Codename: Blackstone

During this morning's MAX 2003 keynote I announced that the next major version of ColdFusion is in the works, the product is codenamed "Blackstone". I also listed the high level themes for this future product, and just so things are clear, this is the text from the slide I showed:
 Key themes for Blackstone are:
 * Reporting & printed output.
 * Making RAD even more rapid. - Simpler ways to create compelling and sophisticated user interfaces.
 * Radical new productivity gains. - Productivity gains for both existing users and new developer.
 * New ways to deploy your apps. - Including source code protection.

12 Comments

thomas November 19, 2003

here is a crazy idea... why not do as you preach and create a Breeze presentation for each session... then sell access to it. Models could include: - free for DevNet Subscribers - free for conference delegates - US$10,- per session - US$200,- for the whole conference online - US$200,- for the whole conference on CD/ DVD I believe that could be a great use of Breeze and as an audio only version would be quite easy to do.

Sam Farmer November 19, 2003

Was any timeframe given to Blackstone? Any chance to see the slides or is that for only for those lucky enough to be at the conference?

Micha Schopman November 20, 2003

Oh yeah, Maybe some integration with WEBDAV, or ODMA? .. integrate ColdFusion apps with all those lovely apps which support WEBDAV.

Micha Schopman November 20, 2003

The only thing I like on the list of Ben Forta is source code protection. At last we can sell our ColdFusion apps to customers, without focussing on taking an asp role. Several of our customers have their own bandwith or hosting environments and so it is very difficult to sell a system, not able to run on their servers. (we do not want to give away our sourcecode which took 4 months, +40 hours a week to write) At the moment our 3rd CF based CMS system is used by a lot of customers, and what I miss alot is: Functionality for creating PDF's without 3rd party tools (maybe with cfsavecontent) Ability to deploy a single file containing the entire app with safe source code, either: compiled cf sourcecode :? Stability, it is so easy to crash a ColdFusion server. High load is enough Since MM switched to Java, I miss the speed. CF5 is still the fastest version. Image manipulation without 3rd party tools A safe cfcontent system. Cfcontent halts all requests until a file is served. Getting server information like cpu usage, memory usage (I have some cfobject hacks, but this is not the nicest way) I don't think Macromedia must focus on stuffing ColdFusion with all sorts of things on the interface area. Customers more often want custom interface widgets, and I personally have never used things like cfgrid. Please keep it clean. Focus on the code, and not on interfaces and ui's. Maybe something cool, integration with speech technology. I would love our customers, or handicapped persons with eye vision problems, to just say to our CMS "Add Article!" ... and my ColdFusion code could transform this in a call to a ColdFusion page.

Fernando da Silva Trevisan November 20, 2003

Well, Mr. Forta, as I see, I've made you the right question there in Rio de Janeiro... Flex (aka Royale) and Cold Fusion aren't competitors, and Flex isn't a CFKiller. They are, in some points, the same. Huuuuuuum very suggestive ;) Tks!

Ben Forta November 20, 2003

No, no time frame, yet. I believe the keynotes will go online, yes. And as for Mike's question, um, no can tell, yet. :-)

Mike November 20, 2003

Will the "simpler ways to create compelling and sophisticated user interfaces" be Flex?

Rogerio November 29, 2003

I would definitely enjoy these features in a new cfmx version: - imap4 support!!! - webdav support - source code protection - app deployment in a single package file (containing cfmx, my app, and all previous made configuration in cfmx) Is there any alpha or beta testing going on right now? I would enjoy to participate in any beta programs of this new version. Cheers,

net.Det January 17, 2004

2 Dreams: a) Coldfusion-Server as WebDav-Client and perhaps as WebDav-Server (not so important because Apache does this job). b) XML-Schema Validation, to check XML and XSD for correctness.

dre February 18, 2004

Puhlleeze make cfcs be entirely scriptable in cfscript.

Steve Walker June 15, 2004

How about a datagrid like the one in .Net. One that works, has sort functions built in, and doesn't require that I learn Flash Pro.

Don Vaillancourt July 9, 2004

The programers at our company are all ColdFusion power users and are at the point where the ease of development is great, but need much more power and thought that maybe these features would be great: Being able to code java directly into a cfm template via a <cfjava> tag. Better interability between ColdFusion objects and Java such as query objects on the Java side and Java variables and constants on the ColdFusion side.

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