Washington Takes The Lead From Kansas City

Ben Forta Visits DC Again

Kansas City held the user group attendance lead (for this tour) for a few weeks, but Washington D.C. took the lead this evening with 100 attendees. About 1/3 of those present had attended my CFUN keynote, so I varied the presentation somewhat (different examples, additional content), answered lots and lots of questions, and listened to all sorts of suggestions and comments. Next stop, Philadelphia.

I was there. The attendance was good as was the FigLeaf pizza. Ben said use your own words and I will. Blackstone is the code name for the new version of ColdFusion expected early 2005. Hightlights:

• Lots of tools and wizards to make it easier for newbies.
• Support for XForms to improve management and style.
• Lots of ways to create Flash forms like Grids and Trees.
• Binding of form fields. Example, disable field if others are not completed.
• Printing and reporting including on the fly PDF format as well as FlashPaper.
• ColdFusion Report generator that looked powerful.
• Able to bundle into JAR file and run on other J2EE server.

Overall, it was great. A long night with lots promise.