Yup, the new adobe.com went live today, sporting a look mirroring that of the dev center.

Interestingly, ColdFusion is no longer listed on the front page (or the products page) as one of the top products, it’s now buried in the drop-downs.

I’ve just been sat here encoding some video to flash, and happened across a post by Peter Ent talking about how the BBC had chosen Flash for the basis of it’s iPlayer software (their online catch-up TV service).

So why is this significant? Well, think Silverlight. Microsoft have been pushing Silverlight as hard as they can for Video - so one would think that Silverlight would be ideal for the BBC’s iPlayer content - but No, the BBC have decided to go for flash - which is quite a significant win.

Now we just need them to get rid of all the RealPlayer based news content they pump out.

This morning I was reading a post from Brian Meloche regarding “Promoting ColdFusion to non-ColdFusion Developers“. I did answer via the comments, but I thought that I would post something a little more susbstantial.

Generally I believe that what is there makes sense, but I’m not overly keen on the aspects mentioned within the “Build demo apps” section of the list. Two main points are things that I feel the need to discuss:

1) “put this on RIAForge”

To start with, I want to make something clear: I think RIAForge is a good thing. It is a call to action for the open-sourcers in the community and provides a centralised place to go for everything that they kick out, be it frameworks, browser tools, pre-baked applications etc. However, I do feel that in the context of the above post something needs to be considered.

Take a look at the categories on RIAForge. Note that every single one is an Adobe product. This means that a user would probably have some sort of vested interest in Adobe products before visiting the site. This achieves two things: It helps Adobe developers find stuff quickly and it segregates the Adobe community from everyone else. Therefore, I fail to see how this would help promote CF to non-CF developers.

Put yourselves in the shoes of “another” developer (be it .NET, PHP, Java whatever). What motivation would you have to go to RIAForge? The end result is that whenever you go to Sourceforge, Freshmeat et al, that you don’t see much in the way of CFML, as it’s all over on RIAForge, nicely grouped together.

So, whats the answer in the context of the original issue? Well, for me it has to be populating the centralised, vendor agnostic sites with CFML. Get CFML onto Sourceforge, Get CFML onto Freshmeat, Get CFML on Hotscripts. It is only by generating activity in CFML on these sites that people will realise CFML is still active and doing well. Hiding it away on a CFML-centric site does exactly the opposite.

2) “promote popular application types (blogging, bulletin boards, etc.) written in CF”

OK, for this I want you sit in your managers seat - the one that pays the bills, and more importantly, buys CFMX or Bluedragon licenses. Now, think like they would think for a second. What are your key interests? For most, there will be only one: the bottom line. How much money can I make the business this year.

So, now think about CFML in the same way - what are the important aspects that you need to consider?…

Productivity and cost.

So, managers want to know how CFML can help them get their jobs done with the minimum outlay in the quickest time. Therefore managers need to be demonstrated this to take any interest in CFML. They need to be made aware that for them to get their end-of-year bonus they need to invest in CFML. OK, so the license costs are an issue, but we’ll leave that one for now. They need to know that decent-ish CFML developer can do what a good Java developer can do in half the time. This is what is important when thinking about the bottom-line.

Now think about this from the non-CF developers view-point as well. You have similar interests. You want to know that you can do the stuff that matters to you in the shortest time possible as easily as possible, thus getting the aforementioned manager off your back.

So, what does this mean with regard to the point on promoting popular application types? Well for me, showing a developer/manager that they can do the easy stuff in CFML in a pointless task - they can already do this with whatever tools they are using, and someone has probably already done it for them. What I beleive we need to show the community is how to do the stuff they do every day (ie the boring corporate stuff) - but show them how much quicker they can do it with Coldfusion.

Make a big point about how easy it is to generate and consume webservices, do AJAX, do database work, use event gateways etc. With this, CFML will seem a lot more attractive to everyone (thus making the license costs harder to swallow).

But what about the stuff that CFML can’t do (yet)? Well, don’t describe CFML as an island. Make it abundantly clear the CFML is Java (or .NET). Make it clear that CFML can be extended and reinforced. Make it clear that CFML is a way of making hard things easy.

So, hopefully I’ve described myself clearly enough. Any thoughts from anyone else?

I’ve just got back from tonights UK CFUG meeting with Ben Forta at City University in London. Overall, a good night with Ben talking for a couple of hours about the current Flex Beta and some ancillary topics.

Covered were many topics:
- Flex Builder 2 - This is currently in Beta 1 with Beta 2 apparently only a few days away. Ben wouldn’t give any dates for a full release, and the official line is “Mid-Year”, although I did spot that Ben’s Beta 2 install had 73 days until expiry which puts it May/June time. Pricing, as mentioned in other blogs, is said to be below $1000, whilst the framework and compiler (bundled in the SDK) and being handed out for free.
- Mystic - The Coldfusion 7.0.1 updater. This includes a new remoting engine and enables push/pull of data between CF and Flex using JMS.
- Data Synchronizing Services - A new cool gadget that controls multiple users updating the same data at the same time and helping them sort out any problems caused by them overwriting eah other.
- Flash Player 8.5 - Ben spoke about the massive performance improvements to be found in 8.5, and also the inclusion of the original FP8 virtual machine (in addition to the new 8.5 VM) to make sure there is 100% backward compatability.
- Planned Flex/Livecycle integration.
- A brief mention of CF8, better know by the name Scorpio, which include a raft of monitoring, analysis and performance probing tools.
- A brief mention of Jrun, which is undergoing development of a new version fully using Java 1.5 etc.

Nearly all of the above are available at http://labs.adobe.com

As always, Ben presented very well, and the CFUG had a whole load of questions which were answered very efficiently. Some of the demos were very good and showed how powerful Flex could be in the right hands. Unfortunately, Ben’s data services demo’s weren’t working at the time, but nevertheless, we got around these with a little imagination.

The general feedback from the group on Flex was one of excitement, with a couple of members remarking how “the mind boggled” at the possibilities that were now open. Hopefully it won’t be too long before Ben is back with us for another demonstration (hopefully of CF8 ;-)).

The beta versions of Flex 2 (including Flex Builder 2 and Flex Enterprise Services 2), and “Mystic” (the ColdFusion update which provides sophisticated Flex 2 integration is available for download from the Adobe Labs site.