Adobe ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit, Volume 2: Application Development [Paperback]

Ben Forta (Author), Raymond Camden (Author), Charlie Arehart (Author), John C. Bland II (Author), Leon Chalnick (Author), Ken Fricklas (Author), Paul Hastings (Author), Mike Nimer (Author), Sarge Sargent (Author), Robi Sen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0321515463 | ISBN-13: 978-0321515469 | Edition: 1

ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit, Volume 2: Application Development begins by introducing important code organization and management techniques, and then progresses to topics that include integrating with all sorts of other technologies (including PDF, Adobe Flex, Ajax, advanced SQL and databases), debugging, and optimizing performance. From design and planning, to application deployment and troubleshooting, this instructional reference is all you need to successfully work, create, and progress with ColdFusion 8, the the most important ColdFusion since the product was created back in 1995

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ben Forta is Adobe Systems Inc.'s Senior Technical Evangelist, and is one of the best known and most trusted names in the ColdFusion community. Ben is the author of numerous books on ColdFusion, SQL, Regular Expressions, and related technologies, and ½ million Ben Forta books have been printed in more than a dozen languages worldwide. He writes regular columns on ColdFusion and Internet development, and now spends a considerable amount of time lecturing and speaking on application development worldwide.

Product Details

• Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: Adobe Press; 1 edition (December 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321515463
• ISBN-13: 978-0321515469
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #716,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great content, but publisher buggered the delivery, July 14, 2008

By 

K. Miller - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Adobe ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit, Volume 2: Application Development (Paperback)

I love Ray Camden's work, and this book is no exception. He has a straightforward writing style with lots of examples to back it up. CF8 has a lot of new features, and if you work with CF8, this is the reference set to start with. If you have prior works, you'll continue to love it, though you'll rapidly get sick of the old 'Orange Whip Studios' sample.

Now the bad part. For some reason the publisher split this into 3 separate books. If I pile them all up they are about the same size as the last single CF book I bought by Ray, except that you now pay over twice as much. Myself, I'd rather have the single big book.

Second grief; about 1/3 of the content is on CD... except it isn't on CD's... You have to download the PDFs from Ray's site. Personally, I hate electronic copy for reference books, I like to flip between pages and dog ear topics of interest. The publisher did the same thing in the prior versions of this book, though at least they had the dignity to include the CD with the book.

Editors PLEASE: offer a set of completely printed volumes and a set of electronic volumes. Let the users choose. If Ray went with a different publisher that did this I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

So, content aside - which is excellent - this entire line reeks of a bunch of new VPs brainstorming how to improve quarterly margins. You can almost visualize the Dilbert like conversation...

VP1: 'OK, first we'll only publish 2/3s of the content, we'll put the last chapters on CD, that'll save us a bunch!.
VP2: 'heh, why attach the CD, we could save $0.03 on each sale if we DIDN'T attach it! Let 'em download it!
VP3: 'In fact, we'll make 'ol Ray put it on his site so we don't even have to pay for hosting space - that way we can shaft the customers AND the author (laugh around the table). They'll be paying us for something we don't even provide!
VP1: 'GREAT!, and, wait - yeah - we could cut it into 2 books and charge twice as much!'
VP2: 'Come on man, be bold - THREE volumes and charge THREE times as much!'
VP3: 'Oh man, no wonder they fired thoses bozo VPs before us - we'll double earnings in one quarter alone! I can't wait for the bonuses!'

Anyway, great job to Ray. Publishers - WAKE UP!

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed Forta Fan, March 30, 2008

By 

M. Murphy (Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Adobe ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit, Volume 2: Application Development (Paperback)

I have almost every book that Ben Forta has written on ColdFusion and have been a big fan of his teaching and writing style but this book is a big disappointment to me.

Firstly, I did not purchase volume 1 since I already have a basic working knowledge CF thanks to his previous books and at the current prices didn't think I needed a reprise. Vol 2 appeared to cover the new CF8 features but it appparently is not a stand-alone version since there were no instructions as to where to obtain and install the sample code and tutorials used in the book. I finally found the link on the back cover, visited the Forta/book site and accessed the forum. I found the supporting files to Vol 2, downloaded and installed them, then discovered that I apparently needed databases and files included in previous books. Not only that, but to "reduce the price" of the book, half the chapters are online.

Chapt 29 spent a great deal of Page space (which seems to be at a premium) expounding on the need to create a good user experience (navigation techniques, fast downloads, etc) - this book was supposed to be on CF8, not best practices in website design. I would have preferred he used the valuable page space for CF8 features and techniques.

I still haven't located what appear to be missing files in a missing directory called "imageserver", (which displays a "page not found" message when trying to view the example code files in Chapter 33) even after spending some frustrating time surfing the online forum.

I expected a book devoted to the new and upgraded CF8 features and not revisiting previous code examples (like Next N) unless the new features impact the former way of doing things, which are covered in a previous Forta books like: Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Web Application Construction Kit and Advanced Macromedia ColdFusion MX Application Development (3rd Edition).

I paid almost $50 for one volume of a 3 volume book which is mostly a rewrite of the previous content and half of that is only available on line. I would rather have paid a bit more for new valuable content on the changes in CF8.

When I purchase a book, I expect a book that I can read sitting in a chair - not sitting at a computer reading a pdf file or printing it out on a ream of paper!

Forta's other books are great but this book is not worth the price.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have for any ColdFusion Developer, January 8, 2008

By 

Andrew M. Sandefer "Andy Sandefer" (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit, Volume 2: Application Development (Paperback)

This book is well written. I've been working with CF more and more over the last 4 or 5 years and I've been buying this family of books since version 6. As with earlier versions, this family of books for CF 8 has definitely helped me get started with new features and I regularly consult them for ideas as I need to integrate new features into various ongoing projects and existing applications.

This book does a good job of introducing concepts related to the new display management tags (cflayout, cflayoutarea, cfpod, etc.) and the new image handling tags. It stays within the scope of what the majority of advanced level CF developers need to know when leaping from CFMX7 to CF8.

I do wish that the book approached AJAX development by threading the examples together in a "build this small application" style format rather than the way they're laid out now which is "here is a random example of how to use cfmenu, cfajaxproxy, etc.". It is only fair to mention that the Getting Started edition for CF8 does employ that format when teaching AJAX Auto-Suggest and basic Grid Design using the familar Orange Whip Studios web application. I have not yet bought my copy of Volume 3 so maybe it will go a bit more in depth on some of the database related AJAX topics - we'll see. All in all, this is another great book!