A Minor Rant About The ColdFusion 8 Developer Exam

24th June 2008 in Adobe ColdFusion, ColdFusion by Simon | 2 comments

The Adobe ColdFusion 8 Developer Exam arrived earlier this year and it is about time I took it. But like Ben Nadel, the exam scares me! Why? Because there is so much more to know. With the introduction of new AJAX tags, native JSON support, .NET integration, image manipulation, threading, interfaces, not to mention full PDF integration, the presentation builder and across the board enhancements, there are a lot of new things to know.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I am also an Adobe Certified Trainer, I would probably shy away from taking the exam, since, apart from showing that I have gained an Advanced level of knowledge of what’s available in the language/application, is it really relevant?

Now for the moan…

I like to prepare for exams properly. I studied hard for the CFMX6.1 and CFMX7 exams because I wanted to achieve the best result I possibly could. I don’t much like the stigma of mediocrity, so I try hard. But with the advent of the ColdFusion 8 exam, Adobe aren’t making life any easier and this isn’t because of the increased number of features. It’s because they are not supporting their exam with the appropriate study material.

In the past, Ben Forta had been commissioned to create the official developer study guide. However, according to Ben, this appears no longer to be the case (at least for now).

It beggars belief that Adobe release a product, then release a related exam, but do not have the will to produce a study guide. Yes we have the Web Application Construction Kit and Livedocs, but for me, they are either not succinct enough or not available in print. It makes it tough to study.

Clearly there is a cost issue, but Adobe Publishing can be smarter these days with their print-runs. Indeed they could even allow developers to choose between a print and PDF versions, much like Manning and many other publishers.

Perhaps Ben is busy. Surely not! But if it is the case, I’m sure there are a number of his peers that could take up the mantle. Cue…

A ray of hope…

There is a small ray of hope. There is likely to be an updated version of the popular CFMX Exam Buster by CentraSoft. Brian Simmons is working hard on the latest version.

ColdFusion Developer Required - Sweatshop.co.uk - Leading Specialist Running Retailer

31st March 2008 in ColdFusion by Simon | No comments

Sweatshop is the leading specialist running retailer in the UK with 29 stores and 6 websites. We organise 2 of the largest road races in the UK and have been in business since 1971.

Sweatshop Logo

Over the next 18 months Sweatshop is looking to dramatically develop its websites, road races and retail operation. We are looking for key personnel to take the business forward as we intend to treble the size of the company in the next 5 years.

Objectives:
To improve the profitability and efficiency of the business by developing applications as required, and give the business much better access to the information it currently holds.

Role:
This role will involve re-authoring existing websites and helping to drive innovative new ideas and concepts throughout the business. This is a fantastic opportunity to drive the online side of the business forward.

Responsibilities:

  • Build web and IT automation to improve process and capability of the company.
  • Support and improve existing developments.
  • Build and implement new website functionality.
  • Build robust & scalable applications.
  • Build reports for existing systems.
  • Work with the senior management team to develop new business ideas.
  • Work with business users to specify and document requirements.
  • Estimate and report on effort required for all projects.
  • Communicate with business users and management, progress on all projects.
  • Manage own time effectively.

Qualifications:
A graduate calibre candidate with an appropriate technical qualification.

Essential Technical Skills:
Coldfusion technology, MS SQL server and MySQL, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, ASP, VB6/VB.net, Crystal reports.

Experience:
3+ years commercial development work including some time within an e-commerce environment or working for an established FMCG company.

Attributes:
Good communicator, Analytical, Ability to work on own initiative, Self starter.

Interested candidates:
If you’re interested and share the company values of ground breaking customer service, integrity, success, teamwork and the welfare of staff, write to:

Sarah Whatley, Sweatshop, 12 Station Road, Hampton, Middlesex TW12 2BX or
email HR@Sweatshop.co.uk

Salary:
£36k+ £40k+ (negotiable dependent on skills and experience)

I’ve Only Been Published!

19th February 2008 in Asides by Simon | No comments

Sys-con Media. You either love them or you hate them, but last week I had one of my articles published by the venerable sage of the digital age.

You can check the article, Future Directions for Rich Internet Applications out on the Flex Developer’s Journal.

Java Developer’s Journal 2006

18th January 2007 in Code, Java, Writing by Simon | No comments

The world’s premier independent, vendor-neutral print resource for the ever-expanding international community of Internet technology professionals using the Java programming language and the Java development platform, has just completed volume 11.

Below are links to of each of the 12 issues.

Firefox Extensions for Web Developers

31st October 2006 in Applications, Browsers, Design, The Web, User Science by Simon | 2 comments

By itself, Firefox is a lean and fast browser, but lacks many functions useful to a Web Developer. This is where extensions come to the rescue. Web Developers use a host of Firefox extensions to increase their efficiency.

Here is a list of the Firefox extensions I utilise in my day-to-day work:

ColorZilla

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/271/

Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.

With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily.

Firebug

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/

FireBug lets you explore the far corners of the DOM by keyboard or mouse. All of the tools you need to poke, prod, and monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax are brought together into one seamless experience, including a debugger, an error console, command line, and a variety of fun inspectors.

FireFTP

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/684/

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

Along with transferring your files quickly and efficiently, FireFTP also includes more advanced features such as: directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SSL encryption, file hashing, and much more.

HTML Validator

http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/

HTML Validator is a Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla.
The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing.
The details of the errors are seen when looking the HTML source of the page.

The extension is based on Tidy. Tidy, was originally developed by the Web Consortium W3C. And now extended and improved by a lot of people. Tidy is embedded inside Mozilla/Firefox and makes the validation locally on your machine, without sending HTML to a third party server.

IE Tab

http://ietab.mozdev.org/

This extension embeds Internet Explorer (IE) in a Mozilla/Firefox tab, which allows you to view your work in IE without launching a separate window.

LinkChecker

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/532/

Checks the validity of links on a web page.

MeasureIt

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/539/

Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.

SEO for Firefox

http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html

This tool was designed to add more data to Google and Yahoo! to make it easier to evaluate the value and competitive nature of a market. SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results. In addition to pulling in useful marketing data this tool also provides links to the data sources so you can dig deeper into the data.

Server Spy

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2036/

Server Spy indicates what brand of HTTP server (eg. Apache, IIS, etc.) runs on the visited sites. When a tab is selected, the corresponding server name is shown on the right-hand side of the browser’s status bar.

Snapper

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2703/

People often take screenshots of web pages for miscellaneous reasons - when designing a page, debugging a web application, or even for graphical reference. Usually, though, only a portion of the screenshot is actually relevant to the user’s purpose, leading to a large portion of the image getting cropped. This can be time consuming, and annoying at times.

Snapper allows users to designate an area of a web page for a focused snapshot, cutting out the additional work needed for cropping unecessary information.

Web Developer

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/60/

http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools.

Here is a list of other extensions I find useful:

CustomizeGoogle
Gmail Space
Google Notebook
GooglePreview
SessionSaver
Tails Export