This months CFDJ carries an article that I wrote, I know it’s a shameless plug, but it really doesn’t happen often. It’s all about my experiences with JRun and CFMX instances using Apache or IIS as the web server. Benjamin Blackwell also contributed an article about JRun in this issue entitled Confronting JRun - Who’s Afraid of J2EE?, which takes a good look at what’s going on under the hood of JRun!

Since writing that article I have also made a few additional posts here, which I have listed for convenience and completeness below:

• CFIDE instances on JRun
• JRun ? CFMX instance log files
• Where CF mappings are stored in MX running on JRun

This week ALA carries two new articles. The first entitled Zebra Tables show how to use CSS and a little JavaScript to style table rows, Paying close attention to cross brows compatibility and page weight.

The other shows wonderfully how to create image maps using CSS. Especially the irregular shapes one… Simply awesome.

Dean Edwards has released a patch for IE 6.0 and 5.5 that IE more compliant when it comes to dealing with CSS2. I haven’t tested it but will be sure to [come of the feedback is very positive: http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/03/internet-explorer-7]. The implementation is real simple as well, simply include the CSS file he has created first in your pages.

I have recently started doing some development with Eclipse IDE and I have to say I like it. This entry’s aim is to compile an extensive list of resources and will hopefully continue to grow over time.

• http://www.eclipse.org/ - eclipse home
• http://cfeclipse.rohanclan.com/ - CF auto completion
• http://www.eclipse-plugins.info/eclipse/plugins.jsp?category=Languages - eclipse plugins

One of the main benefits of using CFMX instances on JRun was the ability to have multiple CFIDE administrators for your applications/instances. However despite the CFIDE working fine, the interface was not displaying properly. i.e. all the images and CSS templates were quite simply missing. Checking the path to the CFIDE showed that they were all there ({your Path}\servers\instanceName\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\CFIDE\administrator\), so what was going on?

Well as it turns out, when you run a ColdFusion instance on JRun, it runs in distributes mode. What this means is that JRun is responsible for handling the .cfm and .cfc templates and your web server is responsible for serving the static content, e.g. images and style sheets. So I created a folder combination of CFIDE/administrator in my virtual host directory for that instance (e.g. {your Path}\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\cfide\administrator), copied over the style sheets from {your Path}\servers\instanceName\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\CFIDE\administrator\. Then created another folder for the images and copied them from the previous folder as well. Checked my ColdFusion administrator and all the images and styles were being applied!

Now if you have multiple instances you may not want to copy all of these files over and over again into each websites virtual host directory, in which case you can simply copy them into your default website directory (say {your Path}\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\ ) and then edit your httpd.conf by adding the following instruction:

Alias /cfide/ “{your Path}/Apache Group/Apache2/htdocs/Cfide/”

Big thanks to Sean Corfield for mentioning this on the CFCDev mailing list.

The web reference news letter from a few weeks back carried a link to Micheal Angeles’ blog entry on ways that he adopted to find out how user’s were using page layouts, the outcome of this analysis and the resulting case for change.

Signal 37 have brought up a common issue with delivering projects, that we all face, but probably have never identified as a real/tangible problem before. The Challenge of Designing the "Blank Slate", reflects on the delivery of a dynamic site to the customer with no content available, after all he will be populating it with content once he starts using it.

The solution that have adopted is populating the interface with context relevant information, which will gradually be replaced by the end users content. A nice idea… And here you can see the follow up with some sample screenshots.

I-Lin Kuo, who regularly contributes to the CFDJ list on matters relating to databases has just had his first article published (hat tip Simon Horwith). This is a really good overview of the differences in coding for Oracle and MS SQL and in addition in answers many commonly encountered questions on the list and how they can be solved for either system and of course making the most of the database.

On another note I guess there is very little chance of getting away from having to re-write the queries but if you add DAO design pattern that I mentioned a few weeks back [the SUN website has a pretty good overview, with some samples, of how to apply the pattern in an environment that accommodates MS SQL and Oracle (http://java.sun.com/blueprints/patterns/DAO.html)]. So in addition to the above at least the maintenance/development of queries for differing platforms could be further lightened.

Steve Erat has an entry on his blog on how he set up Homesite+ to run on RedHat using Wine. Getting so close now to be able to switch over, if only I could get my wireless card to work under Linux. Incidentally he also has a whole raft of other information relating to ColdFusion.

I think a while back I posted this ALA article on rounded corners for liquid CSS layouts, here the author expands on his previous article showing you how to accommodate gradient backgrounds.

Incidentally ALA also has a few other articles up there worth checking out: CSS drop shadows and delivering context (media) sensitive content using CSS, which takes the concept of different CSS types (eg: print, screen, etc…) to a new level.