	Fusion Authority The House of Fusion Technical Magazine	Issue: 116 November 9, 2002 November 20, 2002
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Specials: NYCFUG Flash Communications Server Broadcast
Community: Macromedia Looking for Mac OS X Experts; TeraTech Puts out New CFUN-03 Survey!
News: Macromedia Unlocks the Power of Web Publishing for Everyone with Macromedia Contribute; Macromedia Goes Lite With Contribute; Macromedia Looks to Ease Web Site Updates; Macromedia Brings Simplicity to Editing; Macromedia to Sell Light-Duty Web Tool; Macromedia Announces New Web Editor; Easy-to-use XML content management solution arrives from Ektron
Tech and Tags: Macromedia Contribute Product Section; New Contribute Center on Desdev; Co-Branding Contribute; Filter Dates with the Flash MX Calendar Component
Views: Macromedia Contribute: What is It, and What Does it Mean for Us?; Logged In: The End of Hassles and Beyond (Erik Larson); New Collaborative Publishing Techniques (John Dowdell); New Collaborative Publishing Techniques (Part 2) (John Dowdell)
Reviews: Dreamweaver Lives up on MX-pectations
Best of ColdFusion Talk: Best of Talk (10/11/02); Best of Talk (10/21/02); Best of Talk (10/22/02); Best of Talk (10/23/02); Best of Talk (10/24/02); Best of Talk (10/25/02 - 10/27/02)
Knowledge Base: Contribute: Creating a Connection to a Virtual Server Path; Setting Up a Site Connection in Contribute; Text Editing Options in Contribute; Line Spacing Does Not Look Correct in Contribute; Pages Will Not Show Within the Frameset When Using Email Review; Formatting is Lost When Pasting from MS Word into Contribute; Linking to Local Files with Many Dependencies in Contribute; Contribute Sites and Drafts are Not Available with a Different Login Name; Options for Contribute Website Administrators; Contribute: Using Section Anchors in Contribute; Customizing the How Do I ... Panel; Changing the Default Settings of a Blank Page in Contribute; Browser Issues When Viewing Pages in Contribute; MS Word and Excel Documents Will Not Insert into Contribute; Troubleshooting Contribute Connection Problems; Using Contribute to Edit non-English Pages; Using Cascading Style Sheets in Contribute; Contribute Frequently Asked Questions; Using Templates with Contribute; Working with Tables in Contribute; Making Hyperlinks with Contribute

Specials

NYCFUG Flash Communications Server Broadcast

By Michael and Judith Dinowitz

On Tuesday, November 12, the New York ColdFusion User Group (NYCFUG) became the first CFUG ever to broadcast and distribute our meeting over the Internet using a webcam and the Flash Communications Server. The broadcast was an experiment and an effort to expose more people to NYCFUG.

The experiment was a success. We now have new members from all over the world who are interested in attending future meetings. A few minor technical issues did crop up and this report is an attempt to address them. We hope that other user groups will use the Flash Communications Server to do the same thing and will profit from our experience, and avoid these potential pitfalls.

Equipment Used to Broadcast:

Camera - Logitech 4000
Microphone - built into camera
Laptop - Toshiba Protégé 3110
LAN-based Internet Connection (T3)
Flash 6 Player
Flash Communications Server
Flash client (running in IE 6)

The camera used for the presentation was a top of the line webcam and the picture was very clear. The only drawback was that it's a small 'eyeball' cam and is not easily moved around. Also, when moving the camera, the lens adjusts slowly, which can lead to a blurred effect. If you plan to use a stationary camera, this model is good.

A more perfect solution would be one of the new Sony digital video cameras. They have USB streaming, which means you can stream to a laptop as you are recording. It's a bit expensive, but if you plan to record a meeting and broadcast it, then it may be the best you can do.

Some people suggested using two cameras (one for the presentation and one for the presenter). While this is a good idea, it is not possible for most people. It would require either a physical switch or a special piece of software to differentiate between each camera. Rather than doing this, I suggest having the presenter's material located on the web somewhere where it can be linked to. A better idea is to have the presenter's material set into Flashcom to be broadcast to the participants. This will help people see what is happening as well as hear it. This solution does require more coding though.

One of the keys to a Flashcom presentation is the audio. The microphone used for our meeting was part of the webcam and while it's good for up close work, it's not perfect for the distance we were using. A separate microphone is suggested. If you can get one, a wireless would be best, as it'll allow your presenter to move around. If not, a standard clip on microphone either near or on the presenter will suffice in giving good audio quality.

For those who can not hear the presentation, a 'monitor' is needed. This is someone who will paraphrase what the presenter is saying and field any comments or questions for the presenter. This is not an easy job, as the person has to listen to the presentation, compile what was said quickly and type just as fast.

We had a problem with that, as the laptop used was an ultra-portable. The keyboard was not designed for touch-typing and this led to many mistakes. The second typist was better as he had never learned to touch type and used two fingers (fast, but...). Having a good keyboard is a must in this situation. A plug in keyboard or a larger laptop should fill this need.

As I was writing this, I was told that an update for the Flashcom server components was out. One of the items in the update was this:
"The SimpleConnect component no longer has a memory leak on the client-side; previously, the memory leak occurred if you typed faster than 1 character every 10 milliseconds."
One of the biggest problems we had was the Flash client running in IE. The more we typed (and we typed fast), the more the system got lagged. This update should fix the problem. This may be due to one of two important issues, the hardware used to broadcast to the Flashcom server and the Flash client.

We were presenting on a Toshiba Protégé 3110, which is a P300 with 128 meg of RAM. This is a nice laptop, but might be a bit underpowered to act as a projection client. Something with a larger CPU should probably be used. As time goes on, the browser running the Flash client seems to take up 100% of the CPU. This will be dealt with in a moment, but the same effect is NOT seen on my home system, which is in the gigahertz range.

The final piece of the puzzle is the Flash client. This component is what's used to take the camera's input and send it to the Flashcom server. It also seems to be the piece that caused the most problems (and the piece that is probably the most easily fixed). As mentioned before, a memory leak with the client has already been fixed. How? Because the client is just a Flash component, and all that needs to be done is a small rewrite to fix any part of it. This is also where I feel the other big memory leak is. When the client is viewed inside of Internet Explorer, the more that happens in the client, the faster IE eats up CPU. I've been told that you can run the client outside of the browser and I think this will solve many of the CPU issues.

One known issue is that the more text that is typed in (both locally and from others), the more text is stored in the buffer and the more memory it takes up. This can easily be solved by setting a limit on the buffer or a clear cache button. Both are easily added to the flash client component.

One final thing that we found was that even if with our faster connection, setting the broadcast quality to DSL was more than enough to send good quality audio and video. A larger setting (like LAN) would mean more data being sent, and if there is a memory issue in IE as I believe, it would show up faster.

Even with a few technical and equipment- based problems, the presentation was good enough for people to stay on through the entire meeting. We did have to refresh the browser every 10-15 minutes to deal with the memory issue, but it wasn't that big a deal. With a few tests and tweaks, I believe that the refresh can be avoided and the quality can be maintained throughout the entire presentation.

As a side note, the entire presentation was 2 hours and 39 minutes of broadcast time. Others may vary. :)

Thread Title:	2nd question - Run MX as Nobody?
End Date:	10/11/02 27 Posts
Summary:	Tight security on a Solaris platform requires MX to run as "nobody". But nobody has no shell for security reasons and Solaris will not define a shell on the fly. Sun suggests using a noshell program, but that doesn't work either. What to do…
Related Threads:	2nd question - Run MX as nobody? - Solution
Thread Title:	CFINCLUDE in CFMX so sloooow !
End Date:	10/11/02 7 Posts
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Thread Title:	CFX not allowed
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Thread Title:	Microsoft UrlScan and CF
End Date:	10/11/02 12 Posts
Summary:	If you're running UrlScan with CF, be sure to tweak the configuration file to prevent the display of header information.
Thread Title:	Multiple Case Values in Switch Statement in CFScript
End Date:	10/11/02 16 Posts
Summary:	Discover how to use multiple case values in a CFScript switch statement. Since these case statements cascade, code executes from the point the case evaluates to the break point.
Thread Title:	Multiple Filters on CFDIRECTORY
End Date:	10/11/02 9 Posts
Summary:	CFDIRECTORY cannot filter on multiple file extensions, but here we discuss some workarounds.
Thread Title:	Upgrading to MX
End Date:	10/11/02 5 Posts
Summary:	Get valuable pointers for configuring an IIS production server to run CF5 and MX concurrently.
Thread Title:	Visual Source Safe and CF Studio
End Date:	10/11/02 19 Posts
Summary:	Need to use Visual Source Safe with CF Studio? This thread offers a few guidelines and plugs the DWMX/VSS combination.

Thread Title:	CF Credit Card Verification/ Authorization Question
End Date:	10/21/02 16 Posts
Summary:	Here are several recommendations for credit card authorization/verification services to integrate into an e-commerce site.

Thread Title:	CFMAIL Tag and Looping Output
End Date:	10/21/02 10 Posts
Summary:	Need to manage high-volume mail? You can use iMS-SE or look into some of the custom tags that are available. If you decide to stick with CFMAIL, BCC 20 or so recipients at a time to take some of the strain off the mail spooler.

Thread Title:	Counting # of Characters in File
End Date:	10/21/02 17 Posts
Summary:	To count the number of characters in a file, we had to use a combination of CFFILE and LEN. We follow up with speculation about how to do this more efficiently in MX.

Thread Title:	How Can You Get the Latest Version of a Page.
End Date:	10/21/02 5 Posts
Summary:	Use this code snippet to get the latest version of a page: <CFHEADER NAME="cache-control" VALUE="no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, max-age=0"> <cfheader name="Pragma" value="no-cache"> This sets the HTTP headers to tell the browser not to cache the page.

Thread Title:	Multi File Upload with CFFILE?
End Date:	10/21/02 7 Posts
Summary:	Several precautionary measures are suggested to a developer who needs to upload multiple files.

Thread Title:	Session Variables Not Expiring in CFMX
End Date:	10/21/02 4 Posts
Summary:	Here are a few code snippets to expire session variables in CF5 and CFMX.

Thread Title:	Session Vars and Locking
End Date:	10/21/02 31 Posts
Summary:	Pre-MX users should always lock shared memory variables or risk a server crash. In general, any process that creates a concurrency issue should be locked.

Thread Title:	Verity K2 Server
End Date:	10/21/02 2 Posts
Summary:	Tips for setting up a Verity K2 Server with CFMX can be found at: http://livedocs.macromedia.com/cfmxdocs/Working_with_Verity_Tools/contents.htm.

Thread Title:	Browser Detect Help
End Date:	10/22/02 2 Posts
Summary:	Here's a CF/Javascript solution to determine browser type and file formats supported on the client.

Thread Title:	CFMX Problem...
End Date:	10/22/02 5 Posts
Summary:	Heads up! McAfee Netshield may interfere with CFMX application services by "quarantining" the Java compiler. Solution? Disable McAfee Netshield and reinstall CFMX.

Thread Title:	File Meta Data Lib (was: Re: Counting # of Characters in File)
End Date:	10/22/02 7 Posts
Summary:	This CFMX UDF returns the number of characters in a file.

Thread Title:	Known CFMX issues Under Consideration for Upcoming Updater Release
End Date:	10/22/02 6 Posts
Summary:	Macromedia posts the URL for a TechNote outlining some of the known issues with CFMX that may get fixed in the next release of the ColdFusion MX Updater.
Related Threads:	Known CFMX Issues Under Consideration for Upcoming Updater Release Known CFMX Issues Under Consideration for Upcoming Updater Release

Thread Title:	Personalised Url is Bloating Our File System !!
End Date:	10/22/02 9 Posts
Summary:	We recommend converting a personalized URL to display user resumes within a dynamic page.

Thread Title:	Read From Database and Insert into String
End Date:	10/22/02 7 Posts
Summary:	Need an easy way to create a comma-delimited list of column values from a query? Try the ValueList function.

Thread Title:	Shopping Carts & PayPal IPN
End Date:	10/22/02 4 Posts
Summary:	An e-commerce developer gets some solid advice about using PayPal and IPN with ColdFusion shopping carts.

Thread Title:	CF to Excel Formatting Questions
End Date:	10/23/02 8 Posts
Summary:	Need a CFGRID replacement to simulate Excel? Microsoft Office web components allow you to embed an activeX excel control on a web page -- inheriting the basic Excel functionality. Code for a prototype custom tag is included.

Thread Title:	CFIndex for Verity Quit Working - Needs Attention by Macromedia!
End Date:	10/23/02 12 Posts
Summary:	When CFINDEX problems cause Verity to suddenly stops working, several developers suggest alternatives.

Thread Title:	Date and Time Insert Statement
End Date:	10/23/02 10 Posts
Summary:	Use CreateODBCDate and CreateODBCTime when inserting dates and times into a database. You can then format the date or time returned in a recordset by using either DateFormat or TimeFormat.

Thread Title:	Easy question
End Date:	10/23/02 10 Posts
Summary:	It's simple to trim a field to 35 characters. Just use #Left(field_name,35)# or #Mid(field_name,1,35)# .

Thread Title:	OT: Javascript ?
End Date:	10/23/02 7 Posts
Summary:	An input tag with type="image" behaves just like type="submit." If you need to prevent form submission, either switch to an image tag or add "return false" to the Javascript called by the onClick event.
Related Threads:	Javascript ?

Thread Title:	Shared Scope Pointers (Structure)
End Date:	10/23/02 7 Posts
Summary:	To copy a session structure containing complex variables into the request scope, use request.session=duplicate(session) rather than looping over the structure to set each item.

Thread Title:	Webservices and Caching
End Date:	10/23/02 6 Posts
Summary:	Visit this URL suggested by Ben Forta, http://www.forta.com/cf/tips/index.cfm?date=10/17/2002, to refresh webservices called by your CFC.

Thread Title:	Can't Start CFMX Admin - No Default Web Site
End Date:	10/24/02 6 Posts
Summary:	CFMX Admin is inaccessible after the web server's default website is deleted. Solution? Run the IIS connector script at c:\CFusionMX\bin\connectors\IIS_connector.bat after re-creating the default website.

Thread Title:	HTTP Compression and ColdFusion
End Date:	10/24/02 9 Posts
Summary:	A CF5 developer wants to use IIS's built-in HTTP Compression to speed up intranet page loads, but headers display when it's on. Known CF5 issue?

Thread Title:	Linux & Solaris File Paths
End Date:	10/24/02 12 Posts
Summary:	A developer preparing his Apache-hosted apps for MX is advised that a lowercase filename convention has been adopted with two notable exceptions: Application.cfm and OnRequestEnd.cfm.

Thread Title:	Max Length of Text Data?
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Summary:	If you're using SQL Server, MAX(DATALENGTH(textdatafield)) will return the maximum length of an ntext data type. (An ntext data type can store variable-length data.)

Thread Title:	SOT:Java?
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Summary:	Here are several good recommendations for those of you interested in learning more about Java: books, IDEs, a Flash tutorial...
Related Threads:	Java?

Thread Title:	Using CFEXECUTE from a Web Browser???
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Summary:	Our gurus home in on the correct CFEXECUTE syntax needed to print a file. This thread also includes a recommendation for Meadco's ScriptX object to control printing functions.

Thread Title:	CFC in .NET
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Summary:	Want to use CFCs in .NET or Web Services in CF? You can do both. You can call a Web Service from CFMX and invoke a CFC from within .NET.

Thread Title:	How Do I Embed a .mov File in a Web Page?
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Summary:	Here are a couple of URLs about using EMBED and OBJECT to play a .MOV file, among other things, from your web page.

Thread Title:	How to Remove URL References from Printed Pages
End Date:	10/25/02 23 Posts
Summary:	Convert your web pages into printable PDFs with htmldoc.exe, available at http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc. To implement it, use either CFEXECUTE or the cf_html2pdf custom tag.

Thread Title:	M$Access DB and ColdFusionMX for Solaris
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Summary:	There is a way to access an MS Access database from ColdFusion MX running on Solaris, but it's a third-party solution called OpenLinks with a not-so-cheap price tag. Download the try-before-you-buy at www.openlinksw.com.

Thread Title:	Mail Server Recommendations
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Thread Title:	OT Cheap SSL
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Summary:	SSL certificates provide a twofold service: they establish an encrypted, secure connection and they verify the existence of a business. While self-signed certificates may get you a connection, public sites should always buy from trusted vendors for business verification reasons.

Thread Title:	Whitespace Woes
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Specials

NYCFUG Flash Communications Server Broadcast

Community

Macromedia Looking for Mac OS X Experts

TeraTech Puts out New CFUN-03 Survey!

News

Macromedia Unlocks the Power of Web Publishing for Everyone with Macromedia Contribute

Macromedia Goes Lite With Contribute

Macromedia Looks to Ease Web Site Updates

Macromedia Brings Simplicity to Editing

Macromedia to Sell Light-Duty Web Tool

Macromedia Announces New Web Editor

Easy-to-use XML content management solution arrives from Ektron

Tech and Tags

Macromedia Contribute Product Section

New Contribute Center on Desdev

Co-Branding Contribute

Filter Dates with the Flash MX Calendar Component

Views

Macromedia Contribute: What is It, and What Does it Mean for Us?

Logged In: The End of Hassles and Beyond (Erik Larson)

New Collaborative Publishing Techniques (John Dowdell)

New Collaborative Publishing Techniques (Part 2) (John Dowdell)

Reviews

Dreamweaver Lives up on MX-pectations

Best of ColdFusion Talk

Best of Talk (10/11/02)

Best of Talk (10/21/02)

Best of Talk (10/22/02)

Best of Talk (10/23/02)

Best of Talk (10/24/02)

Best of Talk (10/25/02 - 10/27/02)

Knowledge Base

Contribute: Creating a Connection to a Virtual Server Path

Setting Up a Site Connection in Contribute

Text Editing Options in Contribute

Line Spacing Does Not Look Correct in Contribute

Pages Will Not Show Within the Frameset When Using Email Review

Formatting is Lost When Pasting from MS Word into Contribute

Linking to Local Files with Many Dependencies in Contribute

Contribute Sites and Drafts are Not Available with a Different Login Name

Options for Contribute Website Administrators

Contribute: Using Section Anchors in Contribute

Customizing the How Do I ... Panel

Changing the Default Settings of a Blank Page in Contribute

Browser Issues When Viewing Pages in Contribute

MS Word and Excel Documents Will Not Insert into Contribute

Troubleshooting Contribute Connection Problems

Using Contribute to Edit non-English Pages

Using Cascading Style Sheets in Contribute

Contribute Frequently Asked Questions

Using Templates with Contribute

Working with Tables in Contribute

Making Hyperlinks with Contribute