Simon Horwith

2005 has been one of the most significant years in history for ColdFusion developers and Web developers in general.

2006 looks to be a very promising year as well, between the impending release of Flex 2, the beginning of seeing what Adobe does with the product, and the continued development of ColdFusion 8, code named "Scorpio." Still, at the end of the year it's good to look back on the legacy we will inherit and build-on in the year(s) to come.

This past year saw the release of Dreamweaver 8. This release of Dreamweaver was definitely the best to date - the product appears to be more stable than ever: there is better support for working with ColdFusion Components, better XML support, and excellent major enhancements to its CSS support. In 2005 we also saw a huge acceptance of the CFEclipse project. Many ColdFusion developers are now using this free IDE to meet all of their development needs, and (especially for those who don't like using Dreamweaver to write their code) this has given us back what can only be referred to as a "real developers" IDE.

The community celebrated and participated in a couple of major events this past year as well. Developers converged on Newton and congregated at their local user groups in order to celebrate ColdFusion's 10th birthday. The annual CFun conference was rebranded CFUnited and saw a major increase in attendance and sponsorship, and has now become the largest and most significant annual ColdFusion event. The Fusebox conference was also reformatted to include all frameworks, which made for a terrific event.

Speaking of frameworks, the emergence of several new frameworks and new versions of existing frameworks is a noteworthy trend in 2005. Frameworks in general have had much more widespread use and acceptance. More developers are beginning to publicly release implementations of design patterns and modules to make common tasks easier. There is more discussion on blogs, list servers, and conferences about object-oriented CF. These things are all symptoms of a trend: more developers are beginning to approach ColdFusion development as serious software development.

This past year saw the release of the eagerly anticipated ColdFusion MX 7, and it was well worth the wait. CFMX 7 was, in fact, the most significant feature release I can remember since the first version of ColdFusion was released over 10 years ago. A new application framework, PDF and FlashPaper support, Flash Forms, new reporting formats and features, a ColdFusion Report IDE, many new packaging and deployment options including support for .EAR/.WAR packaging, a new version of Verity with support for many new search and indexing options, and the new Event Gateway framework to allow ColdFusion to do so much more than simply respond to HTTP requests are among the most significant features. I know the team is looking to make Scorpio the best release ever, but they've sure got their work cut out for them.

The "Web 2.0" buzz began in 2005 and people are into it. Macromedia even went so far as to show off what type of Web 2.0 applications will be possible with Flex 2.0 next year, and what an impressive demonstration it was. AJAX became popular, and has given developers a library of functionality that allows Web 2.0 style clients to be built and delivered to clients on a variety of browsers. Of course, Macromedia's public announcement of Flex 2.0 and FlexBuilder 2 (along with a ColdFusion connector) are of major importance.

I like AJAX and I think it's a great idea - especially for developers who are not allowed to use Flash as the platform for their user interfaces. Personally, I'm much more excited about Flex 2.0 - it has a wider reach than AJAX, allows developers to do things that AJAX simply cannot do, and in my opinion is more developer-friendly than AJAX. Macromedia released their Macromedia Labs site - finally they have joined the ranks of companies like Microsoft and Google in offering the public a forum for looking at technologies while they are still in the research and development phases. It is there, at Macromedia Labs (http://labs.macromedia.com), that the public alpha of FlexBuilder 2 was released. Toward the end of 2005 I also announced that CFDJ will begin to offer more articles on Web 2.0 concepts and, more important, on techniques for building better applications using AJAX, Flex, and ColdFusion.

The last, but certainly not least, significant happening of 2005 is the announcement and finalization of Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia. Those of us who remember the Macromedia acquisition of Allaire know that these things do mean change, but typically the changes are for the better. With the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe Systems, Adobe not only owns and controls the best digital document format for content and best graphics and layout tools on the planet, but is also the proud parent of the best format, tools, and server products for rich content, animation, and business interfaces on the Web, the best online collaboration server, and the best platform for developing Web applications. Having all of these products under one umbrella creates opportunities for every product that were unfathomable before.

Adobe also made a point of stressing the value they place on the Macromedia user communities, and appear eager to begin working with us to strengthen the popularity of the products as well as strengthening the communities themselves. Adobe was very quick, through interviews, press releases, and letters to the community, to send a warm welcome to us all. I'd like to conclude this editorial, and 2005, by reciprocating to any Adobe employee who this article finds its way to: so many of us look forward to seeing what you do with the products we use and love, and we look forward to working with you as well. I sincerely can't wait to see what 2006 has in store for us all...