Hal Helms On Web Development - Training

Ready to Learn Ruby on Rails?

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:27:00 -0400

I've heard from quite a few programmers who are interested in putting their toe in the RoR waters. It is a big step -- and to make that as non-stressful as possible, I'm going to hold a free two-hour online "Intro to Ruby on Rails for ColdFusion Programmers" training on September 22 from 12.30 to 2.30 Eastern US time. [More]

What We Can All Learn From Ben Nadel

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:36:00 -0400

Most of you will be familiar with blogger extraordinaire Ben Nadel. Ben recently posted about a fundamental misunderstanding he had about jQuery event objects. There's something very important to be learned about how Ben approaches problems. [More]

Glad THAT's Over, But ...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:36:00 -0400

Well, I finished that monster prototype, with much credit to my coding partner, Maciej. I figured that over 11 days, I worked 165 hours. Whew! Yesterday, we gave the presentation to a large multi-national corporation. To my relief and gratification, they were very impressed. Which leaves me, now, with only one small problem... [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]

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]

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]

Learning jQuery, Day 7 : Sortable Checked Lists

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:21:00 -0400

In Day 6 of Learning jQuery, I mentioned a project we had completed that dealt with work orders. Part of the job entails office staff processing completed work orders. In their line of business, they want certain staff members to process certain work order types -- and in a certain order. Let's use some jQuery to make this happen. [More]

Learning jQuery, Day 6 : Double Confirmation

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:01:00 -0400

I'm just wrapping up a site for a client that handles work orders and, while they need the functionality to cancel a work order, they wanted a double confirmation. In this post, we'll look at accomplishing this with jQuery and a jQuery plugin. [More]

Learning jQuery, Day 5 : Enhanced Tabs

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:45:00 -0400

Today, let's look at how we can use the tabs that come with the jQuery UI library. I use these for most of the administrative back end applications I write. The jQuery tabs are great, but they lack some enhanced functionality that I need, so we'll look at how some simple JavaScript can provide things like closing tabs and ensuring that we don't have duplicate tabs. [More]

Form Processing : the OO Way -- the Movie!

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:43:00 -0400

Yesterday, I posted a blog entry on doing form processing using OO to help us. There was a lot of code and some new concepts, so I thought having a couple of brief videos might be of help. [More]

Looking for jQuery Tutorial Topics

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:46:00 -0400

Quick question: does anyone have anything they'd specifically like to see a tutorial on regarding jQuery (and especially its interaction with ColdFusion)?