Creating VCS Files in ColdFusion

One thing I have been trying for months to do on the Faculty of Management website is to create VCS files on the fly. VCS files are what Outlook and other calendaring software use to pass calendar items between each other. When I added an event to our database with ColdFusion, I wanted it to create a VCS file that the user could then download to his/her calendar.

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Categorised as ColdFusion

Design Ideas for Telephone Directory

As the new ward clerk, I have been notified that I need to put together the new ward telephone directory. I am looking for ideas.

Most of my design experience has been digital. Most of that digital work is web related. It is very rare for me to do a print design. It is even rarer to do a print design that consists of more than a logo. I have just never received many requests for print work. Maybe that says something about Lethbridge.

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Categorised as General

Declare Your Background Colour

If there is one thing you should do first when implementing a new website design, it should be declaring your background colour. If you do anything else first, stop it. Declare your background colour first.

Bold, italics, and overemphasis

A co-worker asked me to make some changes to a section of the website today. Part of the changes included some paragraphs with sentences that were in bold and italics. Why do people do this? Why is it when someone wants to emphasise something, they over-emphasise it?

Paving Paths and Website Accessibility

I have been working my legs too hard over the last couple of weeks with my non-stop cycling. Last weekend certainly was not enough time to let me legs recuperate. I decided to drive to work this morning in hopes that a third day will be enough to get my legs back to normal.

Anyhow, while walking from my truck to the University of Lethbridge on one of the new paths, I was reflecting on how the path has a lot to do with web design.

Internet Explorer 6.5?

Microsoft released Windows XP Service Pack 2 yesterday. Part of the service pack includes updates to Internet Explorer.

On the plus side, IE now comes with a native pop-up blocker. It also requires user authentication for drive-by downloads. Another cool feature is the “Add-On Manger”, which is similar to Firefox’s extensions manager.

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Categorised as Browsers

Web Standards Solutions

My boss came into my office yesterday with a special gift. It was something I’ve been wanting for a very long time (okay only since this past March).

It was Web Standards Solutions by Dan Cedarholm. I’ve been following Dan’s blog ever since I came across a few of his articles on ALA (Mountaintop Corners and Faux Columns). He always has some quick and slick CSS tricks that I enjoy testing and even implementing.

Firefox is the Coolest Browser

I ditched Internet Explorer at home a few moths ago for Netscape. Every time I opened IE for the first time, it would take nearly a minute to load the first page. That was simply unacceptable and since I could not find the problem, I simply switched to another browser.

While I was using Netscape, I became addicted to tabbed browsing. It has come to the point where I detest using IE at work because I always have to open new windows instead of new tabs. There were some other cool features as well.

I heard a lot about Firefox and decided to try it. It was a nice download; less than a minute on DSL. It automatically imported my Netscape bookmarks, favourites, links and passwords. Very cool.

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Categorised as Browsers