After many months of hard work, we have released the 2009 edition of FusionDox. Lots of fun things in this edition, including PDF previews of documents, a document conversion API so you can write your own code to convert documents, split/merge PDFs and more. New Flex/AIR based FusionDox client (aka the FusionDox Authoring System) for live editing MS Office/OpenOffice documents directly through your browser, and it works for Macintosh and Linux computers too!

There is some preliminary info online, with more to come.

http://www.fusiondox.com/

There have been a few blog posts on how to convert a query into an array of structures. Here is Ben Nadel's, Here is Carlos Gallupa's, and there are more out there.

Now that you are a master at converting query to array-of-struct, how about converting it back to a query? No, not just for kicks, but perhaps for that crazy array you built, that you now want to pull via CFC into a Flex app ? (this is the reason I bothered, b/c u know that CF queries get auto-translated into ArrayCollections in Flex, don't you ??)

» Click Here to read the rest of this post

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past? What would you tell someone who hasn't been to CFUnited before?

Yup. I've been speaking at CF United events for the last 4-5 years or so. Lost count. CFUN is cool because you get to hang out with all the movers and shakers in the industry.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

Why not? I'll be showing an example of using Flex to talk to Google App Engine (GAE), so its just pretty darn cool.

3. Do you have any projects in the works that you will be revealing at CFUnited?

I'm hoping to have a brand new product ready to demo called FusionDox Access, which is a way cool easy way to share large files with people, and easily integrates into your web projects. All build in Flex of course :)

4. Besides your topic, what other sessions are you looking forward to?

Flexy goodness, especially looking forward to Flex 4 graphics enhancements.

5. What are some of the hot topics you'd like to see at RoundTable discussions?

How to beat down the industry's impression that ColdFusion is dying.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited? (At the bar, networking, working, in your room, etc.)

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. Also email me. aschwabe(at)gmail(dot)com.

7. What's the latest news with you? Has anything changed since last CFUnited?

New version of FusionDox is coming out. See http://www.fusiondox.com/blog/

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

Everything is approachable at CFUN. Talk to whoever, everybody is sincere about wanting to transfer knowledge so that everybody grows.

9. When you are not working what do you like to do in your free time?

Playing guitar, riding my motorcycle (bmw k100), going to the shooting range with the family, travel, eat, drink, being merry.

10. Feel free to make up your own question and then answer it.

Q: Why? A: Because.

I am a big supporter of "simple first" meaning, get the functionality done and perfect before you start dressing things up and make them fancy. Flex supports this style of development by having a relitively pretty set of components to begin with, and you can substitute in what you want to change.

What if you are making a custom component, such as a Button, and you want an icon on the button. You can open your graphics program and make your PNGs, or SWF files and make custom skins, or wouldn't it be great if you could just snag one of the built in icons from Flex' SDK and use that? Nice and simple to get you started.

» Click Here to read the rest of this post

I added a blog post a while back about setting up an SFTP server on Windows.

It turns out that it IS easy to setup an SFTP server, but to setup a GOOD (read: "secure") takes a bit more work. The solution I am going to describe, I call "Better" (not "Good"), because it solves some problems, but not all of them.

» Click Here to read the rest of this post