life of a nerd

A ColdFusion Nerd's love for Lorem Ipsum

2010-05-05T10:05:52Z

As a distraction from the insanity of client development, I thought it would be fun to mark off one of the ColdFusion to-do items on my list.

Like any good ColdFusion nerd, I have a list of things I want to accomplish with my favorite programming language. There are user defined functions on my list, Mango Blog plugins on my list, ColdFusion websites on the list, you name it.

The list also contains several CF-related blog post topics I would love to write about. I'm definitely no Ben Nadel or Raymond Camden, but I do have my fair share of blogability in me.

Well, not long ago I decided to try tackling two items about once: a Mango Blog plugin and a new UDF for CFlib.org. I had an idea for a simple UDF that I could easily convert into a Mango Blog plugin.

After a few hours of work, I am proud to say that effort paid off in the form of cfLipsum.

The Background

In several of the CF projects I have been a part of over the years, at some point in time there has been a need to go out and copy/paste some Lorem Ipsum filler content.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry that the web design and development world adapted as part of their own. It is used as a place holder to demonstrate how actual content will look in a design or site.

It dawned on me a long time ago that I should be coding a solution for that, rather than going to Lipsum.com and CTRL C'ing the filler content I needed. Then one day I noticed that Lipsum.com had a feed.

And an idea was born.

The User Defined Function

I thought to myself, if I am going to spend time and develop a simple solution involing the Lipsum.com feed, why not also make sure it is capable of being accepted to CFlib.org.

"The purpose of the Common Function Library Project (CFLib.org) is to create a set of user-defined function (UDF) libraries for ColdFusion 5.0 and higher."

Having used CFlib.org a number of times to find string functions and other handy snippets of code, I have been meaning to contribute and give back. Coming up with a UDF to handle the Lipsum.com feed seemed like a good first submission attempt.

Enter cfLipsum. This function allows for outputting lorem ipsum text on the fly. It converts a feed of lorem ipsum text from Lipsum.com into a formatted or unformatted return string for output.

The beauty of the simple feed is that it outputs a different string of lorem ipsum text every time. This is a handy function to have when creating mockups on the fly. For those of us not on ColdFusion Builder yet, this provides a way to use a function call to output random filler content.

The code is fairly self-explanatory.

Download the UDF on CFlib.org

The Mango Blog Plugin

Since I work with Mango Blog on a regular basis, I thought it would be a good idea to convert cfLipsum into a Mango plugin.

I created a plugin that converts a tag ([lipsum:<i>numWords</i>]) in a post/page into a string of lorem ipsum text. The plug communicates with a feed from Lipsum.com and outputs up to 500 words of lorem ipsum filler text.

The idea for usage of this plugin is to make it easier to fill pages and posts during the construction phase of a blog. Often times it helps clients to see the actual design of a page in action. Filler text helps to communicate the design without any actual content.

View the Laura's post on Mango Lipsum plugin here.

Download Mango Lipsum Plugin

download and take it for a test drive!
Theme version: 0.9
Last Updated:2010-04-19

twtpoll Plugin for Mango Blog

2010-01-31T02:01:49Z

For awhile now, I have been wanting to create a Mango Plugin that people could use on their blogs. There are so many great plugins already for the Mango Blog framework, and the possibilities are endless for more.

I have several ideas for various plugins that I plan to develop out as time allows. Some are simple, some are not.

As luck should have it, some time made itself available, and one of my ideas came to fruition. Allow me to explain.

twtpoll (http://twtpoll.com/) is a feedback tool that helps conduct polls/surveys on Twitter, Facebook or any other social media sites. twtpoll allows users to create unlimited polls for free and choose from 17 different types of questions when creating their polls. It also allows them to see any comments people leave after voting, and any tweets sent about the polls.

As a heavy blogger and tweeter, I try to think of ideas to engage users and followers. twtpoll is a very simple, yet powerful tool to engage and gain feedback.

Another handy feature they offer is the ability to embed the polls and graphs into a blog. This way, bloggers can create a poll to coincide with a topic in a post, and gain/display instant feedback to readers. Bloggers can also send a link for the poll around on Twitter or post a link on Facebook to engage an audience across multiple platforms.

The process is also fairly simple. Go to twtpoll.com, enter your Twitter username (ex: @bricecheddarn), and great your poll with a few easy clicks. Once the poll is created, the page will refresh and display your poll.

Take a look at the link after the page refreshes (ex: http://twtpoll.com/nhrpmi ). The link will contain the ID for the poll. That link is all you need to embed a twtpoll into a Mango Blog post with this twtpoll plugin I developed.

twtpoll-v0.9

twtpoll's embed code is fairly simple, and involves just a few snippets of javascript. I took that embed code, and wrapped a plugin around it. Similar to other plugins out there, once activated this plugin allows you to paste a snippet of code into a blog post to display the poll and the poll results (ex: [twtpoll:nhrpmi:250]). The number in the snippet allows you to change up the size (in pixels) of the results pie chart that is displayed. Check it out below!

To install the twtpoll plugin, put a copy of the twtpoll folder into the folder: %mango_root%/components/plugins/user

Then:

- log into the Mango administrator

- go into Plugins

- and activate twtpoll

I plan on continually improving this plugin. For now, it is still basic, but it does the job. Let me know your thoughts. I also licensed it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, so hack away at it if you want.

Browser Wars: Chrome grabs market share from IE

2010-01-09T10:01:52Z

The latest update in the browser wars is out, and it appears someone is shaking things up a bit. The order of the top five browsers on the market now looks a little different:

1. Internet Explorer (62.7%), 2. Firefox (24.6%), 3. Chrome (4.6%), 4. Safari (4.5%), 5. Opera (2.4%)

In just one year, Google's Chrome web browser has tripled its market share and jumped into third place in the browser wars. In December, Chrome surpassed Apple's Safari in worldwide usage by jumping from 3.9 percent to 4.6 percent, according to Net Applications. The rise in popularity of Chrome is having a direct affect on Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer continues its steady slide, dropping from 63.6 percent to 62.7 percent usage. Most of IE's share loss to date has been picked up by Firefox, but recently Chrome has gained some ground of its own.

Some good news for Microsoft, though, as IE8 has almost eliminated the older versions in use. IE8 rose from 19.3 percent to 20.9 percent, while IE6 dropped.

IE6, IE7 and IE8 usage combine to make Internet Explorer the most widely used browser on the market, but web traffickers are losing interest in the browser as more alternatives begin to emerge and offer more.

It seems that Chrome is stealing more users from Internet Explorer and Safari, which some find surprising. It was thought Chrome would primarily steal Firefox users, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Announcement of Chrome Extensions, though still in beta, might be a reason for Chrome's recent rise. Google's recent release of the browser for Mac and Linux helped bolster those numbers, as well.

Firefox remains our preferred browser here at Brice Cheddarn Development, but Chrome is a close second. Both are great for different reasons.

Our opinion of IE is no secret...it's horrible. IE8 has made vast improvements, but still pales in comparison to FF and GC.

Go Firefox!

Five WordPress Plugins that should be Mango Plugins

2009-10-28T11:10:56Z

As many people already know, Mango Blog is an easily customizable ColdFusion blog engine that provides a way to administer and publish content to websites. It also provides the necessary architecture to extend its basic functionality by adding plugins. While there have already been many great and flexible plugins developed for Mango, the list has a long way to go before it reaches the WordPress plugin directory.

The nerds at Brice Cheddarn are hard at work on several projects, which limits time for plugin development. But, that didn't stop us from compiling a list of plugins we wouldn't mind seeing developed (either in-house or by one of the many CF developers in the world). As such, here are Five WordPress Plugins that should be developed Mango Blog Plugins:

Wordpress Video Plugin: Sure, Mango Blog has a few video-related plugins already. There is a blip.tv plugin, a YouTube plugin and a Brightcove.tv, but there isn't one comprehensive, all-in-one video plugin for Mango Blog that allows people to post videos from all over like the Wordpress Video Plugin. Not only does this plugin allow you the option of posting videos from all over the internet, it also allows for some customizations to those video like sizing.
PollDaddy Polls: The PollDaddy Polls plugin allows bloggers to create and manage polls from within the WordPress dashboard. It has 20 different styles for your polls and allows for viewing all poll results as they come in. All PollDaddy polls are fully customizable. WP Polls is also another good WordPress poll plugin. Having a poll plugin for Mango Blog would give bloggers a chance to make their websites and blogs more interactive, which helps increase repeat traffic.
DISQUS Comment System: Disqus, pronounced "discuss", is a service and tool for web comments and discussions that can be plugged into any website, blog, or application. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community. It allows bloggers to have a more in-depth and across platform conversation with visitors. Mango Blog has several comment-related plugins, but nothing this verbose tool.
Star Rating for Reviews: Star Rating for Reviews is a simple WordPress plugin that inserts styled rating stars into posts using an inline tag [rating:4.5]. It can also calculate and output overall ratings based on all previously assigned scores already in the database. There are a number of different uses for this type of plugin. It could be used to rate just about anything, from movies and music to developers and projects.
Twitter Avatar: WordPress has a million Twitter-related plugins (OK, only 310), and Mango Blog has a few already as well. But the Twitter Avatar plugin allows visitors to enter their Twitter username when posting a comment on your blog. The plugin will also replaces the avatar on the comment with their picture on Twitter, both on the front-end and the Admin of the Blog. Having something similar for Mango Blog would bloggers more convenient interaction with their readers.

While it isn't a plugin, there is another bit of functionality needed. WordPress also has a native functionality to it that Mango needs to adopt: Page Links. This provides the ability to split a single post up into different web pages by just typing  into the post. This is handy functionality for many obvious reasons.

So many plugin ideas, so little time to develop them.

Top Six Mango Blog Plugins

2009-09-06T11:09:13Z

Part of the ColdFusiontology effort being undertaken by the nerds of Brice Cheddarn Development includes spreading the word about our favorite blog engine, Mango Blog.

Mango Blog is an easily customizable blog engine built with ColdFusion that provides a way to administer and publish entries. It also provies the necessary architecture to extend its basic functionality by adding plugins. It comes with a set of plugins out-of-the-box, but others have begun to write their own plugins to help expand upon this powerful ColdFusion blogging tool. And some of those plugins need recognition.

As such, I wanted to put together a quick list of the Top Six Mango Blog plugins that are currently available. With the growing number of plugins for Mango Blog, this definitely wasn't an easy list to compile. This is a completely subjective list that is probably not as thought out as it should be, so please feel free to comment and offer your suggestions.

PostByEmail - This pluginby TJ Downes allows users to send blog posts to their site via email. Since blog posts can be sent to your blog from any email address, the plugin requires the username and a site-wide key to be included in the email (space delimited). This prevents spam and unauthorized posts to your blog. This is one of the greatest features of WordPress, and I am really glad to see it being added to Mango Blog. Find out more: http://postbyemail.riaforge.org/

Beer Me - "Like this post? Buy me a beer!". This plugin by Marcos Placona for Mango Blog allows sites to add a link to PayPal at the bottom of each post. The links are personalized, so users can keep track of which blog post generated more donations. Simple but clever, and once I first saw it utilized on a site, I saw the potential. If Ben Nadel used Mango Blog, I would have bought many a beer for him. I probably owe Laura a beer or two, too, but she strikes me as more of a wine person. Find out more: http://beerme.riaforge.org/

Comment Moderation - This plugin, written by the creator of Mango Blog, Laura Arguello, adds comment moderation options to the admin Settings page. This is an extremely convenient tool, and now makes Mango Blog more of an option in the corporate environment. Find out more: http://www.asfusion.com/

Scribe - With this plugin by Adam Tuttle, a site can allow readers to subscribe to be notified by email when a new post is added. This helps to generate repeat visitors to a site, which is always a good thing. Find out more: http://fusiongrokker.com/post/scribe-email-subscriptions-for-mango

jQuery - This plugin written by Seb Duggan (who also appears to be addicted to writing Mango Blog plugins) will include the jQuery JavaScript library onto the pages of the site. This plugin helps add to the extensiblity of Mango Blog. With this plugin, developers can specify that the jQuery plugin is required for their own plugin to work. Find out more: http://sebduggan.com/posts/jquery-plugin-for-mango

Lightbox - This is a great plugin by Mark Aplet, who appears to be slightly addicted to writing Mango Blog plugins (Easy Retweet, CSS Naked Day, Memento). I say this out of envy, of course. Lightbox is a simple script used to overlay images on the current page. It's easy to setup and works on all modern browsers. This plugin (now being developed by Adam Tuttle) will add the necessary JavaScript and CSS to every page Mango outputs (aside from admin), and enables advanced linking in TinyMCE. Find out more: http://fusiongrokker.com/page/projects/lightbox-mango-plugin

The nerds here have several plugin ideas whiteboarded out and theorized. And they kick ass! As soon as things die down a bit, we will develop them for all to use. Of course, if someone wanted to contract us out to solely develop Mango Blog plugins, there would be no complaints I can assure you.

The Launching of Hawkeye Tweets

2009-09-06T10:09:42Z

There is no mistaking the fact that I am a HUGE Iowa Hawkeye Nerd. If you hadn't noticed, two of the last three sites launched by Brice Cheddarn Development have been Hawkeye related. Hawkapalooza was a pro-bono website put together to help a student organization at the University of Iowa. NILE was put together for a client to help him promote his novel.

Hawkeye Tweets is personal project to support my favorite team. It was inspired by the work of colleagues, who put together Suns Tweets and Cards Tweets as a way to use Twitter in support of their teams. I took the same concept and applied it to the Iowa Hawkeyes.

With the help of justSignal, the same technology used on Suns Tweets and Cards Tweets, I was able to put this site together in one massive all night, Monster-fueled hacking session. Hawkeye Tweets uses the justSignal Twitter Widget to pull in the streaming tweets and ColdFusion to power the backend and other ancillary components. ColdFusion will be used more heavily as the site expands.

justSignal is a company that helps other companies and individuals find all of the Social Media content they are interested in, without all the noise. The technology collects a wide variety of information from social media outlets and helps people make sense of it all. It goes way beyond the Twitter widget I hacked into for Hawkeye Tweets and dives into the yet untapped wonderland of social media tracking and statistical analysis.

Having met the founder of justSignal, Brian Troy, at Phoenix Startup Weekend, he was more than willing to help me put this site idea together. I am thankful Brian took the time to help me plan out my site, and look forward to working with him on future projects.

Let's hope Hawkeye Tweets can help my Iowa Hawkeyes win a Big Ten Championship this year. After yesterday's game, it is clear we need all the help we can get.

The Launching of Nile Kinnick

2009-08-31T01:08:12Z

Nile Kinnick played football at the University of Iowa in the late 1930s. He went on to break many Iowa Hawkeye football records on his way to winning the 1939 Heisman Trophy. But there was more to Nile Kinnick than just football. And Tom Lidd did an excellent job of telling the full story in his book NILE.

Having discovered this novel one weekend while doing research, I was quick to purchase it. I also wrote a blog post about it on the Iowa Hawkeyes Blog. In that post, I made an open offer to help the author promote and sell the book. As luck should have it, Tom was a reader of the blog and sent me an email stating an interest in my offer.

Over the next several months, Tom and I exchanged several emails and ideas back and forth on how to promote his book. Th overall goal is to have the book turned into a screenplay, so having a web presence could only help acheive that goal. And believe me, this novel will make a fantastic movie.

The first logical step in helping Tom was to build a website. As more luck should have it, the domain nilekinnick.net was available. We originally tried to reach out to the owner of the nilekinnick.com domain, but we were unable to broker a reasonable deal.

The website was constructed using a very basic WordPress template with a jQuery slider, and houses basic information about Nile Kinnick, the novel NILE, the author Tom Lidd and the Ironmen team of 1939.

The site will evolve with time to meet changing needs and demands. For now, it will be used as a tool to help sell books, in addition to helping promote the advancement of a screenplay.

Check out the website for NILE, a novel by T. Lidd. And if you are a Hawkeye Nerd like myself, make sure to buy a copy of NILE.

Iowa Tech and Social Media Interactive Conference

2009-08-30T02:08:00Z

In just a few short weeks, Iowa will be hosting the Iowa Tech and Social Media Interactive Conference (IOWAtasmic), one of the very fist large social media conferences to be organized in the state. On September 18-20th, 2009 in Mount Pleasant, Iowa on the Welsyan College campus, IOWAtasmic will provide a chance for businesses and individuals around Iowa and the midwest to take part in and learn about the ever growing social media revolution.

While many people think social media is just a fad, IOWAtasmic sets out to demonstrate to Iowans that it's not. The goal of the event is to bring new technology and knowledge to Iowa, as well as to showcase the existing technology and services already offered in the area.

The conference also sets out to prove that Iowa is not ten years behind the rest of the World, technologically speaking, and will attempt to highlight incentives and benefits of relocating or expanding into Iowa.

Event organizer Bradley Laborman, known as Bradman in the online world, says attendees will benefit from the knowledge of top tech and social media figures from the U.S. and Canada. The conference will consist of keynote speakers, local musicians, youtube celebrities, social media gurus and entrepreneurs from across the country.

Among the list of speakers is Chris Pirillo, an Internet Entrepreneur and Consultant that graduated from the University of Northern Iowa. For those who don't know who Chris is, just Google "Chris"...he is the top result. Take it from someone who does a fair amont of search engine optimization for companies...that is impressive.

Also included in the speakers at the event are Sarah Townsend, the Editorial Director for SocialVibe and Derek Johnson, CEO of internet startup Tatango.

The conference is scheduled into a large variety of different sessions, ranging in topic from How to Find and Engage the Social Community to Social Media Conversion and ROI to E-Stalkers and Protecting your identity Online. With several different sessions and panels available, IOWAtasmic provides a wealth of knowledge for people to learn from.

The nerds at Brice Cheddarn Development are proud sponsors of Iowa Tech and Social Media Interactive Conference, and we look forward to helping show Iowa that Social Media might be the biggest mental shift since the Industrial Revolution. With any luck, this can be a regular event in Iowa (and maybe Bradman will let us help him with the website next year).

For more information:

IOWAtasmic website
IOWAtasmic on Facebook
IOWAtasmic on Twitter

Iowa Tech and Social Media Interactive Conference
September 18-20th, 2009
Mount Pleasant, Iowa | Welsyan College

The Launching of Hawkapalooza

2009-08-07T12:08:16Z

Our involvement with Hawkapalooza began by feeding an addiction for Hawkeye information. Like most mornings, I was reading Iowa Hawkeye news while waiting for the caffeine to kick in, as I have found this to be the best way to start off the day.

One morning, the student newspaper for the University of Iowa (The Daily Iowan) posted an article about a newly formed Student Committee on Athletics whose purpose was to encourage Hawkeye Pride. The committee had a brilliant idea called “Hawkapalooza,” a pep rally and concert with the goal of the event to drum up excitement before the football team’s home-opener with Northern Iowa on September 5.

Being the web nerd I am, and having a fair amount of domain instinct, I checked the availability of the hawkapalooza.com domain after reading the article. Sure enough, it was still available. I quickly purchased the COM, NET and ORG versions of the domain and then sent an email over to the committee letting them know they were secured.

My purpose in acquiring the domains was not to profit from them or use them as leverage. Rather, it was to assist the student committee and contribute to a good cause. I used my nerdness for good to help support my beloved Iowa Hawkeyes.

After contacting the committee, I agreed to help even further than handing over the domains. They were very happy I secured the doman names, and since I displayed that I knew what I was talking about, they asked if I wouldn't mind helping them setup the site, too. So, I agreed and volunteered the services of Brice Cheddarn Development to help them setup a site and organize their social media efforts.

Since the University only offers 10MB of space and no database access, we set hawkapalooza.com up on our of our servers using a free WordPress installation and template. From there, we tweaked and branded the template with a custom tigerhawk logo, added in a lot of helpful plugins exclusive to WordPress and setup usernames/passwords for the committee members. Now the committee can update the site when and as they see fit. They will post videos, photos and information to help spread the word.

Hawkapalooza will likely become a yearly activity, so the committee now has the domains and webspace to continually promote the event. Going forward, they will use the site as a tool to organize Hawkeye Pride.

The Hawkapalooza pep rally and concert will be help at 6:30 PM on September 3, 2009 in University of Iowa's Hubbard Park. If you can't attend, definitely show your support through their new website.

Note: We didn't go with Mango or CF on this one, due to the need for some of the plugins in WP. Due to time constraints, we didn't custom build anything for this other than a few design elements.

ColdFusion is the Sparta of Programming Languages

2009-08-05T07:08:36Z

Now I know what the Spartan Warriors in the movie 300 felt like fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle. This feeling comes after responding to yet another forum question on LinkedIn this morning where 10 PHP and Ruby developers decided to pile on and declare ColdFusion dead. And they did so to such an innocent and harmless question that it begs to wonder: what the hell is wrong with people?

I wasn't going to write another post on this. When I last wrote a post on this topic, a few ColdFusion people sent in or posted comments about not paying this type of nonsense any mind. But it is getting harder and harder to ignore the mindless banality. This one being particularly hard, as one of the commenters to this LinkedIn question was a person that was present at my Developer Ignite speech, in which I came to the defense of ColdFusion and declared my ColdFusiontology crusade. (Don't worry, I sent my colleague an email calling him my new arch nemsis for his answer)

This one was also hard due to the question being asked. The question came from a dad asking if it is ok to encourage his son, as his son wants to start learning ColdFusion.

"So my kid is trying to convince me that cold fusion is the development tool that he wants to study. And that it will be a great thing to learn in the future. CF has been around for a while... is it the future or passe? "

I was eager to answer this one when I read it first. What a great thing, a dad making sure his son is learning the right language. That is very commendable. And I fully expected the PHPers and the Rubyists to chime in and suggest learning their language instead. I actually applaud them for doing so. But did they really have to answer an inquisitive father with 'when I think of ColdFusion, I think of a dying platform'. Most of them offer suggestions without having any real info on ColdFusion to base their opinion off of. And ultimately, that is the most frustrating part.

When is the world going to realize that ColdFusion developers are not the autoworkers of the web industry. CF is not an obsolete language. We are an army of 800,000 strong, and we are not going anywhere. THIS. IS. COLDFUSION!

The Launching of Mooney, Wright & Moore, PLLC

2009-08-03T04:08:58Z

The nerds have been working hard for our clients lately, and finally some results are starting to show. Over the weekend, we launched the new website for the law office of Mooney, Wright & Moore, PLLC.

Mooney, Wright & Moore, PLLC is a law firm in Phoenix, Arizona focused on state and local tax controversies. It is a small firm with some very big clients and a very impressive list of representative cases. The attorneys were previously partners in a large corporate law firm, but decided to start their own a few years ago.

Since branching out on their own, they have had just a very basic website in place compliments of GoDaddy's Website Tonight. Realizing that this was not doing the best job of representing their firm, they contacted us about constructing them a quality website. And we gladly accepted the task.

The project called for a professional business site controlled with a content management system. It was a small budget project with the constraint of needing to stay with GoDaddy hosting. This meant taking the WordPress approach. WordPress is our default PHP CMS option of choice when we can't go with ColdFusion. We are huge WordPress fans, and it made perfect sense for Mooney, Wright & Moore.

We took an existing WordPress theme, branded it and added in several widgets and PHP extensions. From there, we added several pages of content. We also created a page for representative cases, made individual bio pages for the attorneys, uploaded professional photography from Markow Kent and added in some basic search engine optimization.

Mooney, Wright & Moore, PLLC will be a long standing client, and will undoubtly need more work done to their site over the years but now they have a professional website with the control in their hands. The attorneys can blog as they see fit through the WordPress or by email and they can upload cases and images to the site with as needed. And now their law firm is represented well on the web.

The most unappreciated tag in ColdFusion: cfelse

2009-07-29T11:07:13Z

The idea to create a single serving site came about a long time ago, long before Wired's recent article hit newsstands. Having several domain names in the repository, it seemed like a good idea to throw up a simple, yet original one page site from time to time. But, no ideas have ever really jumped out and screamed at me to create.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a single-serving site is a web site comprised of standalone page setup on a dedicated domain name that only has one purpose. They are usually strange or nerdy sites with a targeted audience, and they may be the next new way to communicate ideas and pass messages. They are becoming a very hot trend in the world of Twitter because they help keep it short, relevant and simple while adding a bit of flavor into the mix.

The idea has been around for a few years, and there are several examples out there. Is Twitter Down, Is Lost a Repeat, Sometimes Red Sometimes Blue and Jello Time, just to name some of the more basic ones.

Wired Magazine published an article in its August edition, titled How Do I Make a Single-Serving Site? Being a Wired subscriber and reader, the article reminded me of my desire to create single-serving websites on a more regular basis. The article also came with a new form of inspiration, as I instantly knew which domain and idea to use for the Brice Cheddarn Development single-serving site experiment.

While crusing expired domains names a few weeks ago, I came across one that would grab the attention of any ColdFusion developer: cfelse.com. I bought the domain right away with an idea for it in mind. It dawned on me one day while programming that the cfelse tag always gets the raw end of the deal in application development. It's the red-headed step child of ColdFusion, and always gets the leftover logic processing in code. When I saw the domain name available, I thought it would be a perfect way to pay tribute to the most unappreciated tag in the ColdFusion library.

Cfelse.com is a single-serving website whose sole purpose is to show the most abused tag how important it really is to the CF community. It uses a combination of CF, JQuery and CSS, and was designed, written and constructed in one day. More improvements and enhancements will be added to the site as time goes on, but it will always remain a single-serving site dedicated to getting the word out about the life and struggles of cfelse. Once comments come in, they will be posted to the page.

More single-serving sites to come in the very near future, too.

Get ready for Phoenix Design Week

2009-07-25T07:07:15Z

Three months from now, the Phoenix design community plans to take over the city. Phoenix Design Week is a community movement dreamed up by a motivated designer named Mark Dudlik in an attempt to unite and strengthen the design community. His open letter gained immediate momentum and support, and further solidified the need to ignite a fire from within.

Phoenix is a city full of talented and passionate developers, artists and designers, and Phoenix Design Week will be the first large-scale effort to bring them together around their shared love for visual design. The event is will gather graphic and interactive design individuals, design firms and industry organizations to participate in a week’s worth of events to showcase what Phoenix Design has to offer the world.

Phoenix Design Week (PHXdw) will be held October 21-25, 2009 and will include a large variety of exhibitions, panels, training, networking, workshops, and much more. It will coincide with Cooper Hewitt National Design Week, giving national attention to our best and brightest.

The nerds at Brice Cheddarn Development understand the importance of design in the web world, and look forward to participating and sponsoring this event. As October approaches, we will post more information.

IE6 finally hears the Death Rattle

2009-07-21T08:07:47Z

Internet Explorer 6 is like a bad date that just won't take the hint. The long standing browser has been causing headaches for web developers and designers since 2001, and until recently people have done nothing but accept the abuse. Recent news, however, suggests we may have finally had our fill of abuse from IE6.

Internet Explorer is the main web browser that many of us nerds learned to surf the web on. Back in the early part of the decade, IE6 did its job and did it well. This was in large part because no other options existed. Before Microsoft was legally forced not to, they had the ability to bundle the browser with the Windows operating systems, which led to Microsoft experiencing a 95% market share for internet browsers. And when that many people adopt a product, it then becomes impossible to move away from.

Today, we have far superior browsers in the market like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari, as well as Internet Explorer 8 (I hate to say it, but IE8 is pretty slick). These browsers are not only standards compliant, which IE6 is not, but they have evolved into all-encompassing utilities that reach far beyond the internet and into your everyday lives. I can't imagine life without FF and all of its plugins, let alone surfing the web without it.

I liken the IE situation to one of your grandparents living until 204 years of age, and then thinking they could adequately compete in the NFL for a starting RB position. In 2001, IE6 was just what we needed, but for the web to continue evolving and growing, the browser that requires the most time, energy and effort to make things work must be permanently retired. Not just retired, but banished from even coming close to a computer connected to the internet.

IE6 has stifled web innovation and design for long enough. Companies like Digg and YouTube recently announced they will no longer be supporting this browser. They are just the tip of the iceberg in a long list of web junkies looking to rid the world of the IE6 disease, a list the nerds at Brice Cheddarn Development are on.

Some might ask why web nerds don't like IE6? The quick version (because to do the full version justice would take a few years) is for not recognizing transparent PNG images, or not adequately rendering CSS, or lack of security, or lack of standards compliance. Constructing a website to render correctly in IE6 without the use of any standards or proper CSS is like trying to haul 4 truckloads of cargo up a hill behind a moped. Ya, it can be done...but it's going to take 42 times the effort.

A huge responsibility for the continued use and dependency of IE6 falls on corporate America. The current economic climate, coupled with the long legacy IE6 applications have, has prevented many businesses from upgrading their browsers. Since so many applications were developed with IE6 as a dependency, the costs of such a corporate wide upgrade are huge. With the economy being in turmoil over the last couple of years, companies have used this as an excuse not to move forward. The economy is also another reason people grasp to what they know and why they fear change when change is what is needed to recover and move forward.

It is far past time to stop making excuses for why we still cling to IE6. The web has evolved far beyond what IE6 was prepared to handle, and the longer we continue to embrace it, the more we limit our opportunity to see the true potential of the web. Hordes of people on Twitter and all over the internet have finally started to take a stand against IE6. And so have the nerds at Brice Cheddarn.

From this point forward, no more of our websites or applications will be tailored to IE6. While we pride ourselves in making cross-browser friendly and standards-compliant websites, we need to move on and stop wasting our time tailoring to a browser that just won't listen. In order for us to do our clients justice, we have to stop the madness.

Rest In Peace, IE6.

New Mango Blog Theme: Company Blue

2009-07-19T06:07:58Z

Yes, we coded another Mango Blog theme. This is the 2nd of what will soon be many themes to be made from the almost forgotten folder of designs we stumbled upon. This design is called Company Blue and is available for anyone to download and use/change freely under the Creative Commons.

The Company Blue theme has a little bit more style to it than the last theme. This validated XHTML theme is very professional looking site and is great for any small business. It is fairly search engine optimized and easy to work on. It has space for a big promo image on the front page. It also has a site search tied into every page, making it easier for people to find things on your Mango site.

As an additional experiment, we incorporated Visual28's Twitter Plugin in a different way. We have seen (and used) similar techniques with WordPress, and attempted to adapt the plugin from being a sidebar option only. This still needs some work, and is restricted to only being able to display 1 tweet at a time, but it at least shows the flexiblity of Visual28's plugin.

As time allows, updates and enhancements will be made. Let us know your thoughts or if you run into any problems. It was tested with FF/Chrome/IE7/IE8/Opera/Flock. This design is far from perfect, but we wanted to post it anyway in case it sparked ideas for other Mango developers. Download this theme and play around with it. We might even code it for BlogCFC, too.

Screenshots: