My presentation will include a walk through of a simple CRUD application that will demonstrate creating, reading, updating and deleting content from a database via Flex and ColdFusion. Beyond the connectivity portion of the presentation and time permitting I will also try to cover some key Flex concepts and design patterns such as the use of a Events and Value Objects. Understanding these Flex concepts will greatly assist in learning how to build great Flex apps that hook into ColdFusion for server side connectivity.

To attend in person or online check out the Orange County ColdFusion User Group website for details. I believe there will also be a recording available shortly after for those who cannot attend.

Hot off the press, is my ColdFusion 8:Articles:A Preview of Image Manipulation in ColdFusion 8. In this article you will will learn how to use ColdFusion 8’s new image tags and functions to create a micro image gallery application that creates thumbnails from uploaded images and watermarks the originals using the new CFImage tag and related functions. Additionally you will also learn how to create and use a CAPTCHA image in the form space to ensure that a human and not a bot is trying to upload images.

You will want to download the demo files with the application to follow along with, and of course you will also need a copy of the ColdFusion 8 Public Beta also available on the Adobe Labs. One last thing about the demo application, it is not a full featured image gallery. Its intended purpose is to showcase some of the new ways to manipulate images in ColdFusion 8. More specifically it does not contain functionality to delete to images once added to the gallery. To delete images you have to manually remove them from the application's images directory and thumbs sub-directory.

That said enjoy the article and demo.

ColdFusion 8 is finally available on the Adobe labs as a public beta.

Some of the new features:

• Server monitoring to help identify server bottlenecks, allowing for tuning and improved performance.
  
• Step through code debugging in a new Eclipse plug-in debugger.
  
• Adobe Flex™ and Ajax features that let ColdFusion power personalized, multimedia-rich applications to enhance users’ experiences on the web.
  
• High-quality, dynamically created on-demand multimedia presentations.
  
• PDF document and form integration for a printable, portable way to intelligently capture and share information.
  
• Image creation and manipulation with more than 50 new CFML tags and functions.
  
• Native support for .NET objects to easily integrate ColdFusion applications with enterprise data and infrastructure services.
  
• Significant application runtime and server performance improvements.

Be sure to check out my article (A Preview of Image Manipulation in ColdFusion 8) showcasing some of the image manipulation functionality that is brand new in ColdFusion 8.

What are you waiting for? Go download all the ColdFusion goodness.

April 11th 2007 I'll be at the CFUG Toronto meeting giving a demonstrating on how to access a CRUD cfc using Remoting with Flex. This will be the first of a series of Flex/ColdFusion integration tutorials suitable for Flex and CF newcomers.

Also Ray Camden will be chiming at the meeting with a presentation on Adobe's Spry framework for Ajax.

Meeting details:

April 11, 2007
Tippet Room of the Metro Central YMCA
20 Grosvenor Street Toronto
Presentation starting at 7:00pm

This meeting will be broadcast and recorded using Adobe Connect at this url: http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/cfugtorontoapril2007/
Adobe schwag will be raffled off to the people who physically attend the meeting.

Myself and Byron Bignell will be giving a presentation on server virtualization on March 14th 2007 for the ColdFusion User Group Toronto chapter. If you live in the Toronto area come on by and you will learn how to create virtual development servers that you can use to development and test against without having to deploy new hardware.

We will be focusing primarily on VMWare for the windows platform and Parallels for the mac crowd. The presentation is in the Tippet Room of the Metro Central YMCA, at 20 Grosvenor Street and we will be starting at 7PM sharp. After the meeting we will likely go to a nearby pub for post meeting beverages.

See you there.

If you cannot attend the presentation can viewed online at the follwing address: http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/cfugtorontomarch2007/

Update

For those who could not attend the meeting live you can check out the recording here https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a200985228/p58155459/

Check out my just published Adobe Developer Center article How to select a ColdFusion hosting provider. The article outlines what you need to know when choosing a CF web hosting provider. Leave comments on your CF hosting experiences good or bad.

Thus far the two best ColdFusion Hosting providers I've had the pleasure in dealing with are:

In Canada. Alentus has proven to be reliable, knowledgeable and secure. Wade Hovind in their ColdFusion administrator and he really knows his stuff.

States side you cannot go wrong with HostMySite flawless service thus far (knock on wood).