Eyetrack III - Revealing how user's view a web page...
I actually came across this article several weeks ago, but just never came around to blogging about it. Eyetrack III has released their results from their latest testings and the results are pretty interesting, but not exactly surprising.
In a nutshell, this survey tracked users and the movement of their eyes when viewing a web page. Here is a diagram of how most users tended to first scan a web page:
Browsershots.org - Website screen capturing service
A new free, community driven, web-based Browser Screenshot tool has been introduced called Browsershots.
The concept of Browsershots it to provide you screenshots of a URL you specify in a variety of different browsers and platforms. This is so you can verify that your pages are working correctly.
Browsershots uses a community computing to do all the processing of the screenshots. Users from around the world can load a client on their PC which will grab requests from the queue, process them and then upload the static images to the Browsershots web page. Since everything works off a giant queue, processing may take awhile--they suggest to keep checking the queue for up to 24-48 hours.
MD5 Collision Attack Code Released
I missed this on Slashdot (since I rarely read it anymore,) but thanks to Cameron's blog post I caught this piece of news. The first code has been released that shows how to find collisions in the MD5 algorithm. Essentially this means two completely different source files can be salted to produce the same string. In a nutshell, if you're relying on an MD5 hash to gaurentee the integrity of a file, you have problems—especially if you're relying on it producing unique, secure hash strings.
For a good layman explanation of the problem and the exploit, Magnus Daum & Stefan Lucks have published a really good article over at CITS titled Attacking Hash Functions by Poisoned Messages "The Story of Alice and her Boss".
Adding Dynamic Input Elements In IE Fails To Update Element's Array...
If you've ever used the createElement to dynamically add form elements to a page, you may have run into this problem before. You're working on a form and need to add some dynamic checkbox elements to the DOM on-the-fly. The code works great in Firefox, but in IE the fields are only displayed—they're not getting added to the named element's field (document.formName.fieldName) array.
In order to resolve this problem, you need to add a little DOM hack for Internet Explorer. When you invoke the createElement() method you must specify the name of the tag in the string:
Cool App: TaskSwitchXP Pro 2.0
I ran across this application a few weeks ago and have been using it since. It's a pretty slick replacement for the old Windows ALT/TAB application switcher. It has a lot more features and includes thumbnail previews of your windows. This works a lot better than the Windows XP Power Toy. Plus, you can configured it to minimize applications to the systray instead of the taskbar—which is useful for applications like Thunderbird which don't do that natively (although I use an application called ThunderTray for doing that w/Thunderbird.)
Oh yeah, it's totally free! For more information, click the link below:
TaskSwitchXP Pro 2.0
Air Force testing new transparent armor...
I was reading this article earlier today. Pretty cool stuff. Wright-Patterson is about 15-20 minutes from the house I grew up in. It's the home of Hangar 18—where the Aliens from the Roswell crash were supposedly held. Anyway, this is pretty cool. Make sure to click the link to read the entire article.
10/17/2005 - WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFPN) -- Engineers here are testing a new kind of transparent armor -- stronger and lighter than traditional materials -- that could stop armor-piercing weapons from penetrating vehicle windows.
The Air Force Research Laboratory's materials and manufacturing directorate is testing aluminum oxynitride -- ALONtm -- as a replacement for the traditional multi-layered glass transparencies now used in existing ground and air armored vehicles.
The test is being done in conjunction with the Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md., and University of Dayton Research Institute, Ohio.
ALONtm is a ceramic compound with a high compressive strength and durability. When polished, it is the premier transparent armor for use in armored vehicles, said. 1st Lt. Joseph La Monica, transparent armor sub-direction lead
"The substance itself is light years ahead of glass," he said, adding that it offers "higher performance and lighter weight."
Traditional transparent armor is thick layers of bonded glass. The new armor combines the transparent ALONtm piece as a strike plate, a middle section of glass and a polymer backing. Each layer is visibly thinner than the traditional layers.
ALONtm is virtually scratch resistant, offers substantial impact resistance, and provides better durability and protection against armor piercing threats, at roughly half the weight and half the thickness of traditional glass transparent armor, said the lieutenant.
... more ...
Sorry for the hiatus...
Sorry I haven't been blogging lately. I threw my back out (doctor says it's a bulging disc) a couple of weeks ago. I've been trying to minimize my time sitting in front of a computer screen and working on rehabbing and strengthening my back. Anyway, I'll try to get back to blogging. :)
ColdFusion v7.01 Updater Released...
Not that this isn't already being blogged about a bazillion times already, but Macromedia has released the ColdFusion v7.01 updater, previously codenamed "Merrimack", today. The key updates are:
- RTF output format for the cfreport tag
- Support for ActionScript functions in the cfform tag
- Support for ActionScript events in Macromedia Flash forms, including onLoad, onFocus, and onBlur
- Java CFCProxy support, for calling CFCs directly from Java in Enterprise Edition
- Tag attribute addition and enhancements for the cfdocument tag, and other tags
- New CFML functions, including decryptBinary, EncryptBinary, GetLocalHostIP, and IsLocalHost (for preliminary IPv6 support)
- SMS Gateway character set and data encoding enhancements
- New platform support, including the following:
- Windows 2003 Service Pack 1
- Red Hat Linux AS 3.0 and 4.0
- SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and 9
- AIX 5L v5.1, v5.2, and v5.3
- IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Newtork Deploy (ND)
- Oracle Application Server 10g
- Some basic support for IPv6
- A full OS X installer, with an installation experience similar to that on Windows
- Oracle 10g RDBMS support (Note: 10g Real Application Clusters (RAC) are not supported with the Updater.)
- Updated internal technology, including the following:
- Axis version 1.2.1+
- JRun Updater 5+ hot fixes
- Verity 5.5 Patch Level 21
- Other key internal OEM technology updates and fixes
For more information, see the following links:
Barney Boisvert's ColdFusion/OO Primer...
Still trying to wrap your head around OO concepts and to integrate them with ColdFusion? Take a look at Barney Boisvert's blog entry Designing an OO Backend.
David Ross Announces ColdSprings v0.2.0 and ColdSpringsAOP...
Dave Ross has announced ColdSpring v0.2.0 and ColdSpringAOP. I'm a little behind on this announcement.
There's no real information on ColdSpringAOP, but they're supposed to unveil the whole thing this Thursday at the Frameworks Conference. Hopefully they'll also blog the contents of the presentation for those of us who can't attend the conference.
Doug Hughes' ColdFusion API for Inline Dynamic DB Abstraction...
Doug Hughes blogged today about an interesting new API he's working on for inline dynamic database abstraction. The current name of the project is Reaction, but it appears as though he may rename the project.
In a nutshell, this API creates Beans, Gateways, DOAs and Transfer Objects for you on-the-fly. Here's a quick snippet from Doug's post:
<cfset myDb = CreateObject("Component", "reaction.reactionFactory").init("scratch", "mssql", "/scratch/data", "development") />
The init method of the ReactionFactory accepts these arguments:
DSN - This is the name of the ColdFusion DSN which will be used to access the database.
DbType - This as a string indicating the type of database which is being accessed. Currently the only option is "mssql" for Microsoft SQL server. More will be added in the future.
GenerationPath - This the mapping you created to the directory where code will be generated.
Mode - This controls the generation behavior of Reaction. Options are always, development and production. Always causes objects to always be regenerated. Development causes objects to be regenerated if the database structure has changed. Production causes objects to never be regenerated unless they don't exist on disk.The ReactionFactory currently has four public methods (in addition to init):
createBean(name) - This creates a bean object. More on this in a second.
createGateway(name) - This creates a gateway object.
createDao(name) - This creates a data access object.
createTo(name) - This creates a transfer object.For each of these methods, the name argument is the name of the table in the database. For the most part, I believe developers will be using the createBean() and createGateway() methods more than the others.
Beans are quite cool. They're not quite exactly your traditional beans. They have load(), save() and delete() methods.
Customize CFMX's 7 CFCHART Features Using WebCharts3D Designer
I've been playing around with CFMX 7's CFCHART tag quite a bit lately. I've been trying to decide if I can get it to do all the things I want it to do. While it's certainly a nice tag, there are certain aspects of the tag I don't like. Fortunately, with some work you can customize the CFCHART functionality quite a bit. You can even design your own style sheets for use with the WebCharts3D engine that Macromedia licensed for use with CFXM 7.
The biggest obstacle is that Macromedia hasn't done a great job describing how to use the WebCharts3D designer and how those features map up to the internal CFMX syntax. There are a lot of differences in nomenclature between the two, and this makes it a bit of a pain to try to map what attributes of the CFCHART series of tags map up to the internal WebCharts3D XML style sheet.
After playing around with CFCHART for a few days, I found the best way to really learn the capabilities of what you can do w/CFCHART was to use the WebCharts3D v5.0 Enterprise Edition designer. In your CFusionMX7\charting folder you'll find a batch file called "webcharts.bat" Run this file to load the WebCharts3D designer.
The Regex Coach - Interactive Regular Expression Builder
Looking for help building Regular Expressions? The Regex Coach looks like a very promising tool for doing just that. The program is designed to specifically mimic the Perl RegEx Engine, but it should be helpful for other languages as well (like Java, Python, PHP, etc) that use Perl-like syntax. I came across this useful looking tool in a message that came across CF-Talk recently.
Upgrade to Firefox v1.07 Immediately - Severe Security Hole Found
For all of you running Firefox, you really should upgrade your version immediately. The Washington Post has reported a severe security hole that can allow a malicious hacker to take control of your PC.
Upgrade to Firefox v1.07 now by downloading it from the Firefox Product page.
Updating Symantec AntiVirus Definitions On An Hourly Basis
My boss wanted to make sure that on one of our servers we were updating our Symantec Anti-Virus definitions on an hourly basis. By default the Symantec Anti-Virus Client will only allow you to do a LiveUpdate once per day. Fortunately, there's a command line tool called VPDN_LU.exe which you can run to do silent updates.
Here are the command line options for the VPDN_LU.exe tool:
- /fUpdate
- Filter out definitions updates
- /fVirusdef
- Filter out new AntiVirus definitions updates
- /s
- Retrieve definitions and product updates in silent mode.