There is a new Firefox search plug-in for CFQuickDocs. If you've ever gotten frustrated with Adobe LiveDocs, you owe it to yourself to check out this site. The search plug-in may be the latest reason to use CFQuickDocs, but is far from the only reason.

PS - I need to blog more.

I upgraded to IE7 a while back and have been enjoying the improvements it has over 6. I still use Firefox as my main browser but it has been nice to use a decent browser when sites require IE. Things had been going swimmingly until all JavaScript quit working. Changing the security settings did not make a difference. After scouring the internet, I found the solution. Installing the latest Windows Scripting Update. I don't know why IE broke, I don't know why this fixes it...but hey, JavaScript works again!

John Mason gave a great presentation on CFCUnit. I've used this on a small project last year and was flying blind. Watching this presentation really gave me a new appreciation for the power of this tool, in particular the integration with CFEclipse and ANT.

This presentation was give to the Coldfusion Meetup group. There are usually one or two online presentations a week and they are almost always informative. I'm looking forward to ANT presentation next week and the MXUnit presentation to the same group in two weeks. Automation is the easiest way to increase your value and productivity.

A friend of my sent me this amazing story of a hurricane hunter in trouble during Hugo 1989. As a ground zero Hugo Survivor (Charleston, SC), I find this just a truly unbelievable story. I feel in part that I owe my life and those of my friends and family to the bravery of these Hurricane Hunters. So, thanks to these folks 19 years after the fact.

You can never predict what a user will do as this xkcd comic illustrates.

I've been working on a custom design for the site for a while. I'll say that the MT template system is quite powerful (which is code for complex). I'm still having some issues with the content font, but everything else is looking good. It's amazing how easy things are with CSS these days. The navigation rollovers are nothing but an unordered list with some background images switched out when the mouse is hovering over them.

Over on CF-Talk today, Dennis Powers had a problem with selecting the correct records when dealing with bit flags. I'm a big fan of flags and bitwise math, so I jumped in and helped him out. I had to think about the operations a bit (no pun intended) too long, so I decided to drop myself a note as a refresher.

When dealing with bit flags, here is a handy cheatsheet:

myMask = 1st and 8th flags set (10000001 -> 2^7 + 2^0 -> 129)

myVar & myMask = myMask (All masked flags are set)
myVar & myMask > 0 (At least one masked flag is set)
myVar & myMask = 0 (None of the masked flags are set)
myVar = myMask  (All masked flags set, all other flags not set)

Happy masking!

I have a client that manages and resells domains to their hosting customers. Currently, they just purchase them from a registrar and then bill their clients and do it all manually! Does anyone know of a registrar with a good reseller API? The only ones I've been able to find are WildWestDomains (part of GoDaddy), eNom and ResellerClub. Anyone that has any experience with any of these, I'd appreciate it if you'd drop me a note with your experience.

Analysis paralysis is an informal phrase applied when the opportunity cost of decision analysis exceeds the benefits. Analysis paralysis applies to any situation where analysis may be applied to help make a decision and may be a dysfunctional element of organizational behavior. Often phrased as paralysis by analysis, in contrast to extinct by instinct.

Analysis paralysis on Wikipedia

I've got it and I've got it bad. How do you deal with a surplus of choices?

Javascript/AJAX

• ExtJS
• jQuery
• prototype
• Spry
• YUI

ColdFusion MVC Framework

• Coldbox
• Fusebox 5.5
• Mach-ii
• Model-Glue

ColdFusion ORM

• Transfer
• Reactor

Thankfully, ColdSpring appears to be the standard for managing configuration and dependencies in ColdFusion applications. Finally, a choice that is easy to make. :)

Unfortunately, having been out of the loop on most of these frameworks over the past few years I'm not even certain what each can do for me, let alone why one might be better than the other. I wish there was a good way to get over this hurdle. Sometimes I eye the Ruby community with envy. It's Rails or the highway. While choice is good, sometimes I definitely feel that the lack of a "best in breed" standard holds ColdFusion back.

I had the pleasure of seeing Adobe's Director of Product Evangelism, Ben Forta, give a Flex 3/AIR presentation in Cary last night. First, I must mention that Ben has the best job title. Hands down. While the Flex 3 and Flex Builder portion of the presentation was very nice, I was there mainly to learn more about AIR.

AIR in one sentence can be described as a cross platform platform for creating desktop apps using HTML, JS, Flex and Flash. It doesn't sound particularly impressive until you view some of the AIR showcase apps. I was most impressed by the Anthropologie e-commerce catalog. I'm definitely looking forward to see what folks do with this technology. AIR looks to deliver "write once, run anyway" applications and it looks good while doing it.