A little late, I know, but the jetlag has finally cleared enough to allow me to write coherently… Yep, just in time for me to head back to Bangalore and go through this all over again!
As many will know by now, we showed off a bunch of features coming in ColdFusion 8 aka Scorpio. Prayank covered image manipulation, Rupesh talked about CF-.NET integration, and I got to show off server monitoring. For those of you who couldn’t make it, we did record our presentations prior to heading out; I’ll send a link to those once I know where they’re being hosted. If you just can’t wait for those, check out some of the liveblogging summaries that Rob and Ray (thanks, guys!) put out from the sessions:
As is generally the case with the CF team, the developers presenting features are those who worked on them, so if you have any specific questions of these features, head on over to Rupesh’s or Prayank’s blogs (or mine, but you know where that is!) and leave us comments.
The one big MAX announcement that I think is going to be really interesting is the Apollo platform. Various technologies have attempted to provide simple network-distributed applications in the past, and all of them failed, though some do still linger on - Java WebStart (still alive and kicking), Zaplets (dearly departed), Droplets (still around, it would seem). Then, of course, there are newer contenders like the Yahoo desktop widgets; while that engine is pretty interesting, it doesn’t yet match Apollo for features and, for the moment, seems aimed towards more restricted one-off applications.
I think Adobe has got it right with Apollo - the programming environment is simple and familiar (JavaScript, HTML, Flex, PDF, all of which CF plays with nicely, of course), and Adobe owns what is arguably amongst the most powerful software distribution mechanisms on the planet, the installed base of Flash player users. You’ll be seeing Apollo applications in the enterprise pretty soon, I”m sure; but I’m equally certain that you’ll be seeing a lot more of them out in the wild, on the public web. This is one client technology you don’t want to miss out on.
David Maggard | 02-Nov-06 at 4:42 pm | Permalink
I really enjoyed your session at max and speaking to you at the palms party. Can’t wait for scorpio. I truely hope that you and the rest of the CF team realize, atleast a little, the impact CF has on not only the net but the lives of developers. Because CF helps increase productivity it has been the BIGGEST factor in allowing me to earn a living doing what I love. Keep up the awesome work.
ashwin | 06-Nov-06 at 8:17 am | Permalink
Thanks a lot for your support, Dave - we wouldn’t be where we are today without the ColdFusion community.
Jens | 12-Nov-06 at 4:03 pm | Permalink
I unfortunately wasn’t able to attend MAX or CFUNITED (here in the UK) so apologies in advance if any of the following has already been discussed there or if the following is none of your concern…
The fact that Coldfusion is now finally getting some image manipulation functions is brilliant news. HOWEVER…
As far as I can understand from reading various blogs, the new functionality seems limited to “non-professional” use (and may even “just” be a Java JAI port), i.e. not extensive enough for the type of image/graphics tasks which many of Adobe’s core target industries do on a regular basis (reprographics companies, pro-photograpers and design agencies).
I personally love Coldfusion, but many clients’ IT departments don’t want to use a “non-standard” language (i.e. not Java, .NET, or PHP) and Adobe really needs to give the CF community some killer features which are truly unique so we can give our clients a better reason for using CF than “It’s quicker and better to develop in…”
The areas where Adobe can most obviously develop world-class/unique functionality is in Imaging/Graphics and PDF (I won’t go into PDF here).
If Adobe is going to add CF Imaging functionality which isn’t up to the normal professional “Adobe level” and isn’t even integrated with their own standards/formats, then this can only mean that it isn’t serious about Coldfusion’s future…(and please don’t get me wrong, I am not insulting your achievements in your new features which are very welcome).
Providing the following features would give CF a truly unique feature set (aligned with Adobe’s main customer base to boot) and not just me-too functionality:
* Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, PDF, EPS, SWF and RAW file support (both read/write, and rasterisation of the vector formats)
* Conversion from RGB to CMYK based on ICC colour profiles (may already be possible)
* Extracting and embedding IPTC and EXIF data in JPEG, TIFF and Photoshop files
* Full XMP extraction/embedding from all relevant formats.
* Extraction of PDF pCOS data (e.g. for extracting PDF annotations).
* Maybe even some integration with Adobe Bridge
* And on a PDF note: Creation/building of PDF layouts from scratch or based on templates (i.e. like PDFlib and PDFLib Personalisaton Server)
ashwin | 13-Nov-06 at 8:38 am | Permalink
Thanks very much for your comments, Jens, I’ll pass them on.