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CFUnited keynote - live blogging
Keynote is about to start, refresh this page for updates.
Liz is on stage right now, sharing various stories about the history of CFUnited and the ColdFusion community.
Speakers, advisory board, track chairs, all being recognized.
Liz announces 4CFF, a non-profit ColdFusion foundation "dedicated to the ColdFusion Comunity".
Announcing giveaways, raffles, cancellations, and a mobile application for CFUnited sessions, built by Ray Camden.
Ben Forta, Adam Lehman, and Terry Ryan take the stage to a round of applause. Ben announces they will tag team. There will be one big announcement, but it will come at the end of the keynote.
Reminder of what has already been announced: Public bug database, protecting the integrity of CFML (CFML language advisory committee, www.opencfml.org), etc. Sean Corfield, from Railo, up to talk about the advisory committee. CFML Advisory committee BoF tonight at 8:30.
Sean states that the committee is evaluating all existing art (tags, functions, etc.) and hopes to release a new spec this year (2009). Sean leaves the stage, Ben returns.
Since we last met...
- ColdFusion has won lots of awards
- The number of CF developers has risen from around 200,000 in 2004, to almost 800,000 in 2008.
- Gartner recommends investing in CF for 5+ years for existing projects, and new development
- Terry Ryan joined the evangelist teamm focusing on higher education
- Working on ColdFusion 9
Adam Lehman is up next.
First point, Expressive Applications. ColdFusion tying into FLex apps, HTML apps better. ColdFusion sites "look better" than PHP sites, or .NET sites. Enterprise Glue, RAD Without Rules.
New ColdFusion 9 features (like you haven't heard these already).
- ORM support, saving CFC data to a database without SQL; powered by Hibernate
- CFPRESENTATION - generate PPT files from HTML content
- CFSPREADSHEET - create, read, edit Excel files
- CFDOCUMENT - Convert Word & PPT to PDF
- CFSHAREPOINT integration; single sign-on, sites, site templates, web parts, work spaces, etc.
- Flex based AIR application for ColdFusion server monitoring; apply settings across multiple servers, datasources, mappings, etc.
ColdFusion Builder
- CFML support
- CFML Code assist
- CFML insight
- CFML ORM insight
- Full support for HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- JavaScript insight, ExtJS, jQuery, etc.
- FTP/SFTP support
- ColdFusion Builder is extensible
- Write plugins for CFB using ColdFusion itself
- CFBuilder extensions already available on RIAForge
- Adam hints that a new public beta of CFB coming soon, with features no one knows about yet
Adam shows a demo of ColdFusion Builder. Starts off by showing off the ORM functionality. A pet peeve of mine...people who add trailing slashes to ColdFUsion code (Cutter, I'm talking to you). Now Adam shows spreadsheet functions. This is one of my favorite features. Can't wait to have it in production.
Back into the slides, public betas for CF9 and CFBuilder available on labs.adobe.com right now.
Back to Ben Forta, Ben recognizes the CF9 engineering team. Thanks a lot guys! Ben talks about how ColdFusion is integral to Adobe's RIA stack plan for world domination.
Adobe has the goal of inserting Flash Catalyst (available in labs) into the app / website build mix. It sits between Photoshop / Illustrator / Fireworks and Flex / ColdFusion.
ColdFusion & AIR. ColdFusion as a back-end for AIR applications.
Ben turns the stage over to Terry Ryan.
Terry shows an Illustrator file with an app mockup. Next he imports that file into Flash Catalyst. He begins by selecting various components and converting them directly into Flex components. Scrollbars, buttons, search boxes, etc.
Quickly converts list of data into a live data grid. Adds states for list, details, and search views. Finally, adjusts the app so that each state animates to the next at the appropriate time. Super slick, and freaking amazing.
Now Terry runs a CFBuilder extension that generates an entire back-end CFC set for ColdFusion that ties into this sample app. Great job Terry.
Ben almost literally kicks Terry offstage.
Looks like the wrap up is starting. Here comes the big announcement!
Ben begins by talking about Cloud Computing. What are the benefits of ColdFusion in the cloud?
ColdFusion 9 will introduce cloud licensing. CF Enterprise will allow 10 concurrent instances.
Adobe will provide ready-built prebuilt Amazon EC2 ColdFusion AMI (Amazon Machine Image). Per hour pricing to be announced.
Ben steps down and Adam comes back up.
CFUnited attendees receive a special offer for ColdFusion 8, 30% off and 3 free copies of Flex Builder 3, plus 80% off of maintenance license for CF9.
Adobe has lots of reps here at CFUnited. Make sure to talk to them, use them, get information from them. Adobe also passing out free ColdFusion hero shirts for all comers (don't forget my ColdFusion Hero wallpaper).
And we're done. Great job everyone!