Using Google Maps Places API and ColdFusion's CFMAP to render places of interests

Google announced the Places API recently at Google I/O (2011) and I was looking into this, to see how this API can be used in conjunction with ColdFusion maps created with CFMAP. The Places API can be used to retrieve place information which includes:

• Places of interests such as parks, restaurants, hospitals which are nearby to the users location.
• More detailed information on the place, such as the address, phone number etc,.

The API can also be used to perform check-in at a particular place and to add\delete a place. These check-ins can then be used to evaluate the popularity of the place. In this post I'll explain how to retrieve the places of interests and displaying the same on a ColdFusion map using CFMAP.

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Custom validation messages for HTML5 Input elements using the constraint validation API

HTML5 has introduced several input types such as EMAIL, URL, RANGE, SEARCH, DATE, TIME, etc,. Most of the modern browsers have implemented them and are ready to be used in a HTML document. Another exciting feature introduced in HTML5 is the form validation. Instead of writing JavaScript to validate users input, browsers can now validate it and show an appropriate message if the validation fails. The validation message is shown in line with the field for which the validation has failed. The default error message is shown when the validation fails. In this post I'll explain how these error messages can be changed.

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Submitting Form using FormData object in HTML5 using XmlHttpRequest Level 2

The other day I had posted on uploading a file using XmlHttpRequest 2 and tracking the progress of the file upload process using the progress event on XHR2 object and the progress tag. Another enhancement added to the XHR2 specification is the introduction of FormData object. Using the FormData object, one can create a set of key-value pairs and send them as form data in a XHR request. The FormData object is passed in the send() method of the XHR object:

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