Mark Cyzyk

In the June issue of ColdFusion Developer's Journal (Vol. 1, issue 3), I hinted there might be a way to create subforms using inline frames. This article shows how - using a combination of inline frames, JavaScript, WDDX and, of course, CF. Right now, inline frames are supported only by Internet Explorer, but because they're part of the official HTML specification it's hoped that the other main browser platforms will soon support them. Essentially, inline frames allow a developer to create a space on the screen that acts like a content island - a separate frame surrounded on all sides by the top frame. I'll show how this is done and the benefit of using inline frames instead of text areas to create a subform. The other new technology used in this project, WDDX - the Web... (more)

Creating Subforms with CFGRID

You're familiar with the rudiments of ColdFusion development. You know how to set and read local, session and client variables. You have input, updated and deleted data from a database. You've created drill-down "Master/Detail" templates by passing values in a URL string and you've created dynamic, data-driven SELECT boxes. Your forms look spiffy and everything is working fine, just like... (more)

Mastering ColdFusion 5

I received Mastering ColdFusion 5 two months ago and began using it immediately. Since I had recently upgraded to ColdFusion 5.0, I used this book to learn about some of its new features; I used three of them (query-of-a-query, CFFLUSH, and CFSAVECONTENT) in a single template the first day. This book is an excellent reference to the new features of CF 5.0. That's not all it's good for. Da... (more)

Recursive Custom Tags

I have a confession to make: I wasn't a computer science major in college - I was a philosophy major. While the two disciplines have much in common (conceptual acrobatics, a high degree of abstraction, logical and analytical rigor, obtuse and convoluted texts), I'm finding now that, as a Web applications developer, a study of the basic tenets of computer science can help me create more s... (more)

Everything You Need to Know about XML

What an excellent little book! In a scant 96 pages, Eckstein and Casabianca have managed to present everything you need to know to get up and running with XML. After the obligatory review of what XML is and why it's needed, as well as definitions of some of the key concepts of XML technology, the authors launch into a concise, though comprehensive, discussion of DTD (Document Type Definit... (more)