We are getting closer and closer to ColdFusion Builder being released. Long anticipated by the community, you can get your hands on it today.

Go GET IT NOW!

Well if you have the new Adobe ColdFusion 9 you do now!

If you go to Server Settings > Mail, you will see new options for setting up your keys to use this option.

Just saw this brought up on Ben's blog and thought it would be good info for everyone to know.

One of the analysts at the respected Gartner research group has made a post about his thoughts on CF 9

You can read it here

For a more in depth look from Gartner, check out this PDF

Adobe ColdFusion - Past Present and Future

Its very good to see these types of articles that are long overdue.

Make sure to check out the new page on Adobe.com about ColdFusion 9 and all of its new features.

Hear from developers in the community about this new release.

For another good summary make sure to check out the SitePoint review of What's new in ColdFusion 9

There are many great new features in Adobe ColdFusion 9, and now you can try them out for yourself in the public beta. I know I'm a little late posting this so forgive me for that. Adobe has done an amazing job with ColdFusion 9, looking at the features and effort put into this amazing version, proves the commitment from Adobe to the product.

So what are you waiting for, go to Adobe Labs and check out the new beta's.

I know some people are unaware of the Adobe.tv site. There are many great videos across all product lines.

Here is a great video by Jason Delmore the Senior Product Manager for ColdFusion.

In this video he shows how in the next release of ColdFusion you will be able to leverage the baked in hibernate technology.

In short, see how you don't have to write any CFQUERY tags, or SQL. In addition he will show you a preview of how Bolt (new cf ide coming soon) allows you to auto generate the required CFC's and Hibernate files to get you up and running with the quickness!

Enjoy: Centaur ORM on Adobe TV

A developer new to ColdFusion made a post in the Adobe forums. After reading this though the developer made some really great points. When talking about researching CF, the reader had some of the following points.

"So I thought well I am using Adobe anyway let's see this ColdFusion rather than go back to MS or turn to PHP/ROR. You have to understand having been in front ends and graphics I have some basics of them all anyway.

I nearly did not as the web is not full of praise at all on the surface for CF. ROR is hyped but I did not like it's feel (framework is good bit CF does it too if you want to). The PHP community was too fragmented into a multitude of Open Source Projects - most of which I would never use. ASP had changed too much for me and I did not own a windows license anymore. I am using OSX and Linux distros of the day.

So I looked up the CF community. I noticed unlike the PHP/ASP/ROR etc you had kinda like father figures here (who help newbies!)." -Scot2009

And this quote as well:

"You can learn for free. What is all this CF costs money rubbish I was told before I started. I have found very good shared hosts with great prices and even some using open source CF really cheap. If you need a dedicated machine and can't afford CF then you can't afford a dedicated machine. So that is all rubbish that is spread by other web application server language users. Adobe needs to make new coders know this is rubbish." -Scot2009

So in short, this new developer found that most of the anti-CF stuff on the web is rubbish. For those of us who use the technology every day, we know most of this is rubbish and don't pay attention to unfounded rants by others.

From what this user said, he was almost turned away from CF by the fragmented rants of other communities. I hope Adobe pays attention to this users post, Adobe (IMHO) needs to make better efforts to kill these myths from a marketing prospective.

With Adobe at the wheel, ColdFusion demand is increasing as reported by Hostway. This is great news for Adobe and the ColdFusion product team.

Personally, I think that when CF9 comes out is when you will really see adoption jump. Adobe gets it with this product, and with Adobe DNA being integrated more and more into the product, is going to make for some amazing features in the products future.

Check it out here

Make sure to keep an eye on this. The previous name was "Cocomo" in case you are not aware of the new name.

If you ever had the need, or will have the need to build real-time social type applications, this service is for you. ACFS is a service based platform that allows Adobe Flex developers to easily add real time communication.

The solution is comprised of a set of Flex custom components, and hosted services provided by Adobe. Using these components and services you can build real-time multi-user RIA's. Using the Flex components and hosted services will allow a rapid platform for developing these applications. You can also have peace of mind knowing that server issues and tasks such as deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of.

I'm very excited about this solution, and can't wait to start building apps with it.

Check it out on Adobe Labs

Now on Adobe.com there is a great educational resource for learning Adobe ColdFusion 8. The curriculum is geared toward web developers with some experience how to create dynamic web applications using ColdFusion.

There are two courses available for download, "Introduction to ColdFusion 8" and "Advanced ColdFusion 8 Development".

Adobe.com ColdFusion 8 project-based curriculum