The recording has been posted.

Also, I have updated the PDF, since giving the talk (Fri Jul 28). I not only corrected a couple of typos and improved some wording and organization, but I also have added some new links and content.

Both those links are offered on my presentations page, where I offer info and links for every one of my nearly 170 CF talks over the past 25 years--most of which I daresay would still be useful to many even today.

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Note: This blog post is from 2011. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

It's not something most people use often, and there is far more to the feature set than meets the eye. If you don't use the right resources to help you, you could waste time trying to piece together a solution using only scant examples you may find.

In this entry, I'll point to several resources you should consider to help get you quickly up to speed in using--and appreciating--the power of the XML features in CFML.

Even if you don't need them today, you (or someone you know) may need them some day, so keep this in mind. (Or if you find this page doing a google search some years down the road, drop a note to let me know if it helped then!)

Background

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Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

Yes, it's a MS resource: don't let that keep you away

Now, some will see this is from Microsoft and flinch, but don't let that scare you away. It's a set of introductory resources that could help any beginning web developer, and while the first 2 and last 2 of the 14 sections are MS-specific, the rest are not.

And besides the web-oriented topics above (HTML, CSS, Javascript, and more), there are also sections introducing basic programming concepts like problem solving, processing and storing data, even introducing OO (again, with no reference to C# or anything .NET), and more.

For each of the 14 topics, there is both an article-level discussion and either an audio or video version.

Yes, it's in a resource center about VWD. Don't let that scare you away, either

I'll note that beyond being "from MS", it's also indeed specifically part of a resource center for their Visual Web Developer IDE. Again, most of the content offered in this beginner resource is not really specific to that editor or to .NET.

And frankly, I wouldn't hold it against a CF developer to consider using the editor. Hey, it's free, and consider also that sometimes you may have to do some editing on a server with nothing but Notepad available. Perhaps you're not a fan of Eclipse, don't have an available license for DW/HS, and you want more than just Notepad. (Yes, I do also know about the many other available free (and some commercial) editor alternatives. I list them in my CF411 site category of Editors/IDEs.)

(And if you're ever stuck in a situation where you're unwilling or not allowed to install any new editor on your server, just last week I wrote about a tip for using Notepad if you ever find that you can't use the Goto Line feature.)

Anyway, the point is I'm not making a pitch here for VWD nor any statement against CFE. Let's not go there. :-) Indeed, to any who may want to take the chance to comment here in scorn or to deride the VWD editor or MS, or to point out some other editor alternative, let's not go there, either.

The point of this entry is the free learning resources for beginning web developers that I found on the MS site. I hope it may help some people.