User Error + QBQ → User Interface Error

About once a day, I sift through our aggregated Web server error messages.  My usual sorting goes something like “this needs to be addressed, that one is novel, this one is my personal test and can be ignored.”  Usually there’s at least one issue where my first reaction is “Oh, that’s just user error.”

One particular error kept coming up from our internal users to the point that it became a nuisance, and I cried out “Why can’t they get that right?!” Immediately, I was convicted by what I had read in QBQ: The Question Behind the Question (a must-read for the Dave Ramsey team).  That wasn’t a ‘QBQ’ question. What can I do so that my internal users will get that right? In this case, a drop-down list contained an invalid option entitled “Select an Option”   The solution was obvious, remove the invalid option and enhance the then-arcane validation message. This process can be generalized to the following:

User Error + QBQ → User Interface Error

Don’t get me wrong, some times a user behavior is just too bizarre to code around it.  (The customer isn’t always right.) Sometimes a customer just needs some education.  The point is that as the solution developer, I’m responsible (at least in part) for my end-users’ actions. It is neglect of this truth that yields the bad reputation programmers get for their people skills.

Let’s do better. The next time you’re faced with a “PEBKAC” error, before you write it off as ID-10-T, consider the UI or the UX or the messaging or the training. You’ll ultimately wind up with a better product.  Who knows, maybe you’ll even create documentation.

Zooming like a pro with MapQuests AS3 api!

Wow, so I have had a ticket sitting in my queue for some time now that I didn’t think would be easy. What we had to do was zoom into a location while leaving that location in the same relative position for the user. After much thinking (about two hours) I came up with my solution. We use MapQuests AS3 api to interact with our maps.

The principle is simple. Figure out where the users mouse is. Get the XY, zoom in, figure out what LatLng is in that XY Position, and get the difference. Then apply the difference to the center point and set the new center point.

public function zoomMapKeepingXYCoords():void
{
var mouseXY:IPointXY = new PointXY(myMap.mouseX, myMap.mouseY);
var mouseLL:IPointLL = myMap.pixToLL(new PointXY(myMap.mouseX, myMap.mouseY));
setZoom(myMap.getZoomLevel() + 1);
var newLLatXY:IPointLL = myMap.pixToLL(mouseXY);
var latDiff:Number = mouseLL.lat – newLLatXY.lat;
var lngDiff:Number = mouseLL.lng – newLLatXY.lng;
var centerAftZoom:IPointLL = myMap.getCenter();
var newCenter:IPointLL =
       new PointLL(myMap.getCenter().lat + latDiff,myMap.getCenter().lng + lngDiff );
myMap.setCenter(newCenter);
}

Have Fun!

Take that, TicketMa$ter!

What’s the coolest project you’ve ever worked on? When that question was posed to me, one project immediately came to mind.

• 2-D bar-code scanner-equipped, wireless, hand-held computers.
• Portable wireless network that spans any arbitrary venue (including 15,000 seat arenas).
• Online event registration and e-ticketing.
• Three months.
• One developer.

When I started working with Dave Ramsey’s LIVE Events team, we were manually fulfilling about 30,000 paper tickets each year.  Event attendance growth looked to out-pace our capacity to fulfill tickets.  Electronic ticketing was not merely on Dave’s wish list, it was a necessity for my department to meet growing demand.  It was, to be dramatic, the reason I was hired.  It was also due to launch in 4 fewer months than the Web team had planned!

Looming deadlines are great for killing scope-creep.  We wound up using our existing antiquated event registration system with an appendage for emailing PDFs.  I figured we could distribute e-tickets in November for a February event, with the hope that we would have a way of scanning them by the time we got there.

At break-neck pace, we researched bar codes scanners, bar code generator libraries, wireless LAN gear, and vendors to quote on all that stuff.  This was a lot like laying down train tracks while rolling at full speed.  In fact, for the first event, migrating the data from the Web systems database to the gate control database required a few command line tricks and manually stopping and starting Tomcat.

Throughout the course of the events season, much of my manual intervention was automated until I was no longer needed on the road.  During our second season, the system matured to the point where events could happen without my even knowing about it.  It has been an awesome experience to pull this off with the aid of a great team, and with the trust from leadership to architect this and plan my releases as I saw necessary and feasible.  All in all, it looks like the decision to build in house, however rapidly it had to be done, has yielded 20-25 fold compared to the cost of [utilizing some other ticketing service].

FPU CONFERENCE CENTER AVAILABLE

To give back to the local tech community, we’re making the FPU Conference Center available to user groups for upcoming conferences, meetings, etc.

This beauty of a building is located behind Financial Peace Plaza in Cool Springs Brentwood, TN.  Capacity of 300 with sound system, projectors, and dining area.

Please contact us for more information!

615-515-3223 ext. 5566

Independence Delay

W3C announced today the end of the XHTML 2 working group charter.  It has long been apparent that HTML 5 would become a reality, much to my chagrin, but I had hoped deep down that XHTML2 would not die.  You see, HTML 5 is a great tactical move to progress HTML making multimedia easier (among other things) for content authors. However, strategically, I feel this sets back the Web, particularly the semantic Web. I am disappointed, not because XHTML 2 has better features than HTML 5, but because the promotion of HTML 5 over XHTML 2 moves the Web in the wrong direction.

What’s so great about XHTML2

What’s so great about XHTML2? There are some nice cleanups, like replacing <h1-6> with a simple <h>.  The <hr> is replaced with a more semantically-named <separator>. The generalization of the href and src attributes were also pretty exciting. However, the biggest thing is decentralized extensibility. In fact, the W3C mentioned this in their FAQ regarding the end of XHTML2. The very existence of HTML 5 exemplifies why this is a big deal. Decentralized extensibility means we can create our own vocabularies independent of browser implementations.

The current state of things

As a developer, you’re stuck with the elements a user-agent implements.  With HTML, you are limited to what a consortium managed to agree upon and browser authors implemented (somewhat) consistently. The needs of content authors and the capabilities browsers have outgrown the existing centralized vocabularies of HTML 4 and XHTML 1.  HTML 5 addresses this problem with a brute force method: keep improving the centralized vocabulary, and try to keep up with the developer community.

Where we could be headed

If we currently live in the era of the Web browser, we ought to be headed toward the era of the XML browser.With XML, we have more liberty. We can create XML documents with our own vocabularies. We can even define the vocabularies through DTDs or other schemata.  We can mix and match our vocabularies with others. We can define the layout and presentation of new languages with CSS and XSL-FO. Better still, we can define what our new elements and attributes mean through RDF and its related technologies. This is the key.

Every time I mention this, I get the same question, “How would a browser know that my attribute mynamespace:foo@fetcherator is the same as html:a@href?” This is where RDF comes in. With semantic technologies, we can define our vocabularies in such a way that a browser will know.

Why can’t we head there with HTML 5?

We can. In fact, I believe we will (though perhaps more slowly now). My concern is the motivation behind the HTML enhancements in HTML 5 vs XHTML 2. XHTML 2 was a continuation of the W3C’s efforts to bring the benefits of XML into HTML, while HTML 5 seems to bring the benefits of new user agent capabilities into HTML. We need to decouple the user agent capabilities from our document vocabularies. This is true independence.

We can still do this.  The future may still be bright. I hope that we do not lose the vision as we postpone liberty for the comforts afforded by the latest iteration of a centralized HTML.

Adobe ColdFusion Rocks Lampo

On June 18th we were honored to have had the 2009 Adobe ColdFusion User Group Tour on our very own stomping grounds in Brentwood, TN.  The event was held in our conference center and we had a great turn out.  Greg Wilson, an Adobe Product Evangelist, demo’ed many new features in the upcoming release of ColdFusion 9.  The majority of our crew attended and took a lot away from it.  Here are some of their thoughts and photos with highlights from the exciting night!

“I’m particularly pleased with the ability to do much more in <cfscript /> that ever before. As a Java developer, it makes ColdFusion much more appealing. Also, Hibernate integration is particularly interesting – that should improve productivity for data-driven apps dramatically.”

Doug Smith – Sr. Web Programmer

“It was great to see how much Adobe has their finger on the pulse of the development community.  Many of the new features for CF9 are things that just in the past week I had heard someone say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if you could do that in Coldfusion?’ and sure enough, soon you’ll be able to.  Getting that behind-the-scenes perspective from Greg was really cool.”

Ty DeLong – Web Programmer

“The most interesting parts of the event for me were seeing the demonstration of the new, long-awaited Bolt IDE.  It has a lot of nice features that should improve development.  I also enjoyed the new features of the next version of the ColdFusion language. The presenter explained that Adobe has added a lot of little features to make syntax more consistent throughout ColdFusion. They’ve also added some interesting controls, ie. the DataGrid, which might help us to do some standard things more quickly.”

Ron Coffman – Marketing Web Programmer

“The event was a great example of Adobe stepping up once more and retooling ColdFusion into an industry-leading Rapid Application Development language. It was awesome to hear first-hand about some features that I’ve wanted to see for quite a while!”

Tim Kucejko – Web Programmer

“Several great features were presented. Bolt looks like a nice upgrade to CFEclipse. I like the new tags that simplify using JavaScript interface components. I also like the enhancements being made to the cfscript tag. But best of all: ternary operator …”

Jon Fouss – Sr. Web Programmer

Ugly Shirt Day 2009

Our team has been working really hard lately on redesigning the Dave Ramsey site (which is going to look amazing!  keep an eye out!!!).  The other day, a few of us were discussing the new site when one of the guys complimented another on his choice of attire for the day.  The recipient of the adulation was our very own Jon Wolski.  He is the embodiment of retro chic and that particular day was sporting a fabulous Hawaiian button-up.

In a half-joking, half-serious manner it was suggested that we sponsor a Hawaiian shirt day in honor of those who are “encouraged” to do so regularly by corporate america to support “team spirit.”  The idea bloomed to wearing some silly shirt every Friday for the month of June.

Well, last Friday we had Ugly Shirt Day 2009!  Don’t we look awesome?  So with all this shirt ugliness going around we decided to vote for the worst.

Here are the results!

That cool dude posing in the front, Jim, WON with his “Dream” shirt and Kelly, off to the far right received Runner-Up with his amazing “Three Wolves” shirt.  For the prize Jim received an official “Ug Mug” and ugly bird figurine trophy!  Kelly won an ugly hat.  Congratulations boys for making ugly look easy!  I didn’t do too bad myself, ehhh?!

Cheers to all,

Katie

“An Untamed Spirit” (It’s on my classy Sturgis 2001 shirt)

Have a great week everybody!

P.S. Chris took these radical photos!  Way to go dude!

You know... just being ourselves!

2009 Adobe ColdFusion User Group Tour

In just a few short weeks, we’ll have the privilege of hosting Adobe and the Nashville Cold Fusion User Group here at our facilities in Brentwood, TN for the 2009 Adobe ColdFusion User Group Tour.

Here’s the official post from the NCFUG website:

We are SUPER excited to have the opportunity to get the surrounding ColdFusion community together to talk about the next release of ColdFusion. This year our presenter will be Greg Wilson, an AIR, ColdFusion, Flex, and LiveCycle ES evangelist at Adobe.

Greg will be coming to Nashville to talk about the new features in ColdFusion, how ColdFusion integrates with other technologies like AIR, Flex, and LiveCycle, and he’ll be demoing many of the new features in the next version.

We’ll have food, drink, and some awesome prizes/giveaways, so you do not want to miss this special event. Finally, I’m happy to report the great folks at Dave Ramsey / The Lampo Group, Inc. will be hosting this event at the Russ Carroll Financial Peace Conference Center just minutes from downtown Nashville. They were a big reason this same event in 2007 was a success and we are excited they’ll be part of it again.

As we work with Adobe to nail down some final details we will update this page. So go ahead and RSVP and check back for additional information.

WHEN:
Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 7:00pm CDT

WHERE:
Russ Carroll Financial Peace Conference Center (map link below)

SPEAKER:
Greg Wilson – Adobe evangelist for AIR, ColdFusion, Flex and LiveCycle ES

RSVP Info:
In order to help us plan the event we kindly ask you to RSVP by pressing the link below. It only takes a few seconds!

Location Info
1749 Mallory Lane, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027

Map of Location

RSVP for this Meeting

We hope you can come out and join us!

Custom Fonts in ColdFusion

We have a couple non-standard fonts that we use for some of our our FPU class materials. For our new Coordinator Resource Center we wanted to use these same fonts in a server generated PDF file. However, this was the first time we’ve actually used a non-standard font with ColdFusion. This turned out to be a much more difficult task than it would seem. During this process I ran into a few issues. (These apply to ColdFusion MX 7.02)

Font Family vs Font Face
Within the True Type Font file, there are definitions for the “Font Family” and the “Font Face.” For some reason, ColdFusion would not read the file unless these were set to the exact same string. I used a font editor to modify these. In addition, if the font file contains different a “Windows Name” and “Mac Name” you might want to make those the same as well.

System vs. User Defined File Location
There is a difference in where you place the files. If you happen to be running ColdFusion on a Windows box, you’re better off just installing the fonts as you normally would through the control panel. Developing locally, I didn’t have any problems with that. However, our server runs Linux and I needed to set a custom path to tell ColdFusion where to look for the fonts. This is easily done through the Administrator control panel.

However, unless you have this hot fix installed, it will never read the fonts and never give you an error. The admin tool will show you they are installed, but when you try to generate a PDF using them, it will always fall back to a system font. The documentation on this hot fix gives you no indication that it will fix this problem, and it is not included in any other service pack.  However, this solved the problem for us.

Font Types
Supposedly, ColdFusion will support the following font types:
TTF (True Type Font)
TTC (True Type Collection)
OTF (Open Type Font)
AFM (Adobe Font Metrics)
However, I ran into an OTF font where (no matter what I did) I could not get the PDF to output that font. It would keep falling back to the system font. I ended up using [FontForge] to convert it from OTF to TTF.

Plan your escape

URL encoding is not character/entity encoding.

This should go without saying, but I frequently see this confused by experienced developers, especially when working with dynamic/loosely typed languages.

URL encoding is for URLs (URIs to be more generic).  The only time to URL-encode a string is when it is part of a URL.  JavaScript provides encodeURI(), encodeURIComponent(), decodeURI, and decodeURIComponent().  In ColdFusion, you can use the  URLEncodedFormat() and URLDecode() functions.  PHP provides urlencode(), rawurlencode() and their decode counterparts.

Entity encoding is used for representing characters in a document that lie outside of the document character set or have a special meaning within the document.  For example In XML, &, <,>,”,and ‘ have to be encoded as entities (‘&, >, etc.) in the document source code.  Typically, characters outside of “low” ASCII need to be encoded as well.  In client-side code, you typically need not worry about entity-encoding. You’re working with a DOM, not document source code, so entity expansion/subsitituion has already been done.

ColdFusion is a little tricky on this one.  There is no equivalent to PHP’s htmlentities.  You basically have two options, HTMLEditFormat and XMLFormat.  The former will encode characters with special meanings, but it misses high-ASCII (and higher).  The latter will encode high-ASCII, but will not use special HTML entity names.  It’s for (the more generic) XML after all.  XMLFormat escapes characters using character entity references.

The concept applies outside of this concrete example, but this is the example that led me to channel my angst into what I hope is a helpful guide post for others.  In fact, you’ll notice that two paragraphs above, Word Press has transformed my double and single quotes to right-double and left-single quotes, respectively.  What are some other escaping/transforming pitfalls you’ve seen?