I forgot to mention here that I wrote up a nice Actionscript library for manipulating lists. It includes a majority of ColdFusion’s list functions, plus a few that we commonly use here at Webapper. Sometimes you just need a list instead of an array. Get the library here.

Let’s jump right to some code. ::CODECOLORER_BLOCK_1:: versus: ::CODECOLORER_BLOCK_2:: They look pretty similar right? Near identical. Neither is really easier or harder to read. Performance wise, I suspect you couldn’t see much of a difference. If you’re thinking to yourself, “Aww geez Steve Nelson is about to go on a week long rampage about something.” You would be [...]

As Steve pointed out recently, Google has a phone/voice-based front-end to some of their search services. But did you also know that you can send an SMS text message to G-O-O-G-L-E (466453)? The best way to interact with it is to send a message like this: ::CODECOLORER_BLOCK_3:: This will return all business results for “pizza” in the [...]

In my new effort to rid my life of global variables, I’ve been focusing on the arguments scope. I think the arguments scope is the key to solving this problem. With my MVC-CFC framework I find it is easy as pie to live without global variables. In a nutshell, EVERYTHING is passed in through a <cfargument>. [...]

It’s been 10 years since I first heard someone say that global variables are bad news. To be truthful I didn’t really understand the reason back then. The most common reason not to use global variables is the namespace argument. Basically the problem is that you can accidentally overwrite another variable. Yeah ok, I guess that’s [...]

A few people have asked me if I’ve done anything with my MVC framework that I presented a year ago at the CF Frameworks conference. The short answer. Yes, but very minor. I admit it. I’m an addict. Mostly it’s the utter simplicity that I love. It takes the power of CFCs with the simplicity of [...]

This is pretty slick. Basically you call 1-800-Goog-411 (1-800-466-4411) and it gives you an audio version of the Google maps search engine. You can search for local businesses then they’ll redirect the call to them. Apparently it sends you a text message or something if you say “Map it”. I haven’t tried this yet because for [...]

I just bought a new laptop after working on an Dell m700 for 2 1/2 years. No real reason, I just figured it was time to upgrade. I bought another Dell, an XPS 1330. So far it’s slick. The downside? It ONLY comes with Vista. Just like you, I’ve heard nothing but bad things about [...]

If you haven’t seen this video from Perceptive Pixel yet, then you just gotta take 5 minutes to watch it. It shows some of the most bleeding-edge UI development going on anywhere on the planet. Think iPhone, multiply by 10, and then add in a gi-normous display. I’m thinking that in, say, 3-5 years, everyday [...]

Today I got a request to change the “Loading” text in the preloader of a Flex app. To my surprise, I didn’t see any examples on how to do this, so I thought I’d share my results. When you like the existing preloader, but want to just make little tiny changes to it, here’s what you [...]