0

Five Cool Additions and One Undocumented Function in 8.0.1

ColdFusion 8

The release notes for ColdFusion 8.0.1 detail 10 pages of tweaks and new features. Here are five cool additions, and one undocumented function, in no particular order:

  • Leopard and 64 bit support
    Considering the devoted followers of both CF and Apple it was no surprise to see install solutions for CF8 popping up within hours of Leopards release. As cool as that is a supported release along with 64-bit support is extremely nice. And, wow, the speed of CF8 on Leopard 64 bit is impressive; re-inits take half the time they use to.
  • Nested Implicit Structure/Array
    Nested structures and arrays have always been possible. Now the implicit expressions work as well like so:
    <cfset variables.nestIt = {a=[{no="you did not",
           yes="I did",  
           oh=["and on",["and on"]]}]}>
  • cfwindow refreshOnShow attribute
    When using a source for cfwindow the default behavior is to cache the response for when the window is closed and then opened. I recently stumbled into this problem in an application I'm building. When refreshOnShow = true anytime the window is shown the content will be grabbed from the server.
  • Watermark with html
    cfpdf action="watermark" can now take html with formating in addition to an image. A nice, nice addition.
  • Richtext area for Safari
    Finally! WYSIWYG textarea support for Safari (3.0 and up) users. Big thanks should go to the FCKEditor team on this one since its their work along with Adobe's integration that makes it possible to do and have a rich textarea. I am especially happy with this as Safari is my current favorite browser (this can and does change often).

The other addition is an undocumented function: getPrinterList() that well, returns a list of printers that cfprint can print to.

(I will be presenting "Creating, Manipulating and Printing PDFs" and "Intro to CFML as a Language" at CFUnited in June.)

todd sharp said:
 
I'm pretty sure refreshOnShow was in 8.0. Otherwise, good list!
 
posted 435 days ago
Add Comment Reply to: this comment OR this thread
 
Todd Rafferty said:
 
What, no love for cfwindow.destroy()?
 
posted 435 days ago
Add Comment Reply to: this comment OR this thread
 
todd sharp said:
 
Good point other Todd
 
posted 435 days ago
Add Comment Reply to: this comment OR this thread
 
Gary Fenton said:
 
CF8.01 has an undocumented bug fix in that cfdocument pagetype="a4" now renders the correct font size. CF7 8 generated text that was about 2-3 point sizes too big. So if you generate a PDF using code from a CF7/8 script on a server running CF8.01 the text will appear really small. Just a warning as that really stumped me. Solution is to change your CSS, it's not a new bug in CF, rather it's a bug fix.
 
posted 435 days ago
Add Comment Reply to: this comment OR this thread
 
samfarmer said:
 
@todd sharp: thanks for pointing that out. Not sure how I missed it the first time.

@todd rafferty: good point. that is a cool new feature. should have gone with that rather than refreshOnshow

@gary: thanks for sharing that...I know there are a lot of this little fixes with cfdocument.
 
posted 435 days ago
Add Comment Reply to: this comment OR this thread
 
WOW gold said:
 
 
posted 72 days ago
Add Comment Reply to: this comment OR this thread
 

Search

About Me
I am a 33-year old Web Developer specializing in ColdFusion. I live and work in downtown Washington, DC with my wife and two daughters. I work for Interfolio where we help people collect, deliver and showcase their life's work. Read more About Me

2007 CFeMmy Best Newcommer winner
As voted on by fellow CF Bloggers.
I will be attending these conferences in 2009. If you are going let me know!