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Recent Blog Comments By Jon Hartmann

• The UX Of Prototyping: Low-Fidelity Is The New High-Fidelity

  Posted on May 10, 2013 at 11:34 AM

  This is why I prefer Balsamiq for my wire-framing. It supports simple colors, but the default is line-drawing style. This help to reinforce that the design is still just a sketch, rather than a finalized implementation. Its more "breakable".... read more »

• ColdFusion Query-Of-Queries vs. The Group Attribute In CFOutput

  Posted on Jun 14, 2011 at 11:14 AM

  While I have to say that QoQ does offer additional support, you've now written three queries rather than one, and have to change all three queries if the base one is altered in the future. This is a maintainability nightmare. A <cfloop query="x" group="y"> uses functiona... read more »

• ColdFusion's Application.cfc Session Events Are Not Session-Specific

  Posted on Feb 18, 2010 at 3:03 PM

  @Ben: I think we're saying the same thing, but with different points of view. I prefer not to use conjoined applications in ColdFusion because I don't feel that they are a complete solution. I'm not really a fan of the fact that you can declare the same application in two or more diff... read more »

• ColdFusion's Application.cfc Session Events Are Not Session-Specific

  Posted on Feb 18, 2010 at 1:14 PM

  This is actually exactly what I would have expected to happen. I think the mistake here is that you're looking at the OnSessionStart/End methods as being a part of the session, but really they are part of the application. Although you've declared that these two applications are the same applicati... read more »

• Using $Variable In jQuery Code Is Just Hungarian Notation

  Posted on Dec 10, 2009 at 10:18 AM

  I'm right there with you Ben; I held strongly to Hungarian notation for a long time, but abandoned it because it looses meaning in loosely typed languages such as CF and JS, and in strongly typed languages, the compilers wont let you make a mistake any way. Strangely, I still use the $ pre... read more »

• Using CFParam To Define A Variable Number Of Arguments In ColdFusion (And What ColdFusion 9 Teaches Us)

  Posted on Nov 17, 2009 at 3:54 PM

  @Ben: Any guesses as to how often I'd like to be able to pass named arguments to the built in CF functions? I hate needing to say ImageNew("", 200, 200, "rgb", "red"), when I could just say ImageNew(width=200,height=200)? It might not be shorter, bur its more accurate, and doesn't make you scratc... read more »

• Using CFParam To Define A Variable Number Of Arguments In ColdFusion (And What ColdFusion 9 Teaches Us)

  Posted on Nov 17, 2009 at 9:25 AM

  I think named arguments are the way to go. When I programmed C++, I hated that you had to remember the order of arguments and pass in nulls for ones you didn't need and such. Being able to specify getRandomNumber(from=1,to=100) is much better in my mind. It also prevents errors later if you add i... read more »

• Ask Ben: Displaying A Blog Teaser (Showing The First N Words)

  Posted on Sep 23, 2009 at 1:40 PM

  @John, True enough... do you know at what threshold the performance gain would start to matter? I've kind of taken it to heart that if you're doing more then adding a couple of strings together you should go with a StringBuffer... an idea on where the actual tipping point might be?... read more »

• Ask Ben: Displaying A Blog Teaser (Showing The First N Words)

  Posted on Sep 23, 2009 at 12:38 PM

  I think Tom pretty much nailed how I would implement it (although I might rejoin with a StringBuffer or something instead). For Javascript, the same solution but using string.split(" ") would be just as effective. Its core JS to split a string into an array of parts, no REGEX required.... read more »

• Ask Ben: Enforcing An SSL (HTTPS) Connection Based On Request

  Posted on Jul 28, 2009 at 10:31 AM

  I'd also note that the cgi.https flag doesn't seem to respond well when behind a hardware load balancer. At my last job, the connection was secure to the load balancer, but not between the load balancer and the CF servers, so CF never saw itself as being on HTTPS. I'm not sure if that was just an... read more »

• Why My Queries Hate Application Service Layers

  Posted on Jun 18, 2009 at 5:05 PM

  Many posts later and I that I'm still in the same boat at least. I think the discussion has basically said that putting all queries together is good for mainainability, but reuse is only important if it doesn't impact performance. Thats pretty much the rule I follow. I try to make my queries flex... read more »

• Why My Queries Hate Application Service Layers

  Posted on Jun 18, 2009 at 10:39 AM

  Ben, I've been struggling with similar issues in my current application: a large number of my queries aren't reusable because they are specific to single use/display. I'm hopeful that this post might spark some discussion, but I really don't agree with your closing design. Breaking a single query... read more »

• Randomly Executing Only One ColdFusion Custom Tag Child

  Posted on Apr 22, 2009 at 2:46 PM

  @Ben, Yeah, I'd considered the scoping example when I was putting mine together, and that is one of the advantages the tag based implementation does have over CFCs. I keep thinking though that from a maintenance standpoint, if I needed to have the same set of random possibilities in more than one... read more »

• Randomly Executing Only One ColdFusion Custom Tag Child

  Posted on Apr 22, 2009 at 12:43 PM

  @Ray: I was mostly just trying to show that you could do this with a CFC, since Ben didn't think it could be done. I'm not really sure that the tag based version is any more maintainable though: in either case, you are going to have to open a file and add some text wrapped in a CF tag. With the C... read more »

• Randomly Executing Only One ColdFusion Custom Tag Child

  Posted on Apr 22, 2009 at 12:05 PM

  Should have tried to format that better :)... read more »

• Randomly Executing Only One ColdFusion Custom Tag Child

  Posted on Apr 22, 2009 at 12:04 PM

  <cfcomponent output="false"> <cffunction name="execute"> <cfset var local = StructNew() /> <cfset local.options = StructKeyList(this) /> <cfset local.options = ListToArray( ListDeleteAt( local.options, ListFindNoCase(local.o... read more »

• Making My ColdFusion Tags More Consistent

  Posted on Feb 13, 2009 at 1:37 PM

  @Ben ... that really sums up how I feel about development as well. Thanks for the moment of zen in my day.... read more »

• Making My ColdFusion Tags More Consistent

  Posted on Feb 13, 2009 at 11:09 AM

  I'm not really sure that comparing a function evocation to tags for formatting is really a solid comparison. You can look at them and conclude the opposite reasoning as well. I mean, if you look at the <cfset /> tag, and then converted it to a function, you'd have an evocation that looked l... read more »

• Ask Ben: Removing Duplicate List Items While Maintaining Original List Order

  Posted on Jan 16, 2009 at 5:18 PM

  This method wont work if you need case sensitivity, since the struct key bins are case insensitive.... read more »