CFUnited Express is $149 until midnight tonight!
This Pre-MAX one-day event is going to be full of great topics and speakers. Tons of goodies and time to network with peers. See you September 30th in Chicago!
-After today the regular price is $199
Register now!
Direct link to registration
Or go to http://express.cfunited.com/go/chicago/2007/ for more information
If you need discount information contact your local user group manager or events (a) teratech.com
Going to Adobe's MAX? Meet up with other ColdFusion developers and talk with gurus before the big event.
September 30th, 2007 8am-5pm
Ascend Training facility in Chicago
CFUnited Express Chicago is $149 through August 31st and $199 after. Contact info @ cfunited.com for user group discount and information.
Here are the current sponsors and speakers for CFUnited Express Chicago!
SPONSORS:
Adobe User Groups donates a free copy of CF8 Standard to raffle.
ColdFusion Developer's Journal is our media sponsor this year.
Ascend Training Facility is the oldest Adobe Authorized Training facility based in Chicago.
TeraTech Programming brings CFUnited to Chicago and is ready to help you solve your ColdFusion needs.
Ajax and ColdFusion 8
Presented By Raymond Camden
How ColdFusion 8 makes Ajax as easy as pie. And not just any pie, but home cooked, piping hot, apple pie with a scoop of ice cream next to it, and none of the low fat crap, but REAL ice cream.
COOP - Dehydrated Page Processing
Presented By John Farrar
DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself). COOP is a mix of perhaps the simplest way to process web forms/pages and the most powerful! More power and less work? Customize it! Control it! Extend it! Separation of processing and markup that will make you think about how little thinking this takes.
Hidden Gems in CF8
Presented By Charlie Arehart
Prepare to be surprised! In this talk, veteran CFML developer Charlie Arehart will introduce a few dozen little hidden gems coming up in CF8 (Scorpio). Sure, we've all heard about the big features, but in every release there are lots of little things, and in CF8 especially, Adobe has pulled out the stops! Come see if some long-standing problem has been solved, or learn of some new technique that's become available. You may be surprised at all the little things you may have missed!
How Amazon S3 and EC2 Saved My Marriage
Presented By Adam Howitt
Learn how to use Amazon's S3 service to host static files and how you can build a scaleable architecture with EC2 from just $75 per month. Adam will walk through code examples for sending files to S3, demonstrate some of the tools you can use to manage S3 files and then show you how to boot up Amazon servers to handle temporary increases in load.
Amazon S3 (simple storage service) is a flexible, cheap way to host files on Amazon's infrastructure to speed up the delivery of the static elements of your web pages. Amazon EC2 (elastic compute cloud) is a beta service offered to allow you to boot virtual servers on Amazon's infrastructure to handle surges in traffic or provide extra processing power on demand.
Introducing the CF Administrator
Presented By Charlie Arehart
Whether you're new to CF or have been using it a while, if you've wished you understood more about the ColdFusion Administrator, this bootcamp session is for you. Veteran CFML developer Charlie Arehart will review and discuss the key features of the Admin and how to use them, including CF performance and security features.
TBA
Presented By Shlomy Gantz
TBA
Using your Whole Brain for Developers
Presented By Michael Smith
Recently Dan Pink's book "A Whole New Mind" suggested that the era of "left brain" dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which "right brain" qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate. We will discuss ways to leverage both sides of your brain for better development including such techniques as mindmapping, FLiP, personas and more.
REGISTER TODAY!!!!
CFUnited Express Chicago
The following is an interview conducted between Michael Smith and Charlie Arehart, independent consultant and frequent contributor to the CF community, regarding Charlie's thoughts and opinions on the newly released ColdFusion 8.
Michael Smith: We have heard that ColdFusion 8's new features focus on three areas: developer productivity, integration with external environments and technologies, and rich Internet experience. What are some of the other cool new features in ColdFusion 8?
Charlie Arehart: Well, as with most releases, there are lots more features than are often publicized. It's understandable: Adobe needs to pick the key points that would motivate new sales, but fortunately there are many, MANY new features that are purely developer focused. And while many of them have been talked about a lot in blogs and such, I think people would be surprised to learn still more. In fact, a couple of months ago I started doing a "Hidden Gems in CF8" talk at various user groups. I can't possibly repeat here all the little surprises I found. I'll be offering it at the upcoming CFUnited Express in Chicago http://express.cfunited.com/go/chicago/2007/, the day before MAX. Folks can also view older presentations via my site, http://www.carehart.org/presentations/
MS: ColdFusion has always been seen as a great language for data interaction, but not so much for designing great-looking front end user interfaces. What do you think of that?
CA: Well, it's not that CF didn't try. There were UI elements in earlier releases. They just weren't very effective (whether the Java or, to a lesser extent, Flash features). More important, CF didn't stop you from creating great-looking end user interfaces. You just had to do a lot of work yourself, such as to build Ajax-style interfaces. The beauty of CF8 is that it provides so much now for you to build such features automatically, with very little code. This isn't even among the things I consider "hidden gems", since many have written about it. While the autosuggest feature (of CFINPUT) gets a lot of play, I can't stress enough the power and ease of the new HTML-based CFGRID. It's just NOT the "your father's CFGRID". :-) There's lots more (CFLAYOUT, CFWINDOW, CFPOD, and more). Besides the Adobe resources on the topic, you can find lots of coverage of these things (with examples) at the sites of bloggers like Ray Camden (http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/), Ben Nadel (http://www.bennadel.com/) and of course Ben Forta (http://www.forta.com/blog/), to name just a few.
MS: What are your thoughts on the ability of CF8 to make dynamic presentations?
CA: I assume you mean the new CFPRESENTATION tag, right? With it, you can create Adobe Connect presentations on the fly, including their being driven by CFML-generated data. I think that's one that a lot of people are not noticing. This happens in each release. With all the noise about some key first- and second-tier features (not to mention all the hidden gems), there are some features that go unnoticed. As with this tag, some features solve a problem that perhaps is not yet widely observed by people. That doesn't mean it's not useful. Just that they'll need time to learn to appreciate it. It's really pretty intriguing and could be kind of paradigm-shifting, akin to how CF made dynamic HTML so easy. Of course, not everyone sees the need for Connect presentations now, but time may change that. It could be compelling for presenting information on demand in a new form.
MS: How would you rate the debugging features in Enterprise?
CA: Well, many will know that I have been a big proponent of interactive step debugging CFML. I fought for it remaining in CFMX (it was in CF 4 and 5 and we lost it in 6), and when FusionDebug came out last year I was a big fan, and still am. So now CF8 includes its own debugger. For those who've not tried one at all, it's great to finally have one for free. Note that it only works on CF8. You cannot use it in CF7. That's where FusionDebug still has value, as it works in 6, 7, and 8. There are also some minor differences between the two. But really they are a lot more alike than not. They're both Eclipse plug-ins. As I said while evangelizing FusionDebug, the same must be said about the CF8 debugger: don't worry if you prefer Dreamweaver or HomeSite+ (or some other editor). You don't really HAVE to switch to using Eclipse (or CFEclipse). You can just use it with the least you need to know to do debugging. The CF docs (the Developer's Guide) has a chapter on it. and again I did a talk on both CF8 and the FusionDebug debuggers at CFUnited. That presentation is available on the CFUnited site. .
MS: And what do you think of the new monitoring feature?
CA: There again, some will know that I've spoken previously on the 3rd party tools, SeeFusion and FusionReactor. So I can't help but contrast the new CF8 monitor to those. First, I want to clarify again that the CF8 monitor works only with CF8. You can't use it to monitor CF7. Also, it is an Enterprise-only feature. You can't use it with the Standard edition. But here's great news: you CAN use it with the free Developer edition, and to be honest, for many people that will be where they use it more than even in production. I know that may seem a little counter-intuitive: isn't a monitor tool meant to monitor production? It certainly can, but there's great value in using the tool(s) in development, to help you isolate and resolve problems before they even get to production. I'll say that this too is a topic on which I've done a lot more writing. I have a 4-part series coming to the Adobe Developer Center. Part 1 is already posted (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/monitoring_pt1.html), and its focus is indeed using the monitor in development. The latter parts will focus on using it in production, including the multi-server monitor as well as the alerts and snapshots features. I want to say as well that a common misconception is that the monitor "must incur a lot of overhead". That doesn't need to be true. As I discuss in an article-length blog entry series (http://carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2007/6/15/cf8_hiddengem_monitoring_incredibleinfo, there is an incredible amount of info you can get with zero overhead. I know many won't believe it. Do check out the resources above.
MS: You've mentioned FusionDebug and FusionReactor (and SeeFusion). What's their future?
CA: This is a very common question, and the natural conclusion many make is that CF8 must be a death knell for those tools. I mean, why would anyone pay for what's included for free? But let me remind you: the CF8 tools work only with CF8. How many of us are still running on CF7, or 6 (or even 5 or 4)? Since these 3rd party tools all run on 6 through 8, they will have great value and a large market for a long time. Of course, since the CF8 monitor is in Enterprise only, that's another point in the favor of the 3rd parties. More important, note that CF8's monitor is really built atop the Admin API, which means that the 3rd parties could add the same info into their interfaces. Just as the 3rd party CFML engines are leading to innovation in CFML that we are seeing folded into CF (and vice-versa), I'd argue that we will see the same in monitoring and debugging. I'm still quite enthusiastic about all the tools in this space, and in fact I wrote a longer article-length blog entry to address this question:http://carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2007/5/23/scorpio_debugger_monitor_and_the_other_vendors
MS: Any thoughts on the new CF8 Administrator?
CA: I suppose you may be asking me about this because I'd done a talk at CFUnited on the CF Administrator. It was a boot camp introduction to the Admin. I really didn't focus too much on what was new in CF8, since we had to get the presentations in well before CF8 was even released in beta (In fact, I only added discussion of the CF8 debugger to my talk on FusionDebug when Adobe asked me to speak on it as they planned to release CF8 topics at the event.). Anyway, I can share what's changed, as I've done an article-length blog entry on what was new in the CF8 admin: http://carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2007/7/3/cf8_admin_changes. But at a minimum, here, I'd like to point out that a significant change (again returning something we had in CF5) is the ability to allow individual users to be granted access to the Admin (and also the RDS feature). Folks should definitely check that out, as often there may be value in letting one or more developers have some limited access to the Admin, such as to manage datasources, mappings, etc. Again, this is discussed in the CF docs (in this case, the Configuring and Administering ColdFusion manual). All the CF 8 manuals are available online at http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/coldfusion/, which points to both the PDF and livedocs forms of documentation. If anyone had trouble with the CF8 docs early on, those problems have been solved, as I wrote about in an entry at http://carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2007/8/3/cf8_livedocs_working_commenting_and_more.
MS: Are there any more features worth mentioning?
CA: Well goodness yes. There's a great list at: http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/features, and most of those listed there have another page with still more detail on each feature.
MS: I will look forward to learning more at your CFUNITED/Express talk Hidden Gems in CF8.
I hope folks will indeed come see that and more at the event, many of which are topics (like mine) that were not offered at the CFUnited conference in June (and are not being offered at Max, either). Folks can learn more at http://express.cfunited.com/go/chicago/2007/ See you then.
Hi CFUnited 2007 Attendees! You can now login and access the audio for most topics. We are still collecting some more recordings, but for now we've release what's available.
Step 1: go to the CFUnited.com hompage and type in email address and password.
Step 2: click on "topics" and scroll down to the presentation you want to download. Each presentation is roughly 40-70MB.
Step 3: listen to the presentation
For non-attendees, we will make these audio recordings available for purchase very soon.
FYI, all Videos are coming soon. We conducted a screen capture with audio overlay so you can view what the presenter is doing on the screen instead of just seeing the presenters face. This will be available soon to purchase at an affordable price for all videos. Please keep an eye on this blog for future details.
**next cfunited event: CFUnited Express Chicago! Sept 30th
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Don't forget the call for speakers!
Damon Cooper's BLOG posted today a very interesting entry about ColdFusion 8 and a behind the scenes peek at the making.
ColdFusion 8: Lightning in a Bottle
http://www.dcooper.org/blog/client/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=22197BB5-4E22-1671-5276250EC40723FD
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