Just a quick note to remind folks of the crusade Adam Cameron and I kicked off a few months ago - ColdFusion UI - The Right Way.
The idea was to help ColdFusion developers work with client-side technologies while avoiding the built-in tools like cfgrid, cfwindow, and the epic cfpod. As I said back when I originally wrote about the project, we wanted to give folks an alternative as opposed to just saying, "Don't do it!".
I want to publicly thank Dave White, who has contributed pull requests for cftextarea, cfgrid, cfpresentation, cfmediaplayer, cfmessagebox, cftree, cfselect, cftable, cfinput-autosuggest, cfslider, cfcalendar, and cfmenu. My god - I knew he helped a lot, but I honestly didn't know he did all that. Check out the history of pull requests to see!
Of course, others have helped as well, and you can help too. You don't have to submit a pull request. You can help by just spreading the word. Have a coworker who is using cfwindow? "Gently" introduce him or her to the project. Have a friend using cfpod? Stop being their friend. (Ok, maybe that's a bit harsh.) Educating others can go a long way to improving everyone's code!
Archived Comments
I think this is a good idea because there are no doubt lots of folks like me who have continued to use the CF UI tags. Having just been lectured on House of Fusion when I posted a cfwindow problem, I am beginning to accept the need for a change in my UI tools.
But I have to say that I find cfwindow, cfform, cfinput and the associated error handling very easy to use and it is still hard for me to face the idea of stopping what I am doing and taking the time to learn a new language like jQuery and a new set of tools. So for me the thing that will be most useful is good real life examples that will help me get started on that change. Much of what I know I learn by seeing what someone else does and adapting it to my needs.
Incidentally, I wanted to jump right in and start my conversion when I read your post, but I am already confused as to where to find these tips and techniques. Perhaps I missed something. And what is a pull request? I think the learning curve may be a bit longer for some of us than you expect.
Just a small thing, and this will sound anal, but others will ding you on it. Never say this: "learn a new language like jQuery" jQuery is a library, not a language. :) A lot of people seem to equate jQuery with JS itself.
As I said - that was anal - so take it gently. ;)
As for examples, *everything* in the repo should have examples. That was the point. So instead of just saying, "use this plugin", you get a real example of it.
"Incidentally, I wanted to jump right in and start my conversion when I read your post, but I am already confused as to where to find these tips and techniques. Perhaps I missed something. And what is a pull request?"
Ah, the Github URL is where you would find the demos. Unfortunately, they are in markdown now and NOT in 'pretty' HTML. For some folks this is no big deal, but if you don't know this, I can see how it is confusing.
So - my goal is to get a HTML-friendly version of this up ASAP. It may not happen this week due to cfObjective, but that's the idea. For you right now I'd use the "Download as Zip" option you should see somewhere on the right side. Cool?
Don't worry about Pull Requests. I'll answer the question just so you know though. On GitHub, a pull request is how a user submits an update to an open source project.
John, I've got a plan as to how I want to publish this, but *please* bug me if you don't see an update in a few weeks time. Got multiple presentations and big work stuff so it may take a little bit of time.
John, I read your comment above and noted that you wrote ... "But I have to say that I find cfwindow, cfform, cfinput and the associated error handling very easy to use".
I have submitted an example of how to validate without using cfform on the CF-UI github repo here :-
https://github.com/cfjedima...
Just use the "Download as Zip" option to get the code.
The demo contains two ways to validate ( plain jQuery or using a jQuery plugin ).
Btw - I know I still need to generate an HTML version. Sorry for the delay folks. :\
Sorry to keep bugging for useful examples and ideas for how to get out of ColdFusion UI tags, but it would be very helpful to get this. I just ran into another issue (cfcalendar) where the feedback is "stop using CF tags" ... not very helpful when you are trying to fix an ongoing production problem. I'd like to migrate but suspect I will need to carve out a week or two and do nothing but work on learning jQuery.
You did see that there was a chapter on cfcalendar in the project, right? :)
And - as an aside - spending a week learning jQuery would be a week spent *well*. I know (or think) you said it kind of negatively, but if you don't know JavaScript and jQuery, spending a week learning both would be a huge boost to your skill set. Right? That's not a bad thing.