Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Are you using CFCOMPONENT NAME? I'll argue that you should not. Here's why. Someone asked me what I knew about the CFCOMPONENT NAME attribute. They were finding it being used but couldn't find any explanation of its purpose. I'd never really noticed it before, but as I started researching it, I can see some sources of potential confusion. From my testing, I'm going to propose that it's not something you should be using at all. It serves no purpose and can instead lead to confusion. I realize that's going to surprise those who use it, and perhaps it will cause a stir, but let me make the case, and you can decide for yourself.

Supported versus Unsupported Attributes on CFCOMPONENT, and GetMetaData()

First, there's no NAME attribute listed for CFCOMPONENT in the CFMX docs. If one wants to give a friendly name or description to a CFC, that's the purpose of the DisplayName or Hint attributes instead.

More important, whenever you use any attribute on CFCOMPONENT that's not otherwise supported, the only programmatic motivation would seem to be to take advantage of the fact that a GetMetaData() call against that CFC will return that attribute as a key in its result.

But it turns out there is ALREADY a getmetadata key called "name" that's always returned from a getmetadata call against a CFC, and it always returns an internally generated value indicating the name and location of the CFC, and more to the point, this value returned is NEVER affected by your use of a NAME attribute on CFCOMPONENT.

Curiously, I do find that different versions of CF and BD return slightly different values for that (more on that in a moment). And for those who may wonder, neither the use of NAME nor any unsupported attribute affects the output of the CF Component browser.

That's why I'll argue you shouldn't be using NAME at all. It not only does nothing (is not returned by getmetadata), but it may lead someone to be confused that it should. I don't know if I will go so far as to propose that CF (and BD) should raise an error when it's used. Sadly, a google search for "cfcomponent name" shows hundreds of pages using it (and those aren't real code running on people's servers but instead code people are sharing on the web for demonstration purposes), so restricting that could have a lot of impact.

If one wonders how people started using it, I'll note that (sadly) the CF7 docs user guide section on "documenting CFCs" does shows using the NAME attribute. I will leave a comment there pointing to this blog for folk's consideration (and perhaps to get Adobe to remove that, if all this observation holds true).

Further, the person asking me about this did so because they noticed that the CFEclipse CFC wizard also implements the NAME attribute in CFCs it creates. Again, unless comments to this suggest otherwise, it seems that perhaps that should be changed.

I am open to hearing from others. It sure seems that all is as I see it, but if I've missed something, I welcome comments below. If there is any egregious problem or misunderstanding I've created, I will offer a follow-up entry to correct things.

What getmetadata's NAME key returns on different CFML engines

I mentioned above that if you use GetMetaData against a CFC instance, it does return a NAME value. What does that value hold? Well, the docs for CFMX 6.1 simply indicate that it's "the component name", with no further explanation. The CF7 docs reference on GetMetadata does elaborate further, now saying that it's the "Component name, including the period-delimited path from a component search root such as the web root or a directory specified in the administrator Custom Tag Paths page."

I mentioned before that I'd found differences between the two versions of CF as well as between editions of BlueDragon. Here's a demonstration. I setup a simple test hello.cfc file in a /demo directory off my webroot:

Note that in the CFC I have set the value of NAME to "hellox". I did also test it using simply "hello" or "hello.cfc", and it made no difference at all in the following results. I then called it with a template that used Getmetadata:

The dump of the getmetadata result always showed a NAME key and it was always the same whether I provided one or not, and regardless of what value I provided. But there was a slight difference among the engines, which showed the following values for the getmetadata name key:

version	value
CFMX 6.1	hello
CFMX 7.02	demo.hello
BDJX 6.2.302 (JX)	demo.hello *
BDJX 6.2.302 (.NET)	demo.hello

The big difference is that CFMX 6.1 does not show the location of the CFC as found, just its name. Both CFMX 7 and BD show the directory name in which the CFC was found, as explained in the CF7 help above. This value can be useful for times when you wonder which CFC you have found on an invocation (since both CFMX and BD have a variety of search locations that they use), although note there is also a "path" key returned by getmetadata which returns the absolute rather than relative path.

You'll note I've put an asterisk next to the BDJX test. To do this testing among the 4 engines, I'm running on Windows XP with IIS, so I can't have multiple web sites. (Yes, I know about tools to get around that and that Apache would let me have multiple sites.) Instead, I setup multiple virtual directories, each pointing to the different engines (as I document in a CFDJ article), so that I could call the page invoking the CFC using each of the different versions of CF and BD. On my laptop, I use virtual directories named _cfmx, _cf7, _bdjx, and _bdnet (so calling my demo page above might be http://localhost/_cf7/demo/invoke_hello.cfm.) I was surprised to find that in BDJX (only), the resulting name key returned did also show the name of the virtual directory as a prefix to the value returned, so the getmetadata name value returned by BDJX in my example was _bdjx.demo.hello. Of course, you won't see that difference if you don't use virtual directories.

Those who delight in the discover of the new value returned in the pre-defined getmetadata name key may find the above details useful. The more important point, again, is simply that the use of a NAME attribute on CFCOMPONENT has no programmatic purpose at all. It's not a supported attribute, and unlike any other unsupported attribute, it's not returned by GetMetaData, so it seems it should not be used at all. Let me know if you think otherwise.

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Wish you could simplify your captcha's? If you use Peter Farrell's Lyla Captcha, as I do because it's embedded in Ray's BlogCFC, I'll show a few quick changes you can make that will make them much easier for your users to read.

Sound counter-intuitive? Aren't captcha's supposed to be difficult to read, to hamper spammers? In my last entry, I made a call for simplifying captchas and why they aren't all bad. As a blog owner who uses them to weed out the random spambots who would otherwise clog my comments and feedback mechanisms, I like captchas, and I'm grateful for the work Peter's done.

That said, I have to admit that as I've encountered them in the blogs of others, I've grown a tad weary of their complexity. They require the user to type several characters and have several swirly ovals, random lines, and a wavy background. Frankly they're quite hard to read, and it would be a shame to lose commenters for that reason.

Again, the intent is to make it hard for some spammer to scan the captcha request somehow and figure out what's being requested so as to automate around it. Fair enough, but as I said in my last entry I'm really not that concerned about protecting my site from determined break-ins. I'm not a bank. I just want to keep out the automated pests.

With just a couple of changes to Lyla's captcha.xml file, you'll have a much simplified captcha, if you want one.

Lyla is highly customizable

On a lark, I decided to try to find out if Lyla might just be modifiable to dial down the intensity. Turns out it is, by simple changes in the lyla captcha.xml file, as documented in this PDF. Thanks again, Peter! :-)

After a few simple tweaks, I reduced my captcha to just asking for 3 characters, all lowercase, without all the swirly ovals, lines, and wavy background.

Changing Lyla's captcha.xml

In BlogCFC, the captcha.xml file is located in blog\client\includes (or just \includes if you've installed the blog client directory as your webroot.)

To effect the change I wanted, I ended up with the following values for the following entries. Again, see the docs for more info:

You can change them to suit your taste. Note that if you do change the randStrLen, the value selected represents the "average" length of the string that users will be asked to enter, and may vary by +/- 1 from that.

Make the changes, and check 'em out for yourself. Note that with Ray's BlogCFC, you need to reinitialize the blog (add ?reinit=1 to your blog URL) to see the changes. What I did was had one browser page open to do that, and another sitting on a blog comment form. After running the reinit, I could then just reload the comment page to see the impact. (If there's a still-simpler way to test changes to the captcha.xml, let me know.)

If you don't use BlogCFC, then you have to re-instantiate the captcha object after making changes to the XML file. If you've stored it in a shared scope (like application), you need to run some code that reloads it. Of course, restarting ColdFusion will also reload the CFC in whatever scope you stored it in.

Conclusion

Making these changes won't solve the accessibility problems some have with captchas, and it certainly could increase the risk of a determined spammer more easily breaking your captcha. As I said in the last entry, I doubt that's a real concern for most of us. If it proves to be so, then you can dial the intensity back up.

I just want to keep from annoying my readers, and I hope others will consider these changes to keep from annoying us all. :-)

PS: I do realize that one could skip the captcha graphic entirely and just go to prompting the user for a random string. That may just a bit "too" easy for a spambot to get around. To each his own.

Thanking Peter

One last note: while Peter certainly appreciates your kind comments (and do share them, as I'm sure many don't bother), those who REALLY appreciate his work should note that he gratefully accepts contributions by way of his Amazon Wishlist or you may may make a donation with PayPal, using his address, [email protected].

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Most by now understand what captchas are. Some love 'em, some hate 'em. I want to dial down the rhetoric some with this perspective: as a blog owner fighting frequent spam in comments and trackbacks, captchas (in some form, not necessarily a graphic) have their place to keep out spambots, and they can indeed be simplified (even the graphics ones) and at no loss of benefit. My bottom line: I don't use them as a double-key deadbolt lock to keep out intruders, I just use them as a screendoor to keep out random pests.

If you use Peter Farrell's Lyla Captcha, which I use because it's embedded in Ray's BlogCFC, in the next entry I'll show a few quick changes you could make in the Lyla captcha.xml file to make them much easier to read, going from this

to this
.

Before that, I just want to expand on those thoughts above on the general angst against captcha's, and why I think it's ok to make them easier to read.

The Haters

I realize that some have gone to great lengths to decry captchas primarily because they are not "accessible" (to those using screenreaders), though audio ones help solve that.

Others simply hate them because they're too darned difficult to read. I've surely seen that, even in the ones created by default in Lyla (thus my next entry on addressing that).

Now, while most use a graphic that a user must read, it's not the only approach. As the previous link discusses, other approaches include simpler approaches like asking the reader to add some numbers or answer a question (that only a human could reasonably do).

But the other complaint is that they give those who use them a false sense of security, because they can be easily broken, even the graphic ones.

But my Blog is Not a Bank

Here's the thing: my blog is not a bank. While the difficulty in breaking a captcha may be important to a bank or commercial site trying to use them for authentication, I just want to make it hard for an automated spambot to post crap in my blog comments and trackback forms. If you have any similar king of input form on a publicly accessible site, you may suffer similar problems.

I really can't believe anyone would go to the lengths of scanning and breaking the captcha on my site (random as it is) to get a crap spam comment into my lil' ol' blog. And some of the comments are just nonsense; it's not like they're trying to drive traffic to another site or something--so the popularity of my (or your) site isn't the issue. It's just the annoyance factor (both to me as I get notified of comments and to readers who would have to sift through them if I didn't delete them as I do now).

Having made the case for why a simpler captcha may suffice for some purposes, in the next entry I'll show how to control the degree of difficulty in reading them for captchas built using Lyla Captcha.

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Did you know there's a nifty Chart Designer built into CFMX 7? While Webcharts has sat under CFMX's charting since 6.0, this designer tool is newly available in CF7 only, as the webcharts.bat file in the cfusionmx7/charting subdirectory. It allows you to create still more useful and attractive charts than are built into CFCHART, and then you can leverage them using CFCHART. For those who've followed CF7 closely, this is old news, but for those who are still getting up to speed in CF7, it may be quite newsworthy.

I'd like to point you below to a few references to learn more. First, here's a screenshot of what the tool looks like:

And here are some of the resources to help guide you, from blog entries to articles to the docs to podcasts. I'd also like to thank Dale Fraser of the CFAussie mailing list whose note today first clued me into this stuff. Enjoy:

• Steve Brownlee's: Customizing Your CFCHART Results, from 12/05, which shows how to use the designer tool and how to connect to data in your app using CFCHART
• Chris Wiggington's "ColdFusion Tip: Using the included webcharts3d engine in CFMX 7", from 11/05. He focuses on calling it using Java and building the XML for the chart
• Tim Buntel's CFDJ article, "Not Your Father's Charting" by Tim Buntel in CFDJ
• The CFMX 7 docs on CFCHART and leveraging this feature
• The ColdFusion Weekly Podcast of April 3
• Apologies to anyone else who had a useful controbution on this subject. Let me know in a comment and I'll add you here.

Note as well that there is a pdf in that charting directory, a 35 page Designer User's Guide. And pay special attention to the available options in the designer under file>setup, in particular the 2 tabs, designer and server.

There is a more complete (125 page) WebChart Developer's Guide.

Finally, some other useful CF charting tips are available in a blog that was devoted to the subject, http://cfchart.blogspot.com/ . Though he only made entries June and July 2005, it's worth a look.

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

In my last entry, I mentioned briefly the new "JDBC Spy" feature that's available in the new 3.5 JDBC drivers for CFMX. I want to point out some more info for those interested in investigating the Spy feature further.

First, notice that there is a site at the DataDirect site (from whom Adobe purchases the JDBC drivers):

http://media.datadirect.com/download/docs/jdbc/alljdbc/reference/spy.html

It discusses some additional attributes. And still more useful info is offered at another page on their site:

http://media.datadirect.com/download/docs/jdbc/alljdbc/reference/diagnostics2.html

This actually shows what the log of info would look like, if you want to decide first if its info is worth the bother setting up.

This other page also talks about ways to turn the spy logging on and off at runtime, using Java method calls. Perhaps someone with more familiarity with the underlying Java classes for these drivers can translate the code there into something we can use in CFML. (It's late, and I don't have the energy.)

As such, be aware that the spy feature could generate a lot of data, so you may want to consider creating two datasource for each DB you may want to monitor. Either rename them to enable whichever you want to be in effect, or change if your code lets you specify a DSN via a variable, you can change the value to the "spying" version when you need it.

I did test and determined that also you can just add/remove the connection string from the end of the JDBC URL (see the technote for more), and immediately the logging stopped against the datasource. As a trick, I stuck the connectionstring value into the "description" field of the datasource definition, to keep it readily accessible if I wanted to add it back. (See my previous entry for a warning about putting it into the ConnectionString field instead.)

Finally, I should clarify that this Spy feature is not to be confused with the much older (and more powerful) p6Spy project, which has gone from open source to commercial to kind of stagnant. It still has great use, and in fact has a useful related SQL Profiler that's worth looking at. Still more at http://www.p6spy.com/, and maybe I'll write more about it later.

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

In my previous three entries, I've discussed how someone can keep up with the news of the CF world by leveraging blogs and blog aggregators. In this final installment, I want to point out a few resources that do all the work for you to keep up with a weekly update of what's going on in the CF world. One is a summary of the top CF blog entries (in that author's opinion), another is a summary of CF news (again, another author's opinion), and finally I want to point you to a couple of podcasts that include a focused summary of the news each edition.

Andy Allan's weekly blog summary

First, let me point out the nifty new weekly summary of top blog entries as determined by CF developer, Andy Allan, of the Scottish CFUG. His "roundup" of the CF blogosphere is just one of his regular blog postings, but he has demarked them by a category of "Blog Round Up", so you can keep an eye on just those particular new entries (if that's all you care to see) by watching the URL:

http://www.creative-restraint.co.uk/blog/index.cfm/Blog-Round-Up

As I noted in part 2 of this series, you can set up your browser to bookmark this URL in a way to make it easy to visit frequently.

Better still, as we discussed in part 3, you can leverage an RSS feed instead and Andy also offers such a feed for these "roundup" entries:

http://www.creative-restraint.co.uk/blog/rss.cfm?mode=full&mode2=cat&catid=93661280-C6C5-1A2A-16D86B1A3ADA948E

I first blogged about Andy's new service at http://carehart.org/blog/2006/7/21/andy_allens_weekly_cf_blog_roundup.

Ryan Hartwich's Weekly CF News Review for FusionAuthority

Now, where Andy is picking out the top blog entries, another take is Ryan Hartwich's new "News Brief", on the FusionAuthority site. So far, he has offered these two:

http://www.fusionauthority.com/News/4640-Adobe-ColdFusion-News-Brief-July-31-2006.htm

http://www.fusionauthority.com/News/4626-Adobe-ColdFusion-News-Brief-June-16-2006.htm

While there is no single page that keeps track of new entries to just the News Brief, it may be worth noting that for now you can use the following page that tracks all "news" items on the FA site, including the News Brief:

http://www.fusionauthority.com/News/

Sadly, it's not even presented in chronological order (for now), so you kind of have to wade through its contents to see what's new. Judith has told me that they are looking to address this challenge (of tracking what new entries are made in the News Brief and other article series), so look for that in the future.

Listen to the News: CF Podcasts with a News Focus

Finally, another outlet for CF news may appeal to those who just don't have time to read web pages, RSS readers, or emails. Of the several nifty CF-related podcasts, two in particular try to highlight the latest news each edition.

http://www.coldfusionpodcast.com/

http://www.coldfusionweekly.com/

Note as well that each of them also list the points they raise, including links, on a page for each podcast, which can itself be another avenue for keeping up on the week's news.

And a Summary of the Podcast (Summaries)!

OK, this may be getting a little too "meta", but for those who would like to keep tabs on what the CF podcasts are talking about, Charlie Griefer is offering another "meta" resource on FusionAuthority, in his somewhat regular podcast reviews. A couple of the latest entries (at this time) are:

http://www.fusionauthority.com/Reviews/4625-The-ColdFusion-Podcast-Roundup-Thursday-June-8-2006.htm

http://www.fusionauthority.com/Reviews/4624-The-ColdFusion-Podcast-Roundup-Wednesday-May-30-2006.htm

And, as with the News Brief discussed above, there is no one page that lists just new entries to the Podcast Reviews, but they are listed along with hundreds of other "news" pages (going back to 1999) on the page: http://www.fusionauthority.com/Reviews/.

CF Open Source Updates

Oh, let me share one more. I'm sorry I forgot it initially. Brian Rinaldi is now keeping a weekly update on the OpenSource part of the CF World. Here is the latest:

http://www.remotesynthesis.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/7/31/ColdFusion-OpenSource-Update--July-31

If he offers me a URL that lists them as they're updated, I'll offer that here.

OK, that's it. I hope you got some value from these 4 parts on "keepin' up on what's happening in the CF world".

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

In my two previous entries, I've been discussing how someone interested in keeping up with the news of the CF world can leverage the two popular Adobe-community blog aggregators. The last focused on browsing them, and this will focus on using their available RSS feeds.

Even if you don't know anything more about RSS than how to spell it, follow along. I'll share something that can help you leverage it from Email, to get your daily (or even hourly) dose of CF news delivered to your inbox. Finally, in the next and final part, I'll point out a couple ways to save you even that bother, with folks who have so kindly gathered up the latest news of the week.

The previous two entries were on the aggregators and browsing them.

While going to the sites to browse the latest news is one way to keep up, it's certainly not the most efficient. New entries are constantly being added, and all you need to do is go away for a few hours and there are several new entries. And what if you're gone for days?

Getting the RSS Feeds Instead

A still better solution to that problem is to get the posts delivered to you as they are discovered (added by the bloggers whose blogs are being aggregated). This is possible by using what's called the RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication). You don't need to understand much about them to take advantage of them. Indeed, I won't get into any detail here as others have covered the topic well.

Just know that it's an XML stream of data that's updates whenever a new entry is made, and some program can be set on your computer to watch that stream and take note of any such updates. RSS feeds are offered on both many blogs, and in fact it's the RSS feeds that these aggregators watch. Well, the aggregators themselves also offer RSS feeds of all the data they aggregate.

Recall in the first entry of this series, I shared with you the two URLs that you could use to keep en eye on the CFML-related entries that the aggregators detected.

Well, the corresponding URLs for the RSS feeds watching those entries at the two aggregators are, respectively: http://www.fullasagoog.com/xml/ColdFusionMX.xml

http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/xml/rss.cfm?query=byCategory&languages=1&categoryId=1 If you're familiar with what to do with those URLs, take them and run with them. Otherwise, I'll explain in a moment how you can take advantage of them, even to get notified by email of the changes detected in the feeds.

Before that, though, let me point out that the MXNA feed URL can be generated for different characteristics, including particular languages (I've given the English one above) and even to watch the feed for a particular string. Visit the MXNA site to generate your own desired RSS feed URL.

Further, note that MXNA also offers a mechanism called "smart categories", which tries to be even more discerning about what gets delivered as related to a given category. The CFML feed for that would be: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/xml/rss.cfm?query=bySmartCategory&languages=1&smartCategoryId=1&smartCategoryKey=D0382F3A-9D2B-69E8-C7BC317066FA1CC2

I know how to spell RSS, but that's about it. I prefer Email

As helpful as an RSS feed is for those familiar with using RSS readers (or using email programs that know how to process them such as Firebird and Outlook 2007), what about those who don't use any of those yet? You can still get your constant drip of CFML goodness without having to visit the page every day or hour, and without having an RSS reader or email program that knows how to process such feeds.

On another blog of mine, I wrote about a couple of free services (Squeet, Feedblitz) that allow you to give them an RSS feed and they'll email you when new entries are posted to the feed. You can even control whether it's immediate or only a daily digest. Nifty. Learn more about that at my tipicalcharlie.com site (for generic, non-CF tips):

http://www.tipicalcharlie.com/blog_email_notification_by_squeet.htm ((Update: tipicalcharlie domain is no more, but page recovered using Archive.org.))

(Update: Sadly, squeet (a tool to send RSS feeds by email) is no more. But there are other alternatives, that I track in a category of my CF411 site: http://www.cf411.com/rss_email.)

And finally, for those who just can't keep up with a constant or even daily flow of the latest and greatest news, in my next entry I'll point out a couple of great resources that instead give you the news on a weekly basis.

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

In my previous entry, I started a multi-part series on keeping up with what's happening in the CF world. In this entry, I want to introduce a couple topics related to keeping an eye on those two aggregators I mentioned, FullAsAGoog and MXNA, by way of browsing them.

Of course, there are still better ways, including leveraging their RSS feeds, which I'll cover in the next entry. But for those who still prefer good ol' web pages, here are a couple tips that may help. These tips aren't unique to watching the aggregators, of course, and for some they may be old school. But I see plenty of folks who don't leverage them so it seemed worth mentioning.

We all know that having the URLs to the aggregator's CF category listings (as mentioned before) we can easily bookmark the pages to go visit whenever we want. But since these are pages that you may well want to visit frequently than most, you can take advantage of a couple of browser features to make them even more readily accessible.

Keeping an Eye on the Aggregators--by Quick Links

First, did you realize that both IE and Firefox have a unique toolbar-based list of favorites/bookmarks that you can see all the time? Many never bother to change them or pay attention. Here's how to use them in each browser.

In IE, when adding a favorite, you just want to put it in the special "Links" folder. Using the Favorites>Add to Favorites menu option, use the "create in" option to point to the "Links" folder. Then it will appear in the top IE toolbar area. Other things in there by default are "Windows Marketplace" and "Windows Media". You can remove them if you want, to make more room. If you don't see these links at all, make sure you've enabled View>Toolbars>Links. And if you can't see the entry/entries you just added, you may need to move the new entry around in the Links folder. Use Favorites>Organize Favorites, expanding the Links folder and moving the newly added entry up in the list of links.

In Firefox, there is a similar set of "toolbar bookmarks" that appear at the top of the screen. To add something to it, use Bookmarks>Bookmark This Page (or hit Ctrl-D) and then choose "create in" and point to "Bookmarks Toolbar". Other default items in there include "Customize Links" and "Free Hotmail". Again, if you don't see it at all, make sure that View>Toolbars>Bookmarks Toolbar is enabled. And as with IE, you may want to move the entries around in that list (or even delete some you'll never use), using Bookmarks>Manage Bookmarks and expanding the "Bookmarks Toolbar" folder to arrange things.

Keeping an Eye on the Aggregators--Making One of Them Your HomePage

One other trick to consider is that you think you just ALWAYS want to see one of the aggregator pages by default, you may know that you can set one of them up to be the "home page" for your browser. Then it appears each time you open the browser.

In IE, you do that with Tools>Internet Options>General>HomePage>Address and enter the desired URL.

In Firefox it's Tools>Options>General>Home Page>Location.

Honestly, I don't do it in either browser. For one thing, I want the browser to open as fast as possible and so just choose "use blank page" in both.

But better still, I keep my eye on the submissions using another approach, one that I'm sure many readers here know about and wonder why I'm not promoting. I will, in the next entry on leveraging the RSS feeds. If you don't know what that's about, I'll help you, even if you don't know what an RSS Reader is and don't want to install one! :-) That's coming up next.

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

I was offering some info on a discussion list and decided I'd share it more broadly and expand upon it. If you want to keep up with the latest and greatest in the CFML community, you may know that there are dozens of blogs, but who has time to read them all?

In this multi-part entry, I want to share some tips to make it easier to keep up on what's happening, from simplifying your reading all those blog posts, to keeping up on them as they change, to (better yet) obtaining summaries of the week's news put together by others to save you the bother.

In this first part, I'll introduce you to the two great CFML blog aggregators.

The Community Blog Aggregators: FullasAGoog and MXNA

So how do you find all the great CFML-oriented blogs out there? Am I going to list them for you? I don't need to. There are two primary "aggregators" of all blogs related to the greater Adobe (and previously MM) space, FullAsAGoog and the Adobe MXNA. These have for long been all you needed to keep an eye on to stay on top of what people are discussing in the blogosphere.

And any blogger who wants to reach the CF community has (or should) submit their site (their site's RSS feed) to the two aggregators. Then, whenever a blogger adds a new entry, it's automatically picked up (sometimes taking minutes or hours) by the aggregators, so people can just keep an eye on one of them to see what's news.

The 'goog existed first, but naturally Adobe's has attracted its own audience. Both have a submission/acceptance process (and indeed MXNA is more than just Adobe bloggers), but most bloggers are on both (which also means some duplication if you watch both). BTW, you can read the history of the 'goog's silly sounding name via a link on the left at the site. :-)

Limiting The Aggregators to Just CFML-oriented Content

Since both aggregators cover the full spectrum of blogs related to Adobe/MM products, you will probably want to limit them to just show you the CF-related ones (or whichever topic/s you are interested in). Though many seem to miss it, each aggregator offers a way to do that in its interface. In the 'goog, it's done via the "choose your poison" drop down at the top of the page--perhaps you never thought to look at that. :-) In MXNA, you choose the desired category link on the right toolbar.

If you just want the URLs for the CF feeds, they would be:

http://www.fullasagoog.com/index.cfm?blogcat=ColdFusionMX

http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/index.cfm?query=byCategory&categoryId=1&categoryName=ColdFusion

The URLS offered just above are to see the web-based (HTML) interface for reading each aggregator. You could certainly just set them as a bookmark to visit whenever you have a free moment, and I have a couple of tips on that, but then there is yet another approach which you may not know about: using RSS feeds--even via email. More on that in the next entry.

(I've decided to chop this up rather than make one big long entry, since some will be more interested in some aspects than others. I don't want anyone to miss out if they were to stop reading at some point in a long post. Following posts will cover making quick browser links to the aggregators, using RSS feeds, and getting weekly summaries already "baked" for you.)

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

The folks at WebApper have shared news of an interesting discovery regarding a performance problem they've observed when using CFSWITCH and a string value for EXPRESSION, especially in a loop under load. It seems interesting enough to make sure others notice it. Check it out.