Ben Forta's Philadelphia Visit Summary

• Everything mentioned here is not guaranteed to make it in the final release, some things are subject to change, and we're still early in the game.
• We were given permission to share the information, provided no audio or video clips were recorded. Because of this, I'm able to share this information on my weblog.
• There are no architecture changes planned. The CF5 to CFMX migration was the architecture refactoring. This is a feature release built on a solid Java architecture.
• Timeline:
  • Summer/Fall 2004 - CF 6.1 updater (more below)
  • Fall 2004 - Blackstone Beta
  • Winter 2004/Early 2005 - Blackstone ships
• CF Updater:
  • Not required - "if you need it and what to assume the risk of updating your server"
  • 60+ fixes (most of which are already hotfixes) - bundling hotfixes into one updater
  • Improved database drivers (DataDirect 3.3) - main feature
• Goals of Blackstone:
  • Make new users more successful
  • Create developer features we can really use
  • Improve reliability and deployment options
• Data Entry Enhancements:
  • "Skinnable Forms"
    • CFFORM format="xml" - generate XForms code. A "skin" attribute can be used to apply XSL stylesheet to XForm.
    • Transformation done on the server gives back some HTML/CSS/JavaScript that is compatible in all web browsers (the web browser doesn't have to support the XForms standard since the server is doing a transformation)
    • Ben demonstrated 3 very different form looks by just changing the skin file.
    • There was no hardcoded presentation elements inside the CFFORM tag, just the CFINPUT's in the right order and the server then generated the presentation code.
  • CFFORMGROUP
    • Create different types of form elements (user-expandable).
    • Ben showed a type="dualselectlist" that generated one of these out of two simple select elements (no client code at all on the developer end!)
    • Two more types of form groups - wizard and wizardstep to create "multipage" forms with div's and such. Again, no client code to hide/show the divs, everything is generated on the server with a simple cfformgroup tag.
  • CFGRID/CFTREE
    • Can change format="applet" to format="flash"
    • Java tree applet replaced by Flash v2 tree component
    • Java grid applet replaced by Flash v2 grid component
  • format="flash"
    • Scaled-down flex functionality to just create flash forms with only a standard set of controls
    • Use regular cfinput tags
    • Validation built in (required fields turn red, error messages pop up automatically)
    • Flex-style binding between form fields
    • cfformgroup type="tabNavigator" or type="accordian" to build a flash form with tabs separating the different screens
    • Back-end still receives the same form-scope data from the flash form as it would from a regular form
  • Flash forms summary
    • Better form field interaction (via bindings and inline ActionScript)
    • Additional presentation options
    • Better overall user experience
    • True portability (no JavaScript/DOM issues across browsers)
  • Back-end Improved form field validation
    • isValid function
    • validate="email", validate="url"
• Printing/Reporting
  • CFDOCUMENT
    • Render pdf/flashpaper of content between tags (html, images, css, etc)
    • pagesize attribute (letter, standard, etc)
    • orientation attribute (portrait, landscape)
    • filename attribute (if specified will prompt for download instead of displaying file in browser)
    • cdocumentitem type="pagebreak", type="header", type="footer"
    • CFDocument.currentPageNumber, CFDocument.totalPageCount - for adding page numbers in the resulting pdf
  • CFREPORT
    • Very easy to use with just 3 attributes - format="pdf", template="something.cfr", query="myQuery"
    • filename attribute (if specified will prompt for download instead of displaying file in browser)
    • The .cfr file is an xml file specifying how the query data should be displayed
  • New Client Tool - ColdFusion Report Builder
    • Useful for help in building the .cfr files
    • Windows-only for the first release
    • CF installs an installer on the server which you run on your computer to install the tool
    • Contains an expression builder to use an cf expression inside of the report (which is unlike most report writers)
    • Visually lay out report - margins, pagebreaks, exact location of text, etc
    • Query passed in with CFREPORT tag then fills the report in for easy viewing
• New Deployment Options
  • Distribute applications without CFML source code
  • Package application with CF runtime (bundled with a license inside) as a .war or .ear to deploy as a "regular" application on J2EE servers
  • Simplify support for multiple CF instances on the same box (enterprise version only)
• DreamWeaver Extensions
  • New Wizards such as Login Wizard
    • Select directory / application to secure
    • Pick simple security, LDAP, nt authenticate
    • Enter username, password
    • Generates a .cfc for business logic and some .cfm pages for views
    • Easily expandable to validate against a query
    • Makes it very easy for newer users to implement login's to secure certain sections of their website
  • Access CFAdmin functions from within DreamWeaver (common "beginner" things)
• Lots of little things
  • Images embed in HTML mail - cfmailparam file="...jpg", use the resource with an image tag in the html mail body then
  • cfntautenticate tag, pass domain, user, password and it will return success boolean and groups the user is a part of
  • cfcs can be safely integrated in shared scopes
  • cftimer tag
    • Wrap code in the tag to time how log a section of code tags to run.
    • Can nest the tags
    • Debugging must be turned on
    • Different display options (report time at end of file, report time inline, draw a box around the generated output and report time there
  • XMLValidate function, XMLParse can validate now
  • CF code can be easily invoked from Java
    • Create CFC proxy object in java
    • myCFC.invoke("method")
  • User-provided pluggable encryption that the Encrypt/Decrypt functions can use
  • Improved charting (skins/themes)
  • CF Admin API
    • Anything that can be done in the CF Admin can now be done programmatically
    • Create more than one login (so the single CF admin password doesn't have to be given out to everyone)

Anyone else excited by everything new and improved in BlackStone? Almost everything on this list was very applause-worthy and the general feeling in the room was one of excitement and anticipation.