Paul Kenney has found a solution to the "Session is invalid problem" in ColdFusion MX 7. I had a similar approach, but I think that his is more graceful and I will switch to that approach soon.

It recently came to my attention that some developers may not know how to join a table to itself. For them, I write this. Why would you want to do such a thing? Perhaps you have a company that is owned by another company, and you want to get any subsidiaries of a given company.

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Eyetools Research is running an eyetracking analysis on CSS Zen Garden. Their eyetracking analysis shows where users actually look on a web page. CSS Zen Garden shows the same content (indeed, the same HTML) with multiple designs.

The nice thing about an eyetrack study of CSS Zen Garden is that it is possible to see how people react to the same exact content in different designs. So far, they have tested the original design and one other. They are taking votes for what designs to test next.

If you haven't done so yet, you might want to check out the Eyetools blog. If you are interested in CSS Zen Garden, you might want to look at the CSS Zen Garden book.

I know that I have referenced the usability study on Usability.gov several times in past entries already, but don't expect that to change now. It is a wealth of useful information.

The usability study makes 189 recommendations and ranks each on a scale of one (1) to five (5) on both "Relative Importance" and "Strength of Evidence". Of these, four (4) rank highest in both factors. I have already referenced one of these "Use an Iterative Design Process" (pdf) in a previous entry ("In Defense of FLiP").

Another of those four highest recommendations is "Use Black Text on Plain, High-Contrast Backgrounds" (pdf). Although the recommendation specifically states black text, the text of the recommendation ends with this sentence "In general, the greater the contrast between the text and background, the easier the text is to read.".

Fortunately, you can use Colour Contrast Check to check for both brightness difference and colour difference and check for compliance to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) Checkpoint 2.2.

Note, of course, that the degree of contrast isn't everything. According to Usability.gov, dark text on light background is easier to read. "When compared to reading light text on a dark background, people read black text on a white background up to thirtytwo percent faster."

To read more about color, check out "Color, Contrast & Dimension in News Design".

Here are some other tools and resources:

A downloadable tool, Colour Contrast Analyser (British spellings) allows you to enter the colors that you are using and it will quantify the contrast between the colors and compares it to a value of "acceptable contrast". If you would rather just see the results of different color choices (or you don't want to download software), you can try the Palettizer css color contrast picker.

Good luck!

John Beynon wrote a document justifying ColdFusion enterprise edition over standard edition. If you want to upgrade to enterprise edition, but need help making the case - or if you can't decide yourself, check it out.