Hal Helms On Web Development - Code

Concluding an Experiment on Pair-Programming

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:08:00 -0400

Over the last eight days, my colleague, Maciej, and I conducted an experiment in pair-programming. The experiment was inspired by a terrific piece on pair-programming by a highly-respected Java guru, Elliott Rusty Harold. (You can find his article here.) I've done pair-programming in the past, but never rigorously and so wasn't sure whether my affinity for it was justified. Today we concluded the experiment and discussed what we thought of it. [More]

Event-Driven Programming: an MVC Example, Part II

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:37:00 -0400

Yesterday, I showed an example of an EDP implementation on the client. Let's do a quick review of the main points and then look at the server code. [More]

Event-Driven Programming: an MVC Example

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:04:00 -0400

I recently wrote a blog post on EDP (Event-Driven Programming). Ray Camden asked me to come up with an example of using EDP with a Model-View-Controller architecture. Over the weekend, I did just that. As a bonus, I'm including a jQuery plugin that will allow you to make Ajax calls to the server without using ColdFusion's CFAJAXPROXY tag. [More]

Project Serenity

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:32:00 -0400

Every cool project needs a cool code name. The open source ColdFusion ecommerce project now has one: Project Serenity. [More]

Update on "Ideas"

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:18:00 -0400

A while back, I did a post asking for ideas for an open-source project. Having thought long and hard about the many (truly excellent) ideas, I think I'm ready to begin the next phase. [More]

Learning jQuery, Day 14: Checkbox Quick Selection

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:12:00 -0400

I'm part of a select group of developers who have access to a secret web app called "Google Mail". Since you, doubtless, are unfamiliar with this software (I did say "select", after all), let me explain how it works. [More]

Learning jQuery, Day 13: Adding Metadata

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:18:00 -0400

In earlier posts on this topic, I suggested that you split your "view" into two files -- one that is pure HTML (and the CFML you may need to process the view) and another one that holds your JavaScript and jQuery. One of the nice features of this is that it allows for unobtrusive JavaScript -- meaning that there's no JavaScript mixed in with HTML, making it possible (if you wish) to have a site that works both with JavaScript enabled and disabled. Today, let's see how we can pass information to jQuery that it may need to do its job. [More]

Too Cool: jQuery UI Themeroller

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:08:00 -0400

If you're using the jQuery UI library, you undoubtedly know about the jQuery UI ThemeRoller -- a very cool tool for skinning jQuery UIs. There's a hidden gem available that I didn't know of until my colleague, Maciej, showed me. [More]

A Small But Helpful Tip

Sat, 23 May 2009 14:14:00 -0400

If you're using CFEclipse, one feature you may not be aware of is the special attention it pays to comments marked with "todo". I've found this feature very helpful in managing the complexity of writing software. [More]

Learning jQuery, Day 12: Inline Editing

Wed, 20 May 2009 08:45:00 -0400

We're all familiar with the process of showing content to a user and letting them edit it by means of perhaps an "Edit" button that takes them to a form. Today, let's look at a different way: allowing users to do inline edits in an unobtrusive manner. [More]

Learning jQuery, Day 11: Saving Table State with Cookies

Fri, 08 May 2009 11:51:00 -0400

We use a simple jQuery tablesorter to allow users to sort tables by various columns, but at times, users want to restrict their view of table rows -- perhaps only viewing rows of a certain type. Today, we'll look at how to do this with some jQuery and POJS (plain old JavaScript). [More]

Learning jQuery, Day 10: Keeping Queues in Sync

Wed, 06 May 2009 12:33:00 -0400

I've been working on a job where different people in different places are working off of a shared queue of work orders to be processed. When they first log onto the system, they see the current work orders and their status in a table. (Don't tell the CSS police that I used the "T" word...) The problem is that, as existing work orders are processed and new work orders are submitted, their screens quickly are out of sync. [More]

OK, I'm Confused...

Sat, 02 May 2009 18:55:00 -0400

I've been trying to send a simple JSON string to a ColdFusion CFC by means of a jQuery post. After more hours than I want to admit to, I finally gave up. Maybe you might could help? [More]

Learning jQuery, Day 9: JavaScript's "this" variable

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:42:00 -0400

Today we won't actually be looking at jQuery, but about JavaScript itself. While jQuery is a terrific library, it's simply an abstraction of JavaScript methods for interacting with the Document Object Model (DOM). An abstraction is a wonderful thing, but it shouldn't be a substitute for understanding the base model -- JavaScript, in this case. Today, we'll look at one of the more confusing aspects of JavaScript: the "this" variable. [More]

Learning jQuery, Day 8 : Preventing Form Double-Processing

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:11:00 -0400

Today is a quick tutorial on how to prevent the problem of a user clicking the "submit" button more than once -- usually in the case of a slow-responding form processing page. [More]