Isolating / finding bug in CF and cflayout

[cf_code_warrior]

Ok, I give up.

So soon?

So I am using cflayout, cflayoutarea stuff.  And in my code I have a bug.  But I can't find it. Why?  Because CF10 is not showing it to me.  It is hidden.  Normally when outside a cflayout (or sometimes in one) instead of getting the huge usual error listing all over your screen, instead I get a sort of pop up window ...

Error retriving markup for element "element name": and the element name is the tab ... I am using nested cflayouts. 

enable debugging by adding cfdebug to the URL.  When I do that all I get is a red line telling me nothing else.

How does one determine what the problem is under such a scenario?

[Adam Cameron.]

That UI shit (word used  deliberately) uses JS heavily, so you ought to also be looking at what's happening in your browser's JS console.

That said... <cflayout>... don't waste your time with it. Just use mark-up and JS (or a JS lib that deals with that sort of thing).  The CF UI stuff is poorly written, poorly (or not ~) maintained, and are not transferrable skills. Don't waste your time using them. They had a place te years ago (so before they existed ;-), but not these days.

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Adam

[cf_code_warrior]

I did find the bug ... I had not updated a SQL table (added a cell) on the preview site (not local) so a value couldn't be found.

I'm using Chrome.  Using Inspect Element, Console, it showed nothing untoward.

I'm also no (good) JS programmer.  I use it when I have to.  For mundane things.  What do you mean by "mark-up"?  By JS lib, are you referring to something like jquery?  Wouldn't know where to styart with that.  As mush as today I have become to LOATHE CF, they do make it easy with cflayout, yet I have also found so many annoying things it does!  Like you cannot put a JS function call within one; has to be outside it or in another template.  Yuck.

Transferable skills?

And don't get me started on Builder.  What a POS.  Bot nothing else works.  And it crashes by the hour. 

[Adam Cameron.]

I'm also no (good) JS programmer.  I use it when I have to.  For mundane things.

That's not really an adequate situation to be in if you're a web developer these days. Especially if it means you need to use things like <cflayout> etc to do your work for you. You might have been able to get away with not knowing JS ten years ago, but not now. I recommend you do the courses here: http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/javascript and here: http://www.codeschool.com/paths/javascript.

What do you mean by "mark-up"? 

htMl

they do make it easy with cflayout, yet I have also found so many annoying things it does!  Like you cannot put a JS function call within one; has to be outside it or in another template.  Yuck.

Precisely. Which is why you should get yourself skilled-up sufficiently to not need them.

Transferable skills?

Well put it this way: being adept at <cflayout> is not going to help you get your next job, even if it's a CF one (indeed you daren't mention it, IMO). However JS is pretty much an essential skill to have in the web market these days. You don't need to be a guru, but you need to be confident with it.

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Adam