Filed under: Business, Developer, Internet, Adobe
9 ways ColdFusion 8 will rule web development
Ben Forta and Adobe are getting into full swing with ColdFusion 8 Scorpio Pre-Release tour. Last night Ben gave us in Seattle a taste of things to come. Here is why it will kick the tar balls out of everything else on the market.- Built in AJAX widgets. Create AJAX windows, auto complete forms, calendar popups, grids, WYSIWYG editors, and much more. All using simple ColdFusion based tags and generating industry standard solutions such as Prototype and Yahoo User Interface Javascript.
- Native JSON support. ColdFusion components now know if they are called by a web browser and will return JSON formated data automatically. You can also create JSON packets directly or consume them and turn them into native ColdFusion objects.
- .NET (and Java!) integration. Pull in .NET objects and use them like native ColdFusion objects. Combine .NET and Java on the same page if you like. Easily the best web based middleware solution.
- Microsoft Exchange integration. Love it or hate it, most organizations use Exchange religiously. Now you can read and update email, calendars, tasks and much more. No change to the Exchange server is required.
- Flash based presentation builder. Combine HTML, Audio, Flash Movies, Images, and CFCharts to create spiffy flash based presentations on the fly. Just wrap your existing pages in CFPRESENTATION and you are on your way.
- Full PDF integration. Create, combine, update, and interact with PDF files using CFPDF and CFPDFFORM tags.
- Native image manipulation functions. Blur, sharpen, draw, rotate, stream to browser, and much much more. This finally brings ColdFusion's image support in line with PHP and other frameworks while keeping it so simple that even I could use it.
- Across the board enhancements. Improvements in security, speed, Flash Forms, Report Builder, and more.
- Administration API. Now you can access, audit, and snapshot all the information the server knows about itself. No longer is ColdFusion a black box. Audit long running processes, most frequently run queries, and bottle necks. SnapShot the server before making your change or doing a reset so that you can analyze potential problems later.
ColdFusion 8 Scorpio should land sometime in mid-2007. You know I'll be there.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
