Open Bluedragon ?

Pixl8 has been an avid user of ColdFusion since the late 90's when I used an early version for my University Dissertation. Since then we've gone through many versions and I used to train the formal Macromedia now Adobe certified curriculum. Back in 2005 we started using alternatives Bluedragon.net and now we're a massive fan of Open Bluedragon.

Whats special about version 2.0 ?

Open Bluedragon 2.0 has finally been released and we've been using the latest bleeding edge nightly builds in some specific cool projects for some 6 months now. The Open BD team has really pulled out all the stops and delivered some very elegant features.

Some of my particular favourites are

1. CFSMTP (Write Mail based applications that process Mail and respond accordingly, we'll be sharing details of how we're leveraging this killer feature soon!)

2. CFMAIL call backs for better mail handling

3. Awesome deep json support

4. Server-side JQuery style selectors using the JSOUP libraries and exposed as a simple HTML() function

5. Server side inline Javascript <cfscript language="javascript">

6. Server side inline Java <cfscript language="java">

These last two features means we will now be able to offer developers to write their CMS templates in CFML, Serverside Javascript or Java. I'm currently experimenting with Quercus which would allow us to also provide PHP support.

For more information check out the blog post from Alan Williamson or head over to the project site