Tonight I went to Mid-Michigan ColdFusion Users Group meeting to see Ben Forta speak on ColdFusion 7 CodeName: BlackStone. First off, an update to MX6.1 is due out (circa) this fall. It will include the 60+ bug fixes that have been released as individual patches as well as a rewritten database engine. The new engine slated for release in BlackStone but was deemed too cool to wait on. Now onto BlackStone… this is an upgrade that everyone is going to want to budget for. Here are my notes from the presentation. It will contain some “data entry enhancements”. CFFORM will have a format=”" attribute. When you set it to xform it will become a “sinkable form”. All you code are a bunch of form fields and it does the rest. The skins will be .XSL files (XML Style Sheets). I can 't wait to see what people do with this and download them from the Macromedia Developer Exchange. CFSELECTGROUP will be added. This will allow grouping of datasets for use in trees, drop downs and whatever else you use grouping for. FLASH-IFICATION! Now this is cool stuff! CFGRID and CFTREE will have new format=”" parameters that will allow you use flash. The flashed tree and grid are far more usable than the current java ones and a lot prettier. With CFFORM you can code all of your fields and leave all the display crap out (again). Using format=”flash” on CFFORM will now return a flashed form complete with some awesome real time input validation and awesome possibilities for forms morphing and changing based on earlier user input. A great example of this used by Ben Forta was having a first and last name text box side by side with an email text box with a value of “@macromedia.com” sitting underneath it. As he typed in his first name it was dynamically showing up in the email textbox as ben@macromedia.com. Doing something in similar in java script would be messy at best. I saw at least one new cfform field type that is going to be introduced called dateChooser. It.s a nice little pop up calendar that will allow a user to click ran than having to type a date in (in whatever format the coder wants). <CFDOCUMENT> This is a family of tags that will allow you to dynamically output content into a PDF or FlashPaper. It contains a cfdocument item tag that will allow you to do things like a page break or headers and footers. It also introduces the new cfdocument. Scope. It has neat things such as currentPageNumber and so forth. <CFREPORT> This is a neat one. You will be able to package your applications in an EAR, JAR or WAR file for distribution and deployment. It will contain a complete runtime version of CF as well as your application and all datasources, mappings, registered tags and so forth. You can then move that file to any Java compliant web server (aren 't they all these days?) and your app will run. It will ask for a cf license key of course… But it will run, without having to install cf. Dreamweaver is being tweaked and will have a lot more useful CF wizards including a login mechanism and a next – previous generator. Details on this are sketchy and we had to push Ben to get the info… But…. HomeSite may be phased out at some point to be replaced with something else. A new product. Not dreamweaver.
The added functionality and enhancements cover so much of ColdFusion that it will have something that everyone can appreciate at some level.
It will allow you generate reports of many different kind. It has a (currently) external program called “Coldfusion Report Builder” that has an interface very similar to that of MS Access ' report maker. When you use CFREPORT you simply point to the file generated in report builder and BLAMO.. Instant report. Did I just say “Blamo”?
I 'm not sure what to expect with this and I think Ben (or Macromedia) wanted it that way.
Archive for May 28th, 2004
28
May
Man, It’s a beautiful night, I have both windows in my office open with a nice cool cross breeze. Drinking an awesome white ale, listening to loud tiesto and other misc chill and trance music and coding my brains out.
This update mechanism has been hurting my head for a while now but I think I have a concept that should work. I have never had to write an auto update mechanism for any of my web apps so this was a learning experience. I ‘m taking a bit of a linux/cvs approach and allowing for multiple “builds”. Edge, stable and current.
Its going to be soooo nice once its all done. We already have about 8 sites running metazoa even though its still under constant pre-beta development… So updates are a bitch. This will be awesome once its done!
28
May
Today is my birthday! At midnight (exactly) on June 3rd 26 years ago I was hatched.
Send me stuff!
28
May
Guardian Linux is realy starting to shape up. I have a development server that I am building it on right now. The foundation exists and is stable, I am now simply writing a bunch of custom tools and wrappers and tweaking the functionality to match that of OpenBSD.
Prepare for proactivley secure linux!
28
May
We went to Nic 's over the weekend in Gross Point and had a freeken blast! Its always fun over there.
I should have a new backend for this entire site in the very near future. Fear, for it shall be cool!