It is official. Adobe has shipped ColdFusion 8. I am really exciting about this release. The next JaxFusion meeting will be going over some of the new features in ColdFusion 8.
I am still trying to secure a room for the next JaxFusion meeting. I hope to have another update shortly this week.
I attended the Tampa Code Camp on Saturday. If you have an opportunity to go to one of these conferences in the area you live, you should.
Microsoft used to host the Tampa Code Camp, but now the code camp is run by Visual Gov. These conferences are essentially one day conferences that are free for developers.
The Tampa Code Camp had sessions on SQL Server, which were the sessions I attended, but also on AJAX, .NET, Silverlight, Sharepoint, XNA Gaming and a session on a Robotic API.
Check and see if if there is one in your area.
Saw this article on Digg today. This Wired article talks about how Apple is adding a new Animation API to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). The important part of this article is that animation is starting to become a more important of the user experience.
I was watching some of the interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates interview yesterday from the D5 conference. Bill and Steve got a question if Mac OS X and Windows applications are dinosaurs compared to new browser based applications.
Steve Jobs made a point that he thought there is room for these applications that are made to run on the desktop, but can use Internet base services. He gave an example of a Google Maps application that runs on the iPhone. He said it works better than any browser based application.
Adobe is making the rounds of different user groups presenting the next version of ColdFusion. The next version of ColdFusion, codenamed 'Scorpio', should be released sometime this year.
Adam Lehman from Adobe will be presenting on this version of ColdFusion at the next JaxFusion user group on April 23rd at 6:30 PM.
I this link on Ben Forta's blog about a new project called Ajax Data Services on Adobe Labs.
This Library lets you embed an invisible SWF file in your web page, and then use Flex Data Services to push data to your HTML content. It is extremely difficult to push to AJAX clients without a technology like this for developers.
I was researching the Spry:state="loading" feature in Spry 1.2, and I came across this site. This site will create a Ajax loader animated gif file that you can use while your ajax call is being returned. Pretty cool!
I just added two new powerpoint presentations to my main site. I try to make it a habit of posting the powerpoint presentations I use at the JaxFusion User Group right after the meetings, but I have been lazy.
Over the last two months I did a presentation on Flex 2 and the Spry framework. These and my other presentations can be found here on my site.
Brad Abrams of Microsoft gave a great presentation on the Atlas framework. Atlas is a javascript library for performing Ajax like functionality in web abblications.
At the end of the presentation they showed off a library that Microsoft wrote that translates ColdFusion objects into JSON (Javascript Notation).
Brad mentioned that Atlas is platform agnostic, and will work on IE as well as Firefox and Safari.
He also said that asmx pages have the ability to output in JSON by adding a /JS to the end of you asmx url.
Adobe released a new prerelease of the Spry Ajax framework today. One of the things included in this release is a DataSet Explorer. Spry uses the xpath to flatten XML into JSON array structures that are used by the framework to display the data in a HTML format, such as tables.
This Explorer tool makes it easier to introspect the XML, and how nodes are named by the framework. It is like having a CFDUMP tag for Ajax.
This article has already been posted on DIGG, but I thought I would blog about this since we just discussed this at the JaxFusion user group meeting last night.
Ajax can solve and add security problems to your web app. This article goes over some of the different security problems that can arise from using Ajax.
