over the same period. That is a basic example and not really that useful as these things are available already, but there are many areas where there is still room to inovate. Move from not only producing a product, but to creating an ongoing service. Anyway. I stand behind Web Services and I think they are about the most interesting trend happening on the Web right now. Greed is Not Good - Phil Wainewright, ASPnews.com - In a related article, Phil Wainewright draws some lessons from the ASP bubble of the late 90's and applies them to Web Services. His proposition is that ASPs charging insanely high fees killed that industry. Now Wainewright sees that same greed in the Web Services market. So my industry-leading, trend-setting advice is to charge reasonable prices for Web Services and make them indespensible. Make money over time not in one hit. OK. You heard my opinion, now I am off to create that killer Web Service... I wonder if anyone needs to buy dogfood online... 7:20:27 AM      comment []

Technologies that survived the bubble - Margaret Kane, c|net news.com - Three years ago, anyone with an idea was either CEO or on their way to CEO of a high tech company. Now, most of those companies are gone. Which technologies survived and why? Kane lists success as, yep, Flash... iPix, Amazon's one click check out, FedEx's online tracking, and eBay's buy now feature. I find it interesting and worth remembering that some of these things, eBay and FedEx aren't technology so much as processes that make the customer's life easier, not the company's life easier. There isn't much talk about customer relationship management software. A reminder that e-business doesn't mean you can reduce your focus on customer satisfaction. 7:09:38 AM      comment []