Coldfusion Developer

ExtJS Calendar – I Love You!

There’s just one word that comes to my mouth looking at the calendar component…. WOW! WOW! WOW! Right now my mind is blowing in an infinate loop! I think I just peed a little!

<CFCALENDAR> here we come!!

Many in the community have asked for officially supported Calendar components. Calendars are an open-ended problem: there are many ways to implement them and many features that could be added. In Ext JS 3.3 we present new components for displaying events by day, week and month, all combined into a sample application. As with PivotGrid, the new Calendar components are powered by the existing data package, which means they fit right in with existing code. We’re not including the calendar components in ext-all.js just yet but include a built version of the components in the examples/calendar directory in the SDK.

Check out the Calendar demo here:

Sencha they’ve added a groovy Pivot Grid, nice… (normally aweseome, but next to the calendar…)

PivotGrids are a data summarization tool that are great for breaking large datasets down into an understandable format. PivotGrids allow you and your users to summarize data by any number of fields; easily breaking down sales data by city, for example, or by year and quarter. Check out an example of PivotGrid in action where we summarize sales data. PivotGrids fit in with your existing Stores and take just a few lines of code to create. We have created a series of examples demonstrating their varying configurations. Here’s just a quick example of how code to create the above pivot table looks.

Check out the blog post for more info

Here’s a start on what I’d like to see in ColdFusion 10 and beyond…

Updated 28th July 2010…

valueList() function:

• add startrow and maxrows OR startrow and endrow params so you can filter it without having to loop
• add another attribute to cfloop and cfoutput (name=bla?) so that you could reference a particular tag for getting your valuelist
• add nullValue AND emptyValue parameters to allow a value to be set if the value is null
  • to set each row’s parameter to a default (like isNull(x,0) in sql) eg: (10,,,3,4 becomes 10,0,0,3,4 with nullValue set to 0)
• Add another parameter to set value if nothing is in the output (aka = “”) so when you’re using it in a query like bob IN (<cfqueryparam value=#valuelist(qPages.status)#”>) you can utilize it like someid IN <cfqueryparam value=#valuelist(qPages.status,0)#”>
• formatting parameter (ie: format=”date” mask=”dd/mm/yy” or format=”number” mask=”(00) 0000 0000″)

Ajax Libraries:

• Ability to set the ajax libraries in application settings  in app.cfc so you can choose ONE engine for scripts to be generated/used.
• Abiltity to have a ajaxsource like a datasource and you can add them into the administrator ( and point them to cdn’s/google
  • CFAJAX lib=”ext,jquery,spry,etc” validate=”ext” source=”googlecode”
  • CFAJAXLIB lib=”ext” -> this points to ajaxmapping

ColdFusion Administrator:

1. Admin API needs to be more thourough
2. ExtJS based admin panel
3. Inline updater for updates (as well as visual alerts when one is available)
4. Multiple site admin with better usability – make more like other similar managers like vmware or alike
5. Mailserver to be added as mailsources like databases so you can add mailsource=”gmail.com” to your cfmail tag

• also need a flag that can be set to ‘developer’ so that it just queues those emails in a folder called ‘dev’ on same level as spool and undelivr and expose the directory through the admin api so that it can be read programically (as well as a basic ajax reader in the cfadmin that can read html and text versions of the messagesApplication-Based Settings

Application-Specific Settings:

1. Ability to specifiy default component to be extended per application
2. Ability to place an item in onServerStart from a setting

Generally:

1. CFANT tag/cfscript also incorporating subversion repository management
2. Global proxy settings for getting out of firewalls easily
3. get application.cfc to work like other cfcs including interaction
4. onServerStart server-warming feature that applications can add via cfadmin api – and managed through list interface
5. Support cloud support for mappings, etc
6. Support install to the cloud
7. Minimise install by having a core install and option selected functionalitites, or modules that you can choose to add or remove
8. Add ability to add plugin modules to add core functionality ie: add CFSILLY tag to tags available to every page and administrate this on a per site basis (sandboxable)
9. Bundle jBuddy IM with CF
10. 2d and other barcodes and Microsoft Tag
11. Reduce the footprint of jrun or replace it with something leaner
12. Free limited tag/feature version of CF
13. GroupCurrentRow variable like currentRow variable when group= is used for cfoutput and cfloop

Well, I’ve got to admit that Adobe has done a brilliant job with Dreamweaver CS4. It’s a pretty smooth application and as a ColdFusion & Javascript centric programmer, this is a swell setup.

Things I love about Adobe Dreamweaver CS4:

1. The Interface (I use ‘Coder Plus)
   Well at first I must admit I didn’t like it much. It’s a departure from the traditional Windows interface, but I think that’s a good thing. It’s not too Mac looking either. I really despise the Mac look – (you know that boring monitone colour scheme with drop shaddows! How 1997!)

   
   

2. The Real Estate
   It lets you get things out of the way so you can code, but keeps them accessable giving heaps more development room without having to hide all the toolbars.

3. Minimised Doc Bar Interface (see pic below)
   I love how I can have a mini button nav that pops out the file explorer. I kind of wish Vista or Windows 7 had this kind of interface. It’s quick and easy.

   

4. The Speed
   It’s just fast. I am using Dual and Quad core machines with lots of Ram, (and it’s footprint isn’t tiny) and everything comes up very snappy.
5. Subversion Integration
   I’ve pushed the dreamweaver team for years in beta cycles for Subversion integration. FINALLY, is all I had to say. I was quite happy to see them polling users to see what they thought and did people support this inclusion… you bet! The fact that other repositories don’t have support is another matter. Update: In CS4 you had to use a particular version of subversion, in CSS5 you now can use the latest version and update dreamweaver through a series of updates that (hopefully) will be released.
6. Tabbed Interface
   I love the new grey tabs. I love the related files
7. The help search bar
   Placemnent is everything here. It’s definately in the rights spot. While it needs a product selector so I can choose Coldfusion help, it’s pretty handy anyway.
8. Javascript Code Hinting
   This is a big plus for the coders out there. This feature gives suggestions for objects that relate to the object you are editing. I can’t remember how many times I googled javascript functions to get the right syntax, or funtionality in moments where the information in your head just doesn’t compute.
9. Adobe Air Authoring Support
   I was wonering why ColdFusion wasn’t allowed to have Air Authoring. Now I know, the Dreamweaver team put dibs on it. This is going to be a bg plus for the apps I have planned for 2009.
10. CS4/5 Extensions
    I just love the way if you want to, you can create more functionality for Dreamweaver. I’m in the middle of integrating my ColdFusion framework hints into an extension so it makes it even easier to use my framework in Dreamweaver.

Want more Dreamwever CS4…
Uncovering the hidden gems in Adobe Dreamweaver CS4