Dave's shared items in Google Reader

Dashboard 2.1

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:30:05 GMT

Here's an initial preview of the dashboard changes coming up in the 2.1 release.

Changes

Switched from jFlot (JavaScript) to amCharts (Flash)

It seemed like every JavaScript graph solution I tried ended up either eating a lot of browser memory or becoming very slow if viewed for a long period. Although I don't see the live charts as being the solution for long term views of activity, until I add my solution for historical graphs they're the only option available. So I decided to switch to Flash based charts.

amCharts appeared to be the best solution I found. They were flexible enough for live charts without causing a total redraw or noticeable flickering that I found with FusionCharts and OFC2. They also had very good JavaScript support making it easier for graphs like "sessions per application" to cope with new applications appearing.

Calling in the tabs

The tabs have disappeared to give the graphs more room. Their main reason for existing was to cope with very long application names causing the key to cover the jFlot chart. The new dashboard has an options button where you can select which applications you want displayed and which you'd like selected (provides hover information name/value/time).

One request to rule them all

The 2.0 dashboard makes a separate request per graph, so a total of 4 every 5 seconds. I figured it'd make more sense to combine the requests so we only have 1 per 5 seconds. This makes a lot more sense if you're using CfTracker on a troubled server, you don't want too much activity from your monitoring tool.

Todo

There are still a couple of things to alter on the dashboard but it's pretty much there.

Memory graph to include heap + non-heap details (possibly memory pools as well).
Memory graph might have garbage collections added.
Graph options button might be moved or altered.

If you want to see what else is coming in 2.1, take a look at the Roadmap.

Stopping the bot rot

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:00:25 GMT

CfTracker gets a useful mention by John Whish (@Aliaspooryorik) in a post about managing bot sessions (from search engines).

In the post he talks about Ben Nadel's approach to changing your application code to limit bot sessions. Further on he mentions how useful CfTracker was when it came to tracking down what applications suffering from bot created sessions. He also comments on how he used it to kill around 500 sessions by IP address to clear up those created by a bot.

Designing Style Guidelines For Brands And Websites

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:49:28 GMT

A website is never done. Everyone has worked on a project that changed so much after it launched that they no longer wanted it in their portfolio. One way to help those who take over your projects is to produce a style guide.

Edward Tufte once said: “Great design is not democratic; it comes from great designers. If the standard is lousy, then develop another standard.” Although there’s no stopping some clients from making their website awful, by creating a style guide, you’re effectively establishing rules for those who take over from you.

Why Create A Style Guide?

You’ll have an easy guide to refer to when handing over the project.
Makes you look professional. They’ll know you did everything for a reason
You maintain control of the design. When someone does something awful, you can refer them to the document.
You avoid cheapening the design, message and branding.
Forces you to define and hone your style, making for a more cohesive design.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you already get your copy of the Smashing Book?]

Branding Guidelines: What To Include?

Strategic Brand Overview

This should be short and sweet. In as few words as possible, make clear the vision for this design and any keywords people should keep in mind while designing. Most people will probably flip straight to the picture pages, but they may read a few sentences here.

See Kew’s branding guidelines.

Kew uses strong photography in its “brand essence” message, with a few paragraphs that both inspire and define the brand. Even if you read only the first sentence, you get a sense of what it’s trying to do. While Kew has quite a few of these message pages, they are intertwined with beautiful photography that themselves define the photographic style and primary message.

Logos

For print and Web, most brands revolve around the logo. Make sure you provide logo variations and clarify minimum sizes.

See Cunard’s branding guidelines.

Cunard provides many variations on its minimum sizes. Because its crest can be displayed either on its own, with the name or with the tagline, specifying minimum sizes is important for legibility (for example, if the logo with the tagline is too small, it will be illegible).

See Think Brick’s branding guidelines.

Provide logos with different colors, and specify which colours are allowed. Think Brick gives designers a lot of options with its design. The point is to allow flexibility while maintaining consistency.

Show Examples of What and What Not to Do

You’re a professional, and you know better than to mess around with logos. But many others will try and think they’ve done a good job. They are so wrong. You must make clear what they can and cannot do with a design.

See I Love New York’s branding guidelines.

I Love New York has done a great job defining all the things you shouldn’t do with its logo. It has also produced a beautiful (though bit wordy) document.

Spacing

Many non-designers underestimate the need for white space. Include a spacing reference, especially for the logo. Rather than specifying inches or centimeters, use a portion of the logo (a letter or a shape) to set the clearance. This way, whether the logo is big or small, the space around it will be sufficient.

See BlackBerry’s branding guidelines (PDF, 2.2 MB).

BlackBerry not only explains its spacing policy, but also uses the capital B in the logo to define the clearance.

Colors

Always include color palettes and what the colors should be used for. And include formats for both print and Web: CMYK, Pantones (if they exist) and RGB (or HEX). Always include a CMYK alternative for Pantones because sometimes matching is hard (especially when Pantone printing is not possible). Specify primary and secondary colours and when and where to use them.

See Channel 4’s style guide.

Channel 4 shows all of its Web and print colors, and it displays the swatches below an image that helps to define its color palette.

See the New School’s branding guidelines.

The New School is clear about its primary colors and defines them for both print (Pantone and CMYK) and Web (RGB). Its brand guideline document is beautiful, too.

See Christopher Doyle’s Personal Identity Guidelines.

Okay, so this one isn’t a traditional branding guideline, but rather a personal identity guideline. Here Christopher Doyle shows off some alternative color palettes. He does a fantastic job of mocking branding guidelines; well worth a look (and chuckle).

Fonts

You’ll need to define the typefaces to use: sizes, line height, spacing before and after, colors, headline versus body font, etc. Make sure to include Web alternatives for non-Web fonts.

See Yale’s typeface.

Yale has its own typeface, which it provides to its designers.

See Yale’s Visual Identity page.

On the typeface section of its website, Yale also details when fonts should be used. It has a specific Web font section, detailing which fonts to use there.

Layouts and Grids

By setting up templates and guidelines for grids, you encourage best practices and promote consistency. In Web, preparing some generic templates can curb excessive creativity with the layout.

See the Barbican’s branding, print and Web guidelines.

For its website, the Barbican has set up building blocks that are both flexible and ordered—meaning they’re likely to remain in a grid.

Tone of Voice

A huge component of a brand’s personality is the copy, and defining the tone is a great way to keep a brand consistent. When multiple people are writing the copy, the brand can start to sound like it has multiple personalities.

See easyJet’s branding guidelines (PDF, 2 MB).

easyJet has a well-defined personality, both verbal and written, and it gives examples for both.

Copy-Writing Guide

For those who require clients to write their own copy but want to maintain consistency, a copy-writing style guide can be helpful. Copy-writing is one of those things that most people register subconsciously. When reading, your brain automatically looks for consistency and patterns, and poor copy-writing can ruin the reading flow.

See CAN’s branding guidelines (PDF, 845 KB).

CAN wants its number formats to look the same. On another page, it defines which spelling variants to use, reminds people of common mistakes and more.

Imagery

Many designers have established a particular tone in their photographs and images. Show your clients examples, and explain why they are good choices. Show them in the context of your design, and explain why they were chosen for that context.

See Zopa’s style sheet (PDF, 3.7 MB).

Zopa has done a fantastic job of making its illustrated style clear. Its online style guide is very good, and it offers further tips on how to construct pages around its illustrations in the online style sheet.

Bring It All Together

Show a few examples of what the logo, photography and text look like together and the preferred formats.

See Skype’s branding guidelines.

Skype has done a fantastic job of showing how it want designers to use its illustrations and photography. It has examples of the subtle differences between good and bad usage. The whole guide is beautiful and well worth a look.

Web Guidelines: What To Include?

Many people create branding guidelines but forget to include important style guides for the Web. Just like branding guidelines, Web guidelines keep everything consistent, from button styles to navigation structure.

Button Hierarchy

You’ve carefully decided what all the buttons are for and meticulously defined their states. Unfortunately, the in-house designer hasn’t applied your hover states or has created their own, and they look terrible.

Create a page that shows what all links do (including the buttons), the appropriate behavior of each and when to use them (with examples of appropriate usage). If one button is dominant, make clear the maximum number of times it should be used per page (usually once at most). Define the hover, disabled and visited states for all buttons.

Gumtree.

Gumtree has worked hard to define all button states, especially custom buttons (for example, Post an Ad has a + sign in front of it). These were defined for the Gumtree redesign, which is now live.

Icons

Defining size and spacing and where to use icons is another great way to promote consistency. If icons should be used only sparingly, make this clear.

See ZURB’s icon sizes.

Here, the ZURB agency defines icon sizes and when to use them, and it provides clients with an online source from which to download them. ZURB also defines badges and explains their purpose. It believes that its guidelines are best shared online.

Navigation (Logged In/Out States)

On the Web, good consistent navigation can make or break a website. New pages are often added to a website after the designer is done with it. Have you left some space for this? Doing things like letting people know what to do with new navigation items and showing logged-in states make for a cleaner website.

See the BBC’s Global Experience Language.

This is one of the most beautiful guidelines I’ve seen. BBC shows what to do with long user names, how much space everything should have and more.

Basic Coding Guidelines

There’s no way to make someone else code like you, but you can offer others basic guidelines that will minimize the damage, such as:

CSS class naming conventions
Should they use .camelCase or .words-with-dashes?
JavaScript integration
Are you using jQuery? MooTools? How should new JavaScript be integrated?
Form styling
Include the code, error states and more so that they understand what style conventions you expect.
Doc type and validation requirements
Do you allow certain invalid items? Do you expect the CSS and HTML to validate?
Directory structure
Make clear how you have organized it.
Accessibility standards
Should people include alt tags? Is image replacement used for non-standard fonts?
Testing methods
Which standard should they test with? Do you have staging and production websites?
Version control
What system are you using? How should they check in new code?

How To Format

Some branding guidelines have been turned into beautiful books:

See the Truth brand guidelines.

This beautiful example, which was designed to go with a brand redesign, shows just how beautiful branding guidelines can be.

But this requires a substantial budget and a reprint every so often. For most companies with tight budgets, this is not practical. On the Web especially, content is constantly being refined and styles for elements are not set in stone.

Here are a few good practices for formatting your guidelines:

Include a cover
This should include an example of best practices for the logo.
Make it beautiful
Even if it won’t be printed as a book, you can still make sure the branding guidelines appeal to the viewer. After all, you’re trying to inspire them to use your designs to the highest standards!
Include contact details
For when they have questions, so that you can prevent bad decisions from being made.
Make it easy to access and open
Usually this means putting it online or in PDF format. Don’t make it too big; use images sparingly.
Make it printable
For international companies especially, keep margins big so that the document can be printed in both A4 and US letter sizes. If it’s online, make sure your print style sheets render the document as expected. Don’t do white text on a black background, either: you don’t want the client to have to buy a new ink cartridge every time they print a copy.
Make it easy to change
Updating, adding new pages and making changes should be easy, because it will happen!
Create a mini version
Make a short handy guide that has just the basics, in addition to the full version. Both will get used in different instances.
Provide print templates whenever possible
Things like letterheads, business cards and envelops should have their own templates. While guidelines will help people put things in the right spot, they usually won’t help them get the right resolution or color format.

Here’s a useful template for a one-page branding guideline.

Length

Remember, people should be able to follow branding guidelines. A 100-page book will engage none but the most diligent designer. Many believe that a concise three-page overview is best for daily use, with a more in-depth 20-page document for more complex tasks. Less is more, usually!

See the BBC’s branding guidelines and poster.

The BBC has created a detailed 38-page guideline. But it has also produced a beautiful poster for quick reference. It’s a brilliant idea, and it keeps the guidelines at the front of mind.

Resources

The Web Style Guide, 3rd Edition
A comprehensive guide for the Web.
Corporate Brand Guidelines
A list of design guidelines. Some are old but still useful.
Brand Identity
A great article from Computer Arts magazine on building your brand identity
20 Top Tips for Designing Effective Brand Guidelines, from Saatchi
The Corporate Identity Manual (Brand Style Guide)

You may be interested in the following related posts:

(al)

DaisyDiff.cfc (Active)

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:56:53 GMT

A ColdFusion wrapper for DaisyDiff

New ColdBox eBooks and prices slashed!

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 03:00:25 GMT

Just a nice reminder that our ColdBox eBooks have been price slashed to $29.99 in honor of having a great summer! So check out our new offerings below and if the prices have not been updated yet, then please wait as the catalogs are updated. FYI: The eBook format now supports printing, copy/paste and email:

eBook Format
Kindle Format
iBooks/iPad/iPhone is coming soon!

Building an Extension for Railo: Part 1

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 06:45:25 GMT

My role at Railo Technologies has so far been much more of a consultant so far. We consult and develop a number of projects on ACF and Railo and as I am a happy CFML user this has worked out great so far.

One of the things that I wanted to get much more into was the engine itself, and adding features to it. One feature that I am currently working on is creating a CouchDB Cache Extension.

Why CouchDB? Will firstly because it has a really simple API, secondly because you can make it replicate as needed and this makes for a great document based object store.

What I have been doing is:

Building an Extension

Building a development Extension Provider

Automating the updating of the Extension

Running Railo with a Java Debugger

Running tests on the extension

Building the Extension and a Development Extension Provider

Rather than going into all the backgound information about building your extension provider, there is a great tutorial over at the Railo Wiki, check that out before you go on, so that we are on the same page:

Building an Extension Provider Tutorial

Done? Good, now I can show you what I have been doing differently.

Each extension is a zip file with a config.xml that describes the steps involved in installing it to the Railo Administrator. But in my ExtensionProvider.cfc there is a method that gets information about the extension, and usually this is hard coded. I thought, why not include that in my extension? So I added an info node to the config.xml of the extension itself:

<config>
 <info>
 <id>10EEC23A-0779-4068-9507A9C5ED4A8646</id>
 <version>1.201007021028</version>
 <name>couch</name>
 <type>server</type>
 <label>CouchDB Cache</label>
 <description>CouchDB Cache extension</description>
 <created>2010-July-2 10:28</created> 
 <category>Core Extension</category> 
 </info>
 <step></step>
</config>

Now in my extension provider, I can just dynamically read this data to provide information to the Railo Administrator:

<cffunction name="populateCOM" access="private" returntype="void">
 <cfargument name="apps" type="query" required="yes">
 <cfset var exp="this extension is experimental and will no longer work with the final release of railo 3.1, it is not allowed to use this extension in a productve enviroment.">
 
 <cfset var rootURL=getInfo().url & "/extensions/">
 <cfset var zipFileLocation = 'ext/CouchDBCache.zip'>
 
 <cffile action="read" file="zip://#expandPath(zipFileLocation)#!/config.xml" variable="config">
 <cfset info = XMLParse(config)>

 <cfset QueryAddRow(apps)>
 <cfset QuerySetCell(apps,'download',rootURL & zipFileLocation)>
 <cfset QuerySetCell(apps,'id', info.config.info.id.XMLtext)>
 <cfset QuerySetCell(apps,'name',info.config.info.name.XMLtext)>
 <cfset QuerySetCell(apps,'type',info.config.info.type.XMLtext)>
 <cfset QuerySetCell(apps,'label',info.config.info.label.XMLtext)>
 <cfset QuerySetCell(apps,'description',info.config.info.description.XMLtext)>
 <cfset QuerySetCell(apps,'created',info.config.info.created.XMLtext)>
 <cfset QuerySetCell(apps,'version',info.config.info.version.XMLtext)>
 <cfset QuerySetCell(apps,'category',info.config.info.category.XMLtext)>
 </cffunction>

If all is good, you should now be able to add the extension provider to the Railo Server context.

And you should see your newly available extension in the Applications section of the Railo Server Administrator:

This means you can now install it!

In my next post I shall go into the other files that make up the extension and how you can automatically build it.

FREE Railo hosting is now available at CFMLDeveloper.com

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:01:01 GMT

As of today, Railo 3.1 is now available at CFMLdeveloper.com.

If you already have an account then simply login to HELM and go to Packages -> add new and choose one of the new Railo Plans. Please note that the SETUP fee still applies for all new packages, but is still a one-time fee for fraud validation purposes and your hosting is then FREE forever. For more info please refer to the HELP pages.

If you do not yet have an account then simply SIGNUP from the hosting page.

Please don't forget to check the Hosting support pages if you get stuck, most common questions can be found there.

Stress Testing your website with Apache jMeter

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:45:15 GMT

I recently got a chance to work with jMeter to stress test one of the Projects I was working on. jMeter is an open source software like all other Apache Projects. It is written in 100% pure Java and works as a desktop application. The installation is pretty easy and straightforward as well. Download the [...]

getUploadData

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:00:28 GMT

Returns a structure containing upload information.

My Company, Epicenter Consulting, Is Looking For ColdFusion Developers

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:31:18 GMT

Epicenter Consulting has some exciting projects on the horizon. As such, Clark Valberg and I are looking for some full-time, off-site ColdFusion developers to join our team. This would be an opportunity to work with passionate developers in an environment that promotes best practices, facilitates open communication, and rewards innovative thinking. Your relationshi ... Read More »

JQuery 101: Getting html attributes using JQuery

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:15:48 GMT

One of the things I find myself doing a lot in JQuery is getting and setting html attributes. It is very easy indeed to get the values of attributes, much like the old style document.getElementById javascript method, except in JQuery it is much easier. This article is the first in a planned series demonstrating some of the key concepts of the JQuery library, and how to use it, starting at a beginner level and working up. Here is an example of getting attributes using JQuery. [More]

CommonPlaces Blog: Drupal 7 vs. WordPress 3: Battle of the New Features

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:58:11 GMT

On the CommonPlaces blog today there's a new post from Harry looking at a "battle" that's looming on the horizon between two of the major PHP-based content driven applications - the battle of the new features between WordPress 3 and Drupal 7.

Two highly anticipated CMS releases, Drupal 7.x and WordPress 3.x, are both set to appear in the next month or two. Drupal 7 is currently in Alpha release, but is aiming for a Beta release later this month. WordPress is a little bit ahead, having published a Release Candidate on May 28th. In light of the coincidental (?) timing of these two major releases, let's take a look at some of the new features in each release, and see which is more exciting for its respective community.

On the Drupal side of things, he mentions updates like usability improvements, a simpler backend for administration, performance and security improvements and a new interface to download and install modules directly from the interface.

The upcoming WordPress version will, by default, include the multi-user support previously available in a separate download, custom post types and a better system for creating and editing navigation menus.

As far as he's concerned, though, of the two applications (CMSes) the upcoming version of Drupal is going to come out on top. It wins in terms of security, power and flexibility.

Scotch on the Rocks Presso and Code

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:30:13 GMT

This past few weeks have been a whirlwind but finally I can sit down and post the presentation we gave at Scotch on the Rocks in London a few weeks ago. The conference was my first SOTR and it was really incredible experience. The conference in itself is an experience and seeing friends was great. I had a wonderful time!

Please go to our presentations page to get the presentation and full demo source code. Thanks SOTR!

CFTracker: CFIDE Admin extension

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:15:34 GMT

I’m pretty excited about this post and it’s all the fault of Adobe’s Claude Englebert. When I attended his presentation on CF9′s Server Manager at SOTR2010, he briefly mentioned that you can add your own extensions to the CFIDE Administrator. This was a small but powerful fact that I hadn’t taken notice of before and [...]

Podcasting about ColdFusion Design Patterns

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:00:44 GMT

Last night, we recorded a podcast about Design Patterns in ColdFusion and it was a very enjoyable episode for me. It was one of those situations for me where I can apply some of my own familiarity and understanding, but I'm left scouring Google to explore some of the new revelations revealed by the two guys who have proven to be the ultimate wealth of knowledge, at least for me!

This episode was particularly enjoyable because we were joined by Bob Silverberg who shared with us some more details about the upcoming cfObjective conference which is only a few weeks away. After an overview of what to expect at the conference, Bob stuck around to throw in on the topic of Design Patterns. It was a real pleasure having him with us. It's very satisfying for me and I do feel very blessed to have met so many incredible minds in this community. It really gets the juices flowing for me and pushes me to learn more.

Hopefully, these recordings can be just as inspiring to those who listen to them. Check out the latest episode of This Week in ColdFusion!

Thinking About Trac Replacements? Consider Mtrack. - Brandon Savage

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:00:54 GMT

Recently, I began working alongside Wez Furlong here at Message Systems. One of the many tools we use is Mtrack. This tool is a port of Trac into PHP, along with the addition of some great new features. Spearheaded by Wez, it’s a great tool that we use internally for our projects, and since it’s [...]

[Web Security Magazine] Skipfish, Web Application Security Scanner By Google

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:03:16 GMT

Google released a new security tool Skipfish; a fully automated, active web application security reconnaissance tool. It prepares an interactive sitemap for the targeted site by carrying out a recursive crawl and dictionary-based probes. The resulting map is then annotated with the output from a number of active (but hopefully non-disruptive) security checks. The final report generated by the tool is meant to serve as a foundation for professional web application security assessments.

Skipfish key features :

- High speed: pure C code, highly optimized HTTP handling, minimal CPU footprint - easily achieving 2000 requests per second with responsive targets.
- Ease of use: heuristics to support a variety of quirky web frameworks and mixed-technology sites, with automatic learning capabilities, on-the-fly wordlist creation, and form autocompletion.
- Cutting-edge security logic: high quality, low false positive, differential security checks, capable of spotting a range of subtle flaws, including blind injection vectors.

The second version 1.1 beta have just been released few hours ago. Available for Linux, FreeBSD 7.0+, MacOS X, and Windows (via Cygwin); under terms and conditions of the Apache License, version 2.0.

More information and download at http://code.google.com/p/skipfish/

MockBox - It's not just for unit testing

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:15:12 GMT

MockBox can have many amazing uses. One well documented use is in assistance in creating complicated unit tests insuring you are only testing one small unit of work, however it can be used for many other interesting use cases.

One of the ways we find MockBox useful during our development cycle at Computer Know How is to mock objects we haven't had the time to complete yet, but we do know what we expect as response. This allows us to continue development without waiting for the piece of something we haven't done yet slow us down, but keep the method calls exactly as they will be in when the object is complete.

So, how do you use MockBox outside of the context of a unit test? Well, its easy.

Inside a ColdBox application.

//get an instance of mockbox to use for mocking things not 100% built yet inside a ColdBox app mockBox = createObject("component","coldbox.system.testing.MockBox").init();

Outside a ColdBox application.

//get an instance of mockbox to use for mocking things not 100% built yet outside a ColdBox app. mockBox = createObject("component","mockbox.system.testing.MockBox").init();

Now that MockBox is initialized, we can start mocking objects. Lets say we have a User Object that we haven't had time to build yet. Right now it looks really advanced with lots of cool properties and functions that we spent a ton of time on. Something like this.

cfcomponent hint="I am the User ORM cfc" /cfcomponent

Now what if we needed to build a Welcome screen based off this User Object. Well, we could do something like this.

 var rc = event.getCollection(); //get the users name, later we will need to switch this to get it from the user object. rc.Name = "Paul Was Saul"; But later, we would have to implement our user object once we are done with it. But what if we mocked our user object with the getName method it will ultimately have.  var rc = event.getCollection(); //get an instance of mockbox var mockBox = createObject("component","coldbox.system.testing.MockBox").init() //Mock a User Object since its not built yet. var User=mockBox.createMock(className="model.ORM.User",clearMethods=true,callLogging=true); User.$(method="getName",returns="Paul Was Saul"); //get the users name rc.Name = User.getName();

Now, I know what your thinking. The non-mocked version looks a lot simpler then the mocked version. Well that is probably true in this simple example, but use your imagination and expand this example using the power of your mind and you can see how handy MockBox can be in your own development.

Want to learn more about MockBox. Read the wiki. As with everything done by Luis Majano, the documentation is outstanding.

http://wiki.coldbox.org/wiki/MockBox.cfm

Or Download it at

http://www.coldbox.org/download

Yet another tool to put in your toolbox to make your life simpler brought to you by Team ColdBox.

Coldfusion Random Session Russian Roulette

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:30:42 GMT

If you have any goodness left in you, please stop reading now, because what follows is completely evil! Well perhaps I’m overstating it a bit, but I can’t imagine how you’d use it for good. For any BOFH’s out there thought, this would be right up your street. Say hello to the Coldfusion Random Session Russian [...]

Using ColdFusion and OpenOffice to Convert and Parse Documents Step 1: Configure OpenOffice as a Service

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:15:22 GMT

This post is part of the Using ColdFusion and OpenOffice to Convert and Parse Documents series. In this post I will illustrate how to install and configure the OpenOffice application to run as a service. Windows services start when the operating system starts, so configuring OpenOffice as a service ensures that it is running when [...]