The No-Dans Club - Javascript

console.log throws error on Internet Explorer IE

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:12:00 -0700

If you have calls to console.log in your Javascript, you will get an error in Internet Explorer. This is because there is no console variable (object) in the window name space. Sure you could take out all your console.log statements, but usually you need those around for a little while. Here is a quick snippet you can use in JQuery that'll take the place of console.log. Your Firefox console will still work and you won't get errors on Internet Explorer.


jQuery.logThis = function( text ){
	if( (window['console'] !== undefined) ){
		console.log( text );
	}
}

Now when you want to log something, you can use:


JQuery.logThis( "I pity the fool who uses console.log() ");
$.logThis( "I pity the fool who uses Internet Explorer");

Happy Days are here again!

How to customize the ColdFusion AutoSuggest

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:11:00 -0700

ColdFusion 8 and 9 have an autosuggest functionality that just couldn't be simpler. If you want to have an autosuggest input on the screen, you can do it with a single line of code:

That snippet will place an autosuggest box on the screen and allow a choice of english, spanish or french. Snazzy yeah? If you want, you can bind the autosuggest to a javascript function, or directly to a CFC, making data retrieval and formatting very simple.

You can also make more complex examples, take a look at the ColdFusion 9 Documentation for Autosuggest for some ideas. All this is possible because ColdFusion used the extensive YUI library under the hood. The control used by the ColdFusion Autosuggest is the YUI AutoComplete widget. Let's say you wanted to do something that the YUI AutoComplete offers, but isn't in the ColdFusion documentation, what do you do? [More]

A Side Effect of ySlow and Firebug

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:08:00 -0700

A Side Effect of ySlow and Firebug I spent a number of hours researching a bug in a Model-Glue application. Each time a form was submitted successfully, a duplicate record showed up in the database. This application uses a number of frameworks and it wasn't very clear which layer was causing the problem. I started to dig into the issue, looking for any rhyme or reason and pinged my good buddy Ezra Parker for some sanity checks. After some intense debugging, we found out that the second record in the database showed up after the ColdFusion request ended. I tried all sorts of programmer sorcery to find out why this second request happened and did not get much useful information. This duplicate request problem defied all logic! Through the course of working through the information and issues, we explored many potential causes and questions like:

Was Model-Glue possibly adding a second redirect somewhere?
Was there a CFThread buried in Model-Glue, ColdSpring, Transfer or CFUniform that caused this?
Was there some javascript call being fired off, and replicating the request?
Were space hackers infiltrating my computer?
Am I on Candid Camera?
Should I just quit programming and open a Bakery?

[More]

How to Make a Show Password Link with JQuery

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:14:00 -0700

While we all agree a good security measure is hiding passwords in form inputs, giving a user the ability to unhide the password is a nice usability feature. How often are you changing your password with nefarious people standing over your shoulder, right? Really, the difference between markup for a text field and password field is just the type attribute of either 'text' or 'password'. JQuery makes it easy to work with attributes, by the $().attr() method. So, this would seemingly be a very simple task, right? Let's try it: