Christian Schneider

During a recent intranet project, I encountered the need for live reports of all currently open user sessions within an application. The goal was for me to be able to see how many users were currently online with an open session when rolling out new templates from the development server to the production server. That way I would be able to determine whether it was a good idea to update the live production server or if it would be better to wait until the late evening (of course, I'd probably need to call the local pizza service, instead of having a nice dinner with my girlfriend). It would put an end to the numerous nights behind the PC if I could develop some kind of a live-session monitor that enabled me to see how many users were currently online with running sessions... (more)

WDDX with JavaScript

This article demonstrates how to use Allaire's XML serialization technique, Web Distributed Data eXchange (WDDX [described at www.wddx.org]), to transfer CFML data structures from the server to the client, and into JavaScript and back. Generally WDDX's approach is to interchange data of all types (including complex data types such as nested structures, n-dimensional arrays, record sets, ... (more)

Developing a WAP Based E-mail Interface

This article is about developing an application for wireless devices with WAP support. For this I've chosen to implement a WAP-based e-mail client. On the Web, using HTML, this is quickly done with ColdFusion. This should also be true for WAP, I thought. Whether or not it turns out to be true...well, just read on. Okay, it did turn out to be easy, since CFDJ has published several articles ... (more)

Another Custom Tag DHTML Wrapper

This article demonstrates how to write a paired custom tag that encapsulates complex DHTML logic into a simple-to-use tag. I was inspired to write by Tim Buntel's article about DHTML wrappers in CFDJ (Vol. 2, issue 4). It motivated me to extend a custom tag I had developed and used throughout my projects. As you can see from Figures 1 and 2, my custom tag acts like a nice widget that enab... (more)

Using XML Scalable Vector Graphics with CFML

This article describes how to use Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), the amazing new graphic format, with CFML to create dynamic charts and diagrams. SVG is the W3C standard format for scalable graphics based on XML (see www.W3C.org). Yes, that's right, graphics based on XML; for example, see the following code: