Customer Reviews

Fusebox: Developing ColdFusion Applications

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Fusebox is on version 4 as of 8/2004. This book is for Fusebox 3 ONLY!

Get a Fusebox 4 book if you are starting from scratch with FB4 as 3 and 4 are VERY different.

I will let others discuss the quality of this book - it is mostly a moot point for someone wanting the full benefits of FB.

This book goes from theory to nuts-and-bolts and back again on how to design, implement, use, manipulate, and manage code written in the Fusebox method. While I particularly like Wireframes and FLiP, my favorite Fusebox piece by far are FuseDocs.

The book spends a fair amount of time explaining each piece of the Fusebox methodology and gives plenty of examples. There is a companion website, which is more than handy. The book is broken into two sections: coding and the life cycle of the code. Each section seems to have a bit different focus, and I imagine that the Life Cycle Process section is more immediately attractive to managers and independent developers. Yet I am glad to find both pieces here, juxtaposed. It keeps me from losing the forest for the trees in the coding section, and from getting too far removed from the actual work at hand in the FLiP section.

According to the authors, Fusebox was developed for use by small teams with a theoretical manager somewhere. I can see how this methodology would bring focus to and demystify any application development. But I have to write that while teams might have been the target audience, contractors will come to love this. Fusebox and especially its FuseDoc element empower the novice contractor to tackle the Big Project that has been landed at long last and produce results without becoming overwhelmed. Far more importantly, though, it allows a developer familiar with FuseBox to speak a fluid language about time, task, and integration. As someone who finds herself after lunch looking over code written before breakfast and wondering what the heck I was trying to do, FuseDocs are a godsend.

Fusebox methodology, while written for ColdFusion, isn't limited to the ColdFusion world. One could easily pick up any FuseDoc and translate it to PHP. This portability of the process renders the Fusebox methodology a staying power we haven't seen in a long time. And while extreme programming has much to recommend it, it doesn't result in a task-oriented product in the same way that Fusebox does. The Fusebox process seems to lend itself to real world applications, development and concerns in a way I haven't found in other methodologies. It also has the added bonus of becoming widely known, and could approach a standard for web-based application development.

As a developer, I found the book well written as well, and one that addresses each area discretely. I personally read it form front to back, but the material seems to hold up to a piecemeal reading as well (this chapter, that section, or this reference). All this means that the Fusebox book will be kept close at hand and used often. Buy it, and don't be afraid to write in it, dog-ear it, and put flags where they make the most sense for you. I truly believe that use of the Fusebox methodology singly or by whole teams will result in programmers who get to spend more time doing what they love, and doing it in an environment they enjoy.

Whether you want to learn about the intricacies of the Fusebox core files; or you want to understand how Fusebox can help you become a better ColdFusion® developer, the book Fusebox: Developing ColdFusion® Applications by Jeff Peters and Nat Papovich is well worth the read.

This book covers the basics of the Fusebox framework and FLiP (Fusebox Lifecycle Process) methodology to the more advanced features of Fusebox such as nested circuits and layouts.

Beginners will appreciate the authors' abilities to convey complex ideas through examples that relate to real-world development experiences. Through their examples, it is easy to see how using FLiP and Fusebox can ease and even eliminate the common pitfalls that developers go through when coding their applications.

The book starts out by explaining why a framework and methodology are beneficial to creating successful applications, and will give the reader some insight into the relationship between the developer and the client. This is a recommended read for all managers.

The expertise of the authors really shows in chapters 3 and 4 as they delve into the complexities of the Fusebox core files. This section may be overly complex for the Fusebox beginner, but is an insightful read for those who already have experience creating Fusebox applications. If you were ever curious about the functionality of the code that makes up the Fusebox core files, this section will give you greater understanding of how Fusebox works.

Chapters 5-10 walk the reader through all of the parts that a developer is responsible for when creating a Fusebox application. The basics such as the fuses (ColdFusion templates) and XFA's (eXit FuseActions's or Triggers) are covered in chapters 5 and 6.

Chapter 7 covers Fusedocs, a documentation standard developed by Hal Helms. Even if you are not going to adopt the Fusebox framework for application development, learning Fusedoc's is time well spent. The Fusedocs chapter is a great reference tool that should be kept near your keyboard as you learn the names and attributes of the elements that make up the documentation. Appendix C details the Fusedoc dtd for those interested in the nitty-gritty of how Fusedocs are structured.

Chapters 8-10 detail the advanced features of Fusebox that make it such a powerful and useful framework. The chapter on nested circuits discusses how to set up an application to take advantage of the way in which circuits communicate with each other. With nesting comes inheritance, and nested layout which is the subject of Chapter 9.

Nested layouts are one of the more difficult concepts for new Fusebox developers to grasp. The book walks step-by-step though the concept of nested layouts and shows code examples of how nested layouts could be applied to an application.

Because nesting of both circuits and layouts can be difficult to put into practice, Chapter 10 looks at some of the issues that developers may encounter when utilizing these advanced features.

Part 3 of this book goes into the details of the Fusebox Lifecycle Process (FLiP). Developers who are responsible for the initial requirements gathering and architecture of an application will find Part 3 a useful read. For project managers who have struggled with bringing an application from concept to completion, chapters 11-16 are an important read.

The remaining chapters in Part 3 (17-19) describe some Fusebox best practices, and sum up why Fusebox is useful in a dialog between two of the characters introduced at the beginning of the book

Fusebox: Developing ColdFusion® Applications is very well written, and a must read for anyone interested in using Fusebox to develop ColdFusion based applications.

This is a well written and easy to read book, with a somewhat evangelical tone about Fusebox methodology for writing Web applications in ColdFusion. For those who don't know about Fusebox, or want to find in detail about what it is, it is excellent. For those who have used Fusebox in the past, it is a good reference for Version 3 of Fusebox, with all of the major concepts explained in clear, English prose, with not too much techno-jargon.

Whether the book succeeds in convincing everyone that Fusebox is the way to go is, however, questionable. Evangelism usually succeeds when the message is simple, or the results easily obtainable. Fusebox methodology is not the panacea that its proponents would have us believe. Its learning curve is steep, its benefits limited to certain types of applications and to sizable teams of developers. This book seems to address itself mostly to them, and it will have a hard time converting those developers who toil alone or in small teams. It is to be commended though for trying.

If you are new to fusebox you will probably read this book cover to cover and step away knowing nothing of practical value. This book could be useful as a high level reference for an experienced fuseboxer but not much else.

Jeff Peters and Nat Papovich have both been major forces in the development of Fusebox -- a methodology for developing web based applications in an efficient and organized fashion. While build and primarily used with ColdFusion, Fusebox can also be used with PHP or JSP code. [There is nothing available for ASP - arguably the most popular web scripting environment - due to limitations in the ASP language. ASP is unable to dynamically include files.]

This book provides a good introduction to Fusebox 3, as well as the FLiP methodology. They spend the first 100 pages or so walking through every line of code that is executed to initiate a fuse request (the 300+ line core file, the support files, etc.), then get into details of how to write your own fuse code, and how it interacts with the FB3 files.

They then spend a decent amount of time with FLiP -- the Fusebox Lifecycle Process. This I found less compelling, because much of FLiP is really oriented towards contract web site development. While some is applicable to the corporate environment in which I work, other parts really don't fit all that well. Nonetheless, I feel that Peters & Papovich do a good job explaining the concepts behind FLiP, as well as the various software tools which are available now to support it. They provide quick demonstrations of wireframing & prototyping tools, a visual mind mapping tool, and a tool to build fuse-level unit testing harnesses.

I found I really liked the approach of this book -- diving right into the deep end of the pool and working through the core files line by line. I'd initially gotten into Fusebox about a year ago, learning it on my own from what was available online. A few months later, I was fortunate enough to have Hal Helms teach a class in my company. And I've been developing in Fusebox almost exclusively since then. Despite this, I'd never spent much time actually working my way through the core files. In doing so through this book, I still picked up some interesting tips and tricks, and got my eyes opened on just how some of the code actually worked.

In short, I think I'll build better Fusebox apps with the info I gained from this book. Now, if I can just get myself to take the time to actually write up the Fusedocs... :-)

I thought the book did a very good job explaining FuseBox, but it did get preachy sometimes. There was also too much "story telling" for me.

I thought Discovering FuseBox by Helms was better because I like books that give me information without wasting my time.

I agree with some of the other comments I've read on here and from co-workers -- the book covers the basics well but is too "preachy" when it comes to the "FLiP" development cycle. We have our own development process in-house and I really just wanted a solid reference book for FuseBox 3 in which I could quickly look up what I wanted.

This book covers developing web applications using Fusebox and ColdFusion. However, it covers much more than the coding fundamentals. The strength of this book, aside from being an complete reference for Fusebox, is that it also covers FLiP, the Fusebox Life Cycle. What this means to you is you will not only learn how to develop Fusebox applications, but also learn a tried and true development process from concept to launch. This is an invaluable feature and I'm very happy to have this reference on my desk. Even if you choose not to read the FLiP chapters, you'll get a lot out of this book.

For those looking for a Fusebox 4 book that is similar to "Fusebox: Developing ColdFusion Applications", you can get "Fusebox 4 & FLiP: Master-Class ColdFusion Applications", by Jeff Peters, at www.protonarts.com