Brian Kotek:
Inversion of Control

There's a lot of good news from the Swiz world today. First, we just released the Swiz 1.0 Release Candidate, which fixes a number of small bugs in the beta and adds numerous new features. This version should be pretty much feature-complete, so at this point we'll be focused on fixing any issues that come up. A final 1.0 should be out in the next few weeks.

I did my best to help out with this release by working hard on updated documentation. You can see the fruits of this labor on the new Swiz documentation wiki we've created through JIRA Studio. You can also sign up to enter feature requests or bugs, vote on issues, and all the other good stuff that JIRA provides. If you have any feedback on the documentation, feel free to leave a wiki comment and we'll do our best to address it.

I've also created a Swiz 1.0RC version of my example application. If you like, you can view or download the source code.

Since 1.0RC removes the option for "view injection" into a bean, folks have asked about ways to handle providing a view to a Swiz bean. I created a MediateView custom metadata extension that should handle most of these needs. I'll do my best to keep it up to date as I get feedback about it.

And finally, in the "better late than never" department, I've uploaded the Swiz presentation I gave at cf.Objective() 2010 to SlideSix. I'll also be speaking on Swiz at this year's CFUnited conference. If you're planning on going, I'm happy to talk about Swiz into the wee hours of the morning!

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Update on 8/16/10: With the release of Swiz RC1, I released an updated version of this example application.

With the release of the 1.0 Beta of the Swiz framework, I've updated my Swiz example application to the latest version. You can also view the source code if you like. I'd like to point out a few things that I had to change from the example based on version 0.6.4:

• The instantiation of the framework has changed in order to support multiple instances of Swiz, primarily for Flex module support:
  

  <swiz:SwizConfig id="mySwizConfig"
                   eventPackages="com.briankotek.swizdemo.event"
                   viewPackages="com.briankotek.swizdemo.view"
                   defaultFaultHandler="{genericFault}" />
  
  <swiz:Swiz id="mySwiz" beanProviders="{[Beans]}" config="{mySwizConfig}" />
  		

• The static methods on the Swiz class have been removed, due to the fact that there can now be multiple instances of Swiz. This means that instead of doing something like Swiz.dispatchEvent( event ), you now want to inject a dispatcher object into your non-view objects and dispatch events through it instead. The two main ways to do this are to inject the dispatcher in your BeanLoader/BeanProvider, or by having your class implement the IDispatcherAware interface, which will instruct Swiz to inject the dispatcher automatically.
• The [Autowire] metadata tag has been deprecated in favor of the more industry-standard [Inject]. [Autowire] will still work for now, but be aware that this may be removed in a future release.
• The use of the earlier CommandChain has changed to support more robust and extensible chains, as well as supporting internal Flex event-based chains on top of the existing support for chains that make server calls. For example:
  

  var chain : CommandChain = new CommandChain();<br>
  chain.addMember( new AsyncChainStepCommand( delegate.deleteUser, [user], userDeleteHandler ) );<br>
  chain.addMember( new AsyncChainStepCommand( delegate.deleteUserProfileImage, [user], userProfileImageDeleteHandler ) );<br>
  chain.addEventListener( "chainComplete", userDeleteCompleteHandler, false, 0, true );<br>
  chain.start();
  		

Anyway, that's all for now, but I'll be posting more about the Swiz updates soon. If you're interested in seeing more about 1.0, have a look at Sam Ahn's demo of Swiz using AS3Signals. A very cool use of the brand new custom metadata support now available in Swiz!

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This morning, the Swiz team released the 1.0 Beta of the Swiz Framework. You can view the extensive list of updates at the Swiz web site. Have a look and try out the new features. We'll be doing a full update of the documentation as we prepare for the final release. I also have an updated version of my sample application about ready, and I will upload it and highlight the differences between 0.6.4 and 1.0. Stay tuned!

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Just a quick note that I've had an article on ColdFusion 9 published over at CNET TechRepublic.com. It probably won't tell anyone who reads my blog much that they don't already know, but I hope that it attracts the attention of those outside of the core CF community!

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Like most of you, I sit in front of a computer for a large part of my day. Over time, sitting and working on the computer has caused me varying physical issues, like back, wrist, and elbow pain. To alleviate this, I bought a desk with an adjustable height, an ergonomic keyboard, and an Aeron chair. These have helped greatly. But the one issue that kept coming back was wrist pain. I tried several types of mice, with varying shapes, but none of them dealt completely with the issue. For me, a big part of the discomfort in my hand and elbow came from constantly reaching over for the mouse, as well as gripping it. It might sound silly to some, but when you do this thousands of times, it adds up!

Then, about six months ago, I found a blurb about the RollerMouse Free on some tech site. Having used it daily for a while, I can say that this mouse is an excellent option to a traditional mouse.

The RollerMouse sits directly under your keyboard, just past the space bar. To control the cursor, you roll a bar up, down, and side to side. It sounds bizarre, but it works very nicely and was easy to get used to. The bar moves very smoothly, and is very accurate. You can easily move it with your thumbs, and you barely have to move your hands off the keyboard, or you can use your fingertips. Either way, it's far better than reaching over for a normal mouse.

I still keep a regular mouse as well, but I use it pretty infrequently (except for gaming!). This odd new RollerMouse is the workhorse now. I just wanted to mention this device in case anyone else has similar problems and was frustrated trying to solve them. I was uncertain about how this thing would work out, but it really does work well. There's a video at the product web site which shows how it works in more detail, if you're interested to see it in action.

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