Feedback wanted on new coldfusiondocs.com

On December 18, 2007, in ColdFusion, Flex, by Anuj Gakhar

I have been spending some time lately on this idea of mine and I would like to get some initial feedback on this. Its to do with the CF documentation that is available to developers. As a developer, I always have to search for CF tags or functions and there is no easy way to do that without doing atleast 3 or 4 clicks or searches. So I went ahead and put it all together in a Flex app. And I also purchased a name for it. www.coldfusiondocs.com (which is not live yet).

The demo app is here ( www.coldfusiondocs.com/app/ ) . It lists all the tags and functions and its easy to filter down to what you are looking for and it lists the attributes and also opens up a HTML version of the tag/function. At the moment, it does not have display the attributes for every tag and function (because thats something I am still working on). I am going to put together a homepage and possibly a forum for the site sometime during this week but the heart of this project is this Flex app I am working on.

I would like to have some feedback and find out if the effort is really worth it.

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20 Responses to Feedback wanted on new coldfusiondocs.com

  1. Kris Brixon says:

    The main window is too big, I have to horizontally scroll the Online Documentation window.

    If you are going to build something custom, then add in the ability to link to code snippets and articles about the selected tag/function.

    The clock just keeps spinning on all windows except Online Documentation. May be because I clicked on a function and caused an actionscript error.

    I like on the http://www.cfquickdocs.com/ how they are grouped by topic or all.

    In the attributes section, you may want to have a column for required and a column for default values.

  2. Anuj Gakhar says:

    Kris,

    I can do the grouping by topic , actually I did that but commented that out as couldnt find a plce to fit it in. And in the Attributes window, if the name is Bold, it means its required, and I can add in the column for default values.

    The clock probably keeps spinning, like you guessed, you clicked on one of the tags that didnt have its attributes and the clock cursor didnt get removed. Something I am still working on.

    When you say, ability to link to code snippets and articles, you mean ability for users to build a kinda resource list for that particualr item?

  3. Kris Brixon says:

    Either user built or user built with moderation or maybe provide links to sites so the link will do a search on that tag/function.

    Your program does not have to be the solution to the problem I see, but at some point someone will have to do something:

    Problem:
    Traditionally articles and tutorials would get feed through sites like http://www.easycfm.com or http://www.coldfusioncookbook.com but with more and more bloggers that provide good code like http://ww.coldfusionjedi.com and http://www.bennadel.com it is hard to know where to look for code relating to a specific tag/function/topic.

    I have always thought that someone hosting docs would be an ideal place to help solve this problem. They already have the list of functions and know the grouping they belong to.

    Just an idea.

  4. Jake Munson says:

    I’m the creator of CFQuickDocs.com, and I have to say that this looks pretty sweet! One request that I get from people all the time is to add in parts or all of the rest of livedocs…things like the regular expression pages, and other useful pages like that. Have you condsidered doing that with coldfusiondocs.com? I haven’t been able to come up with a good way to do it, other than creating a whole new section of the site…

  5. Anuj Gakhar says:

    Thanks Jake. I’ve been to CFQuickDocs.com and I do like it. I can probably work out something to list rest of the livedocs, although at first thought , this doesnt sound very straight forward. As long as I can work out a way to build a XML for the data, it should be alright.The plan is to finalise the existing functionality and then take on other features.

  6. Sam Farmer says:

    I like it. A few thoughts:

    – At times the loading of the attributes seems a little buggy and slow.

    – As mentioned above the spacing for the livedocs stuff requires some horizontal scrolling which is not ideal.

    – Any chance of alphabetizing the list? And, maybe if there is only one option just going straight to it?

    Overall, just like with cfquickdocs, I love the ability of the quick look up.

  7. Daniel says:

    Hello from Stavanger, Norway.

    Looks very nice Anuj, I like it and I will probably use it.

    BUT: hehe… always a but, that was what you wanted right? feedback…

    one thing cfQuickDocs has and that you probably you should have is a url direct link to a tag.

    http://www.cfquickdocs.com/#cfscript brings us to the cfscript documentation.

    i suppose you did your application in flex but you probably can also parse a url parameter into the flex application. I haven t work with flex (just tested a bit) and if this is not possible I will never use flex.

    Why i do need that is because i launch sometimes cfQuickdocs from a “command line” with the tag as a parameter.

    Good job Anuj… and Jake, i love your cfQuickDocs, i use it everyday.

  8. Anuj Gakhar says:

    @Sam, thanks. Some of the attributes are still buggy as they dont exist yet 🙂 This should be fixed this week. Albhabetical display can be done.

    @Daniel, Thanks for your comments. Bookmarking is something I was already thinking of, thanks for pointing it out.

    Will post an update here when I have managed to make some changes to the app.

    Thanks guys….

  9. Jake Munson says:

    @Daniel,

    I have a couple years head start on CFQuickDocs, so I’m sure Anuj will get this stuff added with time. 🙂

  10. Anuj Gakhar says:

    Guys,

    Some minor updates :-

    1) List now sorted alphabetically. You can click the header to sort desc or asc.
    2) Fixed the main window size, no scroll now.
    3) Graceful error handling if attributes are not loaded. A message is now displayed. Moving cursor no longer stays now.

    @Jake, I like the idea of adding other resources from livedocs, so I might actually work on it sooner than later.

    Cheers.

  11. […] a result of feedback from one of my previous posts , I have made a few changes based on the feedback and the site is now live. This site is basically […]

  12. Akbar says:

    Hey From India,

    It’s really great and awesome work….

    so far we are using cfquickdocs for our cf reference …. but form now we are going to use

    coldfusiondocs. 🙂

    Akbar
    Chennai CFUG India.

  13. Anuj Gakhar says:

    Nice to hear that Akbar. HOwever, I do think that it does need some kind of accuracy test as my gut feeling is some of the attributes might be missing here and there.

    BTW, how big is the CF community in India these days?

  14. Akbar says:

    Anuj but the entire stuff is looking and working really good….

    Our chennai CF Community is about some 25+ strength currently …. we are trying our best to bring more ppls into the community…

    🙂

  15. Kyle Dodge says:

    I’m still getting an error when I try and sort the attribute value column when the column does not contain values.

    Error: Cannot determine comparator for SortField with name 'paramValues'.
    at mx.collections::SortField/nullCompare()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\collections\SortField.as:564]
    at mx.collections::SortField/http://www.adobe.com/2006/flex/mx/internal::internalCompare()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\collections\SortField.as:232]
    at mx.collections::Sort/internalCompare()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\collections\Sort.as:829]
    at mx.collections::Sort/findItem()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\collections\Sort.as:525]
    at mx.collections::ListCollectionView/getItemIndex()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\collections\ListCollectionView.as:511]
    at ListCollectionViewCursor/collectionEventHandler()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\collections\ListCollectionView.as:2150]
    at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEventFunction()
    at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEvent()
    at mx.collections::ListCollectionView/dispatchEvent()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\collections\ListCollectionView.as:829]
    at mx.collections::ListCollectionView/internalRefresh()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\collections\ListCollectionView.as:1271]
    at mx.collections::ListCollectionView/refresh()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\collections\ListCollectionView.as:400]
    at mx.controls::DataGrid/sortByColumn()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\controls\DataGrid.as:3534]
    at mx.controls::DataGrid/headerReleaseHandler()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\controls\DataGrid.as:4870]
    at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEventFunction()
    at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEvent()
    at mx.core::UIComponent/dispatchEvent()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\core\UIComponent.as:9041]
    at mx.controls.dataGridClasses::DataGridHeader/mouseUpHandler()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta3\sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\controls\dataGridClasses\DataGridHeader.as:1228]

  16. Anuj Gakhar says:

    Thanks for pointing that out Kyle. I will look into it as soon as I can. Does this happen only when the value column is empty ?

  17. Kyle Dodge says:

    Yes, Only when the value column is empty. When the value column is not empty is works great.

  18. Anuj Gakhar says:

    @Kyle, this is now fixed.

  19. Anuj Gakhar says:

    Guys,

    Does anyone has the same problem as reported by Michael on this post

    https://www.anujgakhar.com/2008/01/03/swf-file-size-on-coldfusiondocscom/#comment-192

    Cheers.

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