Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

One interesting document you might miss is the "Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 Test Focus Guide", which is a 40-page guide that lists various changes, with scenarios and step-by-step instructions to recreate and observe the feature changes.

That's a nifty idea, and one I wish more vendors offered. It's not something I've seen offered for previous Windows OS releases (base or SP's).

I don't think it lists every feature, but it does list many that I'd not seen mentioned in the more glitzy "what's new" docs (at the URL offered up top here). By contrast, the Test Focus Guide is more text-heavy (all stuff, no fluff) and kind of rough.

For instance, I wish it offered more of a table of contents, because you can't readily eyeball what all it covers. I found the easiest way to find each topic is to search for "goal:", since each scenario has a listed goal.

Anyway, check it out. You may find something of interest there among its dozens and dozens of scenarios.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

If you start to use the new Adobe Presentations service, an online presentation-building tool, now at labs.adobe.com, you may want to engage in some discussion with other users, so may go looking for some forums. You may struggle as I did.

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Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

If you're not yet on the bandwagon :-), please consider it. Membership is entirely free. Just sign up at the site. It gets you email notification about the meetings, as well as the chance to share feedback on meetings they attend.

Of course, you don't need to join to attend the meetings. The RSS feeds for those are available free on the site, and the meetings are announced on twitter as well, via @cfmeetup. So we technically have even more members, unofficially.

But if you'd like to help us grow to the next 1,800 members, and more important, if you would like another avenue for learning more about CF and related technologies, please consider signing up. There's no obligation, and you're in total control of your membership experience.

About the CF Meetup

The CF Meetup is an official Adobe CF user group. Unlike most groups, we meet weekly (and sometimes twice!) on Thursdays at noon or 6pm US EDT (GMT -4, as of the date of this posting).

We have speakers from all over the world on all kinds of topics related to CF, whether new or classic topics, beginner or advanced; whether new or old presentations, or even new or experienced speakers. If you or anyone you know would like to present, there are always open slots sometime in the coming months.

We've now had 88 presentations since I took the reins from Steven Erat in April 2007. You can find links to all the titles, descriptions, and speaker bios, as well as recordings of the sessions, at recordings.coldfusionmeetup.com (or on my UGTV repository of nearly 400 recorded presentations from over 200 speakers).

Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

(If you're not familiar with the value of thread dumps or stack traces, read on. The resources I point to get help you to appreciate their usefulness.)

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Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

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Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

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Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

For more information, see this blog entry: this blog entry from someone on the Chrome team. It includes links to more details on each change, as well as a brief intro video.

I've been really missing the auto-complete feature, whereby if you fill out text fields on forms that you've entered before, it remembers. (This is not the form-filler of the google toolbar which you can use to fill in an entire page.) You just don't realize how much you use that simple auto-complete until you miss it. (And if you didn't miss it, well, you don't know what you're missing!) Of course, it can be disabled, but it's on by default in the new release.

The update is really fast. Again, see the other blog entry for more.

And I would suggest that if you have any comments like, "yeah, but they forgot xxx", etc., I'd say it would be more worthwhile for you to post those on the google team member's blog than to offer them here. Just sayin'. :-)

Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

What was so curious was that my local mail client (Outlook) was configured with the exact same servername, username, password, and port, and ran fine from the same laptop on which CF was running. Both were trying to send email via the remote mail server. Why would CFMAIL fail when Outlook would work, both connecting from the same machine to the same SMTP server with the same connection parms?

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Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Before you dismiss the idea outright, consider the description below, and if you have an hour to spare, come check it out. You may learn something very surprising. Some of the things I'll discuss are not often talked about, from my observation. Yet I help a lot of people who are hurt by them.

I'll add, also, that out of nearly 80 sessions I've hosted, I've only spoken a few times. The meetup is definitely not "the Charlie show". Thanks to all the many other speakers who have come out the past couple of years.

My Session Title: Sessions and Clients and Crashes, Oh My!

Description: You may be suffering and not even realize it. As a consultant, I focus on helping people troubleshoot CF problems, and one of the most common (and least appreciated) problems people suffer are those related to having too many active sessions in memory or a high rate of creation/update of client variables (whether in registry or database). EVEN IF YOU'D SAY YOU DON'T USE SESSIONS OR CLIENT VARIABLES, this may impact you.

In this session, veteran CFer Charlie Arehart will explain the problem. Using live demonstrations and offering code you can use yourself for free, he'll show how to identify both the extent of and the cause of the problems, and various solutions. The concepts provided will apply to any version of CF (or BD or Railo).

To RSVP (not required) or to learn more about the meeting, including the URL to attend, see the event page.

Update:The recording for this is available here.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

First, the speaker lineup starts with the ColdFusion Jedi himself, Ray Camden. Beyond that, several past Atlanta CFUG (and CFUnited) speakers will be presenting (on topics not presented at the ACFUG before): Doug Knudsen, John Mason, Andy Powell, and myself (Charlie Arehart). You can see their topic titles and descriptions here: http://express.cfunited.com/go/atlanta/2009/schedule

Second, there will also be giveaways including a free copy of Flex, ColdFusion, a free ticket to CFUnited, and more.

All this for just $149 (use code CFXEB2 to get this early bird price, even at the door). Pre-registration if preferred, of course, to help them plan for the included coffee/donuts, lunch/sodas, and snacks/beverages, but you can get in at the door at that price with that code. Register or get more info at http://express.cfunited.com/go/atlanta/2009.

Third, note that 100% of your Express event payment can be applied towards your attendance at CFUnited 2009. Between the content, the giveaways (at great odds in the smaller venue than the full conference), and the credit toward the full conference, it's really a great deal.

For still other reasons to attend, see the "top 10 reasons" at http://express.cfunited.com/. If you have any last minute questions not answered on the resources above, you can also call the organizer, Liz Frederick, at 410-963-9418.

Finally, for more about the venue, Roundbox Global (across the street from the Kind Plow Arts Center), including parking information, see this blog entry.

Hope to see you there.

PS If you know anyone in the New York City area, there will be an event there also, next week, April 20. More here.