Front End Developer Job

A friend of mine asked me if I knew anyone that would like to apply for the following job:

A small, relatively new company that has been set up as a sister company to a leading new media agency. Both companies work closely together and both have recently won new clients and have exciting growth and development plans and potential. Due to our size, culture and approach to client service we are looking for candidates who can demonstrate an ability to multi task, work under own steam from brief to completion and who are committed to delivering work that works. We would ideally like someone who can work on own initiative in Flash, Flash Lite 2 (nice to have), HTML, CSS, ASP. The emphasis would be on Flash but must have an eye to dynamic data driven content and applications, through to flash based sales presenters, banners etc. They will need an eye for design (though often design is provided), lateral thought, motion and interactivity when it comes to Flash. In an ideal world they would also have an understanding of .Net or at least what can be done with it. Must have lots of energy, passion and dedication to the job in hand. As a company we will be moving towards dynamic applications which may encompass Adobe Air, Flex etc. in the future. Salary level: circa £35K with possibility of share options

Don't send me details, you can email them

0 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 10:41 AM - Categories: flex | webdev | jobs | flash

Aptana moves to the server side

Those clever folks at Aptana famous for their IDE and Eclipse plugins for JavaScript/Ajax, HTML and CSS have released Jaxer, The Ajax Server:

...Jaxer changes all that. Jaxer is the world's first true Ajax server. HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are native to Jaxer, as are XMLHttpRequests, JSON, DOM scripting, etc. And as a server it offers access to databases, files, and networking, as well as logging, process management, scalability, security, integration APIs, and extensibility

You can get it as part of the IDE or download the standalone server, for Windows, Mac and Linux. I dont find this surprising really, since Paul Colton, the CEO and founder is the man behind JRun! Awesome stuff, and I hope to get some examples up to show you soon!

5 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 9:33 AM - Categories: apple | webdev | eclipse | ajax

Getting to know you! How analytics lets me know who you are.

I am sure lots of people use google analytics on their site to track usage. Its very good for conversion funnels and what have you but it doesn't really have the immediate effect of reporting that I like for blog posts. I have to admit, I am a nosey bugger. I want to know when people are coming to my blog and what they are looking at. I want to know WHO is on my site, I know you dont mind, of course, its only me knowing this stuff right.... right? So, I have been using a service called reInvorate for a long while. It was beta, closed down, become beta again. It has a great feature of showing you who is on your site at the present moment, which is fine if you like knowing that everyone is called "X88893-333-5555"... but if you are using Ray "The Jedi" Camden's BlogCFC, people can ask for the website to remember their details. Now on a tangent, ReInvigorate have released a little tool for Windows and Mac called Snoop which simply displays people coming onto your site. The problem is that they are still pretty anonymous, but I checked something out over at the ReInvigorate site about adding names to these sessions And it turns out that its pretty easy to do it in BlogCFC, you just have to add the following code before the call to ReInvigorate: <cfif isDefined("cookie.blog_name")>
var re_name_tag = "#blog_name#";
</cfif>
<cfif isDefined("cookie.blog_email")>
var re_context_tag="mailto:#cookie.blog_email#";
</cfif>
re_("your_reInvigorate_id"); And then you can finally see who is coming to your site. Nice to see you again too! :)

8 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 9:19 PM - Categories: webdev | coldspring | blogging

Coldfusion handling Java null's

I have been reading a number of posts how to handle nulls in Coldfusion. Coldfusion doesnt naturally handle a "null" object returned from Java (as far as I can see, I have read a few posts and still no definate answer, so here goes for a couple of tips, just to keep myself sane and to remind myself. There are two ways that you can handle a null and it depends what the returned object is, firstly lets handle nulls where the returned object might be something simple like a number or a string, the easiest method would be to simplify the variable, so you can trim the result, if it is null, you will get an empty string: <cfset myString = CreateObject("java", "com.some.Class").init().getName()>

<cfif Len(myString)>
#myString#
</cfif> The second method is used if you return complex data, such as an Array, Structure or Java Objects themselves: <cfset UsersArray = CreateObject("java", "com.some.Class").init().getUsers()>

<cfif isDefined("UsersArray")>
<cfdump var="#UsersArray#">
</cfif> If someone has a better method of managing returned nulls from Java, please let me know and I can update this post.

9 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 10:28 PM - Categories: coldfusion | webdev | Java | reference

Model-Glue outage!

I just got pinged by Joe Rinehart: model-glue.com, clearsoftware.net, doughughes.netand boyzoid.com are all moving servers at the moment and hence they are down. Joe is on the case and all should return to normal soon. your patience, apreciated it is.

4 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 9:03 PM - Categories: model-glue | webdev

cf_teachers (sung to Daft Punk's Teachers)

Ben Forta, Sean Corfield, Ray Camden, Spike Milligan in the house. Joe Rinehart, Doug Hughes, Simeon Bateman, Rob Rohan, Ollie Tupman in the house.
Jared Rypka-Hauer, Nathan Strutz,  Mike Nimer, Tim Buntel is out the house. 

Just a little sing song for all the people who have helped and taught me things about ColdFusion and CFEclipse along the way.

THANK YOU!
(Check out the song on )

2 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 10:25 PM - Categories: model-glue | cfeclipse | personal | coldfusion | fusebox | flex | webdev | reactor | adobe

UKCFUG Presentation: Model Glue and Reactor

On the 27th of April I shall be presenting at the UK CFUG, talking about Model Glue and Reactor. This is my second presentation this year! not bad!  If you would like to attend check out the CFUG site.

Links:
Model Glue
Reactor (Dough Hughes blog)

4 comments - Posted by Mark Drew at 3:55 PM - Categories: model-glue | personal | coldfusion | webdev | reactor