Latest News from Matthew Woodward

Flex Your ColdFusion Muscles with Adobe Flex

Sat, 12 May 2007 18:00:00 EDT

Web developers have done their best to meet these increasing demands through a rather clumsy mix of HTML and other technologies such as JavaScript, DHTML, and Flash. They have met with varying degrees of success. Because of the nature of these technologies and their inherent limitations, developers are still prevented from providing desktop-like application functionality and rich user experiences within the Web browser. The time has come for a completely new Web application paradigm; one that combines the power of the Internet with the user experience of a desktop application.

ColdFusion Developer's Journal Special "Frameworks" Focus Issue: Mach-II

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:45:00 EST

It's all Simon's fault. We say this to all framework writers who, even now, are trying to recover from the task assigned them by CFDJ's editor-in-chief: provide an article and an implementation of the Macromedia Pet Market application in their chosen framework.

ColdFusion's Place in the New i-Technology Spectrum

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 18:45:00 EST

ColdFusion recently took a bit of a jump up to #19 on TIOBE Software's index of most popular programming languages (www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index). I hadn't looked at this index in a while but it's interesting to see what CF is both above and below, and it's also nice to see the nine green up arrows next to it on the chart.

What's an Object? An Introduction to OOP

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 17:00:00 EDT

On New Year's Eve, 2004 I declared 2005 to be the 'year of object-oriented programming for ColdFusion developers,' and since the year is approaching its final quarter it's a good time to focus our attention on OOP in ColdFusion and see how we're doing.

The Asynchronous CFML Gateway

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 13:00:00 EDT

One of the most powerful new features available in ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise that many ColdFusion developers might not yet be using is event gateways. Event gateways open up entirely new possibilities for ColdFusion and allow our ColdFusion applications to communicate with more or less any other Internet-enabled system even if the system doesn't communicate via the 'traditional' HTTP protocol.

Macromedia Flex Builder 1.5

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:00:00 EST

Over the past couple of months I've been introducing you to some of the fantastic possibilities Macromedia Flex offers for building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with ColdFusion ('Flex Your ColdFusion Muscles,' CFDJ Vol. 6, issue 12 and 'Data Presentation with Macromedia Flex,' CFDJ Vol. 7, issue 1), and I hope you've been motivated to begin experimenting with Flex yourself.

Data Presentation with Macromedia Flex

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:00:00 EST

Last month I introduced you to the wonderful world of building Rich Internet Applications with Macromedia Flex ('Flex Your ColdFusion Muscles,' CFDJ, Vol. 6, issue 12) and discussed some of the distinct advantages RIAs have over traditional HTML applications.

Why Java? Moving Beyond Procedural Programming

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

.NET languages such as C# and VB .NET are OO, and CFML as of MX is kind of OO, so why do CF programmers need to Java? First, argues Matt Woodward, Java is one of the purest implementations of OO that exists, and to truly make this shift from procedural to OO programming, a deep understanding of OO concepts is crucial. Java is the best way to get this deep understanding. Second, as Hal Helms has stated: 'In 2004, not being deeply involved in OO is career suicide.'

XSLT and ColdFusion: Whipping Your XML Data into Shape

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EDT

ColdFusion MX offers a simple and easy way to unleash the power of XSLT for manipulating your XML data. Here's how. From Web services to news and blog data feeds to configuration files, XML is everywhere these days.