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Pete Freitag's Homepage

Covering ColdFusion, Java, Web Development, and other topics

Top 10 Reserved SQL KeywordsOctober 28

You may know that I created a SQL Reserved Keywords Checker a few years ago. I was just noticing today that a lot of people are searching for the same keywords. Here's a list of the top 10 keywords people searched for using the tool in the past year:.

# Keyword Queries Is Reserved 10 password 139 Only on PostgreSQL 9 key 148 Yes 8 description 155 No 7 value 156 Yes 6 status 161 No 5 select 203 Yes 4 date 284 Yes 3 type 300 Only on DB2 2 name 444 No 1 user 958 Yes

Web Design Tips for ProgrammersOctober 28

I found a good article on dzone today titled Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design. The title is actually misleading, rather than focus on the why, it will actually help you create some better looking pages.

I've often wanted to write a blog entry about the same topic. I don't call my self a web designer, so you can take my advice with a grain of salt, but I have been doing this for over a decade, and I've made some observations that I have wanted to share for quite some time.

So here are my Web Design Tips for Programmers

Alignment

We have all done it. Created a form with a caption followed by an input box, line after line. Yes username and password are both 8 characters so it makes the input boxes almost line up.

When you your UI is missing alignment, it makes your users eyes work very hard to determine what's going on.

Form's aren't the only places that need alignment, this also includes your navigation, layout, and content as well. Form's certainly are the major alignment offender though, you can use this article: Styling your forms with CSS and Labels as an easy way to solve this problem.

Spacing

Spacing is just as important as alignment. When you have text butting up against the border of a table cell it makes the table very hard to read. Try adding some spacing, or in CSS terms

Geolocation API for Adobe AIR?October 8

Mozilla recently announced a new project called Geode - which allows web sites to request your location using JavaScript. I assume this will be built into a future release of Firefox someday, but for now it's a Plugin.

Geode allows Firefox to support the Geolocation API Specification which is a JavaScript API for getting location information from a hosting device or web browser.

Here's a Code example:

navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(pos) { alert( pos.latitude + ", " + pos.longitude ); })

Geode will ask for permission before giving the web site access to your location, here's a screen shot:

This is all pretty awesome, does Adobe plan on adding Geolocation API support to the Adobe AIR Platform?

Dear SQL Server Enterprise Manager DeveloperJuly 31

Please add a button to make a column an identity.

You have a button to set as primary key, why do we have to scroll down through 3/4 of the properties, click the plus under "Identity", and then choose "Yes" for such a common operation?

Thank You

PostalMethods - Web Service for Snail MailJuly 27

I just noticed PostalMethods a new SOAP web service / API for sending snail mail via the US Postal Service. This service is from the folks at InterFax who have a nice web service for sending Faxes as well.

It was nice to see that they have code samples for ColdFusion!

Some potential uses for this new service:

• Mailing Address Verification - you can send an automated letter with a personalized code, and have them enter in the code to your web site.
• Security Nofications - You can send a letter to a users mailing address, when the account email or password is changed for verification purposes.
• Promotional Codes - Setup a scheduled task that runs through your customers and sends out a certain amount of coupons each month.
• Lots More - What would you use it for?