Cozmo's Dev Blog - Bad code

Seeking recommendations for a drop down menu (tabs)

Tue, 19 May 2009 20:22:00-0700

I have a very finicky and non trivial CSS based layout that I have finally worked all the kinks out of. Actually it is only finicky in IE. Now the powers that be want to add drop down menus (tabs) the top nav bar that use the sliding door rounded corner technique. I have tried a bunch of menuing systems: Dynamic Drive menus, Spry, some jQuery plugins, Massimo's hiermenu and a bunch of stuff I found off of the Google and all of them have problems of one sort or another. I can't position it correctly, it trows off other page elementsm the drop down columns are mis-aligned etc... forever and ever, world with out end. Amen. I posted this to CF_talk a few months back (the site got shelved since then and it is back in production) and though I would hit up the blogosphere.. Has anybody out there had any luck with this and can recommend a tabbed menu dropdown solution? The primary requirement are:

It can have sub menus
W3C XHTML compliant.
Allows for text based links

These are the Menus that I have tried so far:

(ot) Pleas leave a comment below. Many TIA!!!

It seems that I am not alone

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:19:00-0700

Are You Frustrated With Firefox?

FireFox - Just like a disfunctional relationship

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 02:05:00-0700

I loved firefox at one time. She had everything I wanted and needed, and more, from a browser. She was fast, nimble, extensible, she had and did everything I needed. And I do mean EVERYTHING. She was HOT!! Then we got married. She put on a lot of weight, she became very sluggish and started to really slow me down. She uses all of my resources and will sit there and do nothing for long periods of time so I cannot do anything else but wait for her. It is over baby. You are a fat, sluggish, resource hogging glutton that is taking more than you give. I still love you, but I have to move on. And even though I will be dating your red headed step sister I will still want to see you from time to time so I can use firebug. Open Source used to be so sexy. What happened to you? Are you becoming like Britteny Spears?

I think Fire fox has a memory leak

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:57:00-0700

I could be wrong though. I often am.

My script goes to eleven.

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:22:00-0700

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? This reminds me of debugging PERL back in the 90's.

Open Source my ass

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:54:00-0700

Open Source is starting to get on my nerves. I love open source about 90% of the time. But FF and Eclipse are turning into a bloated sacks of fark that makes MS's worst bloated sack of fark look like notepad. Let me see.... Right now FF is using 450 megs of ram and Eclipse is @ 358 megs. A browser using 450 megs of ram? I close out all but one browser window and it is still using 450 megs. Open what? Suck what? If a site has a flash video (like Youtube), FF pegs the processor of my 3 yr old (1.8 gig P4 - 1.28 gig ram) laptop and grinds it to a farking halt. Unusable. Flash videos also pegs my 2.8 gig duel processor HP box. Nice. No wonder I think that OSS zealots are idiots. "But OSS is FREE!" So is dirt. Blow me.

The spaghetti monster from hell - and a mentor

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:49:00-0700

The intranet I work with at work is a nightmare. I hate it. It is the spaghetti monster from hell. I have written some crappy code in the past but this thing takes the cake. When I first started I thought that I just didn't "get it"... that the guy before me had some mojo I just couldn't get my head around. Now I know he was a bad coder and a horrible architect. Smart? yes. talented? Sorta. Good? no. Both my boss and myself DREAD having to deal with his code. My second thought: I want a mentor. There is no one that I work with that can bring me to the next level with Coldfusion. My boss is a gifted programmer but he is a VB Jedi and is still learning CF. He has taught me a lot but I want an Andrés Segovia type mentor. Someone who will not take no for an answer, whip me into shape, and teach me the ways of the code warrior. I am truly ready, willing and able.

Why God hates me

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:51:00-0700

This lovely little nugget of SUCK my predecessors left me fills me with the urge to vomit

<CFSet ArrayNew = "My Life sucks" >

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 02:21:00-0700

I inherited a huge intranet at my new job. It is all done using CFWACK (ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit) procedural style development. No biggie. I have been do that sort of development for years... I learned CF using CFWACK as my guide. But my predecessor loved arrays... As my boss told me "I cannot express to you how much that man loved arrays". It was not some sort of neurosis... this man was psychotic about it. The site is littered with him literally creating and parsing arrays for the sake of doing so. He literally spent four months converting the site from using query datasets to arrays. So there is four months of bat shit crazy code that I have to un-scramble. The man was a human code obfuscater. Oh, and did I mention that the man did not indent his code? I mean, AT ALL? Ever? Never ever? This is what I wrote my boss the other day:

Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 12:10 PM
To: My Boss
Subject: ArrayNew = My Life sucks

I am really, really, REALLY, REALLY starting to hate arrays. If people made cars the way my predecessor made data structures a gocart would be the size of an oil tanker, have 400 steering wheels, no brakes and starting it would require more secret hand signals than an epileptic third base coach on meth.

Here is an example of the shit I have to deal with:

         SELECT * FROM tbl_Contact WHERE NOT Email IS NULL AND StatusID = 2                                                                                                                                                                             SELECT ProjNum, Title FROM tblProj WHERE ID=#ProjID#                                                                                    SELECT tblRP.ClientName FROM tblRP INNER JOIN tblRPProj ON tblRP.ID=tblRPProj.RPID WHERE tblRPProj.ProjID=#ProjID#                                                   
  #DateFormat(Now(),"dddd, mmmm d, yyyy")#
  
 Dear #EMailArray[L][1]#:
  #EmailArray[L][1]#
 #EmailArray[L][3]#
 #EmailArray[L][12]#
 #EmailArray[L][4]#
 #EmailArray[L][5]#
 #EmailArray[L][6]#, #Application.StateArray[EmailArray[L][7]][1]#  #EMailArray[L][8]#
  
 ..... etc

When ever I see ArrayNew I know that my life is going to suck. All I have to say is why in the fark don't you use the variable names? I mean, CF casts the query as a structure with the variable scope being the name of the query for fucks sake. Why in the name of all that is not stupid do you need to turn it into yet another data structure?