Tom Mollerus' Weblog

In my work as a web developer, I write both ColdFusion and PHP code for different projects. I much prefer to develop in the CFML language instead of PHP because I find it to be cleaner and simpler. So, I thought I'd write up a few examples and see what the community at large thinks of them. If you've never tried ColdFusion before and what I write is persuasive, I hope that you'll give the free developer version a try. If you disagree, please let me know-- perhaps I'll learn a better way to do things in PHP.

I use Subversion for all of my projects. While it's a life-saver for keeping records of all changes to your source code, it can be more than a little annoying to deal with the ubiquitous ".svn" folders that get put into every directory of your project. If you want to create a zip archive to publish your project, you don't want to publish those .svn folders along with it-- but up until now I haven't known of any other way to get rid of them other than to go into the zip file and delete the unwanted folders one by one. But today I found out that there's a better way (at least on Windows) by creating a new registry entry.

From John Galloway's blog:

[This] REG file adds "Delete SVN Folders" to the context menu for folders. When you select it, it removes all folders named .svn inside the folder and it's children (it does nothing if the project's not under Subversion source control.

John doesn't tell you how to get the new registry entry imported into your own registry, but I will: just copy the lines from his blog and save them in a text file with a ".reg" extension. Then open RegEdit, choose File -> Import..., and then import the file.

I'm nearly finished with a new version of Webmail, my web-based POP email client which is written in Coldfusion. But to make sure that it works well in many different environments and with many different POP servers, I'm looking for people to serve as beta testers. Those who are selected as testers and who provide feedback will get a free copy of the code.

As a quick introduction, Webmail provides web-based access to any POP account. It's not intended to be your main email client-- instead, it's intended to be used to read and respond to your emails when you're away from your main client (such as when you're away at a conference, at a client's office, or in a friend's house). Webmail will not delete any of your emails from your POP account unless you specify that certain emails should be deleted.

Webmail now offers the ability to save user preferences including a timezone setting so that all dates are displayed properly, spam keyword recognition, an address book, and even a search function. This new version of Webmail requires ColdFusion 8.

I'm also looking for people who can provide language translations for Webmail (it's about 240 words or phrases, which might take you an hour or two). So if you can test and/or provide a translation, please post a comment below and put your email address in the comment form (I'll be the only one who has access to your email address).

Note: as per Nick's comment, please let me know your web server and email server specifications in your comment. If you have something unique, I'm more likely to include you as a tester.

The team at FreshView, makers of the fantastic CampaignMonitor application, announced the Email Standards Project last week. The project "works with the design community and email client developers to improve web standards support in email", which is a fantastic goal. As an author of two web-based email clients, I can attest to the frustration of how standards implementation differs widely between different browsers. They've even created their own acid test for web standards compatibility, and it's curious to see that GMail rates a "Poor" score in their test.

Check out the project site at http://www.email-standards.org/