Will Adobe Announce A ColdFusion IDE At MAX???
Wednesday 12 November 2008 - Filed under Code
The CFEclipse world has been quiet lately. The mailing list has been slow, bug reports are rare, and it seems people are making due with the latest ‘beta’ release which for the most part works well with the latest Eclipse 3.4. I poke around on the CFEclipse wiki doing occasional updates but wonder if anyone reads them.
So what’s next? Adobe has done a few CF IDE surveys in the past but so far we’ve seen little from it…
- In August 2006 Damon Cooper asked developers about an IDE.
- In January 2008 Jason Delmore posted the CF IDE survey.
There have been rumors for awhile that Adobe would announce something at IDE related at MAX. I can’t remember when I first heard that – maybe during Ben’s AIR tour? But as we all know MAX is coming up in a few weeks so we won’t have long to wait. A few more teases have come out in the last week or so:
Tim Buntel has a blog post about Flex Builder announcements at MAX:
Well, what we’re showing at MAX should put any of those concerns to rest. Very exciting news for CF developers and CF developers who have wanted to get into Flex, but who have stayed away due to the learning curve or other issues.
Ben Forta has a note about the big announcements being during the day 2 keynote:
Well, we’re doing things a little differently this year, and much of the really exciting product news is going to be part of the Day 2 keynote… And so consider this a friendly public service announcement – don’t miss the Day 2 keynote, really!
So will we ColdFusion developers finally get some IDE love? Will it be based on Eclipse or something else? Will it be free? I’ll be watching feeds, Twitter, etc and hope to see some good news from the keynotes!
2008-11-12 » Jim Priest
12 November 2008 @ 1:45 pm
I think an announcement about a CF IDE is almost guaranteed… The Adobe guys have been laying on the hints thick and fast at practically every conference this year. Not long to go now to find out the real story :)
12 November 2008 @ 2:10 pm
after reading tim’s blog, my thought is that flexbuilder (which is a damn fine IDE in and of itself) is going to be extended into a Flex *and* CF IDE. use it for either or both.
nothing more than wild speculation on my part.
12 November 2008 @ 2:13 pm
Charlie – I didn’t think about that but it sort of makes sense… But then do you get into the slippery slope of Dreamweaver where you try to stuff too much into one tool?
12 November 2008 @ 2:53 pm
HomeSite CS4. :)
12 November 2008 @ 2:58 pm
(A shadowy figure in a dark room)
I got to question an intoxicated Mark Drew at CFUnited ’08 about if he and Adobe were partnering on a new CF IDE, and his silence on the issue was deafening.
Also, I would assume that any CF IDE would be an eclipse plugin, which would work with any Eclipse environment, including Flex Builder. So there’s a couple cool features that are available when you have both installed… That’s really not much different than CFEclipse and FlexBuilder right now.
12 November 2008 @ 3:07 pm
I know nothing about any of it, and hadn’t even thought of Flex and CF IDE in one. Would be VERY handy though.
12 November 2008 @ 3:15 pm
It’ll be an eclipse plugin, and will be called ColdFusion Builder (or something along those lines). Just like FlexBuilder and Aptana Studio(not an Adobe product), you can install it as a standalone app or as a plugin to a current eclipse install. You could even add the plugin to FlexBuilder standalone (which is, of course, an eclipse isntall).
It won’t be free. It’ll probably cost somewhere between $99 -$249.
CFEclipse has been quiet. Mark Drew, the Lead Developer, has recently been asked to take over the reins for Reactor (database abstraction framework). I imagine that has something to do with it.
12 November 2008 @ 3:21 pm
I do wonder about the cost.
We currently use CFE and have licenses for Dreamweaver and FlexBuilder.
If Adobe does charge for this new IDE it’s going to be tough to sell (at least here) when we have already paid for DW (but no one uses) and we have FB and CFEclipse (which work fine).
13 November 2008 @ 9:20 am
OOooooh! That would be quite interesting, CFEclipse is due for an upgrade. This will also provide a nice market for Adobe to fill as some customers drop their CF servers for Railo/BD, but will still buy the IDE from Adobe.
13 November 2008 @ 9:29 am
Jeff – that is my one concern with an Adobe IDE – why would they support Railo/OpenBD – their competitors?
13 November 2008 @ 3:15 pm
Would be nice to have Flex Builder handle CF as well – certainly seems logical given that CF integrates nicely with Flex apps.
The one downside is that Eclipse cannot write BOMs in UTF-8 files (it can read them). Which means you have to add processing directives to your CF templates – I wish they would update CF to make UTF-8 processing the complier default.
13 November 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Unless they are planning on going the “microsoft” route. That is to say, the server will be free (like Railo or BD, or maybe just cheap), and the IDE will be where they make their money….