Yes folks now you get to be as cool as I’ve been! For the past few weeks / months I’ve been involved in the ColdFusion 8 aka Scorpio beta. Today you too can play with the next version of ColdFusion. Adobe today released the first Release Candidate or Public Beta for ColdFusion 8!! I’ll give you a second to jump around, pick yourself up off the floor, or just read that all over again.
So why is this version going to be so great? What can you look forward to exploring? Well here’s my highlights:
- Built in server monitoring - Yes now you can monitor your server for tuning, bottlenecks, and performance issues
- Built in debugger - If you’re an Eclipse fan then this will be something you’ve been dying to have. Now you can!
- Spry integration - Yes folks it’s not getting even easier to build AJAX application with ColdFusion and Spry integration.
- .NET Support - While I haven’t played with this myself it’s now available for those of you who need it.
The stuff / tags I’m most excited about:
- CFFeed tag - Read RSS / ATOM and create RSS 2.0 / Atom 1.0 feeds easily!
- The new CFPDF / CFPDFForm tag to do some cool things with LiveCycle and PDF’s in general
- CFExchange integration - Do I really need to say anything else?
- CFImage - Standardized image manipulation, will it live up to the expectations, probably it has CAPTCHA built in :)
- CFZip - Finally we can zip and unzip to our hearts content without a CFX of other custom code
- SERVER MONITORING!
- CFThread - Oh this is just going to be plain fun!
- Per Application Setting! Set mappings and custom tag paths on a per application basis.
- No more single login to CF Administrator
- OnMissingTemplate in Application.cfc - Why they didn’t do this in an earlier version I don’t know but thankfully it’s there now!
- New file manipulation functions - Getting to the down and dirty with file manipulation
- Javascript operators in CFML Expressions - Do you miss the ++ in your code? now you can bring it back old school.
- CFDbInfo tag - Bring all kinds of DB meta data to your screen.
So there you have it folks. Now since this is a beta we have NO IDEA what will be considered Standard features and what will be considered Enterprise. So as you are playing with the beta be vocal and let Adobe know what should go where!
May 31st, 2007 at 2:36 am
Wow.. people still use Cold Fusion? I seriously had no idea. I’ll have to check it out.
May 31st, 2007 at 4:45 am
It is an amazingly wide and deep release. In addition to what you mention, for instance you can build an entire AJAX application without writing a line of JavaScript. If you do know JavaScript the cfajaxproxy tag creates a proxy to a cfc and allows you to call functions in your cfc by name. There’s a reason why the ‘Whats New’ guide is 20 odd pages long.
http://samfarmer.instantspot.com/
May 31st, 2007 at 4:48 am
Dang man - haven’t you ever heard of an NDA?
May 31st, 2007 at 5:14 am
If it’s a public beta releaase, I would expect that they have lifted the NDA restrictions.
– T
May 31st, 2007 at 6:24 am
From what I recall, there’s very limited Spry integration. CF8’s Ajax implementation is actually based on a customized version of YUI and not Spry and I believe apart from the cfsprydataset tag, most everything else is based on their YUI implementation.
May 31st, 2007 at 6:39 am
You’re wrong - the NDA restrictions are not lifted. Do your homework - you’re still not free to say you have/are participating.
May 31st, 2007 at 12:55 pm
> CFImage—Standardized image manipulation, will it live up to the expectations, probably it has CAPTCHA built in
Built in captcha would be pretty slick. At least lyla works :)
May 31st, 2007 at 7:20 pm
it’s a PUBLIC BETA! Anyone can now download it from Adobe labs. The private beta is over (and therefore so is the NDA).
June 7th, 2007 at 4:47 am
Private Beta is not over. NDA is still in effect.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:04 am
That’s kinda funny, because the download page at http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs%5Fadobecf8%5Fbeta
says, and I quote:
emphasis mine
Not that I really care, either way. I just hate it when people act like “know-it-all” jerks. Note that you can correct someone without being a jerk. It’s all in the delivery.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:14 am
CF is so 90s i wounder why they even bother.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:53 am
They bother because it’s a tool. A tool is useful when it fills a need. The hammer isn’t any less important simply just because it was invented by apes in the pre-stone age.
Personally, I’m pretty much a C# ASP.NET guy, but I like to keep my eyes open to current and future technologies. You never know when some scrap of information may prove vital. Keep your eyes and your mind open. It may save your career someday.
– T
June 9th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
To those who are insisting the NDA is still in effect — clearly it’s you who need to “do you homework”. Not only does it state on the Adobe web site that CF8 is now in public beta, but CF luminaries like Ray Camden (who have been tight-lipped about CF8 during the limited private beta) are now blogging freely about the features of the new release.
To the Coldfusion haters/doubters: Fortunately, no one is forcing you to use CF and you are free to use whatever technology you please, so go right ahead. But I really see no point for you to be trolling the Coldfusion blogs except to maybe start flame wars or to demonstrate your third-grade school boy “your language sucks” mentality.
June 11th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
If you’re going to make bold and uneducated comments, at least have the decency to post some sort of nom de plume so that we can attribute your brilliance to someone other than an anonymous user.
It clearly says on the page “public beta”. Public, as in: NOT private.
For those who say CF is outdated or not used, you’re entitled to your opinion, but there are many of us still using CF. The new version shows that it’s still actively being developed and that Adobe is dedicated to its furtherance.
ColdFusion’s ease of use often puts it in a “lightweight” category when it comes to web development tools. Just because something’s easy doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a very valid place in the grand scheme of things. It’s worked well for me for many years in many applications. (From one-(or-two)-man shops to well funded start ups to Fortune 500’s.)
I’ve been pretty vocal in the past about defending CF. I honestly don’t care what .Net’ers or PHP’ers think about it. It suits my purposes.
The new features look great. I’m expecting that some of them may be underdeveloped. That should change with time. Image manipulation, IMO, is about three versions overdue. That should’ve been a no brainer…
Thanks for the post, Eric.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Yeah.. Image manipulation was definately needed. You could still import libraries to do some of those things, couldn’t ya? If I recall from my CF4 days, wasn’t there some CFIMPORT block or something you could use to bring in external resources (COM DLLs, etc)?