I was wondering what I could do to improve the AJAXyness (yes, it is word, because I said so) of ColdFusionBloggers.org, and I came up with a cool trick. On the right hand side of the site is a stats pod. While the number of feeds won't change, and the number of entries won't change often, the number of users will go up and down. I wanted the information to update without user action and this is what I came up with. (As a note, the code attached to the zip is now old.)

First I took the block of code and moved it to a new file, stats.cfm. I then edited my layout page and changed the stats pod to this:

<cfdiv id="statsdiv" bind="url:stats.cfm"> </cfdiv>

The CFDIV is binding to a url, stats.cfm. Again, that's where I moved the stat text. So far so good. Next I added this to my body tag:

<body onload="window.setTimeout('updatestats()',60000)">

And added this JavaScript function:

<script> function updatestats() { ColdFusion.navigate('stats.cfm','statsdiv'); window.setTimeout('updatestats()',60000); } </script>

And that's it. Now when it loads you will get a loading grapic, as it is now for me, and I'm hoping it's just the flakey Airport wifi. (But I shouldn't complain, it's free.)

Thoughts?