I've recently been attempting to learn more about web standards and moving away from things like using tables for layout purposes and the dreaded font tag. In the process I've collected a couple of resources that are a great read on the subject. I thought I would share them for others currently heading down this same path. CSS Zen Garden - Great example of applying different CSS style sheets to a single XHTML 1.0 Strict document to achieve ~100 *completely* different looks. Position is Everything - Articles, tutorials, and links on CSS, the Box Model, browsers quirks, and more. MACCAWS - Making A Commercial Case for Adopting Web Standards. MACCAWS core mission is "To provide Web authors with the resources necessary to promote Web standards as a commercially desirable choice for clients." (via David Foltz on WebSanDiego)

I recently learned this via a blog comment by Adam Howitt:

Cam, Amazon sent a web services message about the servers to be used changing to http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3 from http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml2. Line 24 of the webservice would need to be updated to the new server after April 16th or an error message would be returned. Adam

I've not been able to verify this on Amazon's site, but I didn't look very hard, and I most likely also got this message and it got spam filtered. If anyone knows where Amazon documented this on their website, let me know and I'll add a link to it. I've modified the relevant code and updated the zip file to reflect the change. It's the only substantive change in this version of BookKit CFC, so if you don't feel like redownloading it, feel free just to modify line 24 as Adam indicates in his comment.

I am in the process of creating what I hope will be the first of many "Sumo Guides". I've presented at a few conferences on several topics, and I thought it would be nice to transform some of them into guides that could be useful to the ColdFusion community. The beginnings of the first one, called Sumo Guide to CFMAIL, is up on this site now. I'd welcome any comments on any additional "big picture" CFMAIL related categories or materials not listed that could/should be covered in the guide. I hope to wrap it up in my free time in about a week or so.

Dan Switzer has just announced the long awaited preview / demo of qForms v2.0. He's put alot of new features in this version, and it promises to be even better than the first version, which is pretty hard to beat. If you have been living under a rock and don't know what qForms is, you really are missing out.

As blogged by Ben Forta, Paperthin recently released version 4.0 of their CMS product, CommonSpot. As some may be aware - one of the sites I work with, PGA.com, uses CommonSpot. When Turner Sports Interactive (who manages PGA.com) first talked with the folks at PaperThin, we requested/suggested several features in the product. Two of these features were popular requests they had also received from other customers, and have been included as new features in version 4.0. XHTML Support - While older versions of CommonSpot work well in all browsers, they didn't come close to validating as proper XHTML. They've done alot of work towards producing valid XHTML, which isn't a small accomplishment when considering the complexity involved in the 4,000+ files in the CommonSpot application. Static Site Generation - Scaling a CommonSpot application out across several servers can get expensive when you consider the CF/CommonSpot licensing fees involved on the extra machines. Static site generation makes the product far more viable for sites with heavy traffic by allowing sites to be generated as static files and copied over a large number of webservers.

Since Amazon doesn't have any ColdFusion example apps in their Web Services developer center, I submitted the AmazonKit CFC to the Web Service folks as a simple sample app. As a result, the CFC will very likely be listed at Amazon, but they requested that I change the name so that the word "Amazon" isn't in it. I don't really have a problem with that, so I have renamed AmazonKit CFC to BookKit CFC. I figured this might eventually happen, and probably should have known better than to use the word Amazon in the program's name in the first place. :) ...and for the record, the CFC retrieves more than just book information but I wasn't creative enough to come up with a better name. Any ASIN will work with the BookKit CFC.

Andrew Stopford has published an article on using Flex with .Net called Flex, .NET and Flash Remoting pt1. Flex is cool, very cool. When I recently suggested it to a (.NET/CF) programmer friend of mine in San Diego I was reminded that unless it could interface with .NET it was of no use to him. My answer to him was that since Flex can consume WebServices/XML/SOAP, it will work with just about any current version of just about any Middleware out there. I'm glad to see non-CF communities embracing it!

A couple of people have emailed me asking about the "pod" code for using the AmazonKit CFC along with blog.cfc in the sidebar Recommended Reading box. I've included it below in case anyone else wants it. Just save this code into yoursite/blog/includes/reading.cfm and then include it alongside the other pods in yoursite/blog/tags/layout.cfm. Note:This assumes you have put the AmazonKit CFC in the application scope. I would suggest doing this in the Application.cfm file like so:

I've been an Amazon Associate for quite a few years, and the program has been pretty good to me. As some may have noticed, I have a rotating book link in the "Recommended Reading" box on the sidebar of this blog. Today I wrapped up the CFC for this, attached a pretty liberal license to it, and have made it available to anyone for download. The CFC has two methods, one taking a single ASIN (ISBN) and the other taking a list of ASINs and rotating among the list. The CFC will talk to Amazon's webservice interface and return an XSLT formatted result, complete with the proper AssociatesID! A handful of XSL files are included in the distribution to get you started. This is the first release, so I'd be very interested in hearing any feedback if people find problems or add on extra functionality!

Looks like Macromedia Max 2004 will be held in New Orleans this year! Makes me wonder what the big party event will be on the last night...