Troy Pullis - 12/3/03 MAX Conference 2003 Twin Cities CFUG

12/3/03Troy Pullis2 Community College Corp roadmap – keep pushing RIA and better web experiences. Intro to Flex solution by Christophe Coenraets. ColdFusion MX session: RedSky 6.1, Java/Unicode, CFMail rocks, CF is here to stay, “Blackstone” underway. User Group manager workshops on how to improve user group, attract new members, and keep ‘em coming back.

12/3/03Troy Pullis3 Blackstone – the next CF From Ben Forta’s keynote and blog: * 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.

12/3/03Troy Pullis4 FLEX Previously code named “Royale” Presentation tier solution to deliver RIAs Write code in MXLM (xml based language) Use “Brady” studio tools to enhance the UI created from developers code. Add styles, organize form fields and buttons, and add UI components such as accordion or tabbed pane. Will not break existing code. Potential integration with ColdFusion sneak peak from Mike Nimer Demo MXML code on next page!

12/3/03Troy Pullis5 {treeModel} {feed.result.rss==null?feed.result.RDF.channel.title:feed.result.rss.channel.title} {feed.result.rss==null?feed.result.RDF.channel.date:feed.result.rss.channel.lastBuildDate} {feed.result.rss==null?feed.result.RDF.channel.link:feed.result.rss.channel.link} {selectedEntry.description} {selectedEntry.link} FLEX code example

12/3/03Troy Pullis6 FLEX returns this Flash SWF

12/3/03Troy Pullis7 Great User Experiences Miniusa.com – great ROI for them.Miniusa.com Bacardi.com – learn to dance area.Bacardi.com Planning and Prioritizing the experience is KEY before coding anything. Macromedia.com lessons learned, user wants site that is useful, usable, and desirable. Breeze product design lessons learned

12/3/03Troy Pullis8 Flash MX 2004 Excellent data connection components. XML and web services used in hands on sessions, binded data to UI components. Data Connection Wizard Can’t call public web services with security sandbox. Invoke a proxy service that calls public service. Style sheets can be used in Flash

12/3/03Troy Pullis9 Dreamweaver MX 2004 Launch difference browsers to view page Cross browser validation (Gov’t still standardized on Netscape 4) 508 compliance features JavaScript snippets – don’t reinvent wheel. CSS editor – BIG PUSH for tableless design using absolute positioning. Edit images directly (no jump to Fireworks)

12/3/03Troy Pullis10 Components (aka CFC’s) Good for security using “roles” attribute in function definitions. Use Application/Session persistence to simulate Object Oriented programming. Self documenting, use cfexplorer.cfm to browse. Good to always have “init” constructor. Exception handling – Ben Elmore always returns a structure with return code and data. –Message.return_code –Message.data or Message.errorData (also a struct)

12/3/03Troy Pullis11 Other stuff eHelp’s RoboDemo product is killer app that generates Flash movie for eLearning content creation. FlashPaper – similar to PDF, any document can be converted to FP and the viewed in Flash Player in browser. Bundled with new Contribute 2.0 CF and MS Office integration, cool things can be done in specific situations. Maybe a future CFUG preso doing some examples.

12/3/03Troy Pullis12 Questions / Discussion Thank you.