Michael Smith

Many of us have used the CFCONTENT tag that comes with ColdFusion to serve up files to browsers, but very few ColdFusion developers are aware that the CFCONTENT tag can be used in conjunction with the HTML tag to serve up graphics, such as JPEGs and GIFs. In this case, the why of doing this is perhaps just as interesting as the how. It turns out that using this technique is perfect for use with creating an advertising banner server, controlling access to graphic files, or - on the more sinister side - creating "Web bugs." If you don't recall, a Web bug is a graphic (usually an invisible 1 pixel shim) that is embedded in an HTML e-mail message or Word document that tips off its creator when and who is reading without readers even knowing their access was logged. If you've never used the CFCONTENT tag before, it's an excellent tool to become familiar with. In l... (more)

eWebEditPro 1.8.0.2 from Ektron

eWebEditPro from Ektron is a browser-based WYSIWYG editor that lets your Web site users create HTML content even if they don't know HTML. In this review we discuss why you'd need eWebEditPro, and point out some of its features and limitations. How many times have you brought up a newly created Web page in a browser window and spotted some content you'd like to change? If you're a developer, you can go to your HTML editor or ColdFusion Studio, make the change, save it, go back to your browser and reload. Still not quite right? Another round-trip to the editor is required. For users... (more)

Top 10 Web Security Tips

All data-driven Web sites are potentially vulnerable to hackers, whether they are written in ColdFusion or another language. Fortunately, a few simple steps can make your site much more secure. 1. Have an Error Handler By default ColdFusion displays a detailed error message when there is a problem in your code. Yes, I know - your code has no bugs in it - but what if a hacker deliberately creates an error by manipulating URL parameters or faking out a form submit? If they can make an error and view the error message, they may see your data source and table names, which could help t... (more)

Upsize from MSAccess to SQL Server

In March (CFDJ, Vol.3, issue 5) we covered reasons to upsize your Access database to SQL Server and the tools you'll use to do it. Here we explain in detail how to copy data to SQL Server and troubleshoot your upsizing project. The IMPORT AND EXPORT data wizard (aka the DTS Wizard - Data Transformation Services) certainly helps get you going with building tables in SQL Server. It takes an Access database (as well as many other database types) to import its table structures and data to a Microsoft SQL Server. Since it uses a wizard format, it's simple to use as long as you know wha... (more)

Creating Dynamic Websites With ColdFusion

In this article we continue to look at what ColdFusion is and how you can use it for dynamic website creation. We cover using SQL to dynamically retrieve and display data from any database along with testing and debugging techniques. What is ColdFusion? In case you missed the previous articles that introduced ColdFusion, let me explain what it is. ColdFusion, which was introduced by Allaire in 1995 and is currently on version 4.5.1, is a programming language based on standard HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) that is used to write dynamic webpages. It lets you create pages on th... (more)