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Adobe Listens: Feedback Shows up in ColdFusion 9

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:50:00 GMT

Around two years, just after the successful launch of ColdFusion 8, I emailed some of the top dogs on the Adobe ColdFusion team about features for ColdFusion 9. These where my suggestions and whether they made CF9:

An IDE. ColdFusion Builder is here and one I've been happily using exclusively since its release.
Shorter Syntax/Full cfscript Support. The shorter syntax was an idea of mine to merge scripting in a tagging syntax. Looking back I'm not sure exactly how it would have worked but I am happy to see much improved support for cfscript. Writing a cfc in script syntax feels good and should help those picking up ColdFusion.
cfspreadsheet. Adobe nailed this one with the new tag and numerous Spreadsheet* functions.
cfaudio/cfvideo. My request was for recording and editing Flash movies and possibly other formats. A little disapointed although these features are availible with other tools in the Adobe arsenal. cfmediaplayer is a useful addition to ease the playing of Flash movies.
Built in ORM support. The hibernate integration appears to be awesome so far.
Stronger support for {} and []: Happy to see more uses for these useful short cuts.
Optomize PDFs: Actually asked for this one later on but am delighted to see its inclusion.

The ColdFusion team did not listen just to me of course, from conversations I've had with them they listen to just about every blog post, review all ERs sent in and go out and talk to customers about their vision. I've participated in the latter and they are very good sessions.

Overall I'm excited with the new features in ColdFusion 9 and pleased that my feedback was listened to (and mostly showed up in the final release) but I'm actually more excited about the features I did not suggest such as:

Advanced Caching
SharePoint Integration
Office Integration (including document to pdf conversion)
Java Portal Integration
Enhancements to Components
Integration with the Solr search engine
Faster Flash Remoting
ColdFusion as a Service

Congratulations to the whole ColdFusion team and all of those who have worked on the release of 9!

Adding CVS to ColdFusion Builder Standalone

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:28:00 GMT

Here's how to add the Eclipse CVS client to the ColdFusion Builder standalone version:

1. From the menu click on 'Help' then 'Software Updates' and select 'Find & Install...'

2. Select 'Search for New Features to Install' and click 'Next'

3. Click on 'New Remote Site'

4. Enter a Name and the following URL 'http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/3.4' and click 'Next'

5. If prompted select a mirror and wait till the next screen shows up:

Make sure to select the CVS options as selected above.

6. Click 'Next', agree to any licenses and 'Feature Verification'

7. When complete you will be prompted to Restart the CF Builder.

When using beta software I generally like to have it run in its own install. This has worked great for ColdFusion Builder especially once I got the CVS client installed.

The First Post

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:59:53 GMT

The first post. I've decided to start a blog primarily because I like writing. And having been a programmer for the last 10 years I haven't written much during that time. I also realize I like writing about technical issues and have a fair amount on my mind at the moment so it seems like a good time to start a blog. Note, I did not say I was a grammatically correct writer. So, expect the odd typo and grammatically incorrect sentence from time to time. This is a blog and I'm not going to use the grammar corrector in Word before posting.

I am also intrigued by social networking so InstantSpot seemed a good spot (pun intended) to start my blog.

I aim to cover a bunch of topics, some tutorials and explanations of basic ColdFusion functionality, thoughts on the future of the web and ColdFusion, conferences, and anything else that comes up. I will mostly be focusing on ColdFusion (and will probably start using cf as an abbreviation real soon) though I do hope to post on other non-cf topics like JavaScript, MySQL and databases in general and who knows what else in the future.

I am not going to aim to publish on a regular basis and have pledged to keep this blog a purely non-work time activity. I'm busy enough there anyway. Good busy. I also don't believe blogs die. So if I have nothing good or interesting to say I will say nothing. I also don't think this will turn into a news blog with short entries and links to the latest news. There are enough of those, and, I rely on them for my tech-news as much as anywhere else. In short, if you like what you are reading I suggest using the RSS feeds or subscribing over email.

More to come...