General themes among those who are just starting are generally among the "why should I use them", "what are the benefits", etc.

We were going to Breeze Live the preso, but we didn't get to Ed in time to get the account all set up. So, we broadcast audio only via a Flashcom app that Steve Rittler wrote. Unfortunately, we only had one person on the other line, but it was an interesting hack nonetheless.

Paul Kenny and I had an interesting side discussion on CFCUnit. If you aren't using CFCUnit for unit testing your CFCs, you should be. Check it out!

We're also tlaking about code gen tools for CFCs and who's working on what. Seems people would like to see some tools for this. I mentioned we (we=Adam Crump) has a CFC Bean generator for Dreamweaver, and he's looking to port it for Eclipse. Also looking to extend it to generate tests for CFCUnit. People also want UML to CFC to UML generators. Some good dialogue here.

If you haven't been there yet, Cat's Meow is a karaoke bar. Even if you think you don't like karaoke, this place is a blast. We're planning to head over after the special event. Spread the word and hope to see you there!

This session is more a discussion of how we as architects and developers need to plan for scalability in our applications. As the session description says, "Throwing hardware at an application does not make it scalable. Indeed, scalability must be part of every aspect of application design and development. In this session you will learn exactly how applications must be built from the ground up for scalability."

My session discusses designing for scalability, and presents strategies as well as techniques that apply to web application development in general, and ColdFusion application development specifically. The discussion focuses more on planning and testing than it does on actual coding. If you have a chance to stop by, I'd love to discuss how to scalability in the context of your ColdFusion applications!

• Dramatic performance improvements
• Bitmap caching of vector graphics (cacheAsBitmap)
• cacheAsBitmap works with components to improve performance (like big accordian panes)
• New graphical capabilities. Pixel level control via graphic effects - Bevel, Drop Shadow, Blur (in and out), Convolution, Glow, Color Matrix, etc. All controllable at runtime. Can be applied to any movie clip.
• New text rendering engine (Saffron). Precise control over anti-aliasing.
• New Flash Video codec. Among the best in the industry. Still support old codec as well. Demo images are pretty impressive contrasting old and new. New capabilities made possible including video alpha channel at runtime (very, very impressive). Makes it possible to see through items in video as well.

1. Flash forms with built in validation, new controls such as a tabbed control. All done using CFML.
2. cfdocument tag for preserving printing and formatting of pages. Can output in FlashPaper, PDF, and HTML
3. Report designer showing how to design reports for new cfreport tag. Very similar to other report designers you might be used to ala Crystal, Access, Actuate, etc. The big difference is that it has lots of CF specific functionality built in such as binding with cfquery data. Can output in FlashPaper, PDF, and HTML.
4. Event Gateways. Allow CF to work beyond the web. You interface with gateways using CFCs. CF ships with several included gateways including SMS (comes with a cell phone aggregator for testing). You could also use gateways to interface with IM, JMS, etc. There's a demo gateway to allow you to SMS Blackstone to get updates before your next session, get your schedule, and more.

More interesting was a demo given a little later where they were able to show the breakout, by state, of how people voted. This was based on an area code lookup of the captured phone numbers from the SMS voting.

The actual SMS work was handled by a new feature in Blackstone called the SMS Gateway. More on gateways later.

Update: Lance Linder points out that a 2nd unit testing framework (and more) is also available, as2lib.

Education & Government = 35%
Big corporations =54%
ColdFusion users = 60%
Dreamweaver users = 90%