ColdFusion Roadmap WTF??

Today I looked at the ColdFusion road map published by Adobe on their blog and had a few things to comment on:

1. Streamlined Mobile Application Development:
Alright, so what do you mean by 'Streamlined', what does PhoneGap, jQueryMobile, Sencha, Parse to name a few already do today. Is it not Streamlined?

Another important question is will I write CFML to develop mobile applications. I hope the team is planning to provide solution around Native as well as Web based mobile app development. Personally, I feel using a server side language to build a mobile based application is a bad thing. I wonder how native applications would work. Would there should be some sort conversion from CFML to HTML that will help in creating a web view.

More important than the above is the pricing. ColdFusion Enterprise is priced at $$8500 and the Standard at $$1000+. Will I pay that much to build a simple mobile application using ColdFusion. Hell NO!! Unless ColdFusion can just read my mind and build everything on its own without having me to write a single line of code. I had already bragged about ColdFusion increasing its price for ColdFusion 10 on Twitter and I hope they don't increase it again in 11.

2. Enabling Enterprise to easily integrate with Social Media Streams:
Hmmm, Social media. Nice buzzword. But what do you plan to integrate? Like box, Tweet box, Share box, Stumble upon box and the list goes on and on and on. I can do this with current solutions with JavaScript. I know it might be a little messy but once done who cares much about it.

3. Improved installation and deployment experience:
Yes please, otherwise I'll also break up with you. The company that I hate the most - Microsoft provides better install experience when compared to ColdFusion. Just include express and advanced installation. That's it. I'm not asking for more.

4. One click multi screen support:
Do you mean media queries? Again an already available solution.

Among other things what caught my eye was 'Pluggable framework'. Are you talking about something like Java packages or something like dependency resolution?

I hope someone from Adobe or from the community comes in and comments here and makes me understand how ColdFusion's road map is really that promising.

Features I like the most in ColdFusion 10

Boys and Girls, ColdFusion 10 is out and it is a solid release. I'm writing a post after a long time to express my opinions on this new release. I like most of the features (not really all of them). So here's a list of things that I like in ColdFusion 10:

1. HTML5 WEBSOCKETS: Mama Mia, this is by far the best thing ever, that has happened to ColdFusion. I say this because this will certainly help Adobe to get good number of downloads and increase the number of developers out there. But I'm not sure with it's adoption. I can think of chat applications and sort of applications that can get realtime data. But other than that what else can be done with them.
2. JAVA INTEGRATION: Now I can see that Java will be more close to ColdFusion or vice versa ever. Again it is going to increase its adoption for sure.
3. WEBSERVICES WITH REST: This was new for me and it took me some time to understand it in real sense. Well, I like this but may not use it in my projects right away. Maybe I should wait for the next project and see whether this feature can be a good add.
4. HTML5 CHARTING: This is very sassy. I'll definitely use this in my projects.
5. LANGUAGE ENHANCEMENTS: I see tons of them, which is good and will help the current developers to code better. I really like those implicit CFC constructors, for-in construct for queries and as such.

That's it and that's all for today. I'll post some not so good features in ColdFusion 10 soon. How soon? I don't know.

Must have features in ColdFusion Zeus

A lot of announcements have been made about ColdFusion Zeus in recent conferences. I like this way of leaking the features in the upcoming release because it let's the community know what we all should be prepared for. I think the biggest announcement made was the move from JRun to Tomcat. I think what the team has thought is right, it should move to the next standard and the next standard is indeed Tomcat. I don't know why it took such a long time for the team to decide on this move. I have made a list of features, which I think will be a good fit for the next release:

1. HTML5 features - Nothing concrete have been said at any of the conferences, but I noticed that there is a MAX session on ColdFusion and HTML5. I think there might be some good news about ColdFusion implementing some of the HTML5 features in their product. Of all the features in HTML5, the one that stands out is the WebSocket implementation. I don't know how the API or tag would look like, but if there is one HTML5 feature to be present in ColdFusion then it has to be WebSocket.
2. Server side action script - I had attended the MAX conference long back, where in some one from the team had demoed the Server side action script. I think this would be a great addition to the product. In fact, I would say Adobe should create a new product separately with this in mind. The number of Flex developers are growing at a very good rate. In fact Adobe is betting very high on Flex\Flash. I don't see any reason as to not have this product in place. Whether it is a part of ColdFusion or not is a different story, but I want this some how from Adobe. I'm sure folks at Adobe would have certainly given a thought to it.
3. Ajax controls - ColdFusion though not really a front end technology, but it does have some set of Ajax controls - Tree, Grid, etc,. What I find is that these are useful but difficult to code (may be it is just me).   I have to use the layout, tabs and other controls which are very difficult to follow. I would suggest improving or deprecating that. 
4. ColdFusion Administrator - The Administrator looks like it was built in 90's. Why not take the best front end technology Flex and build it again. This might be time consuming, but it should be built in the next release. 
5. Report Builder - Is this still under development? No idea? A feature provided in one release should then be enhanced in the next release. Looks like Adobe has completely forgotten that they had built this product some time ago; sorry ages ago.
6. Performance - Since the product is moving from JRun to Tomcat, I'm a little skeptical about the performance of the product. If ColdFusion Zeus takes a performance hit then it would be difficult to get everyone adopt to the new release. I hope the move betters the performance.
7. IDE support - I'm thinking of a list of features for CFBuilder, but the minimum for the IDE is to support the new features and changes in the language. I'll post this next.

That's it. I can think of these at the top of my mind. Can't wait to get my hands on the public beta release. Go ColdFusion!!!

Adobe listens to the community and brings the Adobe ColdFusion Developer week

Adobe listens to the community and brings the Adobe ColdFusion Developer week. I'm very pleased to see community leaders speaking about ColdFusion and spreading the word.

In the last few weeks\months, I have been a tad bit rude to the ColdFusion team for not having a ColdFusion evangelist in place. I think if Adobe organizes such events from time to time, the number of developers adopting ColdFusion can increase. I urge everyone to register for the event and learn how you can develop web applications quicker. Here is a list of speakers and their session titles:

1. Getting Started with Web Application Development Using ColdFusion by Terry Ryan.
2. Working with PDFs Made Easy with ColdFusion by Tim Cunnigham.
3. Introduction to ColdFusion Components (CFCs) by Ray Camden.
4. Improve Your ColdFusion Code Through Unit Testing by Jamie Krug.
5. Using ColdFusion Frameworks for Application Development by Mark Mandel.
6. ColdFusion Builder: The Professional IDE to Boost Your Productivity by Sagar Ganatra.
7. Expand Functionality with ColdFusion Builder Extensions by Simon Free.
8. Developing Your First Application Using ColdFusion 9 and ORM by Bob Silverberg.
9. ColdFusion and Mobile - Browser-Based Applications Made Easy by Dave Ferguson.
10. Accessing ColdFusion Services From Flex Applications by Matt Gifford.
11. Make Your Site Searchable with Solr by Scott Stroz.

So there are about 11 sessions by the community leaders who have helped this ColdFusion community grow. A special thanks to Ray Camden who joined Adobe recently and I've faith that he will help the ColdFusion community grow more than before.

Register for the sessions here: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1489920&loc=en_us

Hello ColdFusion

Hello Everyone,

I’m Damien Cook and I’m a ColdFusion developer. Finally I have started a blog (my first one) on ColdFusion and in coming days I plan to blog about it more. I may blog about things that you already know, but I want to document whatever I’ve learned till now with this great product.

I may post some questions whenever I hit the wall and I hope the community members will help me in every possible way.

Love,

Damien.