Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

This entry was prompted by a survey up on a popular site (makeuseof, which I've blogged about before.) The survey asks people what toolbars, if any, they use in their browsers.

In the current voting most say they use none, and some commenters are dismissing them as "wastes of space". I thought that odd, as I use the google toolbar every day. I offered up the following as a comment, and then thought I'd share it here for my readers (have done only a slight bit of editing from my original comment there):

It's a shame to see some call toolbars a waste of space. OK, so many you've lamented them getting auto-installed on an unsuspecting user's computer, or hated when one tries to do that on yours. But not everyone who has one is an idiot.

For instance, I love the google toolbar and have for years. Sure, I realize that FF (and now IE7) offers a search box, but that's not all that the google toolbar does for you. Unfortunately, some of its best jewels are hidden gems, in that you may need to enable them with the "settings".

I use the "site" button every day (type in a search word and click the button to search what Google knows only about the current site). Sure, you can do it yourself with the "site:" keyword in any google search box you may have, but this is much less typing over the course of a day.

Same with doing a google image or froogle/products search, both buttons you can easily add.

There's also the "up" button that's worth adding, which lets you traverse up a site, whereby it removes whatever's at the end of the currently used URL. Often quite handy. Again, all things you could do yourself manually, but one click is nicer, and makes the toolbar very much worth the space to me.

These and a few other things are tips I first shared back in 2003.

Some features don't use any "space" at all, as the toolbar also enables a context menu on each page you visit. You can right-click the whitespace of any page you visit to see (under "page info" in FF2 and IE7):

• backward links
• cached snapshot of page
• similar pages
• translate page

Again, all these are things you can do without the toolbar as long as you have a quick google search bar of some sort and know the corresponding google keywords (link:, cache:, etc.). But again I use some of these every day, so I love not having to type those--plus some users would learn this way of these valuable Google features: they might not ever think to learn the keywords (or use the "advanced search" at google.com).

If I have one complaint, it's that I don't understand why these last 4 features aren't enabled as toolbar buttons (that can be added, optionally). I'd give up the space occupied by "send to" and "autolink" (though some may love those), and certainly "check" (the spell check) since that's built into FF. Anyone from Google (or others who might know more about this) care to comment?

Anyway, don't dismiss toolbars (and the google toolbar especially) so readily. You may be missing out on more than you know.

Hope that helps someone. (Actually, for some reason I still don't see my comment posted on the makeuseof blog entry. I suppose they may have some verification process. If I don't see it in a couple of hours, I'll post the above there again.)

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

The good news is that I do have a couple speakers already lined up the next 2 weeks (10th and 17th). I'll announce those soon, as well as any I might still arrange for this week (the 3rd).

In the meantime, I'll note that you can get some online training goodness via the many recorded CFUnited presentations that have been posted free for all to enjoy by the good folks who run the conference. You'll find 33 of them listed at my UGTV site.

Finally, I wanted to pass along news of a free resource from Adobe to help people learn more about Rich Internet Applications. It includes recorded online workshops, projects to work on, and book recommendations, all for free. Check it out at:

Rich Internet Application Teaching Resources

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

his blog entry with a photo.

That's representin'! :-)

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

• CFUnited Europe in mid March
• cf.Objective() in early May
• WebManiacs in late May
• Scotch on the Rocks in early June
• CFUnited in mid June

What a blast, and of course it's an honor to be invited. I've not written much about them because, well, I don't know what I could add that hasn't been said by many other bloggers who attended each! :-)

Unfortunately, the schedule precluded me giving any thought to attending (or proposing to speak at) WebDU (spoke there last year) or SpringBR. And sadly I had to miss the Adobe Community Summit.

As if those events (and the commensurate travel) weren't enough of a draw on time, in the weeks since the first event in mid-March I've also:

• squeezed in teaching 6 classes
• written 2 tips columns and a feature article for 2 editions of the FAQU
• organized nearly a dozen ColdFusion Meetups
• attended an invitation-only Microsoft Tech Summit (for a couple dozen folks they picked from competing communities to talk and listen to)
• spent a week in Germany with the fine folks at Intergral (makers of FusionDebug, FusionReactor, FusionAnalytics, and with whom I also do some consulting)
• and provided my consulting services to many folks in what little time remained!

Fortunately, the nature of my consulting is different than most: I focus on helping people solve problems (rather than build or architect apps), so they generally need me only sporadically and for short spurts of time. We've been able to fit them in nicely in the time in between, but I've got some who've been patiently awaiting the end of what some called "the conference silly season".

I had also started my series on the tools/resource list, but after part 10 got just too bogged down. I plan to pick that up again very soon.

Just wanted to offer a bit of explanation on the relative quiet the past couple of months.

I have some other really exciting things planned and in the works which I'll be sharing in coming weeks and months. Some are new resources, some new services, and some new tools. All dedicated to helping the community. It's exciting times!

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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've wondered what the hubub was about, give it a look. And if you want to read more about jQuery from the CF community's perspective, check out the blogs of folks like Ben Nadel, Rey Bango, and John Farrar, to name just a couple.

As for the article above, I'll add that the author is Rick Strahl, who, while not a CFer, has still been one of my favorite writers/bloggers over the years. Why? Well, first, he's just very thorough and a good communicator. But he also came from a Foxpro background and so his writing has often been (especially early on) from the same sort of "outside the camp" perspective that we CFers sometimes have. Admittedly, he's recently focused more on .NET and I know some CFers will just choke on that, but if you can look past it you may find nuggets of gold in his writing as I have. Besides the blog, he has a list of articles you can dig through, as well as some free tools which might be of value.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

While looking into the Mura web site, I came away so impressed that I wanted to write about it: not the tool, but the site! (Update: Again, I have updated all references and links below for the new site, but otherwise everything--my text and the resources I highlight--are the same as when I wrote this in May 2008.)

This is an example of an organization that really gets things right, not only about making their tool seem appealing but making it easy to evaluate it without having to first install it. So often, I look at various other products/projects that bury or hide key info to help me decide whether I want to bother considering it at all, let alone downloading or even installing it first. (So often, we're forced to download the product and either install it or at least read a readme. Some people just won't be bothered, so the site really can be key to winning customers.)

The Mura site does thing so well. I felt it was a real breath of fresh air, and I really hope others will consider adopting some of their approaches, which I'll talk about here.

First, I'll note that I have indeed added it to my list of CF-based CMS's. I think some would be surprised that this now makes 24 of them, at least per my listing (some free, some commercial).

What they get so right

Here are just some of the stellar features they employ on the site:

• an attractive site interface, with a real fresh look and feel (bright, colorful, easy on the eyes, lots of pictures of real, happy-looking people)
• a "quick tour" set of edited screenshots showing highlighted key features, in an easy to use slideshow interface
• a set of "" pages tied separately to marketing, IT, and design folks (see the left nav bar)
• high-level features page and separate list of all features
• Quick start tutorials
• their download page explains that they offer the tool in 2 forms. The "standard" flavor is simply the source code (like you'd expect for any project, though they note that it runs on either CF7+ or Railo 2.0+). The "express" flavor is a complete bundled edition that is easy to install onto a machine not running CF (or that is but you don't want to tinker with it). It runs on Railo Express which offers a totally self-contained environment to run a CFML app like Mura, with the Railo CFML Engine, Jetty Application Server and WebServer, and H2 Database. See the download page for links to those parts.
• Of course, they have all the other expected things: FAQs, forums (as well as paid support), and nice docs in the form of a user guide, developers guide, and component API.
• I mentioned the paid support page, and I'd say that and the services page are just another example of refreshing transparency: lots of other projects/companies kind of hide their services, as if they don't want to offend people that they're willing to take money to help users make the most of their tools. It seems a missed opportunity.
• They also offer a list of clients, to help you feel more comfortable knowing others have gone before you, and they have a blog, which is of course a great way to keep people updated on things.

Great first impression, and a model

It's clear that these folks have put a lot of effort into the site and wanting to make the tool appealing. (If it reflects the level of care they put into the tool itself, that certainly bodes well too, and I'm sure the site could lead some to feel that way, at least on the surface, so great way to make a good first impression.)

All this is just such a rarity in my experience, and I just find it so very refreshing. I wish them well, and hope these thoughts may help some others.

I'm not knocking any others in particular

Indeed, let me add that I don't say all this to embarass anyone in particular about their site. If you think I'm talking to you, that's just your conscience, not me. :-) I have no one in mind. And I'm not limiting my thoughts to only open source projects: there are just as many commercial product sites that drop this ball, too, which just blows my mind. I do realize that open source projects (especially if they have no paid support model) often feel constrained to "afford" the time to make such a nice site. Still, this is one open source project that just gets things so right.

Who else do you think "gets it right?"

I realize, too, that there are others that do things well. I mean no slight by not mentioning them, nor highlighting them earlier. In fact, feel free to list here in the comments any other sites you think get things right. I suspect one that some would think of immediately is ColdBox, and its site, both of which Luis Majano has clearly put a lot of effort into.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

Following is the text of this category as it stands on the tools/resources list, as I write this blog entry. As always, check the list to see the latest version. I'll use people's comments below to update that list (not this entry).

CFML Frameworks/Methodologies

There are far more CFML frameworks or methodologies than many may realize, and of course some will debate whether something should be called a framework or a methodology. I don't want to get into that debate, so I've just listed them here all together.

I provide whatever brief description may be found on the respective web site (so if you don't like the description, talk to the site owner and let me know if it changes...and framework owners, you'd do well to have a nice succinct description to help visitors get a quick understanding of the frameworks purpose, goals, intended use, etc.)

Similarly, if there's a name associated with the project on the site, or if a name is commonly known as being responsible for the framework, I list that. As always, I'm open to updates. Finally, I also don't for now order them by "type" of framework, since again some may debate what kind each is. For now, I'm just looking to help people realize the wide range of alternatives available. Check each out for yourself.

Note as well that some of these may be defunct. As long as there was a working site (or some relatively recent site talking about it, even if a third party), I list it. At the end I list some frameworks whose sites seem defunct. Again, updates are welcomed.

• Blackbox "ColdFusion Development Methodology", from Dan Chick
• CFObjects, "object-oriented ColdFusion development framework", from Steve Brownlee and Orbwave
• COOP, "a framework that separates mark-up from processing logic", from John Farrar
• cfrails, (couldn't find any brief description), from Sammy Larbi
• COAL (Coldfusion Open Application Library), from Ryan Guill
• ColdBox "event-driven CFC based ColdFusion Framework", from Luis Majano
• ColdSpring "framework for CFCs", from Chris Scott
• FarCry, "a cutting edge ColdFusion MX application framework for web based content management", from Geoff Bowers and Daemon Consulting
• Fusebox, "the most popular framework for building ColdFusion and PHP web applications", from Team Fusebox
• HomePortals, "especially tailored for building portals and other highly modular sites", from Oscar Arevalo
• iiFramework, "manages many aspects of e-business development so that the programmer doesn't have to", from Infranet
• Lightwire, "a very lightweight Direct Injection/IoC engine for directly injecting dependencies into singletons AND transient business object", from Peter Bell
• Mach-ii, "a powerful, object-oriented, open source MVC framework for ColdFusion that focuses on easing software development and maintenance", from Team Mach-II
• Model-Glue, "a family of frameworks [that] support Web application developers by making the construction of Object-Oriented Web and Rich Internet Applications a straightforward process", from the Model-Glue Team
• onAir, "a 'Smart Connection Framework': Connect backend business logic written in CFCs with different clients (e.g. AJAX, Laszlo) via XML, XML-RPC, JSON, etc.", from Jan Jannek
• OnTap, "shares some similarities with Ruby on Rails", from Isaac Dealey
• Plum, "stands for Practical Lightweight Universal Methodology, and it incorporates a rich code generator, a development methodology, a comprehensive application framework that does just about everything you'll ever need to do with a ColdFusion application, a unit test generator, and stored procedure generator, a component generator, and much more.", from Productivity Enhancement
• PureMVC, a CF port of PureMVC, "a lightweight framework for creating applications based upon the classic Model, View and Controller concept", from Cliff Hall (other ports include Flex [AS2, 3], PHP, Java, and .NET [c#])
• Reactor, "an Object-Relational Modeling tool which generates database abstractions on the fly, as needed. Reactor is sometimes called an "Inline Dynamic Database Abstraction" API", from Alagad
• SOS, "stands for Servant Oriented Software...uses the technology in a way that matches your developing style and needs", from John Farrar
• Switchbox, "a programming technique and coding style used to develop flexible and scalable applications", from Joseph Flanigan
• Tardis, "Model-View-Controller Framework for ColdFusion", from Shawn Gorrell
• Tartan, "a command-driven service framework for ColdFusion", from Paul Kenney
• TheHUB, "homegrown application development framework", from Neil Ross
• Transfer, "ColdFusion Object Relational Mapping Library...to automate the repetitive tasks of creating the SQL and custom CFCs that are often required when developing a ColdFusion application", from Mark Mandel
• ColdFusion on Wheels, "provides fast application development, a great organization system for your code, and is just plain fun to use", from the CFWheels Team
• Some that seem defunct include cfoo.org, cfoop.com, fusionscript.com, MXF, MVCF, objectbreeze.com, underscoreframework.com
• Some folks also see CMSs as frameworks, so see my list of them.
• See also
  • Brian Rinaldi's Open Source CF list of frameworks
  • CFFrameworks.com list of frameworks.
  • CFPetmarket.com, a repository of implementations of the CF Petmarket app in various frameworks
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

I've decided to start offering each category here as a blog entry, to give the list more exposure and to make sure I'm not missing anything. For now I'm offering each day one list from the resources and then another from the tools categories. To see the list of all categories, see Part 1 of this series. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page. Please try to remember to point the list out to people you see asking for these kind of tools and resources. Thanks.

Additions/Corrections

The tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

Next up will be a category from the Resources section, CFML Hosting Alternatives. BTW, I had previously listed the "CFML Frameworks/Methodologies" category under "Resources", but have decided just now to move it to "Tools". Having done that, there are tool categories before it which I will indeed soon blog, as I go back and forth between blogging categories in each list.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

CFML Caching Tools

• CF_Accelerate, free, from Brandon Purcell's (Inspired by older CF_SuperCache). There's also a variant based on that, by Tom Dyson, to support file-based caching
• CF_CacheOMatic, free, from Eric Jansson (as discussed in and downloadable from a devX article)
• CF_TurboCache, free, from HotFusion
• cfmemcached, open source, from Jon Hirschi
• JohnnyCache, open source, from Andy Powell
• ScopeCache, open source, from Ray Camden
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

I've decided to start offering each category here as a blog entry, to give the list more exposure and to make sure I'm not missing anything. For now I'm offering each day one list from the resources and then another from the tools categories. To see the list of all categories, see Part 1 of this series. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page. Please try to remember to point the list out to people you see asking for these kind of tools and resources. Thanks.

Additions/Corrections

The tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

Next up will be a category from the Resources section, CFML Frameworks/Methodologies. There are a lot more than you may think.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

CFML Documentation/Help Tools and Resources

While the Adobe docs are the best source for CFML documentation, there are online versions of that both from Adobe and others, providing access to the docs in various ways. Please note, though, that while most of the other resources show only the CFML reference, the actual Adobe docs contain more than just the CFML Reference, including a Developer's Guide, Installation Guide, Administration Guide, and more. See the Livedocs for more on those.

• Adobe Livedocs, for CF7
• Adobe Livedocs, for CF8
• CFQuickDocs, by Jacob Munson
• CF Docs on Air, by Brian Love (If not working, try google cache version)
• CFML Docs for IPod, by Randy Nielsen of the Adobe docs team
• CF8 Help files for Eclipse, from Adobe
• ColdFusionDocs, by Anuj Gakhar
• Complete List of CF tags, for 7 and 8, by Andy Jarrett
• Pete Frietag's ColdFusion Cheat Sheet
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

I've decided to start offering each category here as a blog entry, to give the list more exposure and to make sure I'm not missing anything. For now I'm offering each day one list from the resources and then another from the tools categories. To see the list of all categories, see Part 1 of this series. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page. Please try to remember to point the list out to people you see asking for these kind of tools and resources. Thanks.

Additions/Corrections

The tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

Next up later today will be CFML Caching Tools.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

CFMAIL Replacements/Enhancements

• ActivMail, once commercial, now to be open source, from Zrinity (formerly from CFDev)
• InFusion Mail Server (IMS) and FusionMail, commercial (with free Developer edition), from CoolFusion
• Spoolmail, open source, from Ray Camden
  • Nice review of/introduction to it by Sam Farmer
• See also the Adobe Developer's exchange on tags/functions/apps related to CFMAIL, though it may contain very old variants that no longer work or are supported
• See also Brian Rinaldi's Open Source CF list of Email tools
• Note, as well, that the CFMAIL tag itself has evolved significantly over the years, so some of the various alternatives may not always be needed. 6.1 added replyto/failto/username/password/wraptext attributes, support for multiple mail servers in the server attribute, and several configuration options to the ColdFusion Administrator Mail Settings page. 6.1 also added support for HTML email via CFMAILPARAM and multipart email with CFMAILPART. You can even optionally not use the spooling process via an optional SpoolEnable as of 6. Finally CF 8 added priority, useSSL, and useTLS attributes.
• I welcome additions/corrections/feedback.

About this series

This entry is part of an ongoing series, sharing each of the 100+ categories and the tools and resources I (and others) have identified. They're designed to answer the questions we hear, like , "does anyone know of tools or resources to help with ...?"

I've decided to start offering each category here as a blog entry, to give the list more exposure and to make sure I'm not missing anything. For now I'm offering each day one list from the resources and then another from the tools categories. To see the list of all categories, see Part 1 of this series. I may in the future offer an RSS feed of any updates made to the list.

I hope people will get great value out of the lists, here or on the tools and resources page. Please try to remember to point the list out to people you see asking for these kind of tools and resources. Thanks.

Additions/Corrections

The tools/resources list is a perpetual work in progress. I definitely welcome additions or corrections to it. If you have any to offer, you can leave them here as a comment on this blog entry and I'll move them to the list on my site.

BTW, before you offer an update here, please do check the category on the real list. I won't be coming back here to update these blog entries to sync them if I add new items to the real list.

Next up tomorrow will be CFML Documentation/Help Tools and Resources and CFML Caching Tools.