As predicted Adobe will no longer support Flash on mobile devices. According to an article on ZDNet, sources close to Adobe stated, 

"Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates."

So what does this mean for mobile users strapped with a new 2 year contract on a device running something other than iOS (like me with my new Motorola Atrix 2)? Nothing really, because with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript allowing native video support, they will still be able to receive dynamic content. One of the major problems with Flash has been adapting it to work seamlessly with a mobile system. What came out was an unstable mess that ate up every morsel of battery life it could get it's hands on. Consumers eagerly awaited the Motorola Zoom as it was supposed to be released as the premier Adobe Flash mobile device. Adobe couldn't get the kinks worked out so instead of a fully functioning Flash capable mobile device the Zoom was released with a Beta version of Flash that was unstable at best, according to testing done by Wired Magazine.

Looking at the articles across ZDNet, Wired, Gizmodo, and CNN it appears that the Flash based apps being written will not be in jeopardy with this change, it's playing web based flash applications such as Global Warfare on Facebook that will crash. There are also predictions that with Adobe dropping the ball on the mobile devices that their future in web based development is looking grim. As a meager Flash developer this makes me apprehensive when it comes to the future of some of my current works, however as with anything in the realm of technology you either adapt or die. My suggestion would be to study the changes and start introducing yourself to HTML5.

Since leaving the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium http://www.w3.org) in 2004, due to the WC3's focus on XML over HTML, the new group WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) have been pushing the evolution of HTML and has published the HTML Living Standard which can be found at http://www.whatwg.org/ under the HTML.

I've known about QR codes (Quick Response) for a number of years now, but was surprised when the local news media broadcasted a report about them as though they were brand new. Worse yet, they spent less time informing the public about how they can be used to promote local business and more time in scare tactics.

QR codes, in case you didn't already know, where created by Toyota to track vehicle parts and soon became widespread in commercial advertising all over Japan. The square codes can be seen hardlinking on billboards, store signs, business cards, just about every flat surface. Here in the US, at least where I live, the symbols have not gained as much popularity.

In my local community, thanks to the media, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the townies feared the codes now. They were warned that scanning the codes with your smartphone could open your device to a myriad of viruses and other unwanted content. Nice tactics, the barcode reading software only translates the scanned code into the alphanumeric text embedded in the coding, it doesn't do anything with the translation; that's up to the human!

It is completely up the holder of the smartphone to click on any translated hyperlink and follow the address with their mobile browser. Much more useful information would be to advise the public to be comfortable scanning QR codes from trusted sources, ie store chains, professional billboards, city metro advertising, but if you do not recognize the web address that the code is wanting you to visit, then don't go there!

Whenever a user attempted to post a comment to this blog, they would receive the error "It looks like you have already posted this comment".ﾠ A quick search in Google was no help.ﾠ So for anyone else who may receive this error while running a Mango Blog here is what I did to resolve the problem.

First, the error is actually triggered from the component file CommentManager.cfc which sets the variable isDuplicateComment.ﾠ I dug through the file and removed the conditional logic checks for this variable only to discover that the blog still produced the error.

Go to Cache in your Mango Blog admin and press the Reload Configuration button.ﾠ This will allow your changes to take affect.ﾠ Now, for this blog anyway, if you want to leave a comment you can once again.

While working with CFLDAP recently I needed to develop filters that would authenticate active directory members who belonged to certain characteristic groups and whose domain accounts were not disabled. There are a number of online resources that can help with filtering domain lookups but when you combine the filters together the conditional logic can be problematic. I ended up wasting a lot of time configuring and reconfiguring my filter.

If you're working within an active directory and you need to filter users based on certain criteria, then one of the best tools that you can use is called Active Directory Explorer from Sysinternals. You can use this tool to find the exact search parameters you require from your CFLDAP filter and then just copy and paste them into the attribute. This will prevent you from wasting time trying to design all the parameters needed in the conditional logic of the filter. The search feature in the Active Directory Explorer tool allows you to define any kind of search parameters you may need and takes care of things like "contains", "is equal to", and "does not contain".

The conditional logic of the Active Directory Explorer tool works a lot like CFSCRIPT and can be a little daunting at first. As soon as you start combining conditional elements together you could end up spending a lot of time adapting your filter. Using the GUI search interface in Active Directory Explorer will allow you to develop your filter requirements quickly and effectively.

Information on the Active Diretory Explorer tool can be found here.

If you find this post useful please leave a comment and let me know how you used the information.

When presenting the user with several form fields to complete inside a CFDIV, it may be necessary to prevent them from pressing the enter key on the keyboard within the form. Here is the scenario, the form is expecting at least two text fields to be completed, but the user presses enter after the first one. You will have to anticipate this in the form data collection, but you were more concerned at the time with filtering the submission for erroneous characters or malicious submissions.

For each text field in the form, a JavaScript call to a function that blocks the captured keycode (13 for the enter key) will solve this problem. Why worry about this in a CFDIV? If you submit your form in a CFDIV and the entries are incomplete, the first reaction the user will have may be to press the browser back button. Since a CFDIV with a form is actually Ajax, there is nothing cached for the browser to back history.

Inside our main page is our JavaScript function:

<script type="text/javascript">
   fnNoEnter=function() {
      return !(window.event && window.event.keyCode==13);}
</script>

The form inside the CFDIV could be represented as the following:

<cfform action="#CGI.SCRIPT_NAME#" method="get" name="FormEmployee">
   <input name="NameFirst" type="text" onkeydown="return fnNoEnter();" value="" />
   <input name="NameLast" type="text" onkeydown="return fnNoEnter();" value="" />
   <input name="Submit" type="submit" value="SUBMIT" />
</cfform>

This level of input checking is client-side only and can be defeated if the user browser does not have JavaScript enabled. In a corporate setting, where each client browser is uniformly configured through a group policy however, it can be very effective.

If you find this post useful please leave a comment and let me know how you used the information.