Ya soltaron el Scorpio (beta)

Esta mañana soltaron el Scorpio beta.. esta en adobe labs para bajar

Adobe ColdFusion 8 Public Beta ?

Por ahi dicen, Ben Forta, Raymond Camden y Damon Cooper, que ColdFusion 8 Public Beta podría amanecer disponible mañana.......

9 ways ColdFusion 8 will rule web development

Taken from: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/04/24/9-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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. .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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Full PDF integration. Create, combine, update, and interact with PDF files using CFPDF and CFPDFFORM tags.
7. 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.
8. Across the board enhancements. Improvements in security, speed, Flash Forms, Report Builder, and more.
9. 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.

Admittedly I am a ColdFusion fan boy, but I know that it isn't for everyone. Still, ColdFusion is easily the BMW (both in price and in raw engineered quality) of the web application languages out there. With ColdFusion 8 it now becomes possible to build and integrate a vast amount of functionality with only a few lines of code. Imagine letting users quickly create their own presentation by uploading photos and editing slides using a WYSIWYG editor. Then, when they are all done, they can view and share it on the web via Flash or push it to a PDF file. ColdFusion 8 lets you wrap up all this up into a tight package using heavily documented yet extremely simple tags. No scripting required!
ColdFusion 8 Scorpio should land sometime in mid-2007. You know I'll be there.

WEBDAV: Creating Exchange objects with ColdFusion

Exchange Item Creator

Explanation

My workplace has a heavy investment in Microsoft Exchange. We also have a very heavy investment in ColdFusion. So, we've tried to set the two up on a blind date for years. This past year, we finally started to see sparks. It turns out that Exchange can be accessed with WebDav for the purpose of creating Exchange Items. With a little work, ColdFusion can communicate using WebDav. With a little more work, ColdFusion can create Exchange Objects.

read full article at http://www.numtopia.com/terry/code_exchange_item_creator.cfm

BEN FORTA: Scorpio Per Application Settings

Taken from: http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2007/4/24/Scorpio-Per-Application-Settings

ColdFusion users have long wanted a way to define settings per application, rather than server-wide. In truth, this is doable right now, just install multiple instances of ColdFusion an each instance gets its own CF Admin and own settings.

But, if that is not an option, then Scorpio will help, as I explained last night in Seattle. ColdFusion MX7 introduced Application.cfc as an alternative to Application.cfm. Application.cfc does everything that Application.cfm does, and added important new features (like methods that get executed OnSessionStart and OnSessionEnd).

To set application settings using Application.cfc, variables are set in the THIS scope. THIS.name to set the application name, THIS.sessionManagement to enable session state management, and so on.

In Scorpio, Application.cfc and the THIS scope can be used to define per application settings. For example, THIS.mappings is a structure which contains the currently defined ColdFusion mappings.

To set a mapping you just modify that structure like this:

<cfset THIS.mappings["MyStuff"]="c:\inetpub\MyStuff">

Or like this:

<cfset StructInsert(THIS.mappings, "MyStuff", "c:\inetpub\myStuff")>

To set the Custom Tag path you can update THIS.customtagpaths which is a simple ColdFusion list.

You can set the path like this:

<cfset THIS.customtagpaths="c:\inetpub\wwwroot\ben\tags">

Or use ListAppend() to add a path, like this:

<cfset THIS.customtagpaths=ListAppend(customtagpaths, "c:\inetpub\wwwroot\ben\tags")>

You get the idea. It's clean, simple, and highly intuitive. Which means you now have yet another reason to use Application.cfc.

The Dojo Offline Toolkit

The Dojo Offline Toolkit will be a small, cross-platform, generic download that enables web applications to work offline.

Let’s look at the Dojo Offline Toolkit from a user’s perspective. Imagine Alex is using a web-based real estate application for realtors built with the Dojo Offline Toolkit. In the upper-right corner of this web application is a button that says “Work Offline.” The first time Alex clicks on this button, a small window appears informing him that this web application can be accessed and used even if he is offline. If Dojo Offline has never been installed, Alex is prompted to optionally install a small 100K through 300K download that is automatically selected for his appropriate OS, including Windows, Linux/x86, and Mac OS X/Universal Binary.

Once Dojo Offline is installed with the included installer, the web-based real estate application prompts Alex to drag a hyperlink to his desktop and bookmark the web application’s URL. As Alex works online, anything that should be available offline is simply stored locally. If Alex is offline, he can reach his application by simply double-clicking the link on his desktop, opening its bookmark, or by simply typing in its normal web address. The application’s user-interface will magically appear in the browser, even if the user is offline, and all offline data will be retrieved from and stored into local storage. Dojo Offline detects when the network has reappeared, allowing the web application to send any data stored in local storage to the web server.

Local storage is done using Dojo Storage, which allows web applications to store hundreds of K or megabytes of information inside the browser, with the user’s permission. Dojo Storage is complete and works across 95% of the existing installed base of the web, including Firefox, Safari, and Mozilla on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. The Dojo Offline Toolkit will come bundled with Dojo Storage.

Once Dojo Offline has been installed, it will work for any web application that codes to it — it is completely generic and has no application specific information in its download. Applications have a consistent, simple API they can code to, the Dojo Offline and Dojo Storage APIs, to enable offline ability. Even better, since the user always interacts with the web application through its domain name, rather than through a file:// URL or http://localhost domain name, the web application runs under the same security policies as standard web sites, which means a user’s machine will not be compromised by an untrusted web application. The Dojo Offline Toolkit will work in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, and will run on Windows, Linux/x86, and Mac OS X/Universal Binary.

The Dojo Offline Toolkit will be fully open source, available under the same licenses as Dojo: the BSD and the AFL.