Tom Schreck

One of the biggest problems developers face everyday is moving a project along and producing solid code without cutting corners. This typically means a lot of copying, pasting, searching and replacing, and a whole lot of manual editing. At every point the potential for error increases. Confidence in your code diminishes and your day gets longer. Now, to add to the joy, consider this: change. Change is inevitable and becomes another item for developers to manage throughout the development lifecycle. Change comes in the form of scope creep, modified business requirements, database schema changes, functionality enhancements, etc. Now change can be good, however at the end of the day these changes can have a big impact on the cost, timelines, and ultimately the success of y... (more)

An Introduction to AJAX and Taconite

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. The core of AJAX is the use of the XMLHttpRequest() object to communicate with server-side scripts. It can send and receive information in XML, HTML, and plain text. The "Asynchronous" part means the client can communicate with the server without page refreshes. This allows you to update portions of a page based upon user events and is what... (more)

XML and cfcPowerTools

CfcPowerTools is a web GUI for generating Cold Fusion Components (CFCs). I started working with CFCs when ColdFusion MX 6 was released. Like many developers, I was intrigued as to what CFCs are and how I can use them to be a better, more productive developer. I played with CFCs following what documentation Google found for me and realized the potential CFCs offer. I found some "best pract... (more)