Adobe Listens: Feedback Shows up in ColdFusion 9
October 8, 2009
Around two years, just after the successful launch of ColdFusion 8, I emailed some of the top dogs on the Adobe ColdFusion team about features for ColdFusion 9. These where my suggestions and whether they made CF9:
- An IDE. ColdFusion Builder is here and one I've been happily using exclusively since its release.
- Shorter Syntax/Full cfscript Support. The shorter syntax was an idea of mine to merge scripting in a tagging syntax. Looking back I'm not sure exactly how it would have worked but I am happy to see much improved support for cfscript. Writing a cfc in script syntax feels good and should help those picking up ColdFusion.
- cfspreadsheet. Adobe nailed this one with the new tag and numerous Spreadsheet* functions.
- cfaudio/cfvideo. My request was for recording and editing Flash movies and possibly other formats. A little disapointed although these features are availible with other tools in the Adobe arsenal. cfmediaplayer is a useful addition to ease the playing of Flash movies.
- Built in ORM support. The hibernate integration appears to be awesome so far.
- Stronger support for {} and []: Happy to see more uses for these useful short cuts.
- Optomize PDFs: Actually asked for this one later on but am delighted to see its inclusion.
The ColdFusion team did not listen just to me of course, from conversations I've had with them they listen to just about every blog post, review all ERs sent in and go out and talk to customers about their vision. I've participated in the latter and they are very good sessions.
Overall I'm excited with the new features in ColdFusion 9 and pleased that my feedback was listened to (and mostly showed up in the final release) but I'm actually more excited about the features I did not suggest such as:
- Advanced Caching
- SharePoint Integration
- Office Integration (including document to pdf conversion)
- Java Portal Integration
- Enhancements to Components
- Integration with the Solr search engine
- Faster Flash Remoting
- ColdFusion as a Service
Congratulations to the whole ColdFusion team and all of those who have worked on the release of 9!
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