Nik Molnar

"Sorry about that Adam, we'll have to take a deeper look at it. Uh-huh. Yeah. No, I totally understand. Okay then, I'll give you a call if I still can't replicate the problem." Many of you recognize this phone call: the client has an issue and now you have to figure out why. I usually find issues like this much more frustrating than a cold hard error. At least with an error you get something concrete, you get facts about the problem. But these types of bugs, often problems with the application's logic, are the ones that sneak through to the client and are difficult to track down. I call this kind of bug No-see-ums, named after the teeny tiny mosquitoes commonly found in the Everglades. Luckily for me, ColdFusion provides great tools for tracking down bugs like these. So armed with a fly swatter (error handling) and a can of Off (debugging), away I work at tracking d... (more)

The XPath Factor

It's 3:00 P.M. on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The birds are chirping, the leaves are blowing, and you can hear the lake waters breaking on its rocky shores. The sounds of a baseball game randomly crack in the distance, and the roar of competition erupts on the basketball courts nearby. My burgers are just getting medium-well as my wife is returning from a little potty walk with the dog. Our blanket is set and our picnic looks like it will be wonderful. Who knew a Web geek like me could pull off such a seemingly perfect day? Interestingly enough, I owe much of its success to XML an... (more)