vanderwal.net

Those of us trying to develop or debug ColdFusion applications at home can take solice in ColdFusion single user license. This is only available with a registered version of ColdFusion Studio on the same box.

Joel explains the software development paradox when the technical folks and non-technical folks meet. I am very fortunate that I do not go through this at the moment, as I work for a client that understands the development process. I can not say that about every place I have been, but the developing a prototype in a few weeks that has rough functionality in it is light years from an actual product. The most important part of that next step is getting real data and getting a good understanding of the data and information you are working with as well as knowing what is to be done with said information. This being said is why many of us like using wireframes for interface development and not live GUIs (there are other reasons to use wireframes, but I will address that on another day, possibly real soon).

Peter has a good discussion regarding what tool do you think in, getting to the point of what tool do you put down your ideas and work through your ideas. Go put in your 2 cents.

Six Degrees software sounds like it may actually aid with knowledge management. The toughest part of knowledge management is getting the information and data into the KM system. This software's approach provides a cure to that at the desktop, where data and information are turned into digital knowledge. Joel has an overview of Six Degrees on his site.

After procrastinating for long enough and reading Nick's review in Digital Web I upgraded to Homesite 5. This is what I used to update and validate sections of this site to XHTML. I have been using Homesite for work projects for a few years, but rarely used it for this site or other personal projects (just a quirk) as I usually do my work handcoding with TextPad. Some of the layout of the tools has changed slightly from Homesite 4.5.2 to 5, but it was not a major difference. I really liked the XHTML elements and collapsing the code, which makes finding non-closed tags an easy task.

I have been able to read through all of this month's Digital Web and can say it is a solid issue from end to end. I really enjoyed the interview with Hether Hesketh. I am also a fan of the two business pieces, Managing the client: A fairy tale and Building the Business Game Plan. Both of these business articles I have pointed others to already as they are great insights from experience.

Digital Web Magazine has its fresh issue out. This month's focus is business, but also includes a solid review of HomeSite 5 and review of Web ReDesign: Workflow That Works, by Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler. This is wrapped in my favorite cover to date.

Grokdotcom provides a good overview of the methodologies of Web application development. The modular approach is provided as the best methodology, go figure with an open methodology that is based on published/documented standard set of processes. The article ends up discussing Fusebox, which is new to me, but seems to be a rather straightforward approach to modular software development.

I am so happy as I have a system at home that is stable enough to build the Active State components: Komodo, ActivePerl, and ActivePyton. It is nice to have an option to the command line and to be able to test with out FTPing scripts up to a server.

Evolt provides a solid review of HomeSite 5. The changes from 4.5x seem somewhat incremental, but quite helpful. If you have a version now, this article provides a good insight into what you may be missing for $29.