I truly hate you IE!

(Photo: Kay Kim)

I just came across a very interesting bug on my website. I've made a post on twitter today asking the local CSS gurus if they knew of any way to fix this:

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  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 11:00 PM - Categories: Website Optimization | Technology

A more elaborated jQuery Drag & Drop (with cloning)

I've decided to get back at jQuery draggable and droppable to a personal project I've been working on. In the past, I've demonstrated how to do basic drag and drop, but this time I needed something a little bit more elaborated.

I won't spoil my personal project by showing what it id before it gets done, but I'll show here an example of what I wanted to accomplish which will use pretty much the same functionality, but in other application.

The idea is:

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  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 4:20 PM - Categories: JQuery | Javascript | Technology

MangoBlog 1.4 Released and Important notes

I'm probably late on this one, but mangoBlog v1.4 has just been released. From the changelogs:

What's new in version 1.4

• Revisions of posts and pages are now stored and user can "restore" an older version
• Added a permission for users to not to be able to access the administation (thanks to Seb Duggan)
• Added a replacement for Verity search to search in database directly (this search now includes comments). It is the default search now.
• Plugin settings are now stored in database, which should make it easier to migrate a blog
• TinyMCE editor upgraded
• Configuration file now has placeholders for base path so that directories do not need to be hardcoded in configuration file
• Ability to disable or enable threading
• Plugins made for ColdFusion 8 only can extend org.mangoblog.plugins.BasePlugin without including BasePlugin in their own folder
• Friendly URLs for author archives

Changes in theme tags:

• Added a descending order option for the comments tag
• Enhanced Posts tag to be able to show posts for a given author
• AuthorProperty tag can now output the name of the role of the author
• Added AuthenticatedAuthor tag that allows the theme to know if the current visitor is logged in

Administration:

• Post pagination and search
• Session will be maintained while user is writing a post or page
• Added permission to manage pods and to run blog updates
• Drafts now always "float" to the top of the list
• Ability to remove plugins
• Added "beforeAdminPageContentEnd" event to the bottom of the page edit screen and "beforeAdminPostContentEnd" to the bottom of the post edit screen
• Ability to manually set the post URL (thanks to Seb Duggan)
• Added more functionality to BasePlugin to make it easier to write plugins. 
• Plugins can now run their own upgrade method when a new version is installed via the administration
• Paging for authors screen
• Cosmetic changes: Add ons renamed to Plugins, go directly to edit mode after adding a new post or page (thanks to Seb Duggan), changed Pod Manager icon

Updates to new installs:

• Added new plugin that allows keeping the old BlogCFC URLs functional
• Added sample data
• Include CFFormProtect (enabled by default instead of Captchas)
  
• New default theme called Cutline
• New installs on Railo will now have an error on main page (thanks to Andrea Campolonghi)

Plugins updated:

• formRememberer (included in update)
  
• CFFormProtect (not included in automatic update)

Bug fixes:

• Solved some compatibility issues with Railo
  
• Fixed XSS vulnerability (themes need to be updated to take advantage of this)
• Preview link was wrong in future posts
• Comments are now rejected if comments are closed for a post or page
• Error when entering an empty search string
• Error when not using friendly URLs
• and more...

Important:

Now, for those who are using Railo and are updating via admin interface. There is a bug with the mango updater and Railo, Laura (Mango blog's developer) explains:

"This is a known issue with Railo (we should report it, since it is an incompatibility with CF). I thought 1.3.1 included the fix, but apparently not.

Open file components/Updater.cfc and change line 436 from

<cfhttp url="#arguments.zipAddress#" method="get" path="#tempdir#">

to:

<cfhttp url="#arguments.zipAddress#" method="get" path="#tempdir#" file="#filename#">

"

More info can be found here:

Mango 1.4 upgrade bug / Railo 3.1 / Centos 5

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 5:21 PM - Categories: ColdFusion | Railo | Mango Blog

Top 10 Best hosting Services

I have just found this website listing web hosting reviews. It features a list of the Top 10 best hosting companies along with their short descriptions and prices.

It also features links to partner websites that can help you find the best hosting solution for your application or website, as well as some very useful guides about switching web hosts and a nicely written e-commerce guide.

I particularly like the way they organized their list of web hosts, as they provide some useful information such as up time, reliability, ease of use, disk space and money back guarantee.

I think reliability and up-time are two very important factors, and I really take them into account when choosing a hosting provider.

Another very important thing is pricing. They have hosting packages starting at as little as $3.95 per month with unlimited disk space and 99.99% up time.

You can also read their reviews by clicking on the review link, and it will redirect you to an internal page filled up with information about the selected hosting as well as very specific features such as control pannel ease of use, details on customer support, and what you can expect from the selected hosting.

This guys have definitely done a great job on this website, and sure put a lot of effort to come up with a so complete list. I hope they keep adding and updating the list.

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 3:53 PM - Categories: Review

Railo 3.1.1 released

Railo 3.1.1.000 has just been released and is available at www.getrailo.org

From the changelogs:

• [ RAILO-163 ] cfexecute and arguments containing spaces (Linux)
• [ RAILO-257 ] Railo will not start - start/stop shells contain ^M characters
• [ RAILO-275 ] Binary arguments to Railo treated as array
• [ RAILO-302 ] CFHTTP PUT sends corrupted binary data in body
• [ RAILO-342 ] Query/Array Rows not Bracketed; on large volumes causes slow performance and poor UI [FDAPI]
• [ RAILO-347 ] Unable to create remote clients in 3.1.0.024
• [ RAILO-349 ] Mapping stripped from CFCATCH.MissingFile value
• [ RAILO-356 ] Spelling Error in upgrade script
• [ RAILO-359 ] Problem with CF_SQL_CHAR type
• [ RAILO-360 ] XML lost when serializing an XML document to JSON
• [ RAILO-361 ] java.util.Calendar
• [ RAILO-362 ] ordered keys in struct dump
• [ RAILO-364 ] Error when using cf_sql_numeric with floating number
• [ RAILO-365 ] Query bracketing does not have correct row numbers in drill down [FDAPI]
• [ RAILO-366 ] Misspelled struct key on exceptions
• [ RAILO-368 ] serialize xml
• [ RAILO-370 ] Query Exception Compatibility: SQL
• [ RAILO-372 ] Query Exception Compatibility: Datasource

 

To update your current installation, simply access Railo Server Administrator, select the left item on the menu called "update", and make sure the URL is set to be "http://www.getrailo.org". Simply click update, and the available updates will be shown.

Click the button called execute updates, and wait for about 10 seconds while it does all the work for you.

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 1:45 PM - Categories: Railo | CFML - 101

Useless Information: Why is it called Railo?

According to Michael Offner-Streit (Railo CTO) at the Railo user Group:

"Railo is the name of the first alien dog ever seen in Star Trek. His name is Rhylo and because my english is not very good I have written it wrong, Sorry ;-)"

Which leads to an interesting question:

How do you pronounce Railo?

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 5:31 PM - Categories: Railo

Free tickets to Scotch on the Road - Europe

That's all, and there's no catch and no tricks. Simply go now, and register for Scotch on the Road - Europe to get your free pass. The organizers of this premier ColdFusion conference decided to innovate and beat the Credit Crunch once and for all. they are offering free passes to Scotch on the Road -Europe for all of its locations.

 

Simply go to their website and register for free!

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 3:00 PM - Categories: Conferences