Mailer.cfc 1.5, the email abstraction component that makes sending email from components (and switching to test email for development) easy is in release candidate stage.
This is a much simpler component set than DataMgr, so I don't expect to have the kind of trouble getting it out of release candidate that I have had with DataMgr.
Here are the only changes from beta:
Most of my career, I have been either a solo developer or the most senior developer on a team. I have created a handful of open source applications in part to get feedback from other developers about my work. Be careful what you ask for...
I thought that DataMgr RC3 was really the final release under a different name and advertised it as such on my blog. Such hubris could only cost me. I convinced Peter Bell to take a look and he discovered some fairly significant bugs - including a whole feature that I had completely failed to test. He was, of course, very nice about it. Still a bit embarrassing moment none-the-less.
Just days later my friend, Jason Holden, discovered another bug (or rather, a missing feature). So much for "ready for prime time". These bug discoveries came after DataMgr 2.0 has been in production in some form for several months and I have run several tests on it (though clearly not enough).
I have since fixed the bugs that have been discovered and done a bit more testing. This has resulted in one more pre-Gold release, DataMgr 2.0 RC4. In all likelihood, this still won't be the final pre-release version as I have one more adjustment that I would like to make before DataMgr 2 goes gold.
Clearly I have a thing or two to learn about good testing. I have been looking into unit testing, but DataMgr can handle such complex situations that the idea of testing every combination of interactions seems a bit overwhelming.
Anyway, DataMgr 2.0 RC4 has been running without incident for a few days now and is ready to download.
If you find any problems with it, let me know.
I recently needed to download a trial version of MS Office 2007. Microsoft made me fill out a bunch of forms in order to do so. This wouldn't have been that bad except that they apparently have never heard of the "label" tag.
Not exactly new, the label element has been around since the introduction of HTML 4 (so from at least 1999). Despite its antiquity and usefulness, it still doesn't seem to get much use.
By way of review, the label element associates some text as the label for a form element. This is useful for assistive technology, but also for everyone else.
If you click on the text in a label associated with a text field, it will automatically give that form field focus. More useful, however, is its effect on checkboxes and radio buttons.
Compare a checkbox without a label:
Check this box
to one with a label:
Notice that they both look the same, but the second one allows you to use the text as part of the checkbox itself, making it far easier to use. This takes advantage of Fitt's Law: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target (source - also see Wikipedia's entry on Fitt's law).
Using label elements is easy to do and makes form fields easier to use for everyone. If you aren't using them already (and I am always surprised by how little they are used), best start today.
